The NMA has just reported “Online consumer spending totalled £10.9bn last year, an increase of £2.7bn from the previous year, according to data from retail analysts Verdict Research.”

The report also indicated the highest level of growth since the end of the “dot com era” in the early 2000′s with a predicted online spending market worth £28.1bn by 2011.

More impressive figures for any companies still considering going down the e-commerce route.

See the full NMA report

Yahoo have today announced the official launch of their new Sponsored Search Platform in Europe.

Current users of Yahoo SM will see their account upgraded over the coming month to a new more intuitive platform with AdWords’ rivaling features. I look forward to my upgrade, when I will give a more detailed overview.

Here is the full press statement:

LONDON May 30, 2007: Yahoo! Europe today announces that its new sponsored search advertising platform has launched and that it has started upgrading European advertisers to the new campaign management console.

The platform is designed to enable marketers to better manage their campaigns for an improved overall return on their search advertising investment whilst providing consumers with a more relevant and higher quality search experience.

Richard Firminger, Regional Sales Director of Northern Europe for Yahoo! Search Marketing said, “This powerful new advertising technology marks a key turning point in our efforts to deliver additional value for advertisers and a more relevant experience for users worldwide.”

“Additionally, through this platform, Yahoo! will be able to unlock the full potential of our large global user base and our ongoing investments in creating the largest and most engaged audience.”

To facilitate a smooth upgrade experience for its thousands of European search advertisers Yahoo! will transition customers from its current system to the new platform through a phased rollout.

Beginning today, Yahoo! advertisers throughout Europe will start to receive notifications to access the many new features available in the completely redesigned, easy-to-use campaign management console. Notifications to upgrade will continue in stages over the coming weeks.

Jon Myers, Search Director at Latitude Group said, “I welcome the launch of Yahoo!’s new sponsored search advertising platform and look forward to the positive impact it will have on the search marketing competitive landscape in the UK”.

“Having worked closely with Yahoo! on development and pre-launch testing, I’m confident the new platform will help Latitude bring a new level of sophistication to our clients’ campaigns on Yahoo!”

“The overhaul should result in a robust platform that can easily scale alongside any future industry development, with new features and functionality that enable search marketers to run better campaigns for their clients.”

Yahoo!’s new search advertising platform is designed to connect businesses to consumers even more effectively by empowering advertisers with the right tools, visibility and environment to create ads that are more relevant to users. The platform will provide advertisers with many new features and capabilities once they upgrade their accounts, including:

Fast Ad Activation – provides a streamlined content review process that allows advertisers to launch most new ad campaigns within minutes of submission*. This enables immediate engagement with customer, instant reward for quality improvements and the ability to manage last minute inventory.

Ad Testing – supports automatic rotation of multiple versions of ads to determine the most effective, and over time displays the highest-performing ads more frequently. This empowers advertisers to drive quality, improve click through rate and deliver better value.

Visible Quality Index – scores ads based on quality, bid and other relevance variables, and will be made visible to advertisers to enable them to gauge and optimise placement when the quality-based ranking model is implemented

Intuitive Control Panel – provides a simplified interface, allowing advertisers to easily understand their performance and modify or enhance campaigns every step of the way

Goal-Based Optimisation – enables advertisers to let Yahoo! automatically find the least expensive way to meet their Cost Per Acquisition or Return on Ad Spend goals

Enhanced Geographic Targeting – powered by Yahoo!’s WhereonEarth technology, enabling Yahoo! to more accurately understand and match to user search intent (“Soho, NY” versus “Soho, London”) and colloquial terms (“restaurant near Tottenham Court Road” is in central London).

Share of Clicks Forecasting – displays data regarding the bid needed to achieve an estimated specific share of expected clicks

Assists – allows advertisers to see how ads drive both immediate and deferred conversions across multiple campaigns, not just the last click that led to a conversion.

The new platform has been built for the future so has the capacity to introduce additional distribution options, targeting capabilities and pricing models, as well as additional ad formats enhanced with graphics or rich media. As such it is completely scalable to grow with future market trends.

For more information about Yahoo!’ new Sponsored Search Platform, advertisers can visit our upgrade Centre on http://newsponsoredsearch.yahoo.co.uk

*subject to various criteria including nature of the search terms and presence of sensitive content in the ad campaign.

The power of SEO should not be underestimated.

Google had a recent re-shuffle of results; thought to be an impact of Google de-valuing the worth of “paid for back-links”.
This is a good step in our eyes; links which are paid for should not have an impact on “natural results”.

The effect of this reshuffle on 2 of the UK’s most valuable internet properties; MoneySupermarket.com and Confused.com has been nothing short of catastrophic.

Moneysupermarket was due for a stock floatation valuing £1billion – this has been severely hit by the Google re-shuffle with its listings for keywords such as “loans” & “Car insurance” moving from the top 10 to 50+. While this appears to be a temporary glitch as they have resurfaced to the top, the financial impact of the down time has been massive.

Confused.com seems to have had a similar problem with an added issue of duplicate content (confused.co.uk). All this coming just as they were due to sell for £700million. While Moneysupermarket seem to have recovered, Confused.com has not with its listings moving out of the top 50 results and staying put.

The moral of the story has to be: Ignore the value of good SEO at your peril. SEO is not just about getting results today or this month but about sustained and ethical results which last.