I was watching television over the course of the weekend and noticed the seemingly ongoing Bing adverts.

These were part of a multi-million pound advertising campaign by Bing – and further to those months of testing I revisited the market share data to see whether this has been effective.

These were the stats from March this year (from Hitwise/Experian data)

Rewind back five months and Bing were very much the third in line, sitting behind both Google and Yahoo, with just under 3% of the UK search marketing spend, estimated according to the IAB (as of March this year) to be worth around £2.15 Billion pounds (£2,000,000,000).

Now lets fas forward this to the end of July and take the latest data published by Experien which highlighted a significantly different picture, and one which would which sees, Bing now as the second largest search engine in the UK, however whether this is due to the continuing decline of Yahoo as a search player or the effect of the promotion Bing has undertaken, is open to debate.

I say significant but its not immediately apparent from the images above – however the following were interesting

1. Bing is now the second largest search engine in the UK – ahead of Yahoo (thats not really surprising) but still way behind Google
2. Bing has seen an increase of 0.16% market share – you may say thats not much but consider the size of the market
3. Yahoo has seen a drop of 2.91% with Google seeing a further 1.46% increase in market share
4. That would thus suggest any increase in market share has been at the expense of Yahoo rather than Google – which ultimately is going to hit revenues again given the Yahoo/Bing alliance.

This may not sound like much until we factor in the potential return of these increases. The figures released by the IAB were for the UK paid search spend of around £2.15 billion, which means every percent means around £20 million revenue to the search engines, so every percent does count have a significant impact in these instances as the table below highlights.

It would seem therefore that the amazing budget allocated for the Bing advertising campaign has not had a hugely significant impact – and would only really break even if they took the entire Yahoo budget into account. That said, it has continued to make gains into the search engine market share over the last year. My personal feelings is that I can’t help thinking Bing may be a little disappointed not to have more of an indent into the search marketing sector at this stage, particularly given the level of awareness.

One has to take into account the 100 odd million advertising budget deployed at the start of the campaign (albeit globally) and when you look at just an incremental return of just over £3 million pounds, one would suggest questions are going to be asked sooner or later.

Whether or not they can compete with the likes of Google is open to debate. When asked whether Bing were a viable alternative to Google, our readers suggested no.

Update:Saw this tweet run past on Twitter earlier today: just heard from @debbypenton that if last weekend was the X Factor final & it was decided by votes – John & Edward would have won!!! crazy – http://twitter.com/kerrymdavis/statuses/5196890674. I can only second that last comment

I like many people was spending Sunday night watching the X Factor on television. In a major surprise both Danyl Johnson and Miss Frank ended up in the sing off – however was there any indications in the search results of the result.

Unsurprisingly John and Edward were accounted for the vast majority of searches for the last seven days – probably indicative of their survival in this weeks competition, however the others (apart from Daniel and Lloyd were much of a muchness). Lloyd mentioned above, was the exception, and given both the recent search trends and his performance it seems surprising he wasn’t one of the final two – the opposite of which is true for Danyl who was the second most popular search.

Its also noticeable that all acts showed a significant increase on searches on the Saturday, that is again with the exception of Lloyd whose searches continued to flatline (much like his musical career if Saturdays performance was anything to go by)

However way out in the lead are John and Edward and for those firmly looking at who the guilty parties are who are keeping them in – I would look no further than Scotland

Well according to Barclays out in the States – Ad decline is twice as bad as we thought. Whilst the dreaded slowdown/recession is certainly worse than people first feared back in the early parts of this year (2008), bank behemoth Barclays announced advertising in the US is likely to decrease 10%, this is 5% up on Octobers’ figure of a 5% drop for 2009.

Unsuprisingly, online ad spend is still forecast to increase (we do keep hearing that don’t we), with search advertising again being the major driver – unsuprising given the accountability in comparison to many other online and traditional offline channels, something any marketeer requires during difficult time such as this. However when one looks at the forecast below – it makes stark reading.

Broadcast Television Networks: We are lowering our Broadcast Television Network advertising revenue estimates for 2009 and 2010 to down 10.0% and up 3.0%, respectively. Our previous estimate was for down 8.0% in 2009. We expect the national broadcast advertising marketplace will hold up better than local.

TV Stations: We have lowered our broadcast TV local and national spot estimates for 2009 and 2010 and now estimate a decline of 15.5% in 2009 and a decline of 1.1% in 2010. Previously, we were anticipating a decline of 8.9% in 2009.

Cable Networks: We are lowering our estimates for 2009 and 2010 Cable Networks advertising revenue to down 3.0% and up 5.0%, respectively, given the deteriorating consumer economy. Previously, we estimated revenue growth of 1.8% for 2009.

Newspapers: We are cutting our 2009 and 2010 newspaper advertising revenue forecast to down 17.0% and down 7.5%, respectively, vs. our prior 2009 estimate as of one month ago down 14.0% and down 12.0% as of our ad forecast report in October. Specifically, in 2009, we estimate retail down 11.0%, national down 17.6%, and classified down 27.9% (help wanted down 44.7%, auto down 37.5%, and real estate down 28.8%). In 2010, we estimate retail down 5.0%, national down 7.0%, and classified down 13.5% (help wanted down 15.0%, auto down 12.5%, and real estate down 12.5%).

Radio: We estimate radio advertising revenue to decrease 13.0% overall in 2009, below our prior estimate of a 7.4% decline, and now expect down 1.7% in 2010.

Yellow Pages: We have lowered our expectations for 2009 to down 13.0% vs. our prior estimate of down 9.0%, and now expect down 7.0% in 2010.

Outdoor: We are lowering our estimates for 2009 and 2010 Outdoor advertising growth to declines of 6.0% and 4.4%, respectively. Previously, we estimated flat revenue growth in 2009.

Direct Mail: Given mounting cyclical pressures, we are expecting direct mail to decline 8.5% in 2009 (vs. our prior down 6.0% estimate) but increase 2.5% in 2010.

Magazines: We estimate magazine advertising revenue to decrease 15.0% in 2009 (vs. our prior down 12.5% estimate) and decline a further 5.0% in 2010.

For many advertisers and agencies this could make stark reading, with many traditional channels forecasting significant reductions in budget – I would suggest there could be some hard times ahead particularly for agencies merely focussing on offline.

According to a recent report by Ofcom, spend on Internet marketing makes up over 19% of the total ad spend in the UK. This was the UK Communication Regulator’s third such report into developments in international communications markets – and put the UK at forefront of internet marketing worldwide.

The UK was followed by Sweden with 17%, with the US, Japan and Canada all seeing Internet Marketing spend at around 10%. The report also found reasonable increases in Online TV with a significant incrase in the volume of downloads of TV shows in the UK.

When you come across a great resource, it seems only right to share it with others. Danny Dover over at SEOMoz (Yes them again), has put together a group of links to key tools and resources every online marketer should be aware of – called the Internet Marketing Handbook.

Good for both beginners, with enough in there to keep the even the likes of David Naylor happy (well Dan anyway), its well worth grabbing five minutes having a look at.

According to the latest IAB figures, spend in online continues to flourish, despite the doom and gloom in many of the financial markets and regular talk of recession. Figures for online showed

• £1.682.5m was spent during H1 2008 – an increase over 348.2m year on year
• Thats a 21% increase on H1 2007
• Despite many markets shrinking (Direct Mail 5.9%, Outdoor 4.2%), Online continued to grow significantly – up by early 20.9%
• Market share up to nearly 19% up fromm 15.9% in H2 2007
• Spend in online was only just below Press Display (1737.7m) and Television (1951.8m)

Such figures only serve to encourage online marketeers many of whom are facing their first real brush with economic slowdown, and it testament to the accountability of the channel as a sales tool. So where has this money been spent.

• Display – 19.8%
• Classifieds – 21.5%
• Paid for Search – 58.3%

If these figures are taken with SEO in mind (estimated to be worth around 330 million according to E-Consultancy), an overview of the market would probably look as follows:

Uk online market including SEO

The above SEO figure has been worked out as a percentage figure based on the 88/12 split from the earlier E-Consultancy report. With the current IAB figures therefore a rough estimate of SEO allocation would be circa 7% of the total spend

The growth in spend, still continues to be fueled with the traditional investors, that is the likes of the recruitment, automotive and property sectors, with finance accounting for circa 6.2% of totlal spend

So can this continue, only time will tell. Some forecasters are still seeing significant growth in the industry, others like the lads over at Marketing Pilgrim are seeing times ahead that are less bountiful than now, however there is no doubting the effectiveness of online, and the fact it is in the marketing mix for the longhaul.