How Consumers Shop Differently Today
John Keehler
Time magazine interviews retail guru Paco Underhill to get a snapshot of how the American consumer is buying differently.
New Search Technologies Mine the Web More Deeply
Brian Kress
Get ready to geek out: Even though Google just (quietly) passed its 1 trillionth webpage indexed by its spiders, they’re still missing out on a huge part of the web called “the deep web.” There are a few companies working on indexing databases within the public Internet that hold valuable keys to finding what you need to know. “What’s the best fare from New York to London next Thursday?” The information is out there, waiting to be found.
Want to Make Someone a Little Richer Today?
Jeff Whang
Then check out the 25 most “valuable” blogs – in quotes because it’s fairly arbitrary how 24/7 Wall Street’s list was created. Nevertheless, it’s probably “valuable” to take a look at the list and visit each of them at least once if you haven’t already.
Email – Discovering Value Beyond Clicks and Opens
John Keehler
New study from Epsilon shows that permission-based email programs improve brand impression, purchase intent and more… Even if there’s not a click.
Is Hulu Getting Annoying?
Jeff Whang
A look at Hulu’s success and its still-vulnerable position of failing at the ad model for online video due to its recent PR issues of pulling popular shows or the threat of showing twice as many ads. Hang in there Hulu, and don’t screw this up!
ComScore just released its 2008 Digital Year in Review report. It starts off by posing the question, “was it half-empty or half-full?” There were certainly some huge advances in digital media with usage and innovation growing rapidly, but also some of the first declines ever in segments of the digital marketing industry. We know that long-term, digital marketing is on an upward trajectory, but the report highlights some trends uncovered in 2008 that will help us respond to the challenging market in 2009.
Here are some key nuggets from the report:
Search continues to grow
Search query volume on the five core search engines increased 21 percent in 2008 from the previous year, with Google Sites accounting for nearly 90 percent of this growth. Keep in mind, Google Sites includes not only google.com but youtube.com and blogger.com as well. The query volume was largely driven by an increase in searchers per searcher, as opposed to new, unique searchers. This may indicate a larger macrotrend of Internet users relying on search to find information as opposed to traditional channels that simply serve pre-selected content.
Economy and politics driving online activity
Not surprisingly, job search was the fastest growing website category, growing 51 percent in 2008. Coupon and classified sites also saw sharp growth as a result of the recession (46% and 27%, respectively). Craigslist grew 51% this past year, undoubtedly capitalizing on those of us looking for deals.
The election made politics one of the fastest growing categories, as well. Traffic to BarackObama.com dominated visits to JohnMcCain.com three to one.
Expect all of these categories to continue their growth in 2009, as it seems there will be continued interest in the new political environment and concerns about the economy.
E-Commerce hit with slower growth in 2008
After years of 20%+ growth, comScore reported that e-commerce experienced the slowest year of growth in 2008 since they began tracking in 2001, increasing by only 7 percent to $214.4. Of course, this is another instance of glass half-empty or half-full – a few e-commerce retailers posted record profits, like Amazon for instance (up 9% in Q4 2008 from same time last year). Overall, however, the last couple months of 2008 were especially tough, with negative growth recorded for the first time in comScore’s history of tracking.
No signs of online video slowing down
6% more people in the US viewed 34% more videos versus a year ago. Watching videos online accounts for 12.5% of users’ time on the Internet, up from 8.5% last year. YouTube accounted for two-thirds of video’s growth, growing 74 percent.
Another developing in online video is the gradual shift from short-form, user-generated content to long-form, professionally-created content such as Hulu, which grew 57 percent in the last six months of 2008. Its TV shows and movies are responsible for the average online video duration growing from 2.8 to 3.1 minutes per video.
All video online is experiencing tremendous growth, but there are early indications that publishers of content are beginning to find profitable models to distribute long-form content that consumers are also willing to pay for (either through digital storefronts like iTunes Store or receptivity to advertising).
The report also offers some key trends for marketers to think this year:
As viewing of TV and movie content online becomes more and more mainstream, it offers advertisers a new opportunity to capitalize on this highly engaged – and often difficult to reach – audience. Think about ways to take advantage of this engaged audience.
As online video and other forms of distributed content gains popularity (i.e., widgets and applications), it’s time for us to come up with some clear models of monetization.
Smartphones (including the iPhone) continue to drop in price, and new entrants such as Google’s Android phone has seemingly opened the floodgates for devices optimized for mobile Internet. Despite the economic downturn, 2009 is expected to be another record-breaking year for the mobile Internet, and as penetration and engagement soars, mobile will have to be a vital part of most advertiser’s digital strategies.
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Women over 55: The Fastest Growing Facebook Demographic
John Keehler
Facebook has been almost universally adopted by teens, but growth is coming from older demographics, but from women in particular. Read this blog post for more insights on very recent Facebook traffic numbers.
Kluster and Crowdsourcing the Creative Process
Brian Kress
Freddie Laker, Director of Digital Strategy at Sapient, introduces us to a new tool for crowdsourcing – the collaborative generation of work by a crowd – creative ideas, which has helped his group to easily rate and build upon concepts. With the awesome price tag of FREE, perhaps we should give it a test drive and see what ideas surface.
Artists, Bands and Musicians on Twitter
John Keehler
Will musicians help Twitter gain a larger audience? It worked with MySpace. Check out this comprehensive list of musicians and artists with Twitter profiles.
Mississippi Farmers Still Dialing-Up
Jeff Whang
Someone really interested in farmers and the Internet mined the 2007 Census of Agriculture, showing us which farmers are humming along on broadband and which are still waiting for their web pages to load. Texas? Our farmers are 9.8% below the national average. An interesting look at the extent to which our rural communities are on a divide: those that are economically and socially up to date, and those that still have very little access to…well, the Internet.
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The future of Internet marketing is at stake. Especially in an uncertain economy, it ultimately rests in our hands to deliver meaningful results that improve business. But what results are we seeking? And how do we know if and when we’ve achieved them? Those are the questions that can only be answered by creative, critical thinking – an activity that is exponentially aided by introducing business intelligence (BI) to our online marketing efforts.
For a simple demonstration of a company that uses BI well, let’s look at Amazon.
The company’s book recommendations, for instance, are directly a result of their putting both granular and aggregate business intelligence to good use. In short, they are able to make their website and customer communications more directly relevant and more effective, on average, because they experiment, track, and analyze their ideas quickly.
It’s important to note that they don’t keep this information under lock and key. They share it with their customers – either on a personal level (your purchase history indicates you might like…) or in the aggregate (others who bought x also bought…), because their audience is most likely best suited to know what to do with that information.
The good news is that the market isn’t demanding that you build an Amazon-scale business intelligence system overnight. It’s okay – and often desirable – to start by identifying a small problem that could be helped if only you had access to the right information at the right time.
This problem could be as simple as:
- Which ad is more effective at driving traffic to our site?
- Are we spending the right amount in the right way in the right places?
- Are people doing what we need them to do once they get there?
- How do changes in our offer and layout affect our critical metrics?
With properly implemented business intelligence systems, you can:
- Improve click-through rates of advertising or emails
- Increase your advertising ROI
- Test landing pages and workflows to improve conversions
- Make more relevant content or product recommendations
However small we start, though, we must always keep the bigger picture in mind, because, among other reasons, the decisions we make at these early stages may have an impact on how easy it is to maintain data integrity later.
To businesspeople without database training, some of these solutions that require conversations about normalized data, ETLs, OLAPs, data warehouse tables and the like might be foreign concepts.
Likewise, to database architects without business training or frequent access to the day-to-day decisions that are critical to fulfilling the mission of the organization, some of the problems may escape their notice.
That’s why it’s so important that they work together, form partnerships and steering committees to stimulate creative solutions to the critical problems that threaten business growth.
A good book on the subject for people who fall into the first category is Cindi Howson’s Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App. It isn’t going to teach anyone how to be a database architect. Rather, it equips readers with the ability to ask the right questions when they have a problem that could be helped if they only had access to the right information at the right time.
In short, it’s a wonderful primer for teaching what goes into preparing, organizing, selling, and facilitating data-fed intelligence centers. However, the implications of the topic may convince you that with creative thinking, business intelligence can be a big part of fulfilling the marketer’s dream of meeting the Web’s ultimate potential.
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The Future of the US Postal Service
Jeff Whang
A couple start-ups aim to deliver the death blow to USPS by utilizing scanners to send digital copies of “real” mail – all with super-security, PIN access, the works to make sure this isn’t just glorified email.
Amazon Kindle 2.0
John Keehler
Watch this video to learn about the second generation of Amazon’s Kindle. It continues to be in high demand and low supply.
How will Twitter Monetize?
Brian Kress
Twitter, the recently-newsworthy micro-blogging service, is famous for, among other things, its lack of revenue model. In all the press hubbub over the past few weeks, the question repeatedly came up, “how does this thing make money?” Twitter turned down Facebook’s $500,000,000 buyout, so they must have something planned. Right?
eBook: Using Social Media for PR
Cam Beck
This PR blogger has compiled a few easy rules of engagement for social media into a free eBook. Approaching people in the wrong way or on the wrong venue can have negative consequences for a brand. Because of this, we should all familiarize ourselves with the rules of engaging with others over these powerful platforms.
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This week, the folks at Advertising Age published a short article noting that 65% of Super Bowl advertisers bought search terms related to their commercials. That’s a great percentage, if you believe that the $3 million you just spent will actually make more people search for your brand.
Thanks to the magic of Google Insights for search, we can tell which Super Bowl advertisers saw a lift in search activity due to their Super Bowl spending. Here are a few of the winners and losers.
Winner: Denny’s
Wow… not sure what else to say. Denny’s clearly took advantage of their $3 million to launch a huge promotion, and from the looks of it, the effort has generated more search interest for “Denny’s” then they have had since 2004, when Google Insights first began recording this data. The spike is so severe, it’s hard to even read the graph. Click here to explore the Google Insights data for yourself.
Winner: Hyundai
In particular, searches for “Hyundai Genesis” were up significantly. The Hyundai Assurance program is also listed as a breakout term, although no data appears in Google Insights for Search.
Winner: Cash4Gold
Cash4Gold seems to have spent their $3 million wisely. With no real historical data prior to their Super Bowl ad, it looks like they managed to actively get consumers interested and searching for “Cash4Gold.”
Loser: Audi
The A6 is a beautiful car, but it looks like all that money they paid Jason Statham is all for not. No apparent lift in buzz for “Audi” on Google, although there appears to be a slight lift for interest in the A6.
Loser: Toyota
Two spots down the drain for Toyota. Neither “Toyota Tundra” nor “Toyota Venza” see any lift in terms of search activity. In fact, for the Venza, it appears that the New York Auto show and other events proved more effective in generating search interest.
Loser: Taco Bell
Despite spending $3 million, no one can remember or is searching for whatever it is Taco Bell is selling.
One of the larger lessons to be had from this search data is that a Super Bowl ad is particularly well suited for new brand or product introductions. At the same time, it’s also important for established brands or products, like Denny’s, to do something new with their Super Bowl ad that generates interest. Otherwise, like many of the advertisers listed above, you may be left with buyers remorse.
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Twitter Guilt
Jeff Whang
Ever feel like you’re too much of an observer and not a participator on various social networks you’re connected to? Or on the flip side, have you ever felt like you’re a little careless giving out (or rather, blasting out, mini-feed style) your personal details on Facebook? Steven Levy of Wired Magazine feels your pain. Read on to find out how he copes.
More on The Power of Free
Brian Kress
In the current economic slowdown, Internet businesses need to prove their worth more than ever, but having spent a decade charging $0.00, how can they live when capital is running thin? Chris Anderson suggests a new business model: Freemium.
The New Liberal Arts?
John Keehler
“The time is ripe to expand and invigorate our notion of the liberal arts. Is design a liberal art now? How about photography? Food?”
Instead of Printing the NY Times, Send Every Subscriber a Kindle!
Mark McDonough
Newspapers aren’t dead… But the delivery mechanism, newsprint, is.
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