commerce

Bull or bear, e-commerce is on the up and up and up. From just the ad spending to the total spend, money spent online is growing exponentially as broadband access becomes cheaper and more available.

US e-commerce sales were not only healthy for the fourth quarter of 2006 but were at their highest levels in four years according to the US Census Bureau. On an unadjusted basis, sales reached $33.9 billion, up around a third from the third quarter of 2006. For the fourth quarter of 2006 e-commerce estimate increased 25.0 percent from the previous year while total retail sales increased 4.0 percent in the same period. E-commerce in Q4 2006 comprised 3.3 percent of total sales.

The Internet is an informational repository with seemingly immeasurable limits, and as such anything you say in cyberspace will most likely be accessible at the click of a mouse for decades to come.

In 2006, spending online increased by twenty four percent, a sizable margin to be sure. The numbers for online retail keep climbing, but do the signs point to a plateau somewhere in the near future? Or will the growth of online spending continue to skyrocket at this fast pace?

Pay-per-click advertising doesn't always smile upon budget-minded businesses; even "clean" PPC campaigns (i.e., ones that aren't plagued by click fraud) can be costly.

While online holiday shopping in the US remains robust things are different north of our border in Canada. Canadians lead the world in broadband penetration, time spent online, electronic banking and bill paying. Clearly they are an Internet savvy country but when it comes to making online purchases Canadians prefer to buy at a store.

How will you be doing your holiday shopping this year?

"As much as people want to connect through the Internet, the practice also can have the opposite effect: Social Networking Fatigue," so says the article Social Sites Becoming Too Much of a Good Thing (via: SteinBlog).