The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has revealed plans next spring to extend its regulatory arm to encompass online marketing and online advertising.

From 1 March 2010, the ASA will have what chairman Chris Smith has described as “the most comprehensive approach to the regulation of advertising in website space anywhere in the world.”

Over the past few years, the ASA has received some 4,500 complaints concerning online marketing, yet has been unable to take little or no action.

However, from March next year it will be able to intervene to maintain online advertising’s self-regulatory system – particularly when it comes to protecting the safety of children on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The ASA website will feature a “rogues’ gallery” of online marketing offenders against its code of practice and warnings will appear in the results of Google and other search engines. There will also be a list of products and brands that defy the code.

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), which wrote and maintains the code of practice decided to extend the ASA’s remit after a formal recommendation from a wide cross-section of British industry.

The advertising and marketing industry has itself agreed to apply a standard 0.1 per cent levy on all paid-for advertising on internet search engines, extending the existing funding mechanism across other media that pays for the ASA. Google is providing the initial seed capital.

Website owners and online advertising agencies are urged to sign up to CAP Services to receive guidance and training so their sites will comply with the new rules before they come into effect.

CAP chairman Andrew Brown said, “Our aim has been to extend further in the online world the principles that are already well established in our system, namely those of effective consumer protection and fair competition.”

Video-hosting site YouTube recently unveiled a set of new features aimed at helping online marketing campaigns better target their potential customers.

The website – owned by search engine giant Google – has implemented new video and channel exclusion options, which YouTube senior product manager Baljeet Singh said would be of great use to online advertising creatives and marketing managers, giving them far more control over where their adverts will show up. Before the new options, online marketing depended on using YouTube’s own marketing services to select which clips should be targeted with a company’s adverts.

Now, however, the new features allow individual companies or brands to decide if particular videos – or even entire channels – should be excluded from the campaign. By doing this, online marketing experts will be able to prevent adverts from appearing next to videos that are at odds with their customer demographic.

Two examples that Mr Singh gave were that of a vegan battery being able to exclude FootNetworkTV videos about meat dishes and beer companies giving the swerve to videos aimed at those too young to enjoy a tipple.

“Alternatively, if your ads are appearing on a video that perhaps isn’t performing in terms of clickthrough rate or conversions, you can optimise your campaign by using this new feature to exclude it,” Mr Singh went on to suggest on the YouTube blog.

He added: “Google has also been investing significantly in ensuring brand safety, transparency and control for advertisers across the Google Display Network. We’re hoping that these added layers of control will make your campaign targeting even more precise.”

Despite being described as “the best tool to aid stalking since Facebook,” location-based social media platform Foursquare will prove a massive boon to online marketing companies, one expert has suggested.

Judith Lewis, head of search at media consultancy Beyond, told readers of Marketing Week that in fact Foursquare is the “king of social media marketing.”

After downloading the application, iPhone or other smartphone users can to be located using the phone’s own GPS system. Foursquare then gives them local locations of possible interest and the option to “check in”. Security concerns have been raised because this can be broadcast on other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which could give stalkers and other criminals valuable personal information as to a burglary or stalking victim’s whereabouts. However, Foursquare does make available the option to prevent this, so it is up to the user to stay secure while using the app.

Many businesses have already seen its vast potential as an online marketing tool, Ms Lewis pointed out. Famous brands such as Starbucks, Domino’s Pizza, Pho, Hummos Bros, The Breakfast Club, Evans Cycles and many others have added their businesses to the network in order to ensure that their nearest branch is always pointed out to Foursquare users.

But they also use it to do more than that. Ms Evans stressed that such companies have“realised that the future of interaction in “real life” is becoming firmly based within the digital world.”

“For these and other businesses, Foursquare has become a valuable way of interacting with, and rewarding, regulars,” she pointed out.

“While one of the most difficult things to measure is how much online marketing drives purchasers to offline shops, Foursquare is one tool a marketer can use to help measure, as well as engage with, this customer.”

With its seamless integration of online and offline behaviour and the growing popularity of smartphones, Ms Lewis concluded that Foursquare “is set to be the new dominant force.”

A new report from eMarketer has revealed that the USA is leading the way when it comes to the ascendancy of online marketing across a variety of different platforms.

The organisation said that some 6.7 per cent of all online advertising budgets this year will be earmarked for social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, thanks to the slow but steady economic recovery in the US and the focus among marketers of reaching the millions of users of social media.

Researchers estimated that this year will see over $1.68 billion spent by US advertisers on Twitter and other social networking sites in 2010, which represents an increase of more than 20 per cent compared to last year. By 2011 this figure will have rocketed to over $2 billion, they added.

In December last year, eMarketer said that there would be some $1.3 billion spent on online advertising across social networks during 2010, but online marketing across these platforms has been so successful – particularly on Facebook – that analysts have been forced to drastically revise their forecasts upward.

The eMarketer report said that around half of all advertising spending on social networks will go to Facebook, due to the continuing eclipsing of MySpace by the site. Twitter has become part of the eMarketer calculations for the first time, after launching its advertising arm earlier this year.

The group said that while 2010 will see relatively little spent on Twitter by online marketing campaigns, its potential to grow over the next few years is massive.

Just over a year ago, the Tweetmeme company decided to add another dimension to social networking – and opportunities for online marketing – by providing a single place for retweets.

This gifted content providers with a whole new stream of traffic and soon soared in popularity, leading to this week’s announcement by Twitter that it will officially be taking over operation of the retweet button, known properly as wp-tweet-button.

Tweetmeme’s retweet button currently receives more than 750 million hits a day, and its runaway success has unsurprisingly led to its transferral to an in-house feature on the Twitter site.

The new wp-tweet-button function is little changed from the Tweetmeme original, apart from a new design and colour scheme. Nevertheless, the are some new functions which will help content providers and online marketing experts promote their own brands, sites and services on Twitter.

Once the button is used to retweet, the user will see a list of suggested Twitter accounts to follow, which can be taken up by the website itself for its own promotional purposes, helping to make a retweet the next viral sensation.

Twitter has got a lot of interest going already about the new button, with the likes of YouTube and news outlets such as CNN, USA Today and the Huffington Post all ready to add it to their own sites.

On the company’s blog, Tweetmeme chief executive Nick Halstead revealed that his firm would be assisting Twitter with the switch.

“This will manifest itself in the launch of a number of new products and the first of these is being unveiled today,” he said.

One of these is EDataSift, which will allow website developers to create “streams of data” from the millions of tweets held on Twitter’s database.

A factor we all take for granted as we progress through life is keeping of photographs and mementos from the past. A factor that the Internet will effect in a massive way in the next 50 to 100 years time the typical shoe boxes full of manually processed photographs from the 70’s, 80’s and 1990’s will be replaced by face book pages and twitter accounts. The ability to store old photographs and even messages and comments will provide an interesting time capsule type source into the past. Already if we look back at the history of the Internet in the websites it has generated in the late 90’s the blocky style front page designs which in some cases still displays this old Internet age.

The indulgence in the use of flash which is now reserved to niche design industries as a result of the poor value these site provided from a search engine optimisation point of view. Consider your sites current site theme and design are you up to date or lagging behind with an old design paralleled to a pair of 1970’s flared trousers. This is why a blog and social networking is such an amazing tool for your company not just today but in 10 years time. Visual proof of the progress you have made and continue to make can be archived online for future business generations.

Consider a health check find an Internet marketing company that can investigate the full In’s and outs of the direction your company is moving. Internet marketing is no longer centred upon strict search engine optimisation and cost per click advertising the increase of social networking is changing the whole behaviour of Internet users.

New figures have revealed that the UK government is increasing its budget for online marketing and advertising at a time when the rest of its publicity initiatives are facing budget freezes and cuts.

The Central Office of Information (COI) published figures today showing that the year on year spend for government advertising and marketing budget was almost unchanged in the 12 months up to the end of March 2010, at £532 million. The previous year’s total was £540 million.

The COI is responsible for co-ordinating official advertising, marketing and communications, and its figures revealed that the budget for traditional advertising media, such as television, radio and the press dropped by 9.5 per cent to £193 million from £211 million.

However, the spend on online advertising and marketing increased by 9 per cent to £44 million, bringing the total up to 18 per cent of the government’s advertising and marketing budget.

The COI said that it was able to negotiate reduced advertising rates in the media markets because of its financial clout, and as a result had forced some £204 million in discounts – a 48 per cent saving – in comparison with government departments who handled their own campaigns.

It also saved an additional £52 million year on year by cutting spending on publications, PR and events – and by focusing on online marketing rather than the older, more costly and less effective media.

However, the COI faces a budget threat from the government’s austerity programme. Ministers are looking for cuts of up to 50 per cent, and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has already pulled the plug on most funding for the Change4Life anti-obesity campaign, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Online marketing expert Karin von Abrams has stressed that internet marketing campaigns are increasingly at the heart of companies’ branding strategies.

Ms von Abrams, a senior analyst at the eMarketer organisation, said that nowadays virtually every brand has included online marketing within their overall marketing operations. At the same time, ad agencies are becoming ever more skilled at creating the perfect integrated internet advertising campaigns.

Although some sectors of the business world have taken longer than others to realise the full potential of online marketing – with one example being the fast-paced consumer goods sector – many companies within these sectors are now pioneering internet advertising and setting the standards for the rest of their sectors to follow.

This can be seen by the innovative ways in which many brands are using social networking or micro-blogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and in the strategies adopted to rise to the top of the search ratings in Google.

Ms von Abrams said: “It is now clear that every brand or business can benefit in some way from building awareness online, or from rethinking its business processes to make full use of digital channels.”

The rise of internet advertising was underscored recently when market analysts the Nielsen Company, which showed that worldwide spending on advertising increased by an eighth in the second quarter of this year – and spending on online marketing alone increased by 12 per cent.

At the end of the first quarter of 2010, the total global spend on advertising stood at a massive £65.4 billion.

Its time for a easy solution to both many companies in the UK offer a fantastic e commerce platform but the hidden mystery’s of SEO and Internet Marketing are still very much left to Internet marketing companies. But in real terms for the individual moving into e commerce as a solution to expand there existing business it really can be a nightmare in not only finding all the pieces to the Jigsaw puzzle in the first place but also getting them in the right positions to achieve the bigger picture which is a successful e commerce site ranking well on all the major search engines.

It is time in our opinion for the void between these two markets to be filled literally years are being wasted and hundreds of thousands of pounds are as we speak being pumped into the Internet marketing industry in the wrong areas by companies. First things first get the right e commerce solution that is going to allow for long term development something that is going to keep up to date with the constantly evolving force that is the Internet. A Perfect gauge of this is the recent surge in Social Networking sites such as face book and twitter. Does you online shop all people to share your product on facebook.

Don’t discount open source content management solutions such as Word press for example with a force of thousands of developers across the globe keeping up to date with new trends wont be a problem.

Then we come to the age old problem of many a companies life finding the right seo and cost click agency that you can trust. The company must have results available to prove there SEO prowess otherwise stay well clear it doesn’t have to be a major Internet marketing agency either many of the smaller companies out there offer an excellent service and you will benefit from a more personal approach. The smaller Internet marketing companies or agencies staff take it as there own personal goal to get your page listed on the first page.

In an ideal world you could look for a Internet Marketing company that has there very own e commerce (CMS) Content management system you will benefit from years of development and fixes it really will fast forward your companies presence online. In terms of percentages I would say as high as 80% of the online shops success will rely on the Internet marketing so it makes sense to look to an Internet marketing company for the solutions. In terms of parallels an online shop not listed on the first page of google is the equivilent of having your physical shop positioned in Timbucktoo if listed on Googles first page for a top keyword your site could enjoy the same number of visits as a shop in Oxford Circus London.

Ecommerce example from an Internet Marketing Company

The alcoholic drinks industry association The Portman Group is offering its members the opportunity to learn how to undertake the responsible online marketing of their products.

The group, which oversees the drinks industry’s code of practice regarding the packaging, promotion and naming of alcoholic beverages, and operates the “Prove It” identity card system, is holding a number of interactive training sessions from the end of the month in London, Manchester and Edinburgh.

The sessions will explore the right and wrong ways to approach an online marketing campaign for drinks using a number of role-play and fictional scenarios dreamt up by marketing firm BD Network.

The Portman Group’s chief executive David Poley commented: “With over 18 million households in the UK now having access to the internet, it is critical that the drinks industry markets its products online in a socially responsible way.”

“The Portman Group provides expert advice in this area and these sessions will provide marketing professionals with vital information on how the code applies to digital marketing.”

The first step was taken last year, when the group published guidelines for drinks companies on responsible online advertising, and the dos and don’ts of promoting alcoholic drinks on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. These guidelines can be found on the Portman Group website.

Any in-house drinks marketing departments or agencies working within the alcoholic beverage industry are welcome to attend the online marketing sessions. The first takes place in London at the offices of the Portman Group on 28 July.