Marketing Forecast from Ad-ology

Best of 2010: Small business owners are growing increasingly sophisticated with their use of online search advertising and with their ability to transform the consumer information they capture into good leads.

Last week I blogged about the new attention being focused on the growing battle between privacy advocates and marketers and media providers who use online behavioral tracking . As 2011 approaches, the marketing industry will face other potential regulations that could affect business. The issues were recently outlined by Katy Bachman, writing for AdWeek.

In a bit of good news for a traditional media format, a new report shows that U.S. adults, especially young adults, continue to read magazines in large numbers. At the same time, the number of magazine websites and mobile apps is expanding. These trends indicate that marketers will continue to use the magazine format as a way to connect with and inform consumers about new products and services.

More B2B marketers are expecting to up their promotional activities in 2011. In addition, these businesses will put lead generation at the top of their marketing priority list for next year. These findings come from a fusionb2b survey that was released last month. The company based its projections on respondents from a survey pool that heavily represented the manufacturing, service, and consulting sectors.

As consumers continue to flock to the Internet for everything from entertainment to education, there’s one old media format that does a respectable job of commanding attention. The local television news broadcasts continue to draw in consumers who seek information about local happenings and the weather. As a result, this media format will continue to draw ad dollars from marketers.

Historically, marketers have turned to cute babies and puppies when creating ads. And as technology has advanced, marketers have been employing newer techniques to grab consumer attention. One currently popular tool is animation. Marketers are finding great benefits when using animation but the format has one big drawback – it doesn’t generate high recall.