MarketingSherpa has come out with a Handbook and Benchmarks report on Online Marketing based on a survey of 577 advertisers and marketers. Pilgrim does a review and shares some of the insights from the report here are the key takeaways

Industry statistics

• 47% of companies said their search marketing agency was “absolutely worth every penny,” compared to just 15% who said the same of their “media agency.”
• 56% of companies plan to include A/B testing in 2008.
• A huge 28.6% of advertisers spending $100k to $1 million are not doing any kind of ad testing!

Ad strategies

• According to MarketingSherpa’s eye-tracking studies, ads below the fold can actually out-perform those above the fold, if they have better horizontal positioning–that is, placed to the left.
• Want to increase brand awareness? Non-standard ads–such as the “peel back” ad you see in the top right corner of this web site–lead the way with 41% effectiveness of all ads.
• Want to generate direct sales? Paid search ads are still the best bet, with 29% effectiveness.
• Want an ad format that achieves direct sales, product education, lead generation, AND branding? Small display ads–such as small banners or tiles–offer the best advertising mix.

JuxtConsult an Online research firm is the latest to release a report about Internet in india. The report is titled “India Online 2008” and is based on an on-ground survey conducted in March in 12,500 households in 40 cities of all population sizes, and 4,000 households in 160 villages across all socioeconomic classes. The Internet usage, online behavior and site preferences were collated from 15,000 Internet users through an online survey conducted in April.
Some of the things that caught my eye was that only 28% people prefer to read in English when online and 65% users use Google for local language searches which show that there is a scope for regional languages on the web. Another out of the way info was that Rediff was used by 19% users for renting a movie cd which surprised me that there was such a market in India. Just a disclaimer that with a sample size of 15000 it is very brave to make predictions about millions and so take the report with a pinch of salt but it can still help you to make some decisions.
Excerpts (via afaqs)
No of Internet users in India:

It claims that there are 49 million Internet users in India, of which 40 million are in urban cities. Of these, 35 million are regular Internet users who log on at least once a month. Around 25 million Internet users are online daily.

Demographics & Choice of Language of Indian Internet users

The report shows that 77 per cent of the Internet users are in the age group of 19-35 years, 51 per cent are salaried employees in corporate houses and 30 per cent live in metros. Surprisingly, only 28 per cent of the respondents said they prefer to read in English when online.

Most Popular Internet Activities of Indian internet user

According to report most popular activities online are emailing (91 per cent), job search (72 per cent) and instant messaging (70 per cent). Other popular activities are checking news and sports, downloading music and movies, and checking cricket scores.

Internet Brands & Top of Mind Recall

Among the brands surveyed by JuxtConsult, Google predictably has the highest top of mind recall, at 36.6 per cent, followed by Yahoo! at 31.5 per cent and Rediff at a distant 7 per cent. In terms of usage, Google is used by 28 per cent of the respondents, and Yahoo is used by 27.6 per cent of them. Rediff and Gmail follow with 8.6 per cent usage each.

Online Activities on Indian Websites
JuxtConsult also surveyed the most used websites for specific online activities.

• According to the report, Yahoo! is most used for email (51 per cent users), instant messaging (53 per cent), online news (16 per cent), net telephony (25 per cent), astrology (25 per cent), cinema (14 per cent) and mobile content (12 per cent).
• Google is the most used website for information search in English (81 per cent), search in local languages (65 per cent), real estate (23 per cent) and online learning or education (32 per cent).
• Orkut is the most used website for friendship and dating (54 per cent), sharing pictures (38 per cent), social networking (66 per cent) and professional networking (44 per cent).
• Among the other activities, Naukri is used by 42 per cent of the respondents for job search. Yatra is most used for travel (18 per cent), Zapak is most used for games (32 per cent) and eBay is most used for online shopping (33 per cent).
• In the financial vertical, Moneycontrol is accessed by 18 per cent of the users for financial news and information, while ICICI Direct is used by 31 per cent users for online share trading.
• Bharatmatrimony is most used (36 per cent) in online matrimony, YouTube is most used for video sharing (43 per cent) and Cricinfo is used by 19 per cent of the users for sports. Raaga is the website most used for music (17 per cent), while Rediff is used by 19 per cent of the users for buying or renting a movie CD.

Web18 Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd, the Internet arm of Network18 Media and Investments Ltd is set to launch a horizontal portal, said two people familiar with the development (according to Livemint).

A horizontal portal refers to an Internet portal site that offers a broad range of content and services. Exampels could be Rediff, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL etc. 

 Web18 had launched Josh18 sometime back – that portal comes close to being a horizontal player but it lacks things like travel booking and email; 2 essentials I would say when it comes to classifying a portal as horizontal.

 Web18 has 15 stand alone sites in various field of interest such as cricket, finance, shopping, travel, news, jobs, technology etc. and thus it makes perfect sense to integrate all these sites into one complete portal. Incidentally, Web 18’s top portal MoneyControl has seen traffic falling drastically over the last few days. The result is a confluence of their 3 top portals – CricketNext, IBNLive, and MoneyControl. By the way – is Alexa biased against regional sites or does Josh18 really linger below English content sites? Anyone with information on that?
Incidentally when a group is launching an array of services, I think its better if they have one mother brand which can then be used to nurture all the other brands. It becomes a logistical and marketing nightmare to harness 16 different brands with different identities. There are no spill over effect, no positive externalities, all of them need separate budgets etc. We saw in automotive how GM succumbed to Toyota because of issues related to managing multiple brands – all of which were not successful. In the Internet Space too, Google offers tons of products and applications and the ‘G’ before the brand adds that force. They follow a more or less generic branding strategy. Web18 would have benefited if it did more of that. It would be interesting to see what the portal is called.

T.R. Madan Mohan, a managing partner at Browne and Mohan had another interesting point to make – “Rediff is valued at $200 million (Rs846 crore), while a vertical like Naukri (job portal) is valued at four times that. Sify has one-tenth the value of travel portal Makemytrip.”