Lots of traveling this week, but wanted to get some quick thoughts posted since my last post was on our Capture the Conversation blog last Friday.

As our economy is feeling the crush, companies are becoming more interested in how they can be marketing online. Not to say that interest is tied solely to the state of the economy, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Bottom line: Internet marketing is more cost effective.

Consider one aspect in Lehman's latest report predicting that the domestic online advertsing market will grow by over 23% before the end of this year, bringing it to just over $26 billion. The Internet may still be a child, but increases like this continue to demonstrate a shift in thinking.

If you told me you were considering spending $90k on a full page ad in the NY Times, I'd likely challenge you for the same price to consider an entire search visibility effort with a pay per click campaign in Google lasting no less than 6 months.

Hmmm, one-hit wonder (maybe) in a popular paper... or sustained search engine visibility with conversion metrics, business intelligence and residual benefits from an indexing and place of acquisition perspective.

Not that it has to be one or the other, but as companies continue to understand what's available to them in the context of shifting budget from some efforts to others - we will inevitably see more spending on a variety of old and new online initiatives.