A Datran Media survey of 2,000 online marketing professionals finds that email, not search, is the best performing online marketing tactic. Eight out of 10 marketers said as much, while 82 percent said they plan to increase email spending in the coming year. Fifty-five percent expect email ROI to be higher than any other online medium. The data is a little misleading, however, as the question that was put to marketers was, "which advertising media buys perform strongly for your company," not "which media buy is the most effective." Nevertheless, search came second, with 70.4 percent describing …

Google and Microsoft Corp. have long been after the so-called "white spaces" that exist between the spectrum channels mobile wireless carriers license from the Federal Communications Commission. The Web giants believe that broader Internet access can be obtained from the unlicensed spectrum, but wireless operators like Sprint and T-Mobile have vehemently opposed the idea, worrying that the use of white spaces could compromise the quality of voice and data communication over their licensed networks. On Tuesday, Google asked the FCC to ignore opposition from the wireless carriers. The search giant, which has recently entered the …

Digg.com, which promotes articles by letting people vote on them, has changed its algorithms, upsetting many loyal users, particularly bloggers, who can no longer use the site the way they're used to. Instead of posting only the most popular stories dugg by its users, Digg's new algorithm looks for diversity in digging. Once achieved, it will promote a story from the Upcoming section to the Digg homepage. "This way," said Digg founder Kevin Rose in the official announcement, "the system knows a large variety of people will be into the story." Hopkins warns that the change will "greatly …

Peer to peer file-sharing networks, over which music and movie files are illegally traded, have long been the scourge of media companies, but the technology has many legitimate uses. P2P was originally developed to help the research community share huge files over the Internet, but purveyors of video and other sites that require high-bandwidth applications are now turning to the technology. Two good examples are the BBC's iPlayer and the Web video startup Joost, which both deploy P2P technology to deliver higher-quality streaming video. "Peer-to-peer has entered the mainstream," says Cynthia Brumfield, president of the media consultancy Emerging …

The Dow rode some serious swings on Wednesday to eventually close up nearly 300 points, but Google still fell 6 percent. Why? First came a report from an SEM firm claiming a sharp drop off in search spending towards the end of December. Then came December search data from Nielson Online, showing that Google had lost market share to Microsoft. And finally, comScore on Wednesday estimated that Google's quarter-to-quarter paid search growth in the U.S. had slowed to 8 percent from 11 percent. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney called the deceleration "surprising", but expected worldwide Q/Q growth to accelerate. …