With more and more domain owners looking into development, SEO and marketing ideas are becoming very popular topics in the domain industry. MarketingSherpa.com just posted their annual ad:tech Survey detailing what the top web advertisers view as the best and worst online marketing tactics. There are some very interesting and surprising stats in the report

including the fact that 57% of marketers surveyed said that SEO produced "great ROI and outperformed other tactics" including paid search. That's a big move upward from the 45% that agreed with that statement the previous year (only  33% agreed with it in 2005). 

Meanwhile marketer satisfaction with the ROI from paid search is going the opposite direction with only 34% now saying it produces the best ROI, a big drop from the 49% approval rating paid search had in 2006. MediaPost.com pointed us to 

blogger Janet Meiners at MarketingPilgrim.com who says that increased competition and higher costs have lowered marketer's enthusiasm for paid search. That would at least partially explain the lower PPC payouts so many domain owners are reporting.

(Posted Feb. 13, 2008)