Last year, online retailers improved overall operating margins to 28% from 21% in 2003. Catalog-based retailers continue to boast the best operating margins, which rose to 32% last year from 28% in 2003. Multi-channel retailers recorded record profitability last year.

Shop.org/Forrester

05/2005

2004 online retail sales rose 23.8% to $89 billion, representing 4.6% of total retail sales. Including travel, online sales also rose 23.8% to $141.4 billion. Online retail sales will reach $109.6 billion this year. Online sales including travel will rise to $172.4 billion this year.

Shop.org/Forrester

05/2005

Retailers expect fastest growth in cosmetics and fragrances, up 33%, over-the-counter medications and personal care, up 32%, jewelry and luxury goods, up 31%, and flowers, cards, and gifts, up 30%. Retailers also expect the Internet to account for 10% or more of sales in several categories this year, including computer hardware and software (48%), tickets (28%), travel (26%), books (20%), consumer electronics (13%), cosmetics and fragrances (12%), toys and video games (12%), and flowers, cards, and gifts (10%).

Shop.org/Forrester

05/2005

Online retail sales in the first quarter reached $19.2 billion, up 23.8% from Q1 a year ago. Total retail sales in the quarter reached $917 billion, up 6.3% from Q1 a year ago.

U.S. Department of Commerce

05/2005

The $4.4 billion racked up this year by online shoppers is a 24 percent increase over the same period last year. Fuelling the dollars spent was a 31 percent increase in the total number of transactions, up to 54.8 million this year. Monday May 2 was the peak day for online shopping during the Mother's Day period, as $473 million worth from 5.43 million transactions were reported. VeriSign said that online jewelry purchases increased by 79 percent, with diamond sales increasing by 101 percent over 2004. There were 540 percent more diamond transactions this year than last and the average spent was $517.

Verisign

05/2005

Search engine marketing will grow by 33% this year, with growth slowing to 10% annually by 2010, when spending will hit $11.6 billion. Search marketing will represent 39% of all online advertising spending this year and will account for 44% of online ad spending in 2010. Of funds budgeted for search engine marketing this year, marketers said they would spend 51% on paid search ads, 6% on paid inclusion, 10% on contextual ads, 12% on search marketing agency fees for paid search, 11% on search marketing agency fees for optimization, and 11% on other areas of search marketing.

Forrester Research

02/2005

Internet ad revenue of $9.6 billion in 2004 compared with ad revenue in 2003 of $7.27 billion and exceeded the previous revenue record of 2000 by nearly 20 percent. Fourth-quarter revenue grew to $2.69 billion, the highest level for a three-month period.

IAB /PricewaterhouseCoopers

04/2005

Online ad growth of 33.7 percent is expected in 2005 to $12.7 billion, raising a previous estimate of $11.5 billion for the year. eMarketer had estimated 2004 ad revenue at $9.5 billion.

eMarekter

04/2005

E-mail appears to be seen by e-retailers as an extremely effective way of maintaining a relationship with their web-based customers. A striking 49% of respondents say e-mail marketing is more effective than other forms of marketing of web sites; only 27% say it`s less effective.

Internet Retailer Survey

04/2005

E-Mail marketing is not a significant web sales generator for most e-retailers. Fully 57% report that e-mail marketing accounts for less than 10% of their online sales, while just under 10% say it accounts for 25% of web sales. By comparison, about one-third of all respondents to last month`s Internet Retailer survey on search engine marketing attributed 30% or more of their web sales to SEM.

Internet Retailer Survey

04/2005

Total advertising expenditures for all media increased 9.8% to $141.1 billion in 2004. Internet advertising showed the strongest gain (21.4%), followed by outdoor (20.1%), cable TV (13.8%) and national syndication (15.8%).

TNS Media Intelligence

03/2005

Online video advertising spending is projected to rise to $657 million by 2009 — five times this year's spending level. Overall rich and streaming media spending, which includes video, will nearly quadruple from $1 billion this year to $3.8 billion in 2009. After reaching $77 million last year, online video advertising is projected to hit $657 million in 2009.

Jupiter Research

08/2004

The online advertising market is poised to grow nearly $10 billion over the next six years. Internet advertising will increase from $6.6 billion in 2003 to $16.1 billion in 2009. Further good news comes from Jupiter's data revealing that an overall advertising recovery is underway, as the online ad growth does not come at the expense of the offline ad market.

Jupiter/ClickZ

07/2004

Global ad spending online will reach $33 billion this year. And those who hate spam won't like this number, but e-mail marketing alone is expected to rise from $2.1 billion in 2003 to $6.1 billion by 2008.

Forrester Research

06/2004

Online search's exceptional targeting capability is why advertising paid search revenues are expected to surpass $2.5 billion in 2004 and reach nearly $3 billion by the end of next year. At that point, nearly 35% of the total online ad spend will go to search.

eMarketer

05/2004

According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group and Shop.org, dot-coms that didn't have stores or catalogs spent an average of $82 to acquire each new customer in 2000. Meanwhile, catalog and store retailers spent $12 to acquire each new customer in 2000.

Boston Consulting Group and Shop.org

01/26/2001

Customer acquisition costs have been falling steadily since they peaked in the fourth quarter of 1999. According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group and Shop.org, all online retailers spent an average of $71 a customer in fourth quarter of 1999. That was down to $20 a customer by the third quarter of 2000, the latest period available.

Boston Consulting Group and Shop.org

01/26/2001