Conducted by Internet Retailer, the survey found that 49 per cent of firms questioned are increasing their spend on pay-per-click advertising. This comes at a time when search engines appear to be more selective about placing adverts.

However, the study revealed that e-retailers are now looking at a broader range of search engines. Although Google is still bringing in at least 71 per cent of search traffic for nearly 65 per cent of respondents, its return on investment is not as high as that of its competitors.

Bing, for example, accounts for substantially less traffic. In fact, 56 per cent of respondents claimed that the Microsoft platform accounts for less than 10 per cent of their search engine traffic, while 38 per cent receive between 11 per cent and 30 per cent of traffic from Bing. But when it comes to return on investment, adverts placed with Bing saw a 10 per cent increase in ROI in the year to the first quarter. Adverts placed with Google, on the other hand, saw ROI decrease by 12 per cent, according to figures from Efficient Frontier.

Partly as a result of these changing financial patterns, marketing appears to be shifting gradually over to Bing. The Internet Retailer survey found that more than two thirds of respondents are shifting their finances over to Bing, although less than 16 per cent say they will move more than a fifth of their spending to the Microsoft engine, suggesting there is still an air of caution about the situation.

Companies are also looking into search programmes, implementing longer keyword phrases and improving their copy. Testing different versions of landing pages and monitoring competitors were some of the other tactics employed to improve search marketing.

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The study, conducted by comScore, found that 13.5 million users in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK accessed online retail sites through their mobiles. This accounts for five.eight per cent of all mobile subscribers during the three month period to the end of May.

While this is still a relatively small section of the market, it has grown by 80 per cent over the course of the past year, with the UK growth level even higher at 163 per cent.

Jeremy Copp, comScore Europe’s vice-president for mobile, commented, “Over the past year, online retailers enjoyed strong growth in visitation from mobile devices in Europe, largely driven by the acceleration in smartphone ownership.

“This trend represents both an opportunity and a threat for retailers. While mobile access offers retailers incremental occasions to engage with customers, it also provides customers the ability to easily compare prices at competing retailers while inside a particular retailer’s store.”

He added that retailers need to really understand consumer behaviour with regards to mobile shopping if they want to make the most of the opportunity presented to them.

Online marketers might be interested to learn that browsers were used to access retail site’s more than applications. In fact, less than 3 per cent of smartphone users in France, Italy and Spain accessed the sites through applications. Germany also showed a higher percentage of users accessing retail activities through browsers. But the UK proved to be the exception, with ten per cent of smartphone owners using browsers, while 11.six per cent reported using applications.

Mr Coop suggested that applications will become increasingly important, “especially as consumers start to transact over their phones with greater regularity”.

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Business Strata reported that, thanks to the major transformation that the direct marketing industry has undergone over recent years, junk mail has taken on new meaning. Whereas in the past, it could be used a broad, sweeping term to describe the direct mail communications of many brands, it can no longer be used as such.

Today, those who do not wish to receive such direct mail communications can ensure that they remove themselves from the mailing lists or ask to be removed. Savvy companies are also spending more time and money than ever before in order to ensure that their targeting is spot on, and that they are not wasting resources sending out communications to people to whom it is not relevant. A growing understanding of the need to maximise return on investment has ensure that firms are more focused on cutting out wastage than ever before.

The investigative show Panorama aimed to break down some of the perceptions surrounding what junk mail constitutes and highlighted several reasons why direct mail and junk mail can no longer be viewed as two separate entities any longer.

Before the broadcast aired, Marketing Week's news editor, Russell Parsons, speculated that the programme would try to show the negative side of such marketing communications.

“What it will show, I can speculate, is a series of extreme examples of poor unsuspecting souls … that are barely able to breathe under the sheer weight of unsolicited mail. It will also, I wager, throw some pretty numbers to illustrate the cost of recycling discarded mail,” he said.

Mr Parsons agreed that some of the untargeted 'blanket bombing' tactics utilised by firms in the past deserved the 'justifiable criticism,' but said that today's reality was very different.

Head of Retail for thomsonlocal.com, Paul Cross, reiterated the importance of targeting the campaign data, saying “the key to reaching prospects lies in the data you are using for your campaign. If your data is targeted and verified, your direct mail will have a much higher chance of reaching the right business prospects, your campaign wastage will be reduced and your return on investment will be improved,” he added.

Another important factor about targeting is the impact unwanted communication items can have on the environment. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the volume of unwanted items going to landfill has dropped by an impressive 80 per cent since 2003. Due to this fall, just 0.4 per cent of the country's unrecycled waste is mail.