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The Internet Advertising Bureau that handles statistics for Internet advertising has released its figures for last year. They show a significant level of growth for online advertising in the US, growing a total of 15% up to $26 billion. Search advertising is still the largest form of advertising online, making up a total of 46% of the whole figure. Display advertisements seen on web pages in the form of banners also contributes significantly to all online advertising, sitting at 38%.

Display advertising indeed actually grew much faster than search advertising last year in the US, growing a total of 24%. Targeted advertising on social networking websites like Facebook has been seen as growing at a vast rate over the past year and may contribute to this figure significantly.

Video advertising also grew a total of 40% last year, although only makes up 5% of the total. It is still worth $1.4 billion across the US, however- a significant figure. E-mail advertising revenue continued its decline, falling to $195 million: reflecting the switch across the board away from targeted e-mail adverts and towards viral content and algorithm-generated advertising. This type of advertising is typically seen as more interesting and less intrusive to consumers: many video adverts are spread around the Internet by e-mail or by sharing on social networking websites, showing that for the most part, these types of adverts are often welcomed by their target market.

Chris Dixon, co-founder of Hunch.com, has posted a blog about what he considers the death of search engine optimization marketing.  This has obviously stirred up some controversy in the marketing sphere.  Top line search engine analysis site Search Engine Land has posted a rebuttal to Dixon’s claims, saying SEO is alive and well.

Getting into the mix as a middle man of sorts, Sarah Tavel posted a middle ground stance on her Adventurista blog.

So which is it?  Is SEO dead, not dead, or only partially dead?

Most of Dixon’s analysis of why he thinks SEO is dead misses a large chunk of how search engine marketing works.  It’s been known for a long time that Google weighs the number of back-links to a site as well as the site’s age (longevity) in its algorithm.   Dixon largely ignores this in his comparison of two hotel finding websites.

Search Engine Land then uses this to refute Dixon’s claim and says that SEO is still likely the strongest way to promote a business.  Given that SEL is all about search (and nothing else), this is to be expected.  They do concede, however, that SEO cannot be the only marketing method if a startup is to succeed.

At this point, Tavel enters with her analysis, drawing up the middle.  She says that SEO is a good strategy, but cannot be the only strategy for a startup.  In her opinion as a venture capitalist, she sees SEO heading down the same path as email marketing, organic results, etc.

It appears that the middle ground approach is correct.  Social marketing is currently the dominant force in most startup strategies.  Eventually, though, that too will be replaced, but the old ways of doing things have a way of sticking around.  Unless the technology itself becomes totally defunct, old marketing strategies like email, blog writing, etc. continue to hang around.

SEO will be the same.

Internet research firm EMarketer Inc. says that Twitter will be tripling its advertising revenue this year to $150 million, according to Business Week.  That will be pretty impressive, if it happens.

The prediction comes as part of a larger prediction for Twitter’s next few years, with $150M being the 2011 number and a bigger $250M being the revenue number for 2012.  This will be in large part because of Twitter’s ability to get big names like Nissan, HP, and Starbucks on board to market there.

Twitter currently has around 175 million users, most of whom follow Ashton Kutcher, but a far cry from Facebook’s 600 million users and Google’s untold legions of users.

The challenge for the 140-or-less micro-blogging platform will be whether they can prove to those new advertisers that they can deliver the goods.  Today’s online marketing campaigns require measurable results and the little startup Twitter will have to demonstrate that they can drive markets towards brands.

The social blogging platform was founded in 2006 and became a sensation in 2009-10 as Hollywood stars and sports and music personalities came on board and began sending tweets from appearances on TV, in the news, and more.  Since then, Twitter has attracted venture capital on a huge scale, now being valued at $3.7 billion after the latest $200M funding round.

Whether Twitter can actually pull off this kind of income is questionable, since it’s profile and user usage profile is so very different from Facebook’s (to whom it’s often erroneously compared).  Twitter users are generally fast and furious posters with little real interaction on a large scale while Facebook’s more in-depth profile-building and network-mapping lends itself to more casual, long-term usage.  This translates (in marketing) to time spent on the site or any given page of it.  It’s likely that metrics would show that the average Facebook user spends much, much more time lingering on a page than does the average Twitter user.

So whether Twitter can deliver the same kind of advertising bombshell that Facebook has been able to build is a very potent question.

It’s the turn of the New Year and so, traditionally, everyone who writes anything about tech has to make predictions for the coming year.  These are my own predictions for the 2011 year in technology.

Prediction #1: The melding of social and interest groups with commerce to create a new level of social-interest-based e-commerce.  Think of it as Match.com meets eBay, but without all of the dating and hidden shipping costs.  One of the companies on the forefront of this trend is Quora, which will probably have its day this year.

Prediction #2: Mobile social photo and video will meet geo-location and become the most popular way to not just “check in,” but to interact and share with social networks.  Photos can already be shared on check-in using Foursquare, but video has not really entered the geo-location scene.  That will probably happen this year as software catches up with most mobile devices’ ability to publish directly to sites like YouTube.

Prediction #3: A large number of people will be able to pay by cell phone.  Every major cell phone maker and many app-makers are focusing on mobile payments.  These allow your cell phone to become a sort of credit card, letting you purchase items at the store by using your phone rather than a card.  This will begin to really take off this year, I think, because big names like Apple and Google are already buying up companies that work on this technology.

Prediction #4: Streaming video will be available nearly everywhere on many devices.  This is a kind of no-brainer prediction, since it’s already happening now and only trending faster.  Streaming video is available on most cell phone platforms now, can be used on a few televisions (more are coming in 2011), and you can Netflix or YouTube just about everywhere it seems.  Up until now, though, this has really just been for the technological elites.  I see it coming to the masses in 2011 with tons of new devices entering Walmart and other common stores.

Prediction #5: You will become addicted to Rev2.  You will subscribe to the RSS feed and visit the site daily.  This prediction may not be much of a prognostication since you’ve probably already fulfilled it.  It’s fate.  Go with it.

Yahoo’s “all hands” meeting from last week created a huge stir when someone inside the meeting, likely a disgruntled laid-off employee, snapped photos of the “Sunset Slide” (below).  The meeting was about the company’s plans moving forward and included several current acquisitions and spinoffs that are slated for “sunset” (corp. speak for “dumped”) and others that will be merged and “featured.”

Yahoo owns several properties that are both popular and unprofitable and has acquired a lot of Web real estate that is definitely not within the company’s focus.  Assuming it has one, which many would doubt.

Yahoo has been fighting for market share (and losing) on just about every front.  They aren’t the Internet’s most popular search engine, Web analyzer, advertising venue, or anything else.  Nevertheless, they have a lot of popular sites and properties that own their categories and need only be monetized – Delicious (the social bookmarking site) is one of those.

That doesn’t seem to be interesting Yahoo, however, who has all but confirmed that they’ll be dumping Delicious and several other brands to “streamline” their offerings.  Yet again, their strategy makes no sense.

According to Alexa, of the half a dozen or so services to be killed, Delicious is by far the most popular.  Yet of the services to be merged (including Foxytunes and Sideline), none of them are anywhere close to the traffic snaggers that Delicious and AltaVista are.

Further, the “Make Feature” column of the list of things to be added are, well, ripoffs.  Replace “Yahoo!” with “Google” on that list and you have the current swatch of Google add-ons for various services like Gmail and Docs with only a couple of exceptions.

It appears, by this list, that Yahoo’s big plan is to compete with the Google Giant.  A competition that, frankly, they’ve tried and lost already.  Yahoo appears to still e desperately searching for its life’s quest and flounders in the attempt.

comScore is reporting that U.S. retail e-commerce sales on Black Friday (Friday, November 26th) were up 9% over last year’s Black Friday sales figures.  For the season-to-date, online sales are up 13%, totaling $11.64 billion so far.

According to comScore’s numbers, Black Friday sales this year were at $648 million, up from $595 million last year and sales in the season as a whole are up $1.322 billion over last year at this time.  Sales on Thanksgiving Day were way up, 28% higher than last year at $407 million.

Retailers have been wary this year after being heavily disappointed last year when holiday sales failed to bring them out of the serious slump the economy had thrown them in during 2008-09.  Despite politicians claiming that the “recession is over.”

The National Retail Federation reports a bigger shopping weekend this past Thanksgiving weekend than last year, with about 6% more money being spent for the weekend.  So the gains aren’t just for the online markets.

Back to comScore, the numbers show that search patterns and user behavior was heavily influenced by Friday-only deals offered by several online merchants.  Black Friday-specific sites, like Black-Friday.net, lead the pack in huge, one-day traffic bursts and sales.  Three sites analyzed (all with “Black Friday” in their names) netted more than 6 million visitors in total – all in one day.

Amazon, of all the retail sites analyzed by comScore, however, came out on top.  As it did last year.  The other three top sites were all brick-and-mortar online branches: Walmart, Target, and Best Buy.

Great news for the retail market and hopefully good news for the economy as well.