A big surge in the annual growth of local search outpaced growth of overall Web search, according to a study by comScore and released by the Yellow Pages Association. The study found that local search grew 58 percent in 2008, reaching an annual total of 15.7 billion searches. By comparison, overall U.S. Web core searches [...]

Small-and medium-sized businesses are now spending 11 percent of their advertising budgets on online marketing campaigns, up from less than 4 percent three years ago, according to a new report from Borrell Associates. These SMBs are blurring the lines between what’s advertising and what’s not. They consider whatever they spend on their own Web sites [...]

Google has announced its launching “interest-based” advertising as a beta test on its partner sites and on YouTube. The ads will be matched via users browser based on the types of sites they visit and the pages they view. Google says it will use interest categories to show users more relevant text and display ads. [...]

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has worked with key players in online behavioral advertising to launch Good Practice Principals. The Good Practice Principles aim to empower consumers and give them information and choices about behavioral advertising. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL all support the new principles. Online behavioral advertising is the growing practice of serving [...]

The Federal Trade Commission documented the most cases of identity theft ever in one year in its “2008 Fraud and Identity Theft Complaint Data.” In 2008, the FTC said it had received about 1,200,000 complaints related to fraud, identity theft and other consumer complaints, representing a 50 percent increase over the previous year. Those consumers [...]

In 2009 companies will continue to invest significantly in online marketing, but less than half (47%) of marketers use analytics to measure their campaigns, according to a recent survey by Alterian. Online marketing investment is predicted to increase for the 6th year in a row as organizations begin to look to social networks as well [...]

The Federal Trade Commission has issued a report outlining self-regulatory guidelines for the online advertising industry. “This is the industry’s last chance to get self-regulation right,” said Leslie Harris, President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology. “The FTC report makes clear that the industry’s own efforts in this area have fallen short [...]

The FBI and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) continue to receive numerous complaints from individuals who have become victims to work-at-home scams and warn consumers to use caution when looking for employment online. These work-at-home schemes are designed by criminals to gain the trust of job seekers in order to take advantage of working [...]