In a sign that online advertising has truly gone mainstream, eMarketer estimates that retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) will account for the biggest share of new U.S. online advertising spending in 2011.

Overall, the research firm forecasts online advertising to grow by 20.2 percent to reach $31.3 billion this year. Retail already accounts for the biggest share of online advertising and is expected to grow by 24 percent to reach $6.78 billion. The CPG industry will grow by 14 percent to reach $2.46 million in total online ad spending.

Here’s more ‘mixed evidence’ over the benefits of daily deal sites for local businesses. July 2011 research reveals that while nearly two-thirds of U.S. businesses had run a profitable promotion on daily deal site, Groupon, 82 percent were unhappy with the level of repeat business generated by the promotion.

The research, conducted by Cooper Murphy Copywriters, also found that while only 35 percent did not make money from their Groupon promotion, most noted that Groupon users were more price-sensitive than the average customer. All in all, out of the survey of 300 businesses:

The number of mobile social network users is expected to grow from 1.1 billion worldwide in 2011 to 1.9 billion by 2016, representing a cumulative annual growth rate of 11.8 percent over the next 5 years.

Based on research from Visiongain, the outlook for mobile social networking is positive as market players and users alike experience changes in monetization models, fervent competition between vendors, and localization trends.

Online retail sales reached $37.5 billion in the second quarter of 2011, an increase of 14 percent over Q2 2010, according to comScore.

The rise in ecommerce spending represents the seventh consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth and the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

Consumers not only read online reviews before visiting local businesses, but they form their ‘first impressions’ of such businesses based on such online reviews.

Research by RatePoint shows that 76 percent of consumers read online reviews before buying from a company they’ve never used before. Meanwhile, 81 percent look for online reviews before engaging local businesses that provide in-home services.

Food and beverage companies are failing to optimize their social media marketing efforts, according to a recent study. Over half (54 percent) of food and drink industry professionals admit they don’t measure the return on investment (ROI) on their social media marketing investments.

According to the survey of over 500 food and beverage executives by U.K. based just-food and just-drinks, a further 18 percent ‘did not know’ if their business measured the ROI.

Website and domain name auction site, Flippa, has released its inaugural State of the Website Economy report, focusing on domain names.

Among the interesting findings of Flippa’s State of the Website Economy July 2011 are that websites and domain names with .com domain extensions have a 124 percent greater chance of selling on Flippa than .co domains, and that dashes in a domain name reduce the average sales price by 26 percent.

A survey of 726 Americans by Ongo shows that more than half (56 percent) visit the Internet once or twice per day to read or view news. Nearly a third go online for news three or more times a day.

In other findings, Ongo reports that:

Most consumers prefer to submit customer feedback, reviews and surveys via texting on their mobile device than via the web, according to research by Buzzbeeper.

Based on Buzzbeeper’s customer trials, consumers not only prefer submitting reviews and feedback via texting, but also do so with a greater degree of engagement.

The most popular shopping category among daily deal shoppers is food and dining. A recent survey by PriceGrabber finds that U.S. online consumers most frequently search for food and dining daily deals, followed by shopping deals and then entertainment and events deals.

According to PriceGrabber’s May 2011 survey of 2,088 U.S. Internet users, the top local daily deal search categories are: