When you look at the value of the ecommerce market in the UK, it becomes obvious that companies need to tune into the benefits of content writing services.

According to IMRG, the UK online retail market in 2013 is estimated to be worth £87 billion. Within that mobile commerce is growing at a rate of 300% a year (see previous article on importance of mobile content).

Gurd goes on to note that with social media in the picture as well, web content has multiple uses. "It's not just a one-channel entity," he says.

However, he cautioned businesses about pinning all their hopes on content marketing, explaining that "content is not by itself the saviour". 

"For content marketing to work, the inputs need to be good," he said. Indeed one thing we can see happening already is that with so many companies taking a stab at content marketing, there are a lot of poor efforts.

"Content has to serve a purpose and provide a value to the end-user. I personally think there is too much content being produced at the expense of a focus on quality," adds Gurd.

Instead of just "throwing up" blogs, articles and buying guides on to a website, there should be a "coherent" content marketing strategy.

Internet advertising attracted the biggest increase, with a positive net 5.6 per cent of marketing executives saying they had upped their online marketing spending over the final quarter of 2012.

Meanwhile, 2013 could also be the year that online marketing loses its preface and becomes simply 'marketing'.

In its 'Trends for the B2C CMO to watch in 2013' report, global researchers Forrester claimed that digital channels are mounting assaults on even the most established traditional media.

It cites the example of YouTube's rise against the advertising bastion of television.

The report argues that ‘digital marketing’ will simply become known as 'marketing' as the various barriers are broken down and the sector becomes more mainstream.

Forrester expects the online sector to be worth around 20 per cent of the total marketing industry, valued globally at £31 billion.

What does it mean for businesses?

Companies will need to think about integrating channels and coming up with a content strategy that applies across various outlets, from websites and blogs, to social media, press and television.

Forrester CMO Corinne Munchbach, told Marketing Week: "Consumers switch from in-store to online, to mobile – sometimes all at once.

"Having separate budgets for each is counterintuitive to what customers are actually experiencing. Logical brands will be able to join this together in a functional way to deliver the experiences customers expect from them."

Find out more about how content writing services and content marketing consulting can help your business.

OneSpot is launching a new platform to allow businesses to transform all their online content, blog posts and social media updates into adverts.

It can use company-generated content, as well as positive external content like social media, reviews, and news articles to create ads.

After ads are generated, a proprietary algorithm uses big data to determine what ads to display and where to place them across all web traffic sources, says OneSpot.

Will it be useful? Well the argument is that content is relevant and interesting, while ads are not.

According to OneSpot, what it will do is target all this relevant content at consumers in a way to ensures it reaches them.

The idea is that no matter how much great content you produce, you cannot guarantee that the right people will get a chance to read it while it is still relevant.

But after all, isn't the whole point of best practice content marketing about building it up from the bottom with no short-cuts like keyword stuffing or, in this case, turning great content into what OneSpot already says is annoying – ads.

So are you just wasting your content? Probably not, as there is a fair bet it will reach people and be more engaging than an annoying advert.

Whatever way you look at it, content stands tall in all this – you still need to be writing and producing first-class content.

However you plan to share it is up to you, but the content still needs to be great.

"Over $16 billion will be spent on digital content in 2012 – blogs, reviews, videos, how-to tips, whitepaper, webinars, and more," says said Matt Cohen, CEO and Founder of OneSpot.

"For every piece of content your business wants people to see, you should have an associated distribution strategy to drive desired business outcomes: lead generation and nurturing, promoting reviews, or brand awareness.

"No distribution channel is as ubiquitous as online advertising. We see a tremendous opportunity to help businesses monetize all their content using the power, data intelligence, and infrastructure of online advertising to deliver it."

OneSpot’s content advertising platform is live with display ads already, but will shortly support other advertising channels, including social and mobile networks.

Will it take off? That remains to be seen, but it with content marketing so important to businesses, it may well succeed.

According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) report, 86% of companies are investing in content, regardless of size or industry.

The data comes from B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America, which is the first annual survey from the CMI about content marketing in the B2C space. 

B2C organizations use an average of 12 tactics, the study shows. Most popular among these are social media excluding blogs (84%), articles on a company's website (84%), eNewsletters (78%), and blogs (77%). 

The results are not too dissimilar to those of B2B marketers. In a previous report from the CMI, 87% of B2B marketers are using social media to distribute content, as compared to the rate of 74% that was reported last year.

However, in the B2C sphere, marketers are using mobile content, mobile apps, print magazines, and print newsletters a lot more.

"It's exciting to be able to benchmark B2C and B2B content marketing efforts and quantify differences by marketing type," says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the CMI.

"One interesting difference is how each group uses social media. For B2C marketers, Facebook is the most popular platform by far, with 90% of respondents indicating they use this for content distribution. This differs from B2B, in which LinkedIn is the most popular platform, with 83% of respondents using this (compared to 51% of B2C marketers)."

B2B marketers are spending a third of their marketing budgets on content marketing, up from a quarter in 2011. Similarly, B2C marketers are investing heavily in content marketing this year, allocating 28% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. Additionally, 55% of B2C marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months.

"Another similarity between B2C and B2C marketers is that both groups lack confidence that they are executing content marketing effectively," says Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs. "But B2C marketers cite lack of budget as their biggest challenge (23%), whereas B2B marketers are most challenged with producing enough content (29%)."