Two excellent reports were released over the past week, highlighting growth and trends in the worldwide Internet adoption and growth market, Europe in particular. The first report, from E-consultancy is called the Internet Statistics Compendium and a small free version of the report is available for download with some great information:

• The NOP study of UK internet users revealed that 71% of respondents were aware of cookies. [Gomez, 2004]
• 82% knew how to delete cookies.
• 55% of them were deleting them on a monthly basis.
• Screen resolutions are heading towards 1024x768 as the standard.
• 1024x768 - 51% in Oct. of 2004
• 800x600 - 34%
• Higher than 1024x768 - 10%
• Lower than 800x600 - 1%
  
• 93.2% of B2B consumers indicated they would use the net to research the purchase before buying. [Enquiro 2004]
• Of those using net research, only 4.46% would not use a search engine.
• Search was the ‘first resource’ for research for 63.9% of respondents, beating manufacturer sites and portals.
• 82.9% used Google.

The second report of interest comes from a CRM Today report on growth in the European Search Marketing segement. That report cites a Forrester Research study that shows considerable growth trends for EU search marketing, particularly in Sweden & Norway, as well as Germany & the UK. They predict that search advertising spending in the EU will reach €3 Billion by 2010.