Kozlen Communications

A new study from the Online Publishers Association and ComScore Networks found that the value of the online content market grew to $987 million in the first half of 2005, a 16% increase over last year. While subscriptions are still the primary method of purchasing online content, single purchases have been rising – accounting for 20% of overall paid content sales. In fact, revenues from single purchases are on track to double 2004 numbers.

Dating, business content, investment and personal growth were among the top categories for subscriptions, while the entertainment, research, and credit help were the most likely to have single sales. Experts believe digital music sales are driving the growth of single purchases. As single song sales rose, purchases of $5 or less – as a category – grew faster than more expensive online content brackets. Purchases of $5 or less accounted for 22% of single-purchase revenues. Other brackets grew, but at a much slower pace.

I caught wind of a new phrase today… Google Bowling. Now that search engine marketers have figured out how their own sites can be blacklisted by Google (and other search engines), they’ve begun using this knowledge to squash their competition. They’ll throw up all sorts of junk links to their competitions’ sites and eventually get those sites kicked out of the Google ranking (even if you search on that specific name). Hopefully Google will develop something soon that can both prevent junk sites and Google Bowling victims.

A study released today – Impact of Online Research on Off-Line Retail Buying: Predispositions and Outcomes – found that 55% of these shoppers had conducted research online before going to the store to make their purchase. The Study – conducted by the CMO Council and The ConsumerEdge Research Group, and sponsored by Yahoo! – surveyed 322 consumers who made purchases earlier this year at BestBuy, CompUSA, and Circuit City. It also found that 27% of respondents researched less than an hour, 24% spent 1-3 hours, and 4% spent more than 3 hours. The more users research the more likely they were to get information from blogs and user groups. Of those surveyed, 47% used marketers’ Websites, 41% used search engines, 39% used retailers’ sites, 11% used banner ads, and 4% used blogs. Surprisingly, 25% put newspapers as one of the top sources of information most influencing them and 21% said the same for the Internet. By contrast, only 5% put TV, magazines, or radio at the top.