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Based on the quantity and quality of leads generated, companies said email was their best lead generation program, followed by live events, website registrations and webinars. The effectiveness of online channels, coupled with the fact that prospects indicate the web is the first place they look for more information, makes it natural for companies to be increasing their investments in web design, email marketing and search engine optimization.

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Online video viewership has increased steadily in the US in the past several years, and eMarketer’s forecasts call for continued growth through at least 2014.

“This shift is the result of a confluence of factors, including the greater availability of long-form content, the popularity of venues such as Hulu and broadcast TV sites, technology developments and internet users’ growing comfort with online video,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Video Content and Syndication: Long-Form Content on the Rise.”

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CHART OF THE DAY: Everybody Wants A Piece Of Groupon

The chart below tracks the growth in interest in buying shares of private companies between Q1 2010 and Q2 2010 from SecondMarket’s 14,000 users.

As you can see Groupon is the fastest growing, then Gilt Groupe. At the end is TechCrunch, which doesn’t have any shares available. A SecondMarket rep says investors can just list companies they would like to buy shares of as a signal to the employees or owners of the company.

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CHART OF THE DAY: The iPad Is Already Bigger Than The iPod — And Half As Big As The Mac

In the June quarter, the iPad business generated $2.2 billion of revenue for Apple.

That’s more than Apple’s iPod business generated last quarter — $1.5 billion. (Though the cheaper iPod obviously had larger unit sales.) And it’s almost half as big as Apple’s 26-year-old Mac business, which put in its best quarter ever at $4.4 billion.

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After coming back strong in Q1, US paid search spending continued to regain strength as 2010 went on.

According to SearchIgnite, year-over-year paid search spending was up 14% in Q2, compared with a gain of 11% in Q1. Spending was down slightly, by 2%, quarter-to-quarter—considered a normal part of the summer slowdown in marketing activity.

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CHART OF THE DAY: Look Out Windows, The Enterprise Is Warming Up To The Mac

One of the threats to Microsoft’s Windows dominance is the idea that companies will increasingly give employees the option to buy Macs — especially now that more business software is web-based and will work just as well on a Mac as on a Windows PC.

Apple obviously hasn’t taken over the enterprise. But the enterprise is warming up to the Mac, according to a survey of IT managers conducted by research firm ITIC and Sunbelt Software.

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Yahoo, Microsoft Make Slight Gains Google Sites led the US core search market in June with 62.6% of the searches conducted (down 1.1 percentage points from May), followed by Yahoo Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.9%), and Microsoft Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 12.7%).

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A June 2010 Burst Media survey found that while internet users across age and gender divides felt attached to their technological gadgets like smartphones and netbooks, women ages 35 to 54 were most likely to say they would feel disconnected without them.

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CHART OF THE DAY: Microsoft’s Head Of Sales Blames Facebook For Low Online Ad Prices

Social networks, with their massive inventory of page views, have much lower ad rates on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis than the Internet at large. ComScore reports that Facebook and MySpace only get a $0.56 CPM on average, while the Internet at large gets $2.43.

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“By 2014 eMarketer forecasts that figure will leap to $96.8 billion, growing at an 11.9% compound annual rate, despite the slow, uneven and fragile global economic recovery,” said eMarketer’s Jared Jenks, author of the new report “Worldwide Ad Spending.” “These rates will be unmatched by other media.”

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CHART OF THE DAY: Time Spent On Yahoo Hits An All-Time Low

Time spent on Yahoo sites hit a new U.S. low in June, according to traffic data released by comScore today. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney compiled the data in a report today and produced the chart below.

Time spent on Google sites (38.9 billion minutes) was greater than Yahoo (38.8 billion minutes) for the first time. As a percentage of total internet time for Q2, Yahoo hit an all-time low, says Mahaney.

Yahoo’s share of time spent was 9.7%. More worrisome than Google passing Yahoo is that Facebook is coming on strong. Facebook’s share of time spent was 8.6% for Q2, which is up from 7.8% in Q1.

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CHART OF THE DAY: Craigslist’s Traffic Crashes Into eBay

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney put out a massive report on Internet stocks today, and this chart showing eBay’s tanking traffic jumped out at us. Mahaney says, “these long-term very negative traffic trends point to the possibility of sustained eBay U.S. Marketplace underperformance going forward.”

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CHART OF THE DAY: Here’s What People Are Actually Doing With Their Cellphones

Some 34% of cellphone owners polled this year send and receive email on their mobile devices, up about one-third from 25% last year. Some 38% “access the Internet,” also up from about 25% last year.

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Digital Migration Hurts Traditional Media Revenues More than Expected

Digital Migration Slams Publishing, Radio The annual decline in 2009 revenues in several traditional media categories was more severe than originally forecast, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers research. Most striking was the decline in out-of-home revenues, which fell approximately 13% in 2009, compared to a forecast of about 7%. In addition, radio revenues declined about 9%, compared to an approximately 7% forecast.

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A May 2010 survey conducted for Placecast by Harris Interactive found that while most mobile users still have not signed up for any text alerts, there was a small rise in interest since a similar poll in 2009: 28% were at least somewhat interested in the alerts, up 2 percentage points, and 8% were extremely or very interested, up 3 percentage points. For under-35s, interest was significantly higher.

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Top Search Engines by Share of Visits April vs. May 2010

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Young mobile population eager to communicate and connect

Hispanic mobile phone users are younger than the Hispanic Internet population, according to eMarketer estimates and comScore: 50.7% of mobile phone users are between 18 and 34 years of age compared with 35.6% in the same age group among Hispanic Internet users. The Hispanic mobile phone population skews even more male than the general population: 55.6% of mobile phone users are male, compared with 51% of males in the Hispanic population.

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