Since last year, online marketing advertisements dropped 3%. The new trend as of last year was in Social Networking sites. A 3% decrease in ad spending is not too bad considering the economic status of the globe. However, online or internet marketing is expected to increase next year.

Why? Since the recession reared its ugly head late last year, many people have been at home "shopping" online but because of the lack of $$, people are shopping for cheaper, less expensive product to cut cost. So we saw a slight reduction is ad spending. Some might have noticed they were getting pennies for ads that they were getting $1.00-3.00 previously.

However, the projection of ad sales is expected to increase 13% next year and another 8% by 2011.

That's how the cookie crumbles right? So the family needs help and Mommies all over the world have taken to internet marketing targeting other moms who need advice, tips on how to stretch a dollar, sharing recipes and even blogging about their favorite coupons and or how to maximize manufactures coupons. Shute, I didn't even know you could use coupons at Walmart. You have seen the ads "Christian Mom makes $10,000 a month working at home", right? You have probably even ended up on a few sites that promise you can make money selling their product and it is all free. Then you go to sign up and it says you need to pay $15.00 to get started.

With that, the trend is what is more formally known as "blogging". Blogging sites have popped up everywhere in the last few years but have become a household name in just the last two years. MySpace was the "go to" networking site, a place where you could have your own place. But the one thing that ruined MySpace was that they don't allow third party advertisements on their site. They would allow their own third party placements on their site and advertise for rock stars and such but they soon forgot about the "regular"' folk.

Then came Facebook. Facebook took off and became the "go to" site almost instantly. Small businesses could advertise through a dynamic network of "real" people for a price they could afford and an audience that was more likely to take interest. So blogging mommies found a new network, a free resource to outsource and it worked.

Next came Twitter. I am not sure if anyone really understand Twitter but what was really impressive about Twitter was it networking capabilities. I think most use it to update to strangers about what they are doing every moment of their lives but the real mind blower is:

• Trendy bloggers tend to want to add anyone and everyone, so while they are blogging away about what kind of lipstick they are wearing; at the same time they are being fed internet advertisement, leading pages to bring them into their market. It's like commercials on the internet.
  

I actually think Twitter saved MySpace. Otherwise I would have taken my space down a long time ago.

So with an economic decline also comes the need for people to find out how to "do it themselves", they need affordable products, they need natural remedies, home cures, Mom's chicken soup recipes etc...

Small businesses struggle to stay alive, they have to cut out the middle men and start relying on their faithful customers to do the advertising for them. The trend is growing and will in all likelihood continue to grow until it reaches, yet again another peak in which case all you need to do is keep your eyes open.

These are sites like this one, HubPages.com, that allow their users to "blog" about what ever they want (of course some restrictions apply which has helped made the site as successful as it is) but also allow third party ad placements on their site which encourages users to read, learn and write quality "blogs" to make money because that is how they make their money.

Other trends expected to keep growing in the next couple of years are personal websites. Wordpress.com and .org is among many sites that make it easy for regular people to build their own sites for their businesses or personal blogs for cheap. You can build your own website with little to no knowledge about how to use HTML codes and other "things" which had made it nearly impossible for people to market their products or businesses without paying thousands of dollars to web builders who could. You remember that right, ads for web site builders and such. When was the last time you have seen one of those?

If you don't know, then you should know that most of your internet activity is being logged and analyzed through entities like Google, Yahoo and MSN (which has merged into Bing, I believe), did you recently sign up for a new Yahoo account and it asked you if you would like the end of your email address to end with @ymail.com? Yahoo and Hotmail, ring a bell?

They know who uses what Operating Systems, they track your click history and see where you are going. They pick up on your internet habits and make a projection for the upcoming years and how much they are willing to invest.

So my suggestion for publishers is to target your "blogs" for real people. It's not likely that you are going to get that $100,000.00 sale through a click ad anytime soon. Though this did happen to one lucky lady on HubPages last week. But for the most part, people want real items, affordable items.

They want discounted designer goods, they want to "learn how to" do something. They will click from site to site comparison shopping but "buy" all means, of course advertise for those Plasma Screen Televisions and Blueray DVD players because as all things go in the marketing world. When the next big thing comes, the prices on those items will drop and you just might find yourself sitting on a Google bank in the the next couple of years.