BLOGGED DOWN

Although the benefits of corporate blogs frequently make news in the business and mainstream media, survey respondents hadn’t yet embraced the technology — a slim 7% said their company operated a corporate blog. Furthermore, only 18% were considering starting a blog this year.

When it comes to marketing products or services online, just 28% of the total respondents said they used affiliate networks. Consumer merchants had a stronger affinity for affiliate marketing than their business counterparts. Thirty-five percent of b-to-c respondents used affiliate marketing, whereas only 21% of b-to-b merchants did.

Respondents using affiliate networks did try to control what affiliates were up to. Nearly half (49%) said they explicitly prohibited affiliates from placing bids on their corporate name or trademarks as search terms.

Large companies are more apt to have dedicated SEM staff

Less than $10 million $10 million or more
Yes, we have a dedicated SEM staff 21% 34%
No, we don’t have a dedicated SEM staff 79% 66%

Where merchants run pay-per-click ad campaigns

Google and/or Yahoo! Search results pages 75%

Other general search engines as well on Google and/or Yahoo! 47%

On shopping or price-comparison engines 32%

On vertical or industry-specific search engines 23%

On Web distribution networks run by the general search engines 19%

On local search engines 7%

Those optimizing Web pages for search inhouse 45%