Marketing Sherpa quizzed 680 marketers who spend an average of 44% of their total ad and marketing budgets on the Web. The key results show that:

• More budget is spent on search than anything else (even email)
• Search spending averages 34% of online budgets
• Behavioral ads have lost some of their luster
• RSS feeds and in-house blogs are favorite ‘emerging tactics’

What works:

Until now, in-house email marketing lists have performed better than any other online tactic. However, 52% of survey respondants concur that [paid] search now outperforms in-house (i.e. your own rather than bought) email lists (47% of respondants). It is interesting to note that organic search (optimisation) comes in with 33% of respondants agreeing it is a great tactic.

What doesn’t:

Similarly, 52% of respondants agreed that bought email lists generated poorer results than other online tactics (although this is US-based, so UK figures will be different - so don’t exclude bought-in email lists just yet). Part of the reason for this is that email filtering has reduced the number of emails that get through or marked as spam. (In a separate question asking marketers what they’d invest in if they had some extra budget, email lists score well.) The next swathe of tactics getting poor results include pop-up, pop-under, banner ads, ads in newsletters, rich media ads and text link ads - basically, ads!

What to spend money on in 2006?

Just in the lead is the “website revamp and/or update” with 39%, pipping search engine marketing with 38%. Ads still feature highly, and a good few people are looking at branded desktop applications like the Google toolbar - 14%. The ‘average’ online marketing budget for 2006 sees just over a third going to search.

Of course, marketing is nothing without measurement, and over 60% of those surveyed said they would be investing in better analytics software for their sites. Google Analytics recently launched a free online version of the former Urchin software and it’s excellent. However, due to oversubscription you’ll have to join a waiting list to use the service. There are numerous other free and paid systems on the market and you should choose the one that’s right for your business.

What’s best in emerging tactics?

RSS and in-house blogs featured as the top two best emerging tactics, although some respondants thought that they might take a year or so to develop fully. Other responses included ads on other peoples blogs, as well as video and mobile. Longer term, product placement in video games (already underway) would become more prevalent.

Marketing Sherpa ad:tech survey (open access to 26th January).
ad:tech