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Spending for U.S. online advertising will decline by 4.6% overall in 2009, the first drop since 2002 -- but expect growth in early 2010. Search and video were the only two media that experienced growth this year, although much less than the prior year, according to eMarketer. Search will continue to take a larger slice of the budget, climbing from less than $11 billion in 2009 to nearly $16 billion in 2014. “An ad gets displayed when someone does a search query, and a query is the ultimate form of self-targeting. It says I’m interested in both this and that in this moment,” notes one exec. Banner ads dipped slightly this year, at 2.3%. It’s estimated that by 2014, advertisers will have divided the online ad market more distinctly, with 46.5% spent on search and 38.7% spent on a mix of banner, video and rich media display ads. Read the full article at MediaPost

Sales at U.S. retailers rose 1.3% in November, more than twice the 0.6%. Some analysts are hoping the uptick is a positive sign consumer spending is gathering speed heading into 2010. “Consumers are no longer in hunkering-down mode because they are feeling a little better about the economic situation,” said one retail analyst. American shoppers are definitely responding to price cuts. Sales on Black Friday and the weekend after the Thanksgiving holiday advanced 0.5% as discounts on electronics and toys drew crowds, according to the National Retail Federation. Overall, it’s estimated consumer spending will probably climb at a 1.7% annual rate this quarter, more than anticipated in November.Read the full article at Bloomberg

The wake-up call for retailers this year has been the continued shift in preference toward e-commerce channels. While retailers were opening their doors at Midnight and staffing up for the Black Friday rush, research shows the biggest traffic jams were occurring online. ComScore reported that online shoppers rang up $595 million in sales on Black Friday, up 11% from last year. Web shopping also rose 10% on Thanksgiving day to $318 million. Meanwhile, web analytic firm Coremetrics found that the average ticket rose 38.2% on Cyber Monday over the year-ago period (led by apparel retailers) and consumers purchased nearly 30% more items compared with Cyber Monday 2008. Cross channel solutions provider ATG noted an uptick of 50-100% in traffic for its e-tailer clients. Several mid-sized retail companies reported year-over-year e-commerce sales growth of more than 200%. “It’s clear retailers are seeing success this year by combining attractive, aggressive sales promotions with personalization techniques that enable them to target different segments of shoppers with offers they’re likely to be interested in,” said Nina McIntyre, SVP & CMO, ATG. Will the cross channel importance of the Web continue in 2010? Yes says Geoff Brash, VP Marketing at SLI Systems who notes, “Retailers have been investing heavily in technologies over the past few years and they now need to integrate these technologies to see the full ROI.”Read the full article at Retail Touch Points

An analysis of over 2 million grocery shoppers by Concept Shopping shows that the top 10% of store’s customers visit the store more than twice a week, spend over $39 per visit, and represent nearly 40% of the store’s total sales. The study also found that these most valuable shoppers tend to remain very loyal to the store, with 95% continuing to shop there throughout the year. “Shopper loyalty continuously ebbs and flows through retail banners and store types, but sorting shoppers by their value helps identify which ones should be courted and which ones can be ignored,” said Concept Shopping’s William Young.Read the full article at Retailing Today

Yahoo has introduced a privacy and advertising dashboard that lets consumers check out the “interest categories” created by their online behavior while Google released a dashboard earlier this year that lets consumers manage the settings associated with Google products. Rumors are that Microsoft and AOL will follow suit with similar products for their services. What gives? According to MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan, “personalization of the Web and real-time search will make behavioral targeting a focus in 2010.” Sullivan believes many younger consumers are “not all are concerned about giving away a little information for a more focused ad.” However, Sullivan notes the level of concern regarding personal privacy online rises as people age. Read the full article at MediaPost

ClickZ’s Aaron Kahlow believes the end of the year is a good time to make some “To Do” lists for 2010. And chief among them for online marketers is prioritizing actions that will deliver a positive ROI next year and beyond. One of Kahlow’s top suggestions is that online marketers should focus on segmenting their customer lists in such a way that “help[s] customer[s] simplify their lives” in a way that makes your business more relevant. Kahlow emphatically notes online marketers need to “segment customers based on interest, not geography, size, or job title.” Read the full article at ClickZ

Michael Rubin, GSI’s chief executive, said online sales on Cyber Monday, the day after the holiday weekend, rose 50% from the same day a year ago. “I think there’s good, broad e-commerce trends,” he said. “It’s going to be an overall industry acceleration.” Online retail’s growth is at least partly due to Amazon.com, Rubin said. “The success of Amazon has really woken a lot of retailers up,” forcing them to be much more aggressive or risk losing market share. Rubin also noted that more retailers will be collecting email addresses at their brick-and-mortar locations and using tactics like email marketing to prompt more online shopping as well as store visits. “Our clients have huge levers that they haven’t used,” Rubin said.Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal

Ad remarketing is currently the most under-used online marketing technology, according to a new survey conducted by Advertise.com and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. This research supports findings by retargeting firm FetchBack that found nearly half of users return to a retail site immediately after being served a retargeting ad - generally within an hour. To capitalize on this, a handful of online ad placement companies have incorporated some form of retargeting in their offerings over the last year or so. “Retargeting is the single most effective form of behavioral targeting we’ve seen so far,” says ZEDO founder and CEO Roy de Souza. ZEDO has stats that show retargeted ads are three times more likely to be clicked and retargeted users are four times more likely to convert. With such success, there’s no doubt retargeting will grow in popularity in 2010. Read the full article at MarketingVox

ClickZ’s Gary Stein submits it’s vital for marketers to create customer loyalty but the old model of “Get consumers in quick and cheap and profit from them forever,” is no longer the case. According to Stein, “there is no silver bullet that will solve the problems of advertising, but consumer intimacy comes pretty close.” Stein believes intimacy is the reason that social media has suddenly become the number one priority for many brand managers. Stein holds up social media as an ideal way to use “the interactive medium (the Web) to make connections that are deeper than what has passed for loyalty in the past. Stein goes on to state, “If you’re going to adopt loyalty as a key goal, then you need to think not just about the sale that you’re going to make, but how that customer lives with you across time…by ensuring current customers continue to come back, you’re also creating advocates and market movers who will help bring new consumers in.” Read the full article at ClickZ

Internet Evolution’s Michael Singer is also touting the value of providing “multiple incentives for them to return and stay loyal to your brand.” According to Singer, online loyalty is a “strategic enabler during this time of decreased consumer spending.” According to Aberdeen researcher Gregory Michael Belkin, savvy customers expecting a highly personalized experience and increased online competition are the two main drivers for pushing brand loyalty programs. Belkin suggests one of the best ways to assure customer loyalty (that all important “strategic enabler”) is to augment online loyalty strategies with increased customer touch points for a more personalized online experience. “In the online space, organizations have the unique possibility of changing their loyalty program results with specific personalization strategies,” said Belkin adding that using customer data to create promotions that are relevant to customer wants and needs is a solid approach. Read the full article at Internet Evolution