Top issue searches included abortion for Obama and oil prices for McCain. Abortion and immigration were the two common search term issues for both candidates. Obama political issue searches focused on gay marriage, gun control, education and immigration.

McCain political issue searches included Health care, Global warming and the Economy.

Other popular searches for Obama included information on his family, merchandise and his speeches and quotes. For McCain, searches were for information on his speeches and quotes, his age and his jokes.

“Searches show that voters on both sides of the aisle have shared concerns around issues such as health care, global warming and immigration,” said Heather Dougherty, research director, Hitwise. “This has implications for what content should be featured on the candidates’ websites, and broadly across all communications with voters.”

Hitwise looked at the top 200 U.S. search terms that sent visits to the candidate’s Web sites. The most common type of searches to Obama’s Web site was for biographical information or basic facts about the candidate. For McCain’s site the most popular search was for the candidate’s stance on major issues.

It projects 15-20 percent annual growth during the forecast period, with it reaching 13.6 percent by 2011 as Internet ad spending grows to $106.6 billion worldwide.

Compared to more mature types of advertising, Internet advertising is growing at a phenomenal rate,” said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC. “But Internet advertising is still relatively new and growing from a much smaller base.

“By the end of the forecast period, spending for Internet advertising will trail direct mail - the third largest form of advertising - by more than $30 billion, while spending on TV and print ads will each be nearly twice as great as for online ads.”

Keyword ads will remain the most popular form of Internet advertising, grabbing over a third of annual online ad spending globally. Display ads will be the next largest type of Internet advertising, capturing more than 20 percent of worldwide spending annually through 2011, followed by classified ads with close to 19 percent of all online ad spending per year.

The U.S. will lead the world in both total advertising spending and online ad spending during the period with expenditures of more than $265 billion and $45 billion respectively in 2011.

“Marketers already recognize that online advertising must be incorporated into any comprehensive ad strategy. This will continue to drive growth in online ad spending well beyond the forecast period,” said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Media and Entertainment.

When asked if they had accessed information not relevant to their jobs 47 percent admitted they had.

The survey found that privileged passwords get changed infrequently and often less than user passwords. Thirty percent are changed every quarter and 9 percent never get changed, giving indefinite access to those who know passwords, even when they are no longer with an organization.

Half of It administrators do not have to get authorization to access privileged accounts which indicates a general lack of control and understanding over the power of such privileges.

“For most people, administrative passwords are a seemingly innocuous tool used by the IT department to update or amend systems. To those ‘in the know’ they are the keys to the kingdom and if unprotected or fall into the wrong hands wield a great deal of power,” said Mark Fullbrook, UK Director of Cyber-Ark.

“Companies need to wake up to the fact that if they don’t introduce layers of security and tighten up who has access to vital information, by managing and controlling privileged passwords, snooping, sabotage and hacking will continue.”

Around half of social network users visit sites such as Facebook and MySpace on a daily basis. Out of the users who say they visit social networks on a daily basis, half say they log on several time a day.

Fifty-seven percent of those between the ages of 12 to 17 are the most likely to be daily users of social networking sites.

People are logging into social networks from a variety of places. The majority, more than three quarters log on from home, they are also logging on at work, school and public places during the day.

Women are more likely to use social networks than men. In general, women use the Internet more than men for personal communication.

The number one reason for visiting social networks is to connect with friends. In addition, about half of all users said they use sites like MySpace and Facebook to maintain their online profile, email and connect with family.

“Online social networking is an integral part of many people’s lives and a natural extension of our means of communication which the Internet has created,” said Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center.

“The next growth wave will be expanding and incorporating these networks into our business lives.”

“By bringing Platform-A to Europe, we can offer advertisers the best marketing tools and technologies available to help them effectively and efficiently deliver their messages to online audiences across Europe,” said Randy Falco, AOL Chairman and CEO.

AOL’s publishing network in Europe includes sites in 13 countries. Platform-A in Europe will bring together AOL’s existing European advertising operations. These include Advertising.com, Adtech, buy.at, and AOL’s ad sales team.

The new organization will use contextual search by Quigo, behavioral targeting by Tacoda, and mobile ad-serving by Third Screen Media. Combined, Platform-A reaches 125 million online consumers, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Brendan Condon has been named head of Platform A’s International operations, based in London. Condon was previously head of Advertising.com’s International business.

By the end of next year, AOL says that Platform-A will be available to the rest of the world.

In the United States, AOL’s Platform-A was the leading display-advertising network in April, reaching 89 percent of the online audience or about 171 million unique visitors, according to comScore.

“No other network can offer the reach, relevance and richness of Platform-A,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A. “Advertisers will be able to use the most advanced optimization technology and behavioral targeting, combining AOL’s premium inventory with Advertising.com’s network, including social media, affiliate marketing, search, video and mobile.”

Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as other advertising. Over all Internet advertising revenue will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012.

The Internet will go from the number 5 medium to the number 2 medium in just five years, making it bigger than newspapers, cable TV, broadcast TV, and second only to direct marketing.  Video advertising will attract the most marketing dollars over the next five years. Its revenue will grow from $0.5 billion in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49.4 percent.

“The size of the online video audience as well as the time it spends watching video is sure to increase as broadband access penetration increases, connections become faster, and as more premium content is available,” said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Media and Entertainment.

“What will also drive this trend is that consumers are starting to realize that, as opposed to TV, Internet video lets them watch what they want, when they want, and increasingly also where they want.”

Search advertising will remain the one advertising format that will receive the most revenue over the forecast period in the U.S. This means that for any media company search must be a key part of its strategy.

AOL’s sites grew unique visitors 12 percent year over year to 55.4 million; page views increased 48 ” year over year to 4.3 billion in April.

The company continues to launch and redesign many of its sites. This week, AOL launched a number of vertical sites within its network, including ParentDish, The BoomBox and TheBoot, along with the new AOL Money & Finance video site.

The significant growth in reach and engagement proves that the work we’ve done rebuilding our vertical websites and introducing new sites is paying off as evidenced by our growing online audience,” said Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President, AOL Programming.

“Our focus is on delivering consumers content based on their passion points, which creates better experiences for consumers and helps advertisers target key audiences and increase revenue potential.”

According to eMarketer part of the reason for the revised estimates is due to the slowing economy, specifically for those companies who will cut experimental ad dollars first.

Another factor is, “social network sites are still trying to figure out what sort of advertising works,” said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst, who authors the social networking reports.

“Tapping into consumers’ conversations and spreading brand awareness virally has proven more challenging than companies originally thought.”

eMarketer has revised its forecast for the two largest social networks, MySpace and Facebook. Its original prediction said MySpace would bring in $850 million in the U.S. but that estimate has been scaled back 11.2 percent to $755 million.

At Facebook, advertisers will spend $265 million, a 12.9 percent drop from the previous forecast of $305 million.

“Consumers will be very cautious with their wallets this Mother’s Day, heeding mom’s advice that she really doesn’t need much,” said BIGresearch Vice President of Strategy Phil Rist. “Gas prices and other economic issues will still be at the forefront of people’s minds as they shop around for the perfect gift for mom.”

Those surveyed said they planned to spend an average of $138.63 for Mother’s Day this, down slightly from $139.14 last year. The NRF said it expected total consumer spending for the holiday to reach $15.8 billion.

A small portion of U.S. adults will be going online for more than just shopping. Five percent said they planned to contact their mom online on Mother’s Day.

TotalWeb shows the unduplicated, unique audience for 200 major Web sites across the PC and mobile space, which will be useful as the two converge.  Nielsen says that for many Internet publishers, mobile Internet increases the total size of their audience.

“The data demonstrate that the mobile Internet can not only increase the frequency of visits to a website, but also grow the overall size of the pie,” said Jeff Herrmann, Vice President of Mobile Media, Nielsen Mobile.

“Publishers can now monetize their total cross-platform audience, and advertisers will better understand the efficiency and incremental value of mobile Web traffic.”

TotalWeb’s first report found that for many sites, mobile Internet increases the overall size of their audience by 13 percent over PC alone.

According to Nielsen, 87 million U.S. mobile users subscribe to mobile Internet services, and more than one in ten mobile subscribers (13.7 percent) actively uses mobile Internet each month.