A recent article by The Economist is one of many that highlight the strength of the online marketing sector during the current period of economic crisis, with search advertising in particular looking to gain from the latest trends. Online advertising data from the US, the UK and Australia, all show that Internet advertising, and spend on search marketing in particular, continues to grow, although at slower rates than the previous few years.

Search advertising has become less of a speculative medium in recent years and instead provides highly measurable and responsive data from a focused marketing activity that gets excellent results for many companies. This makes it a surer option when advertising budgets may be getting cut back and therefore further growth in this sector is likely over the next few years.

The opportunities for advertising through video channels, like YouTube, and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are also seen as good opportunities, although these have yet to prove themselves in the same way as search. That's because these channels are used in different ways to search - more for socialising and viewing content, where advertising may be seen as more intrusive. Yet these areas are still seen as a good opportunity for developing new and creative techniques that will become more acceptable with users.