SEL: Online in '06: Predictions from the People I Read

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Search marketing in the new media era.

January 03, 2006

Online in '06: Predictions from the People I Read

Safa Rachty:
The Upshot: 2006 is promising to be another strong year for the Internet sector and we are again maintaining an Overweight recommendation on the Internet stocks, implying that we expect returns of about 20% or more, or well above the average of other sectors. Our top picks for the year are Google, Netflix, GSI Commerce, and the Chinese Wireless sector.
(I couldn't find the link - I got the PJ report from an emailed pdf.)

Top 10 Best Performing Internet Stocks of 2005 Google wasn't #1.
(via Battelle)

The Coming Year in Online Marketing Predictions across the online channel. Here's the search bit: "PPC just keeps getting bigger. The budgets, which a couple years ago were difficult to come by, are now opening up, no questions asked. The onrush took some of the focus away from natural optimization for a while. People are realizing there's so much traffic to be had by natural, but also that if you're going to spend so much on PPC, you should invest some money to make sure you're getting the whole picture."

A year of Google blogging Google blog celebrates its one-year anniversary. "Since we've had Google Analytics running on this blog since June, some of these numbers reflect only half a year. In that time, 4.3 million unique visitors have generated 8.7 million pageviews."

Google blog's most linked-to post was "Googlebombing 'failure'"

Looking Back, Forging Ahead Greg Sterling links to top search stories of '05 and mentions upcoming Kelsey Group predictions. "On the local front, we’ll see more competition, consolidation, accelerated consumer adoption of the Internet for local lookups, strong movement by some newspapers online, more penetration of PPCall, more social and user generated media and further acceleration of online video and fragmentation of the TV audience."

More Predictions? Sheesh. Battelle drops a few more predictions, most notably "Hardware (as in the bare metal under the web) will matter again, big time."

Industry Feeling Presence of the 800-Pound Google This is the article that has everyone talking about the "Google Cube," a device that will bridge the internet to the television, a sort of iPod for television shows, from the sound of it.

2006 Predictions Tristan Louis sees increased broadband penetration as a key driver for online in '06. "The increase in broadband penetration will have several large implications, including the rollout of more voice over IP services, video services, and the infrastructure security."

Have you seen any predictions that surprised you? Did you make any predictions that were accurate for '05? Write and let me know: selowdown@gmail.com

Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

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