Can you believe that we are already almost a month into 2009? By February it is well and truly time to look to the future, but in January, it’s still acceptable to look back one last time. So this week we thought we would sum up some of the most memorable stats and marketing events from 2008 – Friday Fact Box style.

From ClickZ - The Year in Search A 2008 Review (Dec 2008)

• “sarah palin” was the top rising global key phrase searched for on Google while “Obama” was the fastest rising key phrase in the US.
• “beijing 2008”, “facebook login” and tuenti” (a Madrid-based, invite only private social networking website) were also notable global Google search phrases.
• Yahoo!’s most searched for phrase was “britney spears”, while Lycos cited “poker” as its most popular key word.

From ClickZ - Top 50 Advertisers by Media Value in October 2008 (Jan 2009)

• Honda Fit: Asian Passenger Auto was cited as the number one Internet advertiser according to media value.
• Pioneers of Affiliate Marketing, Amazon.com are now rated as the 35th biggest advertiser on the Web.

From Contagious Magazine -  2008 in a Nutshell January 2009

Contagious Magazine is an online, print and DVD publication that purports to “spread the gospel of non-traditional media and innovative thinking.”

The Biggest Seismic Shift of 2008

Barack Obama and his election and campaign:

• Used one of the original Facebook founders to run his website.
• Made use of Social Media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
• Placed election ads in video games.
• Created an iPhone application.
• Responded to any and all Tweets and online queries.
• Will.I.am’s video of the “Yes we can” speech garnered over 14 million views on YouTube.

2008 highlighted the power of Social Media through Obama and saw these channels being used by new entities the world over.

Technology

• IPhone launches its Apps – Google Earth becomes accessible from your handset.
• Google launches its own browser, Chrome. Chrome gathers 1% of the market in 2008, with IE at 60% and Firefox at 30%.
• The gaming industry sees the rise of ‘casual gaming’ with Guitar Hero being the most popular with an estimated 23 million players and revenue exceeding $1,6 billion.
• 2008 sees the initial viral campaigns used by the film industry paying off. Paramount launched a 6 month campaign in 2007 promoting Cloverfield. The campaign included websites, MySpace character pages, YouTube videos and tantalising hints. When the film finally opened in January 2008, it experienced the biggest January opening in US history.

Social Media

• Facebook – 132 million people visit the site each day. This is a yearly increase of 153&.
• Bebo – 32% growth and 24 million unique visitors.
• Twitter – 422% growth.

Crowdsourcing

This became the catchword of 2008 with sites like Idea Storm reaching 9000 contributors and registering 10 779 ideas. Crowdsourcing also spread out of the IT arena and saw companies like StarBucks launching websites looking for suggestions for improvement from their customer base. Quirk’s own Crowdsourcing site, Idea Bounty, has already registered 1257 creatives and averages over 100 brilliant ideas per brief, with over 5000 people visiting the site each month.

Did a stat or event stand out for you in 2008? Please add it below!