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.

A study eMarketer magazine has found that online advertising has remained strong during the global economic downturn thanks to the high value and “dependable” return on investment (ROI) that it affords.

The online marketing magazine said that although some firms have pulled in the reins on their advertising budgets, the amount of spending on online advertising has actually increased during the recession.

Karin von Abrams, eMarketer senior analyst, commented: “The UK is a mature market for online advertising and the internet is firmly established as an accountable channel that can deliver excellent return on investment.”

“If anything, the recession and the potential for further economic uncertainty make an even stronger case for the online option.”

Ms Von Abrams made her remarks after another report, by media investment company GroupM, indicated that the advertising market could be looking up – at least for online advertising.

The report noted that more and more sectors of UK industry are moving towards online marketing due to its unparalleled strengths when it comes to increasing the visibility of their brand and boosting their profit margins.

Yet another study, this time by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Internet Advertising Bureau, found that online advertising soared above an otherwise depressed advertising sector last year, with a 4.2 per cent increase in spending among companies, compared to 2008.

A report by Forrester Research has also concluded that online marketing can even boost offline sales. Forrester’s study found that almost half of all retail sales are influenced by a customer’s experiences online. Email marketing and special promotions via retailers’ websites are very good at directing customers to the retailer’s stores.

With search engine giant Google preparing a move into Britain’s travel market, online marketing experts are warning travel portals such as Travelsupermarket and Expedia to beef up their business models and face the “threat” head on.

SEO marketing expert Andreas Pouros specialises in helping companies to maximise their online advertising and marketing operations. He recently told Travelmole that Google’s recent acquisition of travel technology firm ITA Software meant that it now posed a clear and present danger to holiday price comparison sites based in the UK.

Mr Pouros said that the ITA data included such essential information as minute-by-minute flight availability and the cheapest fares, which would enable Google to point potential holidaymakers to the best deals without the need for other companies to be involved.

“Travel intermediaries should be very concerned as Google moves towards becoming central to consumers’ travel purchasing behaviour,” he insisted.

“It is only a little over seven months ago since Google made a similar move with property intermediaries.”

Google now shows houses that are for sale or available for rent on Google Maps, thanks to a facility that allows property portals to download their listings free. With ITA it will also now be able to point users towards the cheapest flights or hotel deals.

It is believed that at first the search engine will only use the new software to direct web traffic to dedicated travel websites, but there is also the likelihood that it will ultimately start selling plane tickets directly to travellers.

Mr Pouros said that “travel intermediaries should at the very least be determining how they should operate in the next few years.”

The social networking phenomenon Facebook has proven to be one of the most remarkable success stories of the modern age, growing from a way for college friends to keep in touch, it now has an unprecedented global reach with over 400 million active users.

The sheer number of Facebook users has also made it a fertile ground for online marketing, with Facebook adverts fast becoming known as an ideal way for businesses to reach the right kind of customer.

This is because Facebook stores many of a user’s personal details, plus a list of their likes and dislikes – making it far easier for online marketing experts to target the right consumers for their products.

Because of this unique new marketing opportunity, there has been a concomitant increase in the number of organisations and publications dedicated to helping businesses reconfigure their online marketing strategies to take maximum advantage of the situation.

A lot of these businesses teach marketing departments or small business owners how to use Facebook features such as the “Like” option, which helps build an internal hierarchy within the website and swiftly shows which ideas, brands or products are popular – and with who.

With extra marketing applications such as Facebook ads in place, and more on the way over the next five years, it looks as if the social networking site will be reaping even greater financial rewards – it already makes more than a billion dollars a year and expects to increase this tenfold by 2015 – and it makes sense for any business committed to online marketing to try and get on board.

Some internet analysts have suggested that the growing popularity of Microsoft search engine Bing could change the way that online marketing operates, as it muscles in on the domination of the search market by Google.

With Bing just over a month old, research by comScore found that, along with the Yahoo! search engine, it was gaining ground on the market leader, with implications for anyone involved in SEO marketing.

Across the USA in May, an incredible 15 billion searches took place. Of these, Google remained at the top, with 63.7 per cent of all searches conducted using its engine. Nevertheless, this was still a smaller percentage than in April – and both Bing and Yahoo! were the ones making up the ground.

Google’s rivals are considering teaming up to better challenge its supremacy. Recently, Microsoft senior vice-president Yusuf Medhi said that his company hopes to have integrated Bing’s search technology into Yahoo’s applications by the end of 2010.

Mr Medhi tolf the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle: “Right now, Yahoo engineers are joining Microsoft and they’re sharing ideas. We will power the algorithm results and the paid search results – Yahoo has flexibility to add things on top.”

Although online marketing companies should not rush to shift their Google-based strategies towards Bing or Yahoo! just yet, it makes sense for anyone involved in SEO to keep an eye on their direction of travel and take Google’s rivals into account.

With the prospect of closer working between Bing and Yahoo! by the end of the year, it would be foolish to discount the chances of a more formal partnership between the two in the near future.

Search engine giant Google has begun offering independent financial advisors (IFAs) free training and support services to help them brush up their online marketing skills and make themselves more visible on the internet.

With online commerce becoming increasingly vital to the success of businesses, Google has pledged to help IFAs make the most of the burgeoning demand for online financial advice.

From the beginning of next month, Google will also host a downloadable online seminar complete with demonstrations showing IFAs how to use Google’s free online resources.

Recently it published a White Paper entitled “IFAs in the Digital Space,” which stressed that many such advisors and their companies are failing to take advantage of this growing market.

The paper is available to members of the social networking website IFA Life and looks at online searches for financial advice services. Google revealed that in February this year, the search term “unbiased financial advice” was used 84 per cent more frequently than at the same period in 2009.

Despite this surging interest, Google warned that IFAs are not throwing themselves into the online marketing and SEO campaigning necessary to tap into this growing market for financial help. Most IFAs either do not have a website at all, or are lax when it comes to keeping it up to date and promoting their business.

Google UK head of finance Ian Morgan told Money Marketing magazine: “We want to offer more support to IFAs looking to grow their business through effective use of search marketing.

“Our aim is to offer an educational starting point to these financial advisers. Consumers are looking for guidance in their wealth management and we believe that the internet can play an important role in helping them find the appropriate support.”

A leading online marketing organisation has urged companies to harness the instant feedback possibilities of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

A recent poll found that nearly half of all online consumers demonstrate their support or dislike for certain brands on Twitter or Facebook.

Referring to the study by market analysts ExactTarget, search engine optimisation company SEO Junkies argued that even negative feedback from such social media was very useful when it comes to formulating online marketing strategies.

SEO Junkies director Di Forster insisted that any companies that experience negative feedback online are well place to “turn it around and spin it to a positive.”

“You’re finding out how people are talking about you, whether it’s good or bad. It might be bad, but you need to know about it, then you can change it,” she added.

With the recent introduction by Google addition of an improved real-time search algorithm, which updates the search engine’s databases more swiftly and accurately than ever before, social media such as Twitter has become more important as a marketing device than ever before, Ms Forster insisted.

However, the benefits for companies intent on incorporating Twitter into their marketing strategies will not come without effort. Writing for Official Wire, SEO expert and social media businessman Leon Hill stressed that for social media to be at its most effective, brands have to put work into building up a strong and loyal following.

A company needs to consider what sort of fans it wishes to attract and then concentrate its online marketing efforts into enticing them.

A study by a Dubai-based marketing and communications agency has concluded that there are more Facebook users across the Arab-speaking world than there are newspaper readers.

Research carried out by Spot On Public Relations found that there were over 15 million people across the region who had profiles on the social networking phenomenon.

This compared favourably with the total number of newspaper copies sold in the Arab-speaking world in Arabic, English and French, which stood at just under 14 million – apparently confirming that social networking sites such as Facebook are becoming the number one way for people to communicate and read about new events and products in Dubai and beyond.

Spot On argued that the findings revealed how Facebook, Twitter and the like were starting to redefine how Arab citizens found out about new phenomena, and how they shared the new information.

It said that the largest number of Facebook users could be found in Egypt, at 3.5 million – which far outstripped the circulation of any Egyptian daily paper. Surprisingly the second biggest number could be found in Saudi Arabia, despite its severely conservative government and society.

In the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, a third of the population had a Facebook profile, according to Spot On.

The company said that online marketing firms should take note of the study and recognise the incredible potential that exists throughout the Arab-speaking world for marketing opportunities.

It suggested that companies eager to explore the online marketing potential of sites such as Facebook should consider carefully how their brand would fit in, and decide what tactics would be right for them, such as SEO-orientated marketing or the creation of a Facebook fan page.

Online marketing expert Kevin Gibbons has warned marketing executives that their services will soon become obsolete unless they embrace the phenomenon of SEO.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is fast becoming an indispensable aspect of any company’s online marketing strategy, Mr Gibbons – who is the founder of UK search agency SEOptimise – wrote on the Search Engine Watch website.

He noted that some professionals working in marketing were still not waking up to the immense potential of SEO, regarding it merely as a technical feature of their websites.

Mr Gibbons asked “how many marketing managers have you heard say: ‘Oh, our IT department deals with that,’ when you ask about their SEO campaign?”

“Although this is becoming less common, such short-sighted marketers still exist, but their way of thinking will make them commercially defunct within just a few years.”

His warning was echoed by Idea Taxi’s director of search engine optimisation Sam Tilston, who went on to predict that online marketing experts will see demand for their services surge over the next few years, as SEO-based marketing mushrooms across the globe.

“The SEM industry is consistently experiencing double-digit growth annually,” Mr Tilston pointed out, before adding that the sector is set to grow even further thanks to online advertising systems like pay-per-click, which allow companies to calculate the exact amount of revenue gathered by SEO marketing.

His predictions certainly seem to be coming true in the USA, according to a recent figures published by market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC). These indicated that SEO advertising was on course to deliver the largest increases in revenue across the North American online advertising market over the next five years.

The travel industry has been urged by one expert to grasp the challenge of online marketing in order to compete fully in the cyber age.

Addressing a seminar at the recent Advantage Travel Centres conference, travel technology firm Traveltek’s managing director Jenny Picken told delegates that the only genuine way that holiday businesses could compete on the internet was through SEO and online marketing.

Insisting that online marketing was a “necessity,” in the modern world, Ms Picken called on all travel businesses, of whatever size, to make sure that they had a strong and distinct online presence, or they ran a severe risk of being overlooked by web-savvy consumers.

According to the report in Air & Business Travel News (ABTN), she went on to say that a focus on SEO and email marketing campaigns could be just the way for travel companies to increase their profits in these uncertain economic times – and she stressed that “emarketing shouldn´t be expensive.”

Ms Picken said that it was impossible to overstate the importance of keeping their online content up to date, especially in the “news” section of a website because potential customers would simply move on from a site which did not appear to have the information that they are looking for.

Business experts have long said that email marketing campaigns are a highly efficient and inexpensive way of getting brand information across to customers, and she urged the travel industry to grasp the nettle and join the shift to online marketing.

Her views are even more apposite in the face of many recent surveys which show a rise in the number of holidays searched for, planned and booked online