By Dave Porter

(AXcess News) Reno - The latest ChoiceStream Personalization Survey shows that the quality of product recommendations has declined, which was attributed to unrelated products - or relevance quality.  Yet its just these types of issues that prompted Bloggerwave.com (Otcbb: BLGW) to open an office in the US as relationship marketing grows in importance to advertisers.

eMarketer noted that the most common complaint [in the ChoiceStream Survey] was that "recommendations were simply not what they were looking for."

ChoiceStream attributes the problem to several factors which may include poor algorithms which are meant to match content to product recommendations.

Lori Trahan, Vice President of Marketing at ChoiceStream, was quoted in a press release Feb. 3rd as saying, "It's unfortunate, but not surprising, that so many consumers report receiving poor quality product recommendations. Consumers expect more from recommendations than they did even a year ago. They expect them to be accurate and on target, so when they're not, shoppers are disappointed."

Yet ChoiceStream founder Steve Johnson chalked it up to lack of experience on the part of providers - namely, advertisers themselves.

"The categories that fared the best in this ranking are those that have the most experience in using product recommendations as part of their merchandising. Considering the complexities involved in delivering good quality recommendations, it makes sense that those with the most experience rise to the top," said Johnson.

While product recommendations on Sites which sell them are certainly helpful, consumers at the same time may not trust the recommendations they see - even if relevant to the product itself - and often look to other sources, such as blogs.

Blogs are quickly gaining in popularity and according to Bloggerwave.com, the US market is ripe for the picking after the Denmark-based blog advertising network opened an office in Mountainview, Calif. late last week.

"In three short years we became the No. 1 company of our kind in Europe," says Co-Founder and Bloggerwave Director Ulrik Svane Thomsen. "We will use our same formula for success in the U.S."

In a feature story, Thomsen attributed his Company's growth and slot in the blog advertising arena to simple honesty as to how Bloggerwave encouraged its blog network to write about their customers.

"Write honestly about what you think of a company," said Thomsen.

Alterian's 7th annual consumer survey seems to concur with both Thomsen and Johnson when it comes to delivering more to consumers online.

Alterian's (LSE: ALN) Survey noted that, "The only communications tolerated by consumers are those that are appropriate, timely and relevant - regardless of channel," essentially validating what Thomsen said.

But if you take Johnson's view in context, marketers really are short on knowledge and Alterian's Survey seems to support that outlook.

Figures from Alterian show that only 7% of marketers' staff are skilled enough to implement new customer engagement strategies, but that knowledge was generally restricted to personnel in digital roles.  Another 37% said they planned to pursue investments in the area which may turn out to benefit companies like Bloggerwave.com and Choicestream.com.