Online Marketing News in 2009: The Year’s Hottest Events

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Maria Pergolino | December 15, 2009

Here is our 2009 year in review. Take a moment to reflect on the year’s most interesting, exciting and sometimes surprising online marketing news.

	December 2009 Online Marketing News Mashable: Twitter Starts Testing Features for Businesses Telegraph.co.uk: MySpace and Facebook sign real-time search deals with Google ReadWriteWeb: Facebook Pushes People to Go Public Brian Solis Blog: Time spent on Facebook by 18-24 year olds declines The Global Language Monitor: Top word of 2009: Twitter Marketing Pilgrim: Google Announces New Offerings in Real-Time, Mobile and Social Search

	November 2009 Online Marketing News B2B magazine: Internet Ad spending goes down in Q309 LinkedIn Blog: Linkedin and Twitter integrate MU News Bureau: University of Missouri Researchers Find Search Process Affects Cognition and Emotion Online Media Daily: FTC Urged To Clamp Down On Data Collection Online Twitter Blog: Twitter creates Twitter Lists B2B magazine: 40% of Marketers plan to increase their budgets in 2010 B2B magazine: IT marketers meeting buyers' online content needs Salesforce.com: Salesforce.com announces Chatter, social computing for enterprise companies Modern B2B Marketing Blog: Marketing Automation gets Social – the first major announcement about social marketing automation

	October 2009 Online Marketing News Marketing Pilgrim: Facebook is awarded $711 million in damages from Sanford Wallace, the notorious "Spam King". (Previously, MySpace has been awarded $234 million.) Mashable: Geocities goes out of business Bing: Bing announces Tweets to appear in search results Technorati: Technorati release their state of the blogosphere- shows that most bloggers are just hobbiest and number one use of Twitter is to promote blogs YouTube Blog: YouTube is routinely serving more than a billion video views per day Google Webmaster Central: Google Removes Page Rank from the Webmaster Tools Federal Trade Commission: FTC Cracks Down on Blogger Payola, Celebrity Tweets Search Engine Land: Yahoo stops using meta keywords for search Robert Half Technology: A Robert Half Technology study announces 54% of companies blog social media sites

	September 2009 Online Marketing News TechCrunch: Microsoft announces Looking Glass to let marketers look into a real-time social stream aggregating feeds from Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and will connect with CRM’s and more Mashable: Twitter gets an (unofficial) app store PaidContent.org: Brands become mainstream on twitter- mentioned in 1 in 5 Tweets The Business Insider: Neilson report announces US Ad Spending Declined 15% in first half of 2009 Twitter Blog: Twitter updates Terms of Service leaving them open to advertising Mashable: Facebook introduces @Mentions in Status Updates Big M&A Month- cnet News: Omniture by Adobe for $1.8 billion TechCrunch: Mint by Inuit (Quicken/TurboTax) for $170 million The Business Insider: Brightcove by Google – $500-$700 million PCMag: reCapture by Google comScore Inc.: Social Networking Sites Account for More than 20 Percent of All U.S. Online Display Ad Impressions, According to comScore Ad Metrix McKinsey Quarterly: McKinsey releases global survey about how companies are benefitting from Web 2.0 – companies increasing spend in web 2.0 technologies DMNews: Facebook has released a new set of direct response ad units, updating its engagement ad platform that lets brands offer coupons and free samples to the social network's users cnet News: NFL bans tweeting before, during, after games

	August 2009 Online Marketing News Search Engine Land: Google Caffeine: Google’s New Search Engine Index is unveiled Mashable: Facebook announces real-time search Mashable: Study shares that 8% of US companies have fired an employee because of social media misuse TechCrunch: Twitter announces an API to help control, standardize and mainstream retweeting Marketing Pilgrim: Google improves Google Reader

	July 2009 Online Marketing News B2B magazine: Social media use soars among b-to-b marketers Microsoft Yahoo!: Microsoft now powers Yahoo! search Facebook: Facebook Reaches a Quarter Billion Users & a Billion Video Views The Official Google Blog: Google announces their own operating system: Google Chrome OS Facebook: Facebook gives users more control over their status updates TechCrunch: Online Publishers Association announces that 37 of its members, including The New York Times, Forbes, ESPN, CNN and MSNBC.com are running new, larger ad units ReturnPath: ReturnPath releases email deliverability report

	June 2009 Online Marketing News The B2B Lead Blog: LinkedIn to Launch Pay for Whitepaper Downloads Microsoft Yahoo!: Roughly half of businesses that buy search ads directly from Google and other Internet search companies don't come back the following year Marketing Pilgrim: Facebook beats Myspace traffic Search Engine Land: Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting PCWorld: Time spent on social networks doubles in a year Facebook: Facebook user names for user profiles and Facebook pages

	May 2009 Online Marketing News TechSpot: Microsoft announces Bing.com The Official Google Blog: Google reannounces Google Wave Creative Commons: Creative Commons Facebook Application created The Business Insider: U.S. Online Ad Revenue Now Shrinking Mashable: Online Video Usage Up 53 Percent in ’09 PaidContent.org: Paid Search Traffic Plummets Brian Solis Blog: Twitter Visits Surpass New York Times and Wall Street Journal Search Engine Guide Blog: Forrester Predicts Huge Growth for Social Media Marketing

	April 2009 Online Marketing News AdWeek: Over 60 percent of people who sign up for Twitter do not return to using it the following month WebInkNow: U.S. FTC proposes legislation on product testimonials eMarketer: Brand Mentions Preferred over Ads B2B magazine: Study: More than 19% of leads are rejected as faulty ReadWriteWeb: Google releases Google Me B2B magazine: Microsoft announce plan to spend an "estimated $80 million to $100 million integrated campaign, including TV, print, online and radio" on new search engine (later announced as bing.com) B2B magazine: Internet surveys combined with traditional research methods are becoming the norm

	March 2009 Online Marketing News Marketing Pilgrim: Adobe Introduces Flash Info Site for SEO’s B2B magazine: Study: Many e-mail campaigns alienate customers TechCrunch: Facebook upgrades privacy settings DMNews: Facebook beats Google in steering niche traffic B2B magazine: Tradeshow Budgets Predicted to Decline 17% in 2009 DMNews: Google Releases Behavioral Advertising NielsenWire: Social Networks Pass Email in Usage B2B magazine: IDC finds sharp decline in tech marketing

	February 2009 Online Marketing News All Facebook: Facebook changes terms of service which creates big frustration with user community The Wall Street Journal: Display Ad Rates Falling – Permanent or Cyclical? TechCrunch: Speculation about Twitter charging brands for commercial use Search Engine Land: Google tests AJAX based search results

	January 2009 Online Marketing News B2B magazine: U.S. Postal Service considers cutting back delivery to five days a week B2B magazine: Magazine Ad Pages Decline Econsultancy: A Belkin employee is caught using Amazon's crowdsourcing service, Mechanical Turk, to generate positive online reviews CircleID: One billion unique users on the Internet B2B magazine: Few b-to-b firms are signing up for Super Bowl XLIII advertising

http://www.heinzmarketing.com Matt Heinz

Great summary, Maria. It’s going to be very interesting to watch what may fill this post 12 months from now. How will technologies change, channels change, and most importantly – how will customer and prospect behavior change?
Also interesting to look at news from the first half of the year, and consider how important it still is today. How many trends have evened out? How many announcements or advancements/innovations are either still relevant, still rising, or still pending?
http://www.marketo.com Maria Pergolino

Hey Matt, Thanks for the comment. Part of my inspiration for this post came from your great newsletter. (http://www.heinzmarketing.com/matt-on-marketing/newsletter/subscribe) Thanks for all the great information!
http://www.directimpactnow.com Robert Lesser, Direct Impact Marketing

Thanks for the great recap on the year.
The biggest news in online marketing was the lack of news: the low funding activity in startups and the low level of mergers & acquisitions.
Otherwise your list probably would have been a lot longer!
Best,
@RobertLesser
http://www.sales-lead-insights.com Mac McIntosh

Wow. A lot happened in a year didn’t it?
Online marketing has been adopted at light speed by B2B marketers. Perhaps because of near real-time results and its accountability.
-Mac
mcintosh at sales-lead-experts dot com.
http://www.hightouchweb.com Kim Kolb

I loved this that I shared it with everyone. There needs to be a sense of urgency for 2010. I think 2010 will be a year of putting to use all that we learned in 2009 and making a huge leap forward.! The holiday Jingle was great as well. I don’t see where to enter for the Ipod Touch..
Rhonda Ross

Great year-end summary and fabulous Holiday email, which is what referred me to this page.
http://www.agressona.com C Grimm

That iPod contest was a great call to action but I can’t find the link to win it on this page. On the up side I’ll start following Marketo on Twitter.
http://www.trojanuv.com Stephen Komarnicky

Very creative year summary. I will share your thoughts with others as they do make one pause and think.
http://www.marketo.com Maria Pergolino

Hey C. Grimm, Thanks for clicking through on the email and checking out our post. Just by clicking through you are registered to win. The link you clicked is unique to you – part of the genius of Marketo. You are registered!
http://www.kensington.com Dawn Golbranson

Great email! Thanks.
http://www.roomserviceusainc.com HAMID AJDARI

This is a great summary in a way that you can track some online marketing trends.
What is interesting to me is some sort of correlation between the decline in online ad spending and the increase in time spent on social networks online and using it as a tool for generating revenue.
http://blog.demandbase.com Jason Stewart

I really enjoyed the post, you clearly put a lot of work into it….with all of the twitter hype it’s easy to forget that other things actually happened this year….
http://www.wholesalepages.co.uk Avelina

I must acknowledge the depths of marketing future has been discussed in this article posted. It made me think about more marketing strategies according to the changes it has defined in its awesome post.
Thanks
Avelina
Wholesale UK Dropshipper

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Online Marketing News in 2009: The Year’s Hottest Events