Last year, Jupiter had revenues of $14 million while Forrester had revenues of about $212 million. Jupiter will be folded into Forrester’s Marketing & Strategy Client Group.

Forrester and Jupiter specialize in statistics-heavy syndicated research, analysis and advice.

The so-called “big four” – Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL – captured 60% of U.S. interactive advertising spend in 2007, but only 23% of online advertising using large networks think they’re more cost-effective than individual sites.

“The impetus for acquisition is obvious — for the conglomerates, the potential to improve their portfolio of offerings to both advertisers and publishers as well as overpower their competition theoretically lies in the control of ad servers and ad networks,” Emily Riley, online advertising analyst and lead author of the report for JupiterResearch, said. “Success will vary depending on expertise in sales and operations as well as across technology and inventory offerings.”

Browsing on mobile devices is anticipated to increase from 16% at the end of 2007 to 19% at the end of 2008. This and other findings were published in a report by JupiterResearch titled “Mobile Internet: Adding Portable Media Players to the Mix to Drive Up Audience Size and Revenue.” It’s a short and catchy title.

The study was completed with mobile ad server AdMob. Also found, was that the majority of page views and advertising impressions on cell phones and portable media players are on a small screen with a mini-browser; however CTR per device are higher for devices with full browsers.

Julie Ask, VP at JupiterResearch and lead author of the report stated “Mobility is adding a time and space dimension to media and advertising that has the potential to drive up CPM’s significantly. We are finding ads with location tags are selling at five to tenfold premiums over basic ads. The ability to tag users with location, demographics, and behavioral data complemented by devices that support rich media to avoid having their role in the advertising value chain made obsolete must continue to push forward.”

David Schatsky, president of JupiterResearch added “New devices such as portable media players available on the market with dramatically improved user interfaces and capable of fully rendering HTML web sites are driving consumer demand for Internet access on portable devices. Carriers should continue to enable consumers by rolling out more devices that look like portable media players at affordable prices – perhaps even as a second device – and continue to break down economic barriers of pricing and application restrictions to consumer adoption.”

According to the US Online Local Advertising Forecast, 2007—2012, released by JupiterResearch, local advertising will increase by 13% from 2007 to 2012. This is faster than online advertising as a whole which is only projected to grow about 12% in the same time frame. The biggest impact is anticipated to be made by local display and search advertising with compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 18% and 16% respectively, during the next five years.

Lead Analyst Barry Parr, Media Analyst for JupiterResearch stated “Although traditional media such as newspaper and local broadcast are facing new challenges regarding their business models, local advertising in these media mainstays is not a dying market. The ability to assemble relatively larger general audiences will remain a principal advantage of traditional media.”

David Schatsky, President of Jupiter Research said in the statement “At this point, most local advertisers are not marketers and do not have the time or resources to manage, let alone optimize, online advertising campaigns. Although search is increasing its impact on the local market, it still demands a degree of sophistication unavailable to most local advertisers.”

This data from iProspect confirms what people in the direct response advertising industry have been noticing for several years, that offline media channels such as direct response TV, radio and print are clearly influencing a staggering percentage of online searches and sales. The study clearly demonstrates that marketers who are relying on online advertising only are not harnessing the synergies that exist between search and offline advertising channels. I don’t feel this is a short-term trend. I expect the influence of offline advertising on online search will continue to grow. We’ve worked with several Internet retailers that were able to take their business to the next level by adding direct response television to their media mix.

The iProspect study noted that all ranges of age, income and online tenure reported that conducting search engine queries has become more important to their use of the Internet over the last year. Since users report that the activity of searching is growing more important to them, then businesses need to make sure that their website is found by searchers. Exposing your target audience to your ads and URL in multiple mediums will enhance their ability to find your website.

Not surprisingly, television drove the highest percentage (37%) of online users to perform searches, according to the iProspect study. Even in today’s more fragmented media environment, the power of TV remains strong and the influence of TV on online purchase behavior is growing. We have found that anywhere from between 30% to over 90%+ of customers make their purchase via the web, when they’re offered both an 800 number and a website in a direct response television ad. Why is this happening? Many consumers feel more comfortable making a purchase via the web than through an in-bound telemarketing service. Also, over 50% of people are simultaneously surfing the web while watching TV, so it’s easy for them to log onto your site when they see your TV ad.

The bottom line is that if you’re not using a combination of TV, print and radio and online ads to reach customers, you’re missing a huge share of potential revenue. Companies that rely solely on one advertising medium are missing the mark. It takes a combination offline and online advertising to make a true impact on today’s consumers. So leverage your marketing dollars by using the synergy of DRTV and online ads to maximize the impact of your campaign. When you do, you will see your company’s bottom line results improve.

Koeppel Direct

And there’s good reason: JupiterResearch predicts in an October report that online holiday retail sales in 2006 will grow to $32 billion, with a projected 114 million users buying online during this holiday season. As the holidays approach, there are a number of important things to keep in mind to ensure that your organization is using its time and budgetary resources in the most efficient and results-focused ways possible.

Look Beyond the ‘Traditional:’
Search marketing during the holiday season has historically seen companies focus largely on bid management and pay-per-click advertising via major networks, such as Yahoo!, Google and MSN. While these networks are very effective, there are a number of other established avenues that can offer a highly targeted complement to working with the major networks. These include:

Shopping Search: Dozens of shopping search services are now in—place, focused squarely on matching online retailers and merchants with consumers who have an interest in buying their products or services. These include such entities as Yahoo! Shopping, MSN Shopping, Froogle, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, NexTag, and Shopzilla, among many others. As with traditional search engines and networks, each has its own set of specifications and requirements for merchants who want to be included in their respective search results. Because many of these entities are newer to the scene, you can often find targeted bid prices that might be surprisingly attractive.

Organic Search Results: While much attention has rightly been devoted to securing optimal placements via the paid sections of search results, it is also important to ensure that your site is optimized to appear in relevant organic search results, as well. Search engine optimization remains an exercise worth undertaking for most online merchants, as it will provide a way for you to assess if your site is as relevant to organic results as you think, along with suggested steps to improve on this front.

Meanwhile, paid inclusion provides a way for major online retailers with thousands of product pages to ensure that —all- of their product and service pages are included in the consideration sets of algorithmic search engines like Yahoo! As a relevance-based process, paid inclusion cannot guarantee placement, but it will ensure that your products are in the consideration set.

“Educating consumers, protecting their privacy, and mitigating their concerns about the cost of commercial text messages and SPAM, will be key to driving consumer interest and adoption of mobile marketing executed with SMS,” said Julie Ask, Research Director and Senior Analyst in a statement. “Advertisers will benefit from working with established mobile agencies and aggregators who can help them understand the mobile environment.”

Furthermore, the results dictate that 22 percent of online advertisers are currently engaged in mobile marketing, while a substantial number of online advertisers utilize plan to do so in the next 12 months. Early adopter industries include media, wireless carriers, automotive, financial services, consumer packaged goods, and food services.

“This high level of interest demonstrates that there is market potential,” said JupierResearch director Julie Ask in a statement. “Service providers will need to give consumers context for watching TV on a small screen in order to convert interest into paid subscriptions. Given current consumer resistance to paying, the most plausible business model for carriers to adopt is one that combines paid and ad-supported mobile video subscriptions.”

The study also examined how mobile video services in the U.S. are changing and what mobile providers are doing to increase the appeal of paid subscription video. Other preferred types of content: full-length movies, video clips, and pre-recorded TV shows.

Social Marketing will also be added to JupiterResearch’s Marketing & Advertising suite of research products, which also includes Advertising & Branding, E-mail Marketing, Online Behavior & Demographics, Search Marketing, and SMB Marketing.

“Social media has grown exponentially in the past year,” said Emily Riley, a JupiterResearch analyst, in a statement. “This explosion has allowed advertisers to engage in an ever-changing dialogue with customers. In the near term, an increasing number of advertisers–over forty percent–are planning to use new online social marketing tactics such as viral, Weblog, and podcast advertising.”

Riley herself recently authored a report, “Viral Marketing: Budgeting Beyond Social Media”, which finds that nearly one in five marketers will use online viral marketing tactics in the next year, and over half of these marketers will be using these tactics for the first time.

“An increasing number of marketers are diversifying and intensifying their use of search agencies. However, only 21 percent are completely satisfied and have no interest in switching agencies,” said Sapna Satagopan, author of the report in a statement. “Search agencies must begin to differentiate themselves and build loyalty through higher levels of client service.”

Jupiter found that nearly three-fourths of marketers are dissatisfied with their agencies. Jupiter also found that SEM technology is important, and percentage-based spending models will outperform performance-based models, but client services are what marketers are really looking for. The report pointed out several SEM and SEO industry leaders, including 24/7 Real Media, iProspect, and IMPAQT.