The event will be held at the Connecticut Convention Center at 100 Columbus Boulevard and will feature free educational seminars, along with industry experts galore. Although online registration is now closed, you can still register on site – just stop by the registration booth to pick up your badge!

The eZanga team is looking forward to meeting you at the CT Business Expo!

By announcing the exploratory committee’s through YouTube and Twitter, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Tim Pawlenty all jumped onto the YouTube and Twitter bandwagon. Free advertising and one-way communication seemed to be the themes of the 2008 election. This coming election will involve twitter in a much more interactive role.

Mitt Romney recently announced his exploratory committee for the 2012 presidential race through Youtube and twitter. Besides communicating to his 350,000 followers on twitter, he also initiated communication between himself and another candidate.

During the elections, mudslinging campaign ads on TV are expected but will all of the mudslinging translate into the social media? Twitter wars are emerging and Mitt Romney can be the one to blame.

On April 4, @mittromney’s twitter account highlighted the failed financial policies of Barack Obama. Mitt Romney posted, “@barackobama I look forward to hearing details on your jobs plan, as are 14m unemployed.” Let the twitter wars begin!

In addition, Barack Obama spread a youtube campaign ad called It Begins With Us. Already, the video has received over 400,000 hits in four days. Tim Pawlenty also revolutionized Internet advertising by connecting Facebook to his website with an application called Pawlenty Action. Ten points are awarded for connecting to Facebook while five points are awarded for connecting to twitter.

Among YouTube ad commercials, twitter battles, and facebook likes, the younger generation constantly tapping into the Internet will surely be effected for this upcoming presidential election.

It is more difficult to quantify if online ads leads to offline sales. The concept of first researching a product online and then physically going to the store to purchase it has become a very common practice among consumers.

Since consumers are concerned with online fraud when providing credit card information, the internet provides them with information as well as an easy and efficient way to browse. Buying in the store helps eliminate this concern as well as shipping costs.

Google wanted to test if there was a positive effect and the result proved that, yes, online advertising does in fact drive offline sales. Google did this by saturating test markets across the United States with online advertising for particular stores and then comparing those results to the control markets.

The analyzed results showed some advertisers were getting a sizable $15 return for every $1 spent on online advertising from in-store sales.

Pandora, an online radio provider,was recently subpoenaed to a federal court for selling consumer information gathered from their mobile smartphone application without proper disclosure. Age, gender, zip code, and music preferences were collected by Pandora for specific target advertising. In this situation the saying, “there is no free lunch” holds a lot of truth. If an iPhone or Android application is free, be skeptical.

Because Apple certified the use of the Pandora application on the iPhone, they are also under the scrutiny of the Security Exchange Commission. Is this all one big conspiracy where large corporations hold inordinate amounts of data about the public users? Will smartphone fanatics be able to protect their privacy over the internet and cell phone applications?

The Federal Trade Commission currently searches for a solution. They now believe a “Do Not Track Mechanism” should be installed so that the common internet user can browse the internet, protected from intrusion of privacy. Their ultimate goal is to block online companies from collecting information, but the world wide web presents a tough obstacle.

Internet Protocol (IP) addresses change every few days. Unfortunately, more complex technology calls for more complex solutions. The FTC explained that protecting one IP address could not prevent companies from tracking user’s information.

Can a web or cell phone user shield the eyes’ of the omnipresent bigger brother? Maybe. Remain skeptical of any free application or revert back to the old days and just use your cell phone for incoming and outgoing calls.

The newest social networking technique presented by Google has search engine marketers on the edge of their seats, waiting to see if it takes off with consumers because it has the potential of being a lucrative tool in their world. Depending on whether consumers sign up for Google accounts, +1 may or may not be an advertisers dream. The key is getting people to sign up for Google accounts.

Once you have a Google account, the process of “+1-ing” seems pretty simple. In order to recommend something in a Google search to a friend, you simply click the +1 on the object you choose and it will appear in the Google search results.

Search Engine Land reported today that Google assures advertisers that +1 “improves click-through rates,” but continues that it will not be used as a ranking tool just yet. Google is also reporting that it will track traffic from the +1 system in AdWords.

On Wednesday, in an official Google blog post, Google product manager Rob Spiro said of +1, “It’s digital shorthand for- ‘this is pretty cool’.”

Internet accessibility is key. From tablets to smartphones, this generation revolves around mobile gadgets that offer internet access. Because electronic tablet sales doubled from last year, and more smartphone users are using free news applications, online news passed newspaper readership.

Last year only 17% read news online. Now, 41% read national and international news on the web. As a result, newspaper agencies have taken a hit from the increased viewers on the Internet.  Between 1,000 and 1,500 jobs were lost in the last year in the news industry because print media survives largely due to advertisement space. Businesses are also following suit and considering a better option to reach their target market: online advertising.

Due to the increased readership throughout the world-wide-web, online advertising increased 14% mounting to 25.8 billion dollars spent last year.  Will newspaper agencies salvage this internet revolution in sight of their apparent losses? Surely they will but only if they incorporate themselves into as many news outlets as possible.

An all-time low dip of 35.4 percent in net operating income (NOI) stunned the hotel industry, one of many affected big-time by a  sputtering national economy. Demand for lodging fell drastically, especially in big markets where group meetings and business accommodations pulled in big money.

Hotel managers across the country turned to one solution and as the calendar flipped to 2010, room rates came crashing down – and it worked. This year, the hotel industry is prepared to celebrate a speedy recovery and the average U.S. hotel will have a 5.6 percent increase in NOI. Not coincidentally, average daily rate for rooms is projected to dip slightly.

“Severe room rate discounting during the first half of the year has driven the quicker than expected demand growth in 2010,” said R. Mark Woodworth, president of PKF Hospitality Research. Demand growth for 2010 is projected to grow to 7.8 percent.

An article from USA Today details how hotels are reducing prices of luxury suites closer to regular room pricing in hopes of luring occupants to upgrade. For now, the hope is that by ignoring the stigma that these price reductions will devalue these rooms, the demand and profits will continue to increase.

Hotels are also getting creative and doing things it would not ordinarily do including offering room on executive floors to group  customers and offering suite upgrades on a stand-by basis according to the USA Today report.

Another way hotels can speed up the process to a full recovery would be to advertise such offers and rates more aggressively with online marketing.  As proven with the surge in online shopping this past Thanksgiving weekend, people are turning to the internet more to find what they want. A hotel offering a generous deal or one-of-a-kind offer would greatly benefit by reaching those consumers actively searching online for just that.

For the time being, the market appears to be clearing up and in less time it has taken some other industries to get back on track. As a result, room rates will likely soon rise again as the demand for lodging increases. But for this holiday season, travelers expecting to pay high end dollars for a quality stay could be pleasantly surprised.

Others took a different approach.

While retailers across the country are rejoicing at a strong consumer showing all around (an estimated 212 million shoppers this year), online sales numbers are showing tremendous growth and this year accounted for a third of the holiday weekend shoppers, the most ever according to the National Retail Federation.

Coremetrics, an IBM company, estimates that online sales rose 33 percent on Thanksgiving, 16 percent on Black Friday and 19.4 percent on Cyber Monday from totals last year. Other statistics of note include an average consumer online order of $194.89, an 8.3 percent gain from 2009, and luxury goods sales increasing 24.3 percent over that time.

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone with a pulse on the increasing reliability of the internet that more consumers would turn to the internet for their shopping needs. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone at all that more people would go that route especially with horror stories of early morning Black Friday shopping which usually includes more than a few fights, injuries and even deaths. Why deal with that sort of insanity when you can accomplish the same mission in the comfort of your own PJ’s?

“Online shopping is increasingly becoming the refuge of those preferring to avoid the crowds and long lines,” ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement. “The $648 million in online spending this Black Friday represents the heaviest online spending day of the season-to-date and a solid increase over last year’s Black Friday.”

The turnout for this year’s online sales should guarantee a heavier emphasis on online shopping deals next year, which is good news for the rising population of virtual consumers. The growing reputation of Cyber Monday made it a can’t miss event, and spurred it to 31 percent more online sales than Black Friday.

Like anything else, the more tech-savvy the population gets, the better off online markets thrive. This also bodes well for the ever-booming online advertising market, including the search engines that are widely responsible for leading users to the products and services they seek.

The train doesn’t stop here. All eyes will remain on the e-commerce landscape to see if those trends continue through the remainder of the holiday home stretch. While in-store shopping isn’t in any danger of falling by the wayside, online merchants may be able to grab a sizable chunk of the pie in the next few years.

So what does this mean for @gmail’s, @aol’s, or @yahoo’s accounts? According to Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, nothing much. “This is not an e-mail killer. It is a messaging system that includes e-mail. We don’t expect anyone to totally switch from Yahoo or Gmail to Facebook.”

Here’s a quick overview of Username@Facebook.com:

Pros:

• Facebook communications— e-mail, text and chat — will be aggregated into a social in-box, and less-important communications, such as newsletters are sent to a folder for “other” messages.
• Messages can be sent to traditional e-mail services such as Google’s Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
• Users can attach files, including photos and videos without a size limit.

Cons:

• Facebook messages don’t have subject lines.
• Users can’t send an e-mail to several people at a time.
• Facebook also has no provision for users to automatically send an “out of office” message.

Google spokeswoman Victoria Katsarou said, “People always win when there’s more choice, because it leads to better products.”

So if Facebook Email wins the popular vote, this raises an interesting question on where marketing dollars should/will be focused in the near future.

It has become a minimal standard for any business to have some sort of social media presence: fan page, twitter account etc, where customers and future clients can be kept in the loop regarding business news, product information and updates, along with a basic forum to communicate between company and customer.

However, when looking for a particular product or service, first instinct is to turn to the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing for the answers, proving that search marketing is the force to be reckoned with for online ad placement…right now.

As we start noticing social media trends shift–Facebook email proving to be a prime example–more and more time is being concentrated on social networking sites. Prospective customers are looking for a significant social presences as a means to rate company performance, customer service, and quality based on other users’ perspectives.  Companies are personifying business models as a whole, making communicating and social relationships imperative for lead generation and positive branding.

So I ask, will social media marketing ever equate or surpass search marketing?

Instead of answering just yet, why not just advertise on both.

Some online advertising companies are providing a dual solution approach, offering more time, saved resources and expenses for today’s online marketer. Rather than centralizing, look for the solution that reaches the most people.

iMedia Connection features an editorial from eZanga CEO Rich Kahn on its website and daily e-newsletter about what click fraud is and the steps advertisers can take to keep it from damaging their campaigns. Take a look at the article to see the four bullet points Rich runs through on how to prevent click fraud and how those steps can increase the performance of an advertisers’ campaign.