Still don’t believe in the economic crisis so much. But yes this is a total commercial clean up. Is that bad? I guess not.

Further more I see indeed less spending at the moment. A lot of houses for sale etc. But is this temporary or a real trend? If it is one thing we learned from the whole crisis then it is that we are really bad in predictions. So if they now predict downturn..Maybe it is just a matter of a longer time to conversion after all.

In digital marketing I hear a lot about less investments. There seems to be a big opportunity for affiliate marketing because of the performance based model. Display ads and branding seem to have a hard time, but companies are used to these “reach”model for ages and they learned to never skip too much marketing budget in bad times. So they will think twice and spend a little less I guess.

For cleaning up however it is now time for analytics. While we are all waiting for new investments it is a good time to look at how effective our webpresence is in engaging, converting etc. In my opinion there is a lot to gain here.  Most companies where to busy spending in the past, now it is time to look at costs and ROI.

This is totally in line with the overall commercial clean up.

Thanks all for your nice comments. Been busy with several projects, like eMarketer insight sessions.

Will try to keep posting in the new year.

<update>

With the crisis going on more money is shifting towards digital marketing. Probably because of the good possibility of measuring ROI.  Affiliate marketing is enjoying this most. Digital branding will have to wait a little. Just a little because more sources are proving that digital branding is good for ROI.

Affiliate marketers prefer big brands because they know this already.

Any chocolate lovers out there who want to start up a small project?

Meanwhile made my first money on twitter and poken (a Swiss invention) is getting bigger in the Netherlands

Lately I called several major organisations asking for the online marketing department, the Internet communications person etc. Most of the time this seems more difficult then you would expect.

First a little bit of silence at the other end of the line. Then the receptionist does a quick search in their “phonebook”. Then somebody answers the phone. Either some IT guy or communication assistant if you are lucky. “mm yes Internet communications, we do something about that but we don’t really have someone responsible for that. Maybe you should try..”

It seems like there is no one responsible for digital communications at all or he/she is just unfindable. Seems like digital marketing still doesn’t have its real place within these organisations. Most of the time it is easier for me to find the right person on linkedin.com than for his colleagues inside the company.

Is digital marketing still something for this one guy who cares? Or do they just leave it to the advertising agencies? Seems to me we still have a long way to go.