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Email marketing needs to be managed from the centre if it is to be effective, according to a new survey.

JupiterResearch found that 38 per cent of executives had centralised their messaging efforts in one location, while 24 per cent were managing it across six or more departments.

However, 44 per cent of executives were aware that email would be more effective if it were managed from one platform, suggesting that there is the impetus for change, Marketing Vox reports.

Meanwhile, e-Dialog, an email marketing service provider, has created a tool that it claims is able to determine the relevance of commercial email.

John Rizzi, president and chief executive officer of e-Dialog, told Media Buyer Planner: “Until now, no clear definition or key performance indicators have existed for email marketing relevance, nor have marketers had a comprehensive framework for identifying specific applications of relevance that will increase email productivity.”

Online marketing is the most lucrative form of advertising, according to a joint study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The industry achieved above-expectation growth of 41.3 per cent this year, taking its market share to 14.7 per cent.

Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB, commented: “The online market is developing at an astounding rate and once again we see exceptional growth and a significant increase in market share. Ninety per cent of internet users are on broadband now and nearly 40 per cent are using wireless.”

He added: “Importantly, marketers have a much better understanding of how online works and how to measure the effects of brand advertising as well as direct response.”

Classified advertising now accounts for 20.8 per cent of all internet advertising spend, growing by a staggering 72 per cent over the past year to £277.7 million.

Meanwhile, internet display advertising - which includes banners, skyscrapers and rich media formats - was up 33 per cent to a share of 21.5 per cent.

Sportswear super-brand Nike is set to increase its spending on online marketing.

The sportswear company has just appointed AKQA as its global digital agency for its online projects in Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the US and Canada, India’s Economic Times reports.

All of the projects are football-related.

Nike already works with AKQA on a number of web-development initiatives.

The company currently spends just £269,000 of its £9.2 million UK media budget on online advertising, according to Nielsen Media Research. However, that is expected to increase significantly with the new appointment.

Nike is keen to promote football to youngsters ahead of Euro 2008. Its ‘urban football’ scheme involves a number of UK-based, Nike-branded sports events.

It has already managed a similar project in the Asia-Pacific region, a special training programme for youngsters called ‘90 days of football’.

The world’s leading supplier of sportswear and equipment, Nike takes its name from the Greek goddess of victory.

Online technology has enabled British newspapers to reach a truly global audience.

Top of the online hits league is the Guardian website, which had 15,821,480 visitors in August, a 26 per cent increase since last year.

The left-leaning newspaper is streets ahead of its nearest competitor, the Mail Online, which had 11,585,134 users over the same period. However, that lead may not last for long, given the staggering 75 per cent annual growth in visits year-on-year.

The Sun scooped 10,594,198 unique users is a 36 per cent yearly increase, while Murdoch’s ‘quality’ offering, The Times, garnered 10,239,223 hits.

Moreover, just 37 per cent of guardian.co.uk web users are in the UK, while for timesonline.co.uk the figure is even less at 33 per cent.

These figures are all the more impressive if you consider that the New York Times, the most popular newspaper website in the US, receives 13 million visits each month.

However, there was a dip in traffic at a micro-level with the Sun and Telegraph the only national newspaper websites to post month-on-month user increases in August.

Print circulations are in terminal decline as the web becomes the primary source of in-depth news coverage.