Using Promotions to Drive Traffic Today

The fundamental purpose behind promotions is to create a reaction, and in ecommerce these are almost always measured in any one of three ways: traffic, conversion, and average order value.
How do you use promotions to create reactions?

Is Paid Search Loosing its "effectiveness"?

For years, ecommerce marketing budgets have increasingly been allocated to paid search efforts – no doubt one of the many marketing budgets driving Google’s financial success.
However, anecdotal evidence is emerging that this trend may have peaked. Results from the 2006 holiday season suggest the conversion rate from paid search is trailing those from other business drivers such as email and comparison shopping engines.
What do you think?