According to a new Pew Internet survey, 92% of online adults use search engines to find information on the web, and 59% of them do so on a daily basis. This puts search at the top of the list of most popular online activities, but it’s not alone! Among online adults, 92% use email, with 61% using it on an average day. Since PEW started measuring adults’ online activities in 2002, search and email have consistently ranked as the most popular.

Even in 2002, eight in ten adults were using search engines, and more than nine in ten were emailing. The table below shows how these two activities have compared over time to some of the other popular online activities.

Obviously the internet population has grown substantially since 2002, so the overall number of email and search users has increased. In January 2002, 55% of all Americans said that they used email and now that number has grown to 70%.

Naturally we’re happy to hear about healthy search and email numbers. Search is a fundamental element in Advertise.com’s business, and increasingly email is as well. The Advertise.com Email Content Network (ECN) introduced earlier this year connects advertisers with millions of consumers who have opted-in to receive email offers in categories that interest them. Our ECN is ideal for advertisers looking for incremental traffic from users who are prequalified to receive relevant offers and updates.

Can’t wait to see next year’s numbers. Thank you, Pew!

-The Advertise.com Team

Our CEO Daniel Yomtobian was recently quoted in a great E-Commerce Times piece entitled “It’s Back to Boom Times for Online Advertising.” The article discusses eMarketer’s recent predictions that display advertising will overtake search as the largest online ad spending category by 2015. eMarketer predicted that this year, display advertising will rise 24.5 percent to $12.3 billion, while search is expected to grow 19.8 percent, to $14.4 billion.

Daniel believes that one reason for this is the growing sophistication of remarketing technologies. Remarketing is a vehicle to reach out to the customers that have already been to the site as well as reconvert them, therefore increasing online ad revenues. With search, by comparison, marketers are limited to keyword targeting. With display and remarketing, the ability to know where your consumers are from and what they’ve been searching for in the recent past helps marketers target ads that are of greater interest to them.

Why do you think display advertising will overtake search? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Wishing everyone a happy 4th of July!

–The Advertise.com Team