Research Outlines Marketing Best Practices Based on Consumption Patterns of Blogs, Video, RSS and Online Networks

The study, The Rise of B2B Applications-Based Media, reveals that the usage of emerging media among IT decision-makers has increased considerably over the past year, with video and blogs experiencing the most increased usage for work-related information. This latest study is part of TechWeb's ongoing Business Technology Media Engagement Research series.

Key study highlights include:

-- Increased Usage of Emerging Media Applications: business technology decision makers are utilizing emerging media applications more frequently to obtain work-related information, as compared to last year.

-- More Growth Expected: business technology decision makers currently using emerging media intend to consume even more in the coming year - even those who are not currently using emerging media applications.

-- Engagement with Emerging Media Leads to Action: when business technology decision makers interact with emerging media, they continue to look for related information.

For more information on this research, email Scott Vaughan.

mages, video and press releases are optimized for natural search. A new study, published Monday by search agency iProspect, indicates searchers using the major engines are more likely to click on image, video or news link within the main, blended search results page than vertical-search results. (An example of a vertical search would be searching within the Google Images tab for a photo of Warren Buffett.) Vertical offerings from the major engines historically have been largely ignored, according to the study.
The survey, conducted online by JupiterResearch in December and January, found more than a third (35%) of search engine users do not use vertical search at all, and 25% do not recall if they have clicked a result after using vertical search. JupiterResearch said there were 2,404 respondents to the survey.

When it comes to image search, 31% of users click image results within blended search, while Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

One of the reasons in-text has such strong appeal among users is because it's seen more as information than marketing. Here's why.

There has been a fair amount of interest surrounding in-text advertising as of late, and Vibrant Media has taken the pole position in the space.

In-text advertising -- for those of you who aren't familiar with it -- is essentially advertising that is embedded within the text of a page of online content. This is beyond simple editorial adjacency for display advertising. It is actually having an ad unit married to a word or phrase on a page, within editorial. The way it works is this: I'm an advertiser of, say, soap. I approach an in-text advertising provider and tell them I want to own the words "soap," "shower," and "clean."

The executed buy will be these words in articles or within content on sites the in-text advertising provider has relationships with all across the web, underlined and highlighted. Every time a visitor to a page -- with these highlighted words or phrases -- mouses over the highlighted text, my soap advertisement will show, popping up in a sort of "talk bubble," like those seen in pop-up video or a comic book.

Some providers of this sort of advertising, like ContentLink, do text advertisements. Others, like Vibrant, will actually run video.

Vibrant Media is the largest provider of this kind of advertising, with more than Read the complete article on online...

Proving ROI, using new technologies and leveraging partner marketing were key topics at Red Herring's CMO 2008 conference in San Diego last week.

The conference drew more than 300 senior marketing executives, mostly from b-to-b companies, who shared strategies for competing in today's challenging business environment.

One of the hot topics was partner marketing, with presentations by several executives whose companies use channel marketing models.

Stephen DiFranco, corporate VP-corporate and channels marketing at chip maker AMD, discussed how the company has leveraged its partner channel to confront rival Intel Corp. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

B-to-b marketing budgets appear to be in good shape this year, with more than half of marketers expecting the purse strings to loosen up. While interactive tactics will gain from that increase and see the most growth, traditional media will still command the bulk of the budget. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could figure out today what your marketing plan should look like in six months? Crystal balls don’t exactly grow on trees, so we’ve asked two industry experts—Jordan Ayan, president of SubscriberMail, and Joel Book, director of eMarketing Education at ExactTarget—to weigh in on what’s coming in 2008. Here’s what they said.

1) More CRM integration, especially with software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.
2) Increased use of automated tools.
3) Closer alignment of marketing elements.
4) Using rich video with e-mail marketing.

Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

The attached document contains the questions, and their answers, that were posed to John Jainschigg from CMP and Kathy Mandelstein from IBM during the September 26 Webcast "How BtoB Marketers Can Achieve ROI in the Virtual World of Second Life." Download the complete Question and Answer document. Contact John Jainschigg, Executive Director, CMP Metaverse for more information about creating a virtual presence for your company.

Here is a summary of the questions contained in the document:

* Does SecondLife provide aggregated audience/user data or demo cuts
somewhere on the site? If so where?

* Would recommendations/best practices be applied to Playstation
'Home' coming up in April?

* How many attendees can attend an event on Second Life at one time?

Google, which built a multibillion-dollar empire on Web ads spanning four lines of simple text, is aggressively branching out in new areas of online advertising including interactive units, mobile ads and video text-overlays.

These initiatives and others are aimed at helping Google continue its rapid growth, which relies almost entirely on advertising revenue. Google has tentacles reaching into nearly every aspect of advertising—not just the Web and mobile but print, TV and radio as well.

For b-to-b marketers and ad buyers, the challenge is to figure out which Google directions are worth following, particularly in a b-to-b market where targeting is often more important than mere reach. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

The IT vertical encompasses multiple subcategories—networking, security, storage, application development and wireless, to name a few—but companies successfully marketing to the professionals in this space have found there are some strategies and tactics that have universal appeal. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

When enterprise infrastructure software and services provider Novell debuted its "Your Linux Is Ready" campaign last August, the objective was twofold: to introduce the company's SUSE Linux platform and to establish Novell as a serious player in the Linux market. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Answer: Adopters of online video in the last year have been reporting stellar jumps in action—with both their Web sites and their newsletters—when using videos to get their messages across. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

CMP executives share highlights of the 2007 Technology Marketing Study and the 2006 Purchase Process Study. Viewers will learn about: indelible trends in technology marketing, and the dynamics that shape them, integration -- how online, print, and events work together to accomplish marketing goals, the importance of managing, not just generating, qualified leads, and the influence of new media types including video, in the marketing mix of the future. Moderated by BtoB’s Senior Reporter, Kate Maddox, this webinar gives the viewer research-based insights on how to successfully market to B2B technology customers. View the webcast archive...