eMarketer released the results of a recent survey taken in conjunction with MarketingSherpa at a recent ad:tech show. The focus on the survey is what marketers think is working in online marketing, what is not working, what strategies are being used more and what strategies are waning.

A couple of highlights:

• About online advertising tactics that worked best, search engine optimization (SEO) jumped from a 33% response in 2005 to 45% in 2006.
• Paid search ads answered as the best-performing tactic, although down from 52% in 2005 to 49% in 2006.
• Rented email lists reported as the worst-performing tactic for the second year in a row, garnering 56% of respondents.
• Tactics that online marketers plan a 5% increase in budget investment - search marketing leading with 34%, followed by email marketing to in-house lists with 27%.
• For emerging advertising tactics, ads on third-party blogs and blog networks led the way 42% of respondents, followed closely by social networking sites with 40%

This is, however, a skewed report and eMarkter does include a disclaimer stating the same. The audience is an ad:tech-attending crowd, so it's not a snippet of the marketing industry as a whole. What is disappointing, and what eMarketer does not address, is that there are no figures as to the number of respondents to the survey. It could have been 10 people or 10,000. We're left guessing on that one.