A recent article featured on MediaPost, cited the outcome of a recent survey (by Burst Media) detailing the projected behavior of holiday shoppers this coming season. The survey revealed, that overall holiday spending will likely be down from last year, but a majority of holiday shoppers will go online to find  the best deals

Out of the 2,300 adults surveyed, less than 15% plan on spending more this holiday season compared to last year while almost a third expect to spend less, and 30% plan to spend the same. Among those surveyed,  85% expect to do their holiday shopping online despite the fact that 63% have concerns about the security of their credit cards.

This survey also concluded that:

• 29.5% of respondents reporting household income (HHI) of less than $35,000 cutting holiday spending,
• 46.3% of households reporting HHI of $35,000-$75,000
• 31.3% of households reporting HHI of $75,000 or more

It seems online window shopping will be popular this year as 57% will be comparing different retailers for the best deals and 55% will compare the features of different brands. This holiday season, will likely be marked by empty malls while plastic-wielding consumers shop from the comfort of their own homes and offices.

Via Jack Loechner @ MediaPost

It’s no secret that Facebook’s population recently surpassed that of the United States, nor that it’s revenue is comparable to the GDP of small country. So, with all the talk about the rapid growth and profitability of the site, we decided to take a closer look at where the money and the people are coming from. For this, we decided to show what Facebook – as a country – would look like on a map. For this sake, ‘GDP’ represents revenue, and the ‘cities’ represent the social networking site’s most popular groups. We have also analyzed Facebook’s demographics, based on age and gender, and provided figures which show where the most Facebook users are coming from:

(click image to enlarge)

Yesterday, NielsenWire featured an article written by Jon Gibs, which presented some powerful ideas about audience-targeting, and discusses the relationship between exposure to, and frequency of advertisements vs. “dwell time”.

Summary:

“Why do advertisers still debate the value of online advertising? Because no precise measure of online audience delivery exists. The missing factor? Who—as in who is viewing your ads, not just how many ads were served. Does online advertising deliver the target audience? With current evaluation methods, it’s difficult to tell. What’s needed is a shift in metrics for audience targeting from impressions to dwell time, increasing the cost per thousand in the process.”

In this article, Gibs defines targeting in the Internet world as, “…any form of online advertising that is not run-of-site, run- of-network or content section-specific.” He argues that, “…even contextual, content section-specific ads are targeted.” But one key difference and great advantage for online advertising, in contrast to traditional media, is that the targeting happens not just in planning, but in the execution. The first step in any online advertising campaign will reflect traditional media. A schedule is created of the sites, portals or ad networks that provide the desired target audience. The difference at this stage is that online media buyers have the option to buy specifically-targeted audience segments, “…based on elements like geo-coded inventory through a reverse IP look-up, modeled segmentation based on cookie or panel data, off-line sales data, registered user data.” And, as this form of targeting gains popularity, the conventional census-based reports will most likely be less useful as the data they show are narrowly focused on raw server counts of impressions and don’t give publishers the ability to reach their promised targets.

Traditionally, impressions have acted as the metric for online advertising – monitoring reach, exposure, frequency – in quantitative terms. Gibs argues that this method of accounting is outdated, and actually contributes to declining CPM rates. One reason being that, since publishers are paid on how many ads are served, many often cram ads on sites. This creates cluttered environments, increasing inventory beyond demand, and consequently reduces the price that can be asked of each ad. To Gibs, This can lead to a vicious cycle with continually more ads being served and, and with the value of individual ad units decreasing as well. For publishers, this cycle can lead to a financial problems as they have few incentives to create a good environment for advertising; rather many attempt to increase monetization by creating more clutter. As a result, the effectiveness of each ad diminishes and in the end, the value of the media itself is reduced.

To quote Gibs, “…because the Internet is the first medium with truly unlimited inventory potential”, a model based on impression counts has lead publishers into a dead end where the only way out is to rely on, “…short-term gains at the expense of the long-term health of the industry.”

So what’s the solution?

Time. To Gibs, “…when it comes to online advertising, time is the x-factor.” Research has shown that an ad is more effective the longer a person is exposed to it. This, suggests that time exposure may in fact be more important than impressions. To Gibs, an effective metric would include measuring both the number of impressions and the dwell time on generated by specific ads. Arguably, this would help to adjust to more competitive rates paid to publishers — especially those sending high quality traffic to advertisers’ sites. Plus, since not all click-thrus are equal, these types of measurements would give advertisers important information about user experience post-click.

Some interesting data representations from “Does Online Advertising Deliver the Target Audience”:

Via Jon Gibs @ Neilsen

I recently came across an interesting article on GetElastic that gives profound insight into the different ways in which men and women perceive and operate within the online marketplace. The article, written by Linda Bestos, cites a recent study by Southern Illinois University on which priorities men and women value. According to this study, the top priority of both men and women is ease of use. However, for men, “web speed” was cited as the second-most important concern, and for women it was, “easy navigation.”

Bestos suggests that what might seem like a minor gender-based difference of opinion could really mean that (while online) men are “hunters” and women are “browsers”. To bolster this claim, she cites the findings of a study by the Wharton School (“Men Buy, Women Shop: The Sexes Have Different Priorities When Walking Down the Aisles”), which revealed that males chose, “…difficulty in finding parking close to the store’s entrance.” as their biggest issue with shopping. Conversely, for women, it was, “…a lack of help when needed.”

According to Bestos the differences to not stop there:

• Women Shop Like Santa, Men Shop Like Scrooge. Women start their holiday shopping earlier than men, usually shop for more gift recipients. Men are more likely to become angry and frustrated by holiday shopping. (I also recall a study a couple years back by BIG Research that claimed men are more likely to grab gifts for themselves, mostly electronics).
• Men prefer coupons, women prefer sales. Perhaps this is because a coupon can be applied to something a guy already knows he wants, the coupon is a predictable discount and an extra incentive to reward himself. A sale applies to a number of products, the “fun” for women is browsing the sale to find great deals – it’s recreation. The reward is finding treasure and feeling like you deserve it because you found such a great bargain.
• Guys think about what can benefit them now, while ladies think about what benefits them long term. Perhaps that’s why women browse sales, they keep their eyes open for things they can wear next year or stash away for a future Christmas gift.
• Men and women view images differently and respond differently to humor. This impacts conversion for advertising, website imagery and messaging. They also prefer different colors (but not all women love pink).
• Men and women may buy the same products, but for different reasons. As Future Now’s Holly Buchanan points out, you can use customer reviews to identify which product attributes and benefits men and women rant or rave about.

So, what does this mean for us?

Thankfully, Bestos does not argue that these differences merit gender-segregated sites, with different design, graphics and copy for men and women. Rather, these differences should noted, and this knowledge implemented, when developing shopping sites that appeal to both men and women. In doing this, a site can significantly increase performance while catering to a demographic that previously was not given as much consideration. Bestos suggests making the most of customer surveys that include men and women – and have a way of telling which is which – but, with the option to disclose one’s gender optional. This, she says, will illustrate the successes and shortcomings of a site, from both points of view.

via Linda Bestos @ GetElastic

According to a recent study by McAfee, 65% of online shoppers who abandon their carts during the check-out process, soon return to complete the transaction, with the largest number of these shoppers returning to buy after one to two days. This study, titled ‘Digital Window Shopping: The Long Journey to Buy’, surveyed 150 million online transactions and found that delays in purchase are far more common than previously imagined. According to this study, the following are primary reasons why some consumers delay purchases after placing merchandise in online shopping carts:

• Brand recognition: Merchants with higher brand recognition enjoy shorter purchase delays than lesser-known brands, in part because of the comfort level of the consumer.
• Demographics/experience: More experienced online shoppers – who are usually but not always younger – are more comfortable with the e-commerce experience – from checkout procedure knowledge to security savviness, and will click “buy” more quickly than a shopper new to e-tailing.
• Competitors: Merchants who sell in a highly competitive marketplace will wait longer to see a sale as consumers shop for similar product by price and convenience. Merchants offering unique or hard-to-find items will experience quicker purchase decisions.
• Novelty: New services or products, especially if they are perceived as too expensive for an impulse purchase, will take longer to close a deal on.
• Price: Higher priced items or high purchase value orders will tend to take longer to complete as shoppers reconsider whether they can really afford them, especially during the recession

This study also found security concerns to play a significant role in whether a shopper abandons their cart, and/or if the customer returns to complete a transaction. This was revealed though monitoring the behavior of two groups of consumers: one group that saw the McAfee trust-mark on sites, and one group that saw sites without the mark. Shoppers which saw the mark were converted to buyers at a rate 11% higher than those which did not. Interestingly, shoppers that waited four or more days to complete a transaction were even more responsive to the mark, which suggests that the more uncertain a consumer might be about making a purchase because of security concerns, the more likely they are to delay. A similar study by Paypal and comScore found that 21% of buyers security concerns’ played a major role in their online purchasing.

via MarketingCharts

Yesterday, AdAge published an interesting article about living in a ‘post-click world’, which drew from a recent study conducted by ComScore. This study (titled, Natural Born Clickers), found that the number of people who clicked through display ads dropped 50% in less than two years, and, that 8% of Internet users account for 85% of all clicks. Because click-through rates do not illustrate brand awareness and engagement, these findings beg the question: “how useful is CTR in measuring display effectiveness?”

According to author Kunur Patel, measuring display solely through CTR leads to an incomplete representation of their effectiveness. According to individual case studies included in the same report, the effectiveness of display ads can lift a brand’s direct site traffic and also lead to future online and off-line sales. Effectively, not all conversions that were initiated because of, or facilitated by, a display ad can be tracked simply through measuring clicks. For those brands included in the study, the experience was that, “…consumers exposed to a display ad were 65% more likely to visit the advertiser’s site than users who never saw the ad. Even at four weeks, people exposed to displays ads are 45% more likely to visit the brand’s site,” according to Patel.

This sentiment is echoed by Joshua Spainer of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, who claims that, “…click has always been of dubious value…but clicks are easy to understand and easy to measure.” This research has also led to the finding that display leads to more brand-related search queries, and that when consumers are exposed to paid search and display ads, the likelihood of purchase increases exponentially. According to Steve Kerho of Organic, advertisers should not only be concerned with CTR of ads, but whether an ad will lead to people coming back to a client’s website days later. To Kerho, advertisements are about building awareness and, “…carving out space in someone’s mind.” It’s safe to say that CTRs do not tell the whole story for display, and therefore there needs to be a new paradigm with regard to ad spending.

The following are Patel’s 5 Tips (streamlined) for Living in a Post Click World:

1. Identify how display can fit into a larger marketing plan, and do not get hung up on tracking the ‘success’ of display ads independently from campaigns in other media.
2. Find ways to build a complementary ad campaign that combines display and search advertising.
3. Find ways to measure the success of display campaigns through brand-awareness studies, purchase-intent lifts and engagement rates rather than by click-through rates.
4. Establish a ‘view-through rate’ – find out “how many people actually end up where you wanted them to? How much time are they spending?” These are more important questions than how they got there.
5. Creative counts. If you want to measure display effectiveness through CTR, use strong calls to action. Or find other ways to measure engagement time, and develop richer-media experiences.

Via Kunur Patel @ AdAge