The average small business advertiser spent $2,149 on search advertising in Q4 2009, an increase of 30% over Q3 2009 and 111% over Q4 2008. Video capability was the fastest-growing website feature for small business advertisers over the past year, with 19% of advertisers showing video on their websites in Q4 2009, versus just 5% in Q4 2008. The data represents nearly $22 million in U.S. small business advertisers spending in Q4 2009 from more than 12,000 individual advertisers. Conversion rates also improved for small business advertisers, with 35.3% of clicks resulting in website conversion action, compared with 32% in Q3 2009 and 26.6% in Q4 2008. Actions are predominantly calls, and also include sending emails or SMS texts, form fills, printed driving directions or video views. The average keyword count per small business advertiser increased by 21% in Q4 2009 over Q3 2009, to an average 67 keywords. The numbers show increased confidence by small businesses in using search to gain leads, and increased ability to turn those leads into sales, according to a study by WebVisible.

Advertising spend was hard hit in 2009 – down 1.6% compared to 2008. The overall outcome of 2009 advertising is the result of totally different behaviors within the regions. Asia Pacific inverted the downturn quite early in the year and, since quarter two, has been the only region to show growth compared to 2008 (+6.6%). Europe, which is still below the levels of the previous year (-4.9%), showed improvement in the second half of the year and moved to the positive side of the scale in the last quarter of the year. North America shows the largest percentage decline versus the previous year (-9.4%) and, though the percentage decrease is more contained in the last quarter, the level of expenditure has not matched that of 2008 yet, according to Nielsen’s Global AdView Pulse, which reports advertising across 27 markets in Asia, North America, Europe and Africa.

The iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and smartphones in general dominate the buzz in the mobile market, but only 21% of American wireless subscribers are using a smartphone as of the fourth quarter 2009 compared to 19% in Q3 2009 and 14% at the end of 2008. We are just at the beginning of a new wireless era where smartphones will become the standard device consumers will use to connect to friends, the internet and the world at large. The share of smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased to 29% for phone purchasers in the last six months and 45% of devices will be a smartphone. If combine these intentional data points with falling prices and increasing capabilities of these devices along with a explosion of applications for devices. This increase will be so rapid, that by the end of 2011, Nielsen expects more smartphones in the U.S. market than feature phones, according to a new survey byt Nielsen.

Each week, on average, Americans watched roughly 35 hours of TV and two hours of timeshifted TV via a DVR. Adults aged 65 and up watched the most weekly TV, 47 hours and 21 minutes; while teens aged 12-17 watched the least weekly TV, 23 hours and 24 minutes. The overall growth in viewing is due to a number of factors, the DVR brings added convenience while high definition programming and flatscreen TVs have boosted the quality of the experience. Digital delivery, via cable or satellite, is delivering more channels and more choice to the home than ever before, according to Nielsen.