US Online Advertising Continues To Take Market Share

Despite greater economic woes affecting the US advertising industry, marketers continue to place their messages through online channels at a growing rate. According to eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman, “US online advertising is proving to be far more resilient than other media channels.”

In his March 2008 report, “US Online Advertising: Resilient in a Rough Economy,” Hallerman notes that in 2009, the US online advertising growth rate is expected to decline but will remain in the high teens through 2011. For 2008, US online ad spend will grow to nearly $26 billion, accounting for approximately 9% of total US advertising.

This is good news for the online business community, but we still have much progress to make. Americans are consuming the majority of their media online, to the tune of 33%; however marketers continue to allocate a much smaller percentage of their budgets to the Web. It is only a matter of time before marketers learn that online ads are not only more effective, provide a higher ROI but can also be tracked and quantified more accurately than traditional channels. According to eMarketer, we will get half way their by 2012, but this intrepreneur remains confident.

Inspiration for Entrepreneurs

 

“An entrepreneur is defined as a person who is willing to live like no one else will so that one day they can live like no one else can.” – Anonymous

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary” – Paul Mitchell, co-founder of Vidal Sassoon

“The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t do.” -Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist

“Successful people are not lucky. They make their own luck.” – Anonymous

“Whoever has not two-thirds of his time to himself, is a slave.” – Frederick Neitzsche

“The life of an entrepreneur is occasionally exhilarating, and almost always exhausting. Only unbridled passion for the concept is likely to see you through the 17-hour days (month after month) and the painful mistakes that are part and parcel of the start-up process.” – Thomas Peters, management consultant and co-author of “In Search of Excellence”

“Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” – Peter F. Drucker, Investment Guru

“Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.” – Ayn Rand, Philosopher and author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead”

“If you can DREAM it, you can DO it.” - Walt Disney

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters to what lies within us.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.” - Harvey Mackay

“I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.” - Jonathan Winters

“The man who has no imagination has no wings.” - Muhammad Ali

“Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential.” - Winston Churchill

“Life without risks is not worth living.” - Charles A. Lindbergh

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” - Les Brown

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is good to dream, but it is better to dream and work. Faith is mighty, but action with faith is mightier. Desiring is helpful, but work and desire are invincible.” - Thomas Robert Gaines

“Just Do It.” – Anonymous

“My son is now an ‘entrepreneur’. That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job.” – Ted Turner, broadcasting entrepreneur

“The rich buy assets. The poor only have expenses. The middle class buys liabilities they think are assets.” – Robert T. Kiyosaki, author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”

Take Back Your Inbox: How To Better Manage Your Inbox

If you are feeling overwhelmed by email overload, you are not alone. The average email user receives more than 50 messages a day and many business users are hit up with over 200 emails a day. It is time to take your inbox back, and with a little help from Scott Allen and Timothy Ferriss, I will tell you how to better manage your email.

While at SxSWi in Austin, TX, I had the great fortune to meet veteran entrepreneur and email consulting expert Scott Allen, co-author of “The Virtual Handshake,” (with David Teten). This post takes the best points from Allen’s chapter “Manage the Email Deluge,” and Ferriss’ “The Four Hour Work Week.” Both offer time-saving tips for managing your inbox, and your entire life for that matter. While some of their ideas seem radical, I promise they can help alleviate your inbox woes.

In short, Allen and Ferriss advocate handling email when you choose to rather than when it arrives. This involves checking your inbox less frequently, making quick decisions as to how you will handle each message, and creating a simple organizational structure using folders.

Review Regularly But Not Often
The best way to regain control of your inbox, is to develop a regular schedule for checking email. Checking email on the fly any time your inbox beeps is a very poor use of time. Allen and Ferriss, both, recommend turning off your email alert tool and checking your inbox once or twice a day. Ferriss even suggest setting an email auto-response that tells senders when you check your inbox and to let them know that you will eventually get back to them.

I will be the first to admit that for many people this is not practical, but if you are checking your inbox every twenty minutes or on the fly, try setting specific hours in the day to check mail. Honestly, if something is urgent, the sender should pick up the phone or ping you through instant messaging.

Keep Your Inbox Empty
Keeping your inbox empty does not mean you should immediately respond to every email. In fact, Allen argues the opposite. Referencing David Allen’s (no relation) “Getting Things Done,” Scott Allen explains that you have three options for dealing with messages: 1) Do It, 2) Delegate It, or 3) Defer It. If you can answer the email in two minutes or less, knock it out. If you are not the right person to answer the email, forward it immediately to the person who is. And most importantly, if an answer can wait, place the email in a To-Do folder and handle it later when you have more time.

Organize Around Action, Not Data
A simple organizational structure is critical. However, instead of organizing folders based on projects or subjects, you should create folders based on how you should handle email. Allen recommends the following folders:

• Inbox: A temporary place for your emails to arrive and sit until you to determine how to deal with each one.
• Deadlines: Create a separate folder for each deadline (ie: by day, week, project, etc.) The folder will dictate when you answer the email. For example, emails placed in the Tuesday folder will be addressed on Tuesday.
• ASAP: This is a folder for emails that you can answer whenever you have time; as Allen points out ASAP does not mean urgent, it means any time you can get to it.
• Delegated: This folder should store emails that have been sent to others to deal with. You should check this periodically to make sure each message has been answered.
• Archive: These folders can be organized by project, customer, date, data or whatever works for you. If you use your delete folder as an archive; be sure to periodically save all messages onto a disk or external hard drive and purge the folder.

Don’t over Organize, Rely on Search
Don’t make your organizational structure too complicated; it should be intuitive and easy to follow. Most email clients offer search capabilities, which can help you find what you are looking for.

Use Multiple Email Accounts
Allen writes “you can save yourself much time and aggravation, and potentially protect your job, by keeping your personal and business email accounts segregated.” I have been doing this for years and have even created a third email account for e-commerce, ezines and other becn mail (becn, unlike spam is permission-based email that you want to read but just not immediately). Keeping separate inboxes is a great way to prioritize your life and keep you focused while at work. In addition, having a second email account with a free webmail provider like Gmail or Yahoo ensures that if you leave your current employer, you will still have a way to be contacted via email. If you find it difficult to manage your multiple email accounts or you can’t access your personal email at work, you can use NutshellMail, which offers a free service to help you manage, access and monitor your various messaging accounts.

If you found this post to be informative, I highly recommend you read The Virtual Handshake,The Four Hour Work Week, and Getting Things Done. All three books are about taking back your life and leveraging technology to simplify how you work and live. They have had a very significant on my life and have enabled me to get more (work and play) out of my day.

US Online Advertising Spending 2001-2011

Below are statistics representing U.S. Online Advertising Spend as provided by eMarketer. Online advertising has become a large and legitimate industry over the past several years as marketers have finally realized the power of the internet as a way to communicate with potential customers. Interestingly, online advertising in the U.S. has grown more than 3x since 2001. It is expected to double within the next 5 years. The implications for online businesses with ad-supported business models is tremendous. While this model may have been unsustainable for many victims of the dotcom boom, the environment has changed in favor of the online startup looking to quickly monetize off of site traffic.

US Online Advertising Spending (billions)
2001 - $7.1
2002 - $6.0
2003 - $7.3
2004 - $9.6
2005 - $12.5
2006 - $16.9
2007 - $21.4
2008 - $27.5 (expected)
2009 - $32.5 (expected)
2010 - $37.5 (expected)
2011 - $42.0 (expected)

For more insight into these stats, check out The Research Recap Blog

WebMail Services Global Market Share

Below are statistics representing the global market share of the top 5 webmail/ email service providers. Despite Gmail’s reputation as the most comprehensive of the free email service providers, it remains a distant third to Yahoo Mail and Hotmail/Windows Live.

Source: Comscore- October 2007

Provider           No. of Users (mm)
Yahoo Mail                   262.2
Hotmail/Live                 256.4
Gmail                         87.1
AOL Mail                      48.9
QQ.com                        31.4

For insight into these stats, check out Dave McClure’s Blog Master of 500 Hats.
Note: QQ.com is a Chinese email service provider

Twitter: For the “Anti-Socially Social”

Is Twitter anti-social? Twitter, the SMS-enabled social networking service, has become increasingly popular over the past year. This was quite apparent at the SxSW Interactive Conference in Austin, TX, where the most common pick-up line was “What is your Twitter name?” (Second only to “I follow you on Twitter.”) At every panel I went to, I noticed audience members meticulously thumbing messages on their phones to the Twitter community instead of listening attentively and politely to the speakers. At most conferences, this would be considered rude and unprofessional. But SxSW is not like most conferences and I did not hear of any panelist complaining. So I didn’t think much of it.

Then one night at dinner with @ericaogrady (Erica O’Grady), @tamar (Tamar Weinberg), @trevinorama (Marla Trevino) @antifreeze (Seth Blank), @davidlyman (David Lyman) I barely noticed the silence at the table as we all sat typing “tweets” into our phones. In fact, @ericaogrady and I (half jokingly) spent much of the dinner communicating to each other over Twitter even though we were sitting directly across the table. No doubt, this was unusual, and perhaps some might call it anti-social. But I would like to propose a new term to describe Twitter users:

Twitter users are “Anti-Socially Social.”

I usually don’t speak in oxymoron, but in this case it is perfectly appropriate. Twitter is the ultimate just-in-time social network, accessible anywhere there is cell-phone coverage (ie: everywhere). The people using Twitter are inherently social; Twitter is, after all, a social networking service. The problem is, however, Twitter is utterly addictive and perhaps insanely distracting.

In the corporate world, it is considered rude to send messages on your phone while attending a meeting, panel, and especially dinner. In fact, I once got called out for doing so during a meeting with a very high-up C-level. Even hanging out with my friends, I am harassed for messaging into my phone, instead of conversing like a normal human. But I am not anti-social. In fact, I am way too social and Twitter is my pusher-man.

While, I am the first to admit that you should probably limit your phone use when in the presence of other people, I can’t sit back and let people say that Twitter is for the anti-social. So next time, someone complains that you are being anti-social for sending too many tweets, remember to tell them “Dude, I am not anti-social…I am anti-socially social.”

Yours Truly,

@mschmulen

The Road to SxSW

For any internet startup, the South by Southwest (SxSW) Interactive Conference in Austin, TX is one of the most important events of the year. At least that is what we have been told. David and I are both SxSW virgins and therefore don’t really no what to expect. However, we can not ignore the buzz around the March 7^th event. Everyone and anyone from the Valley to Mumbai who is involved with the Web will be in Austin, TX to participate in the enormous conference. Last year’s conference was attended by more than 125,000 attendees (including the Music portion of the event); and, the Interactive portion of the event is expected to draw in more than 7,000 participants.

Given the huge amount of potential exposure, NutshellMail.com can receive from the event, we have decided to update our website to let you find out more about our service. Although, we are not yet ready to grant access to the service, we have spent the past several weeks preparing for the Conference. In fact, tonight marks our 5^th night in a row working past 3 AM.

In addition, to preparing the website for the SxSW conference, we have printed t-shirts, lap-top stickers and moo cards, all standards for internet startups looking to get some exposure at the conference. At least that is what we are told.

It is now, 3:32 a.m., on the eve of the Conference, we are still working on the site and we both need to pack before leaving from Houston to Austin in less than 6 hours. Hopefully, we can get some sleep. But, hey, this is what we signed up for when we decided to quite our day jobs and do this “internet thang.”

The NutshellMail T-Shirt (Back)

 

The NutshellMail T-Shirt (Front)