The report shows that UK brands spent £ 1.75 billion dollars for online advertising just in the first 6 months of 2009…and 60% of that was spent for search advertising! Of course Google, one of the world’s largest Internet search engines, has been the driving source behind the UK’s rise in online advertising.

It’s a give-give situation with the UK and Google - the UK gives Google more advertising money than any other country in the world, and Google gives UK citizens a chance to step away from TV and print ads and into the abyss of the Internet.

So, what’s your take on the UK’s first place finish over the US in online advertising and search?

You can read the entire article on Telegraph.co.uk.

Boston, Mass. and Reno, Nev. (Sept. 14, 2009) – One to One Interactive (OTO), a Boston-based digital marketing firm recently ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in America, announced today a definitive agreement to merge Twelve Horses, with operations in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Reno-Tahoe, Nevada, into its OTOi and OTOlabs divisions.

The merger expands One to One Interactive’s comprehensive suite of digital marketing services, technology and media offerings by incorporating Twelve Horses’ agency practice and innovative marketing products.

The move represents the fourth time OTO has grown through a merger or acquisition, a strategy the company embarked on beginning in 2005. The addition of Twelve Horses gives OTO a significant presence in the West and Twelve Horses’ many East Coast based clients will welcome the OTO East Coast footprint. Both OTO and Twelve Horses service accounts in Europe and Asia. Twelve Horses, frequently recognized for its innovative work in the travel-tourism industry, also services such global clients as J.P. Morgan Chase, Deloitte and Bill Me Later, a PayPal company.

The western-based Twelve Horses will integrate its trademarked and patented technology platforms, including MessageMaker™, which delivers multi-channel direct digital communications to customers via email, web, mobile, voice and fax messaging, into current One to One Interactive offerings. As a result, OTO clients, which currently include Comcast, Rite-Aid, McGraw-Hill and Partners Healthcare, will be able to leverage the company’s expanded portfolio of services and tools in executing their one-to-one digital marketing strategies.

“Our merger with Twelve Horses enhances and extends OTO into the type of unique firm brands seek in today’s digital marketing landscape, one that can come to the table with leading marketing services strategy and execution capabilities as well as a full suite of proven technology products to integrate and deploy quickly and efficiently,” said Ian Karnell, chief executive officer of One to One Interactive. “By leveraging the platform capabilities and innovative intellectual property we’ve acquired through our expansion efforts, our clients can expect greater efficiency in strategy execution and in speed to market, which is essential for remaining at the forefront of the marketing evolution.”

With its newly expanded product and service lines, nearly 30 percent of revenues will be driven from the firm’s unique portfolio of permission based digital messaging  technologies, which include multi-channel messaging platforms for email and mobile marketing, content management systems, ticketing and event management, desktop widgets and plug-ins for improved workflow. A large portion of the remaining revenue stream will continue to be generated from services such as branding, web site development, customer relationship management, search engine marketing and social web strategies.

“At a time where every marketing services firm is being asked to bring more to the table, our clients benefit from this merger by having immediate access to a broader organization with incredible experience and depth in quality, customizable technology products and solutions,” explained Twelve Horses CEO David LaPlante, who will serve as OTO’s Senior Vice-President of Sales & Marketing. “Our newly combined company significantly enhances our ability to accommodate our client’s broad and often unique set of marketing services and technology dependent requests, as opposed to simply providing a one-size fits-all-solution.”

The merger is designed to accelerate growth and innovation, including a new management structure to help achieve that vision. One to One Interactive Chief Executive Officer Ian Karnell and President Jeremi Karnell will remain in their roles, while Twelve Horses executives Steve Spencer and Martin Gastanaga will serve as senior executives for its OTOlabs division. The company will remain headquartered in Charlestown, Mass., with additional offices in Baltimore, Reno-Tahoe, Salt Lake City and London.

About One to One Interactive
Complete One-To-One Solutions for Brands, Agencies, and Publishers

Established in 1997, One to One Interactive is the first enterprise to assemble a complete solution for brands, agencies, and publishers executing one-to-one marketing strategies. By bringing together one of the nation’s leading digital marketing agencies, the worlds most comprehensive portfolio of permission marketing platforms, performance marketing solutions, and cutting edge neuromarketing research techniques, the companies of One to One Interactive build informed and creative customer/constituent strategies on the belief that digital media’s ability to enable engaging one-to-one dialogues is the future of marketing.

One to One Interactive has recently been ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in America, one of the Top Interactive firms in the United States according to B2B Magazine, and one of the world’s 20 hottest independent digital marketing firms by Ad Age.

Please visit one of One to One Interactive’s web sites for more information:

    * One to One Interactive: www.onetooneinteractive.com

    * OTOi: www.otoi.com

    * OTOlabs: www.otolabs.com

    * OTOnetworks: www.otonetworks.com

    * OTOinsights: www.otoinsights.com

About Twelve Horses
Twelve Horses has historically been a global provider of Web site design and development, multi-channel marketing, business process automation, customer relationship management (CRM), search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Operating as an online brand marketing and messaging technology agency, Twelve Horses assisted businesses in translating and transforming their brands online.

Twelve Horses provides One to One Interactive with operations in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Reno-Tahoe, Nevada.

Twelve Horses has been recognized for being a “Top 30 Innovative Company” by Utah Business, and “Technology Company of the Year” by the Technology Business Alliance of Nevada.

Please visit Twelve Horses web site for more information: www.twelvehorses.com

For more information call 1-617-425-7369 or visit www.onetooneinteractive.com

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Most of us do it every day: check our email, text our friends, turn on the radio and make a phone call. In fact, some people are so skilled that they can do all four of these things at the same time! However, it is fair to say that if you work in any type of job that includes computers and marketing, this kind of multitasking ability is usually a requirement.According to a recent study by Stanford University researchers, it was found that people who constantly deal with several different types of electronic information and switch from one task to another:

• Don’t pay attention
• Can’t control their memory
• Switch from one task to another worse than someone who completes a single task at a time

Stanford calls these people “high-tech jugglers,” and they apparently don’t do any better than someone that chooses to take their time completing a single task. Stanford Professor Clifford Nass even says these people are “suckers for irrelevancy” and that “everything distracts them.”

So, are you offended like I am? I consider myself to be a fair multitasker, and I always thought that it was a good thing.  Apparently the researchers at Stanford are out to prove the old theory that it’s impossible to process more than one string of information at a time.

If you’re interested in reading more about the Stanford study that put 100 students through a series of multitasking tests, you can read about it at Stanford University News.

Social media is a broadly used term that includes a wide range of techniques and tools for leveraging and supporting the sharing of information among people. Internet enabled tools are the locus for social media activity as they provide low-cost access to many people allowing for a new wave of targeted advertising to develop. As social media continues to grow at a near exponential rate, marketers and researchers alike are becoming increasingly interested in the practices of the users who help shape the content at highly participatory social media sites. Digg.com is an exemplar site for user participation in social media and is the focus of this report. Understanding the behavior of Digg.com users will help marketers to better represent and promote their material on Digg.com as well as provide insights into the practices of social media users in general.

In this report, we present an analysis of user engagement with social media via Digg.com. Viewer engagement was measured with OTOinsight’s Quantemo™ neuro-marketing research system. Quantemo™ utilizes a multi-modal approach that combines self-report, physiological and neurological data to holistically and reliably measure user engagement with digital media. Analyzing the results from the Quantemo™ sources, we present a set of four insights concerning how users engage with social media and how the cues in social media systems positively inform user behavior.

Our research uncovered four significant insights:

1. Users Seek Tailored News Experience and Not “Mass Media” Stories
2. Story Headlines Are the Chief Determinant of Digg Behavior
3. Short, Direct, and Branded Headlines Dominate Digg.com
4. Positive Engagement Scores Associated with Desirable Digg Behavior

Here are the 6 questions and a five of the best answers to each one:

Question #1 - How would you suggest other small businesses get started on Twitter?

Rachel, Baying Hound

Web: www.bayinghound.com

Twitter: @bayinghound

“Use linked in contacts or your business card collection to look up and follow people in your field: vendors, peers, and, importantly, competitors. Then, browse through who they are tweeting with and add those people. Join the conversations and tweet questions of your own.”

Heather Smith, MYOB Trainer

Twitter: @myobtrainer

“Alternate between something relevant to your business and something irrelevant. I work in the accounting world, so I tweet comments on the budget, tax season, an opportunity that clients may like etc. I then will tweet about something positive, upbeat, but irrelevant to my business…my passion fruits have come into season and they are yummy…”

Mark Decker

Web: http://qvinci.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @decker_m

“My suggestion for getting started would be to find twitters’ in different fields to follow. Everyone wants to talk to others in their field, but part of the beauty of twitter is meeting new people. It’s like a mixer, you don’t want to spend the whole night talking to the people you always talk with. Meet someone new. Network!”

Jen Harris, Caffeinated Marketing

Web: http://caffeinatedmarketing.com/

Twitter: @jenharris09

“Be visually stimulating! We have all seen that looooonnngggg URL on the back of someone’s car promoting their website but trying to figure out what http://www.seewhatmyconstructioncompanyis.com is hard on the eyes - same goes for your Twitter handle. Capitalize the first letter of your name/business.”

Eric Nagel

Web: www.ericnagel.com

Twitter: @esnagel

“To gain followers, run a Twitter contest. @Mozy does a great job at this, by not only picking a winner, but offering everyone else a discount on their product. So even if someone doesn’t win, they at least get something out of it. To enter the contest, users should have to RT a specific message, chosen by the company.”

Question #2 - What’s the right way (or wrong way) to promote your business on Twitter?

Kira Wampler, Intuit

Web: http://smallbusiness.intuit.com/

Twitter: @Kirasw

“Our #1 tip for smart marketing on Twitter is to start by NOT talking about yourself all of the time. Spread some love. Retweet others and talk about yourself a *little*.”

Imnotadoctor

Web: www.imnotadoctor.com

Twitter: @imnotadoctor

“Setup an RSS Feed of Twitter Search for your brand name and major keywords. Then interact your heart out in realtime.”

Yiana, DIY SiteExpress

Web: www.diysiteexpress.com

“Always keep up with your business branding! This means creating a custom Twitter background that shows your brand. You can get tips and a free template in a recent blog article that I wrote “Brand Recognition: Creating a Custom Twitter Background” http://tiny.cc/NGWJA”

Heather Vreeland, Atlanta Occasions

Web: www.atlantaoccasions.com

Twitter: @atloccasions

“The right way to promote your business on twitter is to participate! Talk about what you’re doing… new happenings at your business…mention your clients and people you are collaborating with… pay attention to your followers and what they are doing and engage in conversation with them. The wrong way - talk about yourself and only yourself. People don’t want to be spammed about all things you. It’s true, people don’t care about what you know until they know that you care… so stop posting about only your business…Constantly tweeting the same exact phrase like “John Doe Event Venue is a great place for weddings” will get you nowhere.”

Paul Rosenfeld, Fanminder

Web: http://fanminder.com/

Twitter: @fanminder

“My favorite tip is how to use Twitter to find new customers. I first use Google and type “Twitter for ______” and fill in the blank with a vertical that might use Twitter - for example, restaurants. I typically get a few articles that are round-up articles of all restaurants in a given city using Twitter. Then I follow these restaurants and engage in conversations with them - we’ve gotten one customer so far this way and I expect we can generate many or even most of our new customers in the next six months this way.”

Question #3 - What is your #1 Twitter etiquette tip for small business owners?

Robert Brady, Righteous Marketing

Web: http://righteousmarketing.com

Twitter: @robert_brady

“Automated DMs aren’t worth sending. If you won’t invest a few seconds to compose a 140-character message I don’t want to invest 5 seconds reading it.”

Brandi Starr, Star Studded

Web: http://yourstarrstuddedevents.com/blog/

Twitter: @starrstudded

“Tweet about things other than your business & products. If you are constantly tweeting about your business or products you will be viewed as a SPAMMER and no one likes spammers. Instead become a resource in your field, share useful information, converse with or comment on others posts, network with businesses that line up with yours. If you build relationships you will gain a lot from using Twitter.”

Tim Milburn

Web: http://studentlinc.typepad.com/

Twitter: @timage

“A quality “T.W.E.E.T. is: Timely, Worth-reading, Educational, Entertaining, and Tweople-connecting.”

Wendy Piersall, Spark Plugging

Web: www.wendypiersall.com

Twitter: @eMom

“Give before you expect to receive. In fact, give MORE than you expect to receive. People always need to know WIIFM = “What’s in it for me?” Answer that question as often as possible and followers will flock to you.”

Tac Anderson, New Comm Biz

Web: www.newcommbiz.com

Twitter: @tacanderson

“Religious and political views don’t belong on a biz acct. get a personal acct for personal views.”

Question #4 - What is your best tip for getting re-tweeted?

Maria Marsala, Elevating Your Business

Web: www.elevatingyourbusiness.com

Twitter: @mariamarsala

“Put PLS RT (please retweet) at the end of appropriate messages so that your tweets get re-tweeted. It’s that old fashioned “call to action” stuff that helps spread your marketing efforts.”

StalkerB, Flash SEO

Web: www.flashseo.com

Twitter: @stalkerb

“Best tip for getting retweeted is to leave enough characters for people to just RT as is. If people have to start editing your message to fit “RT @your name + message” then they often don’t bother or miss out (what you thought was) an important part. View RTs as 120-ish character messages and really work on what you have to say and how to say it. Also if it contains a link make sure it’s clear what people will be clicking through to.”

Anita Cohen-Williams, My Twitter Apps

Web: http://mytwitapps.com/

Twitter: @searchguru

“Best way to get retweeted is to post valuable content for others, such as a link to online resources or a useful blog post. But don’t ask for the RT, people will do it on their own.”

Mark Dixon

Web: http://blogs.sun.com/identity/

Twitter: @mgd

“Three words: Original, Relevant, Succinct.”

Vicky H, Remarkable Parents

Web: http://remarkableparents.com/

Twitter: @RemarkbleParent

“If you ask for a RT (retweet) leave at least 15 characters to let people that are RT’ing your message have space so they don’t have to shorten your message. Many times that’s the difference between a RT and no RT.”

Question #5 - How do you manage your time on Twitter?

Walt, BizSugar

Web: www.bizsugar.com

Twitter: @bizsugar

“If you do not have time to use Twitter (I do not), set up an automatic feed of items and send it to your Twitter account. Doing so populates your Twitter account with fresh content even when you do not have time.”

Lisa Picarille

Web: www.lisapicarille.com

Twitter: @lisap

“I recommend checking twitter first thing in the morning so you can respond to any questions or join in conversations. Then I typically wait about two hours and then limit my time to only 10 minutes.

I do searches on keywords I care about and have some alerts already set up. I also look at my @ replies. I don’t usually look again until lunch time. And again, I limit my time to 10 minutes. I follow that about every two hours.”

Maria-Gabriela Hoza, H-Urban Faciliware

Web: http://faciliware.typepad.fr/

Twitter: @faciliware

“When I know I can plan my tweets by advance I use TweetLater.com. On my blog I use a widget that allows me to tweet when I submit a post. If available, I also use the bottom links allowing me to tweet an article directly when I find it interesting. Otherwise I tweet “ad-hoc” only when I have something interesting to say. And I scan other tweets once a day.”

Sher Graham, Bay Coast Coaching & Consulting Partners, Inc.

Web: http://baycoastcp.com/default.aspx

Twitter: @shergraham49

“I make it one of my regular bookmarks on my tool bar so I remember to click it on daily. It is a part of my business protocol in the morning as is reading and answering emails.”

Dave Fecker, Power Works Automation

Web: www.powerworksautomation.com

“Write your goals for the day, week, or month down on paper. Set the time slots you wish to spend doing your online networking at stick with those times. Pick 2 to 3 slots a day so you can review and adjust any of your content. This is like a workout! If you under, or over do it, you will get poor results.Set times that work best for your personality and available schedule. As part of your goals, set plans to expand your knowledge, or present valuable information to your viewers.”

Question #5 - What is your best kept secret (something not widely known) for using Twitter in business?

TJ McCue, All Business

Web: www.allbusiness.com

“Mine is a tool - TwitterBar. It allows you to tweet from the address bar in your browser. Type in your 140 characters like you’re typing a website URL/address and then click on the little “t” for Twitter and it goes to your account. No need to open another application, or use your phone.”

Michael Hartzell

Web: http://rejuvenateyourrestaurant.com/

Twitter: @michaelhartzell

“Create a unique landing page for twitter specifically with a greeting, service, and introduction. It offers a unique message to those via twitter and assists with tracking those who visit the ’secret page only twitter’s know’.”

Mike Campbell

Web: www.louisvillesoup.com

Twitter: @louisvillesoup

“Post a link to your job postings on Twitter. That’s how I found my latest new hire.”

Desiree Scales, Bella Web Design Inc.

Web: www.bellawebdesign.com

Twitter: @DesireeScales

“A great online Twitter management tool I’m loving (advanced tip) is called http://www.hootsuite.com. It allows small businesses to track tweets and actually get metrics on their links posted through the application. This is one of the first tools I’ve found which allows measurable ROI on Twitter. The lack of measurable metrics in social media is something that needs to be addressed. Most marketing directors and agencies are struggling to talk companies into using social media because board members and upper management demands to see measurable results out of this activity. Hootsuite is a step in the right direction and also allows people to manage multiple Twitter profiles through a single interface.”

Chris Goddard, Affilorama

Web: www.affilorama.com

“We’ve seen that a lot of people find it difficult to know what to tweet - especially when it comes to interesting, relevant content and links. What we do is have someone set up with a Google Reader account that subscribes to 10 to 20 blogs that we know have consistently interesting content like Smallbiztrends or Copyblogger, then we use a tweet scheduler like Tweetlater to schedule 5 or 6 tweets a day, spread throughout the day, with a link and a blurb about the blog post. Takes about 20 minutes a day once you’re in the habit of doing it and makes your feed a consistently interesting source of information.”

These are just a few of the small business Twitter tips offered from Small Business Trends followers. You can find a pdf with over 137 answers to these questions here.

Source: Small Business Trends

Remember when MySpace was the social network of choice for everyone from teenagers and college students to musicians and celebrities?  It was definitely the best way to get in touch with childhood friends, as well as to hear new music from up and coming bands.

According to an article on CNET, not only is Google considering not renewing its ad space contract with MySpace this year, but MySpace is also planning on laying off up to 750 people to afford to keep the network alive. So, can MySpace really survive the flourishing of Facebook and the awesome invasion of online music sites like Pandora, Imeem and Hype Machine?

Matt Rosoff, who writes for CNET’s music and technology “Digital Noise” section, offers his advice on how MySpace could try to save itself from social media catastrophe with a few tips:

• Offer free online music streaming that instantly takes you to a real artist’s page instead of guiding you through a maze of advertisements and  fake musicians impersonating real bands.
• Stop allowing pop up banners and tons of glittery advertisements to show up on a page. If you follow the layout of Facebook pages, which puts all ads on the right-hand side of the page, people will be more likely to stay on a page rather than veer away from ad annoyance.
• Apparently when you search for a band you have to include every “a” or “the” in order to get the right band. If MySpace can fix this search mishap then people may actually find what they’re looking for.

Okay, these are some great tips from Matt, but can they really help MySpace get back on the social network track? It’s highly doubtful when an article in The Washington Post says that Facebook :

• Has seen 26.6 million unique monthly visitors
• Has visitors spending at least 186 minutes on the site per month
• Has seen the number of registered users age25-34 jump 181% over the year

I guess we’ll have to see what new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta will do with the future of the site.

Source: CNET news

Ferris recently appeared at a WordCamp conference in San Francisco and shared some great advice on how beginner and veteran bloggers can create successful blog posts. Here are a few tips that I found most helpful from an article on SocialMedia.biz:

• Another option to Google Analytics is CrazyEgg, which has plans that start as low as $9 per month.
• Instead of using Digg to spread the word about your blog, try Slinkset, which lets you create your own social news site.
• New bloggers need to have their “own voice” that reflects who they are, not who they are trying to be for an audience.
• Since new visitors are biased to older blog posts, don’t show a date or timestamp.
• Create multiple drafts of blog posts, and only post a few at a time. You can then go back and add more meat to the unpublished drafts.
• Find out when you write best (early morning, afternoon, late at night, etc.)
• Focus on only one idea for a blog post so you don’t bombard people with too many thoughts.
• If you use videos in your blog post, in the next post write a summary of the video so that the text can be indexed.

These are just a few of the blogging tips that Ferris offered at the WordCamp conference. If your website features a blog, these suggestions are definitely worth trying.

A very informative Marketing Sherpa case study on a B2B sales agent desktop application OTOlabs developed for Oppenheimer Funds.

SUMMARY: Ever have trouble determining whether a sales team was using the marketing collateral and other sales enablement materials you’ve created for them?

Read how a mutual funds company reinvented the way they delivered sales support and business development content to its team of independent financial advisors. They scrapped their outdated practice of mailing CD-ROMs of important documents in exchange for a desktop application that provided an interactive channel for important documents, sales support materials, and ongoing training. Savings topped 80%, and they can see which types of content are most popular with advisors.

One to One Interactive’s OTOinsights research division is happy to announce its latest research white paper titled “Implications of User Engagement with Search Result Pages“. 

It is well established that rankings on a Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) have much to do with whether a user is likely to click on a given result and higher rankings can actually have a positive effect on a brand’s perception and ‘likeability’ (MarketingSherpa, 2009). With the onset of Universal Search, this study sought to measure the user impact of this new generation of search engine result pages that include multimedia elements such as images and videos.  Specifically, we wanted to understand if there was a difference in emotional engagement with the results and if that would impact click propensity in Paid and Natural Search.  The study compared user engagement with Universal search results vs. traditional text-only results by recording the users’ eye tracking, physiological & emotional reactions, and click tracking behavior. 

Our research uncovered two significant insights.

Insight 1:

SERPs which include Universal Search results reinforce eyeballs to stay focused on the first page’s top paid and natural search results

Implications:

• The advent of Universal Search demands that companies optimize not only their text, but also their media (images, videos, etc)
• Image and video results may anchor users to stay at the top of the SERP
• Images and videos will begin to impact what users will click on first in a SERP

Insight 2:

The inclusion of Universal Search results increase emotional engagement during interactions with a SERP

Implications:

• Users will get an ‘instant gratification’ from images – perhaps more so from branded images
• Higher engagement with Universal results may stop users from exploring the rest of the SERP

OTOinsight’s “Implications of User Engagement with Search Result Pages” white paper is free and available to download here. 

Below is a PowerPoint presentation of the research findings that Dan Berlin and I shared earlier this week at the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) Boston’s Annual Conference at Bentley University.

We welcome your comments, feedback, and suggestions.

For over the past 5 years I have held on strongly to the view that success in future marketing communications will be given to those who learn the nuances of game design.  Why?  We live in an interactive world where the customer has infinite choices, unlimited paths to learning about product/services, and expectations for real-time interactions with brands.  No longer is it possible to lead a prospect down a traditional purchase-consideration funnel.  Instead, brands need to learn the game of improvisation; the game of story telling and interest arcs; the game of community building; and the game of engaging multiple players online via environments of their choosing (not yours).

Two resources that I would recommend to both brands and agencies to further understand game design are:

• Mike Bonifer’s Game Changers–Improvisation for Business in the Networked World
• Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lens