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For months now, consumers have been hunkering down in an economic storm, buying only what they need to survive, like groceries, diapers, medicine — and shoes. The American public, it would seem, cannot carry on without new shoes. Scott Savitz, the founder and chief executive of Shoebuy.com, an Internet retailer, said sales of outdoor and athletic shoes by the likes of Timberland, Merrell and Adidas were robust. Eileen Lewis, director of fashion strategy for Zappos.com, said consumers were snapping up shoes in bright colors like yellow and red. Read the full article at The New York Times

comScore, Inc. a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its Q3 2009 retail e-commerce sales estimates, which showed that U.S. online retail spending totaled $29.6 billion, down 2 percent versus year ago. Q3 2009 represents the first time on record that consecutive quarters have seen negative e-commerce spending growth compared with the same quarter the year prior. Read the full article at WebGuild.org

US online retail spending totaled $29.6 billion in Q3 2009, according to a e-commerce sales estimate released on November 5 by ComScore. The period, down 2% versus a year ago, was the second in online shopping history in which sales figures had a downward trend in consecutive quarters. However, the projections for the holiday season are healthier. Read the full article at DM News

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Google Inc. today unveiled a new search engine service designed specifically for e-commerce sites. The search company today released Google Commerce Search, which includes features like spell check, synonyms, sorting and parametric search, and is aimed to serve as the search engine on Web sites of retailers and other companies of all sizes. Read the full article at ComputerWorld

The online display advertising market is seriously underperforming and urgently requires a higher level of sophistication, if it is every going to earn its fair share of marketing spending. That was one of the key messages delivered by Jonathan Miller, News Corp.’s chief digital officer, during a keynote address on Thursday (Nov. 5) at the Ad:Tech conference in New York. Read the full article at MediaWeek

Depending on whom you ask, U.S. online shopping is either in unprecedented decline – or one of the only bright spots in American retail. On Thursday, comScore (SCOR) reported that U.S. online spending in the third quarter slipped two percent to $29.6 billion versus last year. Read the full article at AllThingsD

The idea of target marketing has been around a long time, but until recently, marketers have had a hard time buying on enough Web sites to make the targeting truly effective. Now, companies like Blue Kai which tracks – behind the scenes – what sites users go to online are helping advertisers with better targeting. After collecting the information, Blue Kai groups Web visits into categories of consumers and immediately auctions off the data from some of the sites to marketers and Internet companies, which in turn use it for consumer research and ad personalization. There are those who believe this data driven ad buying will improve how online display ads are purchased and how they perform. The online display ad market is estimated at $20.8 billion in 2009. Meanwhile U.S. online ad spending on targeted ads will reach $1.1 billion this year, up from $775 million in 2008, according to research firm eMarketer. Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal

Despite concerns about the economy, consumers are widely expected to shop on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but surveys find the shoppers will be looking for bargains. Also, research shows that more shoppers are heading online on Black Friday, traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year for bricks-and-mortar stores. Sales on the major shopping days could be affected, however, by consumers’ plans to do their holiday shopping earlier. A recent survey shows 52% of shoppers plan to shop on the day after Thanksgiving, up from 42% in 2008. These shoppers, however, will be pickier and will only buy if they can get a superior discount. Read the full article

Vitacost.com turned in a pretty good top-line performance in its first quarter as a public company, but costs related to the initial public offering also resulted in a higher net loss. For the first three quarters sales grew 34.3%. Sales increased 31.9% to $48.4 million from $36.7 million in the prior year. Meanwhile, marketing expenses increased year over year 19.4% to $3.7 million from $3.1 million. Read the full article

The retailer is charting an aggressive course for its holiday season marketing strategy in an effort to reach cost-conscious shoppers. The company says it anticipates online sales during the holidays will grow by 30%. Among the investments are more emphasis on social networking (Facebook) and renewed focus on e-mail marketing (Kohl’s says its database grew 50% this past year and its planning on sending 17 separate e-mail campaigns in November and another 30 in December). Finally, visitors at Kohls.com will see a new gift finder tool and an interactive “holiday hint list.” Read the full article