Marketing Pilgrim

eWeek has soundbites from Tim Armstrong, Google’s advertising sales vice president, on the growth of online advertising.

“There is robust interest in online advertising and that interest is now turning into real dollars,” Armstrong said, noting that market analysts are predicting a banner 2005 year with forecasts ranging from $10 billion to $15 billion.

“The experimenting and testing phase begun in the 1990s has ended. Corporate ad buyers are investing now,” he said.

Indeed many are seeing a growth in the percentage of ad-spending heading to the Internet.

While estimates vary, analysts believe around 5 percent of U.S. advertising dollars will be spent online this year, up from around 2 percent just a couple of year ago. In short order, 10 percent or more could move online, analysts say.

After using AIM, Trillian, MSN Messenger, ICQ and a whole host of other instant messenger tools, I can tell you that switching to Google Talk was the best move yet. For those of you who want to keep up to date with the latest development news can head over to the new Google Talk blog.

Fortune looks at Yahoo, Flickr, MyWeb and how they all point to the future for Yahoo.

Over at BusinessWeek, Ben Elgin drools over Google Maps and reviews the many features it offers.

This is interesting. According to eWeek, a Canadian blogger was recently refused re-entry to the US after border guards entered his name on Google, found his blog and then determined that he was trying to live in the country illegally.

In case any US border guard ever questions me; for the record I am now a US citizen so no deporting me to England.

Every day, a blogger or forum member is discussing something important to your business – your company’s brand, your key executives, your competitors or your industry. Are they hyping your company, building positive buzz for your products? Or, are they criticizing your services, complaining to others about the poor quality of your new product launch?

Keeping your eyes and ears on the world of consumer generated media (CGM) can be a daunting task for any company. Blogs, forums, wikis and social networks gain popularity every day and without a plan to monitor and manage your company’s online reputation, you could be at risk.

While you were sleeping, Yahoo went ahead and added an RSS reader to its Mail Beta product.

Yahoo! Mail Beta users will be able to read RSS feeds by clicking on a new ‘All Feeds’ icon, which will appear below the user’s e-mail folders. This new feature will automatically provide users with access to full posts – whether from their personalized My Yahoo! page, a selection of the most popular feeds or favorite feeds that they manually enter.

The ‘All Feeds’ feature offers users the ability to read and digest all open content sources in one continuous stream of news. For instance, if the user selects feeds from three newspapers, two blogs, and one sports site, ‘All Feeds’ will automatically aggregate these updates into one chronologically ordered digest.