Shopping online is big business and getting bigger and bigger by the internet nanosecond. Can you say Amazon or eBay?

Marketing experts agree that the majority of all consumer and B2B shopping will be transacted via the web within the next decade – or sooner. The breadth and depth of available - and potential - products and services is boundless. Online order fulfillment continues to get faster, safer and more convenient.

The long tail phenomenon exists because of the web. If you’ve dreamt of success as an online affiliate marketer you must check out this opportunity. Time is of the essence! No kidding – it’s a very limited offer!

We could say more but the information sales letter will answer your questions. This is what you should expect;
1. Click the text link which will take you to an affiliate landing page.
2. Opt in with your name and email address.
3. This will take you to the sales page.
4. Spend some time; check out the videos and beta sites that are featured.
5. Get informed and make a decision that’s right for you.

This is the consummate, irresistible offer with a no risk guarantee. Going through the process is worth the effort just so you can evaluate and learn from an extremely well executed marketing strategy. You are also learning about an empowering new business model.

Speed is the currency of business and success loves speed. To you, good luck – the gravy train is at the station - but there isn’t room for everyone!

According to Alterian’s transatlantic annual survey of more than 500 US direct marketers, marketing services providers and agencies, eighty-five percent of respondents expect their online direct marketing expenditures to increase in 2007. The spending projection is the largest expected increase since the Alterian Annual Survey began in 2003.

The survey findings show a strong bias towards email marketing and customized landing pages for the subscriber. About 94 percent of respondents who said they will decrease offline spending said they will increase online spending while 70 percent of respondents said they apply basic or no analysis to any of their email campaigns.

The overall results are not entirely unexpected considering the strong momentum in online marketing growth but lack of analysis is a bit disturbing considering there are fewer missing data points & grey areas with online marketing than offline. Perhaps, most of the industry is just following each other than researching a bit more and spending wisely than increasing the frequency & speed of email newsletters.

A full copy of the results can be obtained by emailing  at annualsurvey@alterian.com.

Ready Set Holiday is a new website with useful features for holiday shoppers. Launched on behalf of M80 and Sears, the new service website enables visitors to prepare for the holidays with a complete holiday planner and recipie guide including a message board forum to discuss gift giving ideas. The website also includes merchandise from Sears, KMart, and Lands’ End while allowing users to shop with price comparison and by cateogry of interest.

The website as a whole is a terrific example of blending traditional holiday gift items (some organized as under $25) with new age online shopping. I would highly recommend checkin out Ready Set Holiday.com for your gift giving this year.

This week the company let me test drive their service with a gift certificate. I bought an HP Photosmart C3140 Printer / Scanner / Copier. The thing is pretty amazing for the small $99.99 sticker tag. It has a fast and reliable printing speed. You can print, scan, and copy reliably and quickly - photos as fast as 25 seconds and documents up to 22 ppm black, up to 20 ppm color - with this compact all-in-one. It brings true to life, long lasting photos and documents. You can create briliant photos, reprint, and laser quality documents at home with the HP Vivera Inks that are included.

The whole experience was incredible. The best and last thing I’ll mention is that you have the choice of picking up the item in the store of having it shipped out to you. Enjoy!

There’s a new annoying new character in the car insurance world (buh-bye Geico Gecko) called the General (a poorly animated 3D character). He’ll claim to save you big money on auto insurance on his website. It’s pretty annoying that this company basically stole the whole ‘cute-image’ of Geico’s Gecko and I am supposed to trust a 3D General animation with my car insurance. As a consumer, I can tell the company didn’t pay much to have the 3D General made which means they probably won’t care much about me either as a client. This ad is just horrible and annoying on top of that.

The Monster.com employment seach engine has just launched a massive campaign titled ‘Monster Works for me.’ The effort includes online, outdoor, television, print, and website re-design. Three television spots will feature a nurse (seductive), chef, and sales person (respectively) on cable and prime time network tv.

“As we went to create the new campaign, we wanted to evolve from our last campaign,” said Vicki Godfrey, vp-advertising and brand strategy at Monster in Maynard, Mass. “The real insight for us was that people work for a variety of reasons. If you peel the onion back, it’s motivating to find out why. Monster is really the only one that can help you by giving the tools and resources to get that done.”

real one-time smokersto share their stories for the Commit nicotine lozenges (which I’ve used) camapign. GSK gave four video cameras to four former smokers in the Los Angeles area to document their efforts to quit smoking over the course of 13 weeks in 2006. The videos will be used for TV and online video spots. There is even talks about a full-length documentary. The series of four will air in four superseeding campaigns (one after another) in which the first will feature Lisa

The Web Strategist had an interesting article about the mysterious BMW - Britsh Motor Sports advertising campaign which will go online sometime in the near distant future. At the moment, the campaign consists only of flash graphics and mystery which are causing quite a stir with Digg.com users.

The BMW flash video morphs and shows some very vague products ready to be released in mid January.

If you’re like me, you spent New Years sitting at home with a box of Cheetos and Vic’s Vaporub watching YouTube’s New Years Celebration (ok, so you’re not like me then eh?). Chevy sponsored a YouTube hosted New Year’s celebration this year with Warner Music Group artists performing to ring in the New Year. The ‘almost-live’ experience entailed artists uploading their videos right after performances to the website. Even some of the years most popular video-bloggers were featured as New Years Resolutions and encouraging others to upload their own.

Hope Community Church is trying to rebuild its name after spreading the word about its former website. That former website’s domain name was bought by a porn company when the domain expired and the church forgot to re-register it for the next year. Pastor Steve Spearing said Friday the mix-up happened a few weeks ago when the church changed Internet service providers. Spearing said he believed the church could keep its Web site name, which contained the words “life” and “Christ.” But the old service provider put the address up for sale and it was bought by a pornographic Web site.

But the old service provider put the address up for sale and it was bought by a pornographic Web site.

Social networking website, Bebo, is set to launch its first advertiser widgets which are small web based applications that social site users can embed in their personal profiles.

One of the widgets is an advertiser supported photo-sharing widget from Slide, Photobucket, and Rockyou. The company plans on adding a variety of other widgets users can add to their profile such as video and music players. The ad widgets are part of what Bebo vp of sales and business development Jim Scheinman calls “engagement marketing,” designed to combine Web ads with user-directed viral marketing. Visitors to a profile with a widget for their own page can add it with a couple clicks.

“If it’s great content, it’s going to engage the user so much more,” he said. “To the Beboer, they don’t look at it like advertising but great content.”

With Time Magazine’s announcement that You are its Person of the Year because of the proliferation of user-powered content, Wired has posted a slew of the best online videos of 2006.

The Confessional. Topping the list is Lonelygirl15’s confessional videos that became an overnight sensation, while geriatric1927 became everyone’s surrogate grandpa, telling war stories to younger folk. Catching Racism in the Act. From Michael Richard’s (a.k.a. Kramer) comedy meltdown, captured on a camera phone, to Sen. George Allen’s obscure racist reference, YouTube shows us that racism is indeed, all around us.

Dance, America! Comedian & Motivational Speaker Judson Laipally’s Evolution of Dance clip put him on YouTube’s most watched, while OK Go’s homemade, treadmill-saturated video won a spot on MTV’s Video Music Awards. Fun with Science. From Mentos & Diet Coke science experiments, to putting you-name-it in a blender, YouTube brought edutainment to a higher level.

Daily Photos. Finally, a few people added taking a picture of themself to their daily routine over a long period of time. One guy doesn’t change much aside from facial hair over six years, while a woman shows her pregnant belly over nine months - in twenty seconds.

Goodbye Dr. Phil! You will not be missed at Match.com. Match.com has recently launched a movement to put some life in the slowing world of online dating. With the tagline, “It’s okay to look good”, Match.com has started a multi-media push on behalf of Hanft Unlimited in New York. The $60 million effort gives users a “Match Potrait Toolkit” to seek advice from America’s Next Top Model’s Jay Manuel about their image and how to make their photos more appealing. This will be a total turn around from when Match.com used Dr. Phil to help people bring out the ‘inner-beauty’. Match.com is quickly realizing that ‘outer-beauty’ is all most of us care about (too bad for me).

The television, radio, and print campaign will feature 26 real website members who talk about the website’s diversity and variety. Match.com’s competitior, eHarmony completely blew this campaign out of the water though with a $90 million ad campaign.

Trying to connect to the ‘people’, Toyota has created a website dedicated to hybrid owners and their cars (preferably Toyota). The website will feature testimonials from actual owners and encourage owners to submit their car pictures and videos. Now if only Toyota could set up a social networking website for the ’snob-noses’ who drive Hybrid cars I would blow a whistle with satisfaction.

Cube Fabulous is basically the ‘Extreme Makeover’ show meets ‘Office Space’ by applying the concept of cubicle makeovers to a television show. Every episode features an attractive team of males and females ‘pimping’ your cubicle. The show now reaches nearly 4.5 million visitors to the CubeFabulous website per episode. Places like Honda, Monster.com, and other big names have been mentioned as interested parties for advertising on the online show. They’ve even discussed in-show product placements. Imagine getting your cubicle pimped by this crew and a new Honda waiting outside of your office.

If you ask Google how the Google Publication Ads ‘Beta’ round went they will likely respond that it is a major success and they are planning on rolling out even more features and stretching the program till it breaks. Ask a Publication publisher and they might as well shurg their shoulders and say “meh” over the whole thing. The biggest issue facing Publication publishers using the Google system is how small-scale advertisers can benefit from the program. Some, but not many, publishers have told the associated press that they have receive more traffic and sales where their ads were run.