Toby Bloomberg started a great thread among the members of the AMA E-commerce/Internet Marketing Shared Interest Group on "What are the Top Five Trends in Interactive Marketing." So far, it's a great running discussion. For those of us not in the thick of WebmasterWorld 2004, Jay Berkowitz sent back this report on what's buzzing at the show.

From Day 1 of WebmasterWorld in Orlando with 600 leading web techy's...

1, 2 and 3 Hottest Items are are Search, Search and Search! I call search the Gold Rush of 2004, many of my clients are making 3-8 times their investment back with Search Engine Marketing.

1. PPC or Pay Per Click (also called Pay For Performance) Search. These are the paid links on Google, Overture and other search engines. Every second session at this show is focused on PPC. Google, Overture, GoDaddy and all of the other major players are at the conference.

2. Natural Search Engine Optimization, also called Organic Search. This is the practice of getting your site ranked high by the search engines in their natural or free (left side on Google).

3. Paid Inclusion is getting more air time, look for it to be 'the buzz' as the changes in the search industry (Yahoo bought Overture etc.) come to play.

4. Contextual Marketing. More commonly known as Gators. These are the ads that pop up for a competitor when on a web site. They are served through ad ware for people who have downloaded a program such as Kazaa. Look for these to get red hot with the fall off of eMail performance and then cool down as more people ad Pop Up blockers.

5. Permissioning. Permission to eMail, opt ins, double opt ins, white lists become critical jargon as Can-Spam comes into our lives.

Others:
Blogs - Web logs, online journals
Localization - Google and Overture have local search products ready to come to market
Viral Marketing - Send to a Friend and other referral tools
Sniping - Huge for eBay auctions, bidnapper, bidslayer offer tools to grab a high bid at the last second