The discussion regarding shopping this holiday season has included mixed predictions, with most anticipating a modest improvement over last year’s total spend. The standout, of course is online retail – which both Comscore and Forrester predict will see a marked improvement compared to last year, as well as the rest of 2009. The following is a snapshot of this holiday season, by the numbers. It offers valuable insight to the ways in which various demographics are spending, the trends in spending behavior, and where and how consumers are looking to spend:
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Cyber Monday is generally referred to as the online equivalent of Black Friday, the holiday season’s single busiest shopping day. The notion first came about when Shop.org realized that online sales tended to spike up for many retailers on the Monday after Thanksgiving. However, when the term was first used as a marketing tool, it was little more than that — in fact, to many it was only considered hype. However, over the last five years the term has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy as more and more retailers are beginning to participate in Cyber Monday promotions, with daily sales rivaling the actual largest online shopping day of the season (traditionally mid-December). Interestingly, this may be the year Cyber Monday actually becomes the biggest online shopping day of the holiday season:
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There’s no secret that different types of websites attract different levels and types of advertisers – but the variance is rarely elaborated upon. For instance, Facebook’s top 100 advertisers spend $49,045,000 per month, while the top 100 advertisers of IMDB ($7,217,400), CNET ($3,094,000), and NYTimes($7,128,500) combined spend about 1/3 ($17,740,000) that of Facebook. This of course addresses the levels of ad revenue by popular sites, and is just one of the findings from the most recent Nielsen AdRelevance report. Of special note are AT&T’s spending trends, and the rate at which this brand has invested online, especially in the four sites included in the study.
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According to a recent report by the Nielsen Company, the time an average American spent on social networking and blog sites such as Facebook and Myspace nearly tripled in 2009. This study, which cites the company’s research from August ’09 found that social networking and blogs account for 17% of all time spent on the internet, up from 6% a year earlier.
Perhaps not surprisingly, advertising spending on these sites has also surged. Accordingly, the estimated $108M spent on sites such as Facebook and Myspace signaled a 119% increase from a year before. In terms of total online advertising spending, social networks and blog sites now account for 15% of total online ad spending. This is significant given the global recession.
According to Jon Gibs, VP of Media and Insights at Nielsen:”This growth suggest a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used…while video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth.” This echoes recent findings by Netpop Research, which claims people have replaced time spent on traditional entertainment, with time spent communicating online (contributing to social media, social networking, blogging), and that out of the 105 Million American broadband users, 76% now contribute to social sites.
via NeilsenWire
Yesterday, Sharon Gaudin wrote an article about comScore’s most recent report, which lauded Bing’s 9.3% share of the search market. This report reflected Bing’s position at the end of August, and illustrates a significant increase from 4.8% of market share in early July. Consequently, Google’s share slipped 0.1%, with the search behemoth now holding onto 64.6% of the search market. Also included in this report was notice that Yahoo! has maintained its position of second most-search engine with 19.3%; AOL, however, dropped by 3%. Similar reports by Neilson Co., reported that Bing had reached 10.7% of total market share for search advertising. According to Ezra Gottheil, of Technology Business Research, Bing’s recent success has positioned the new search engine to become, “…the other search engine.”
According to this study, there are two further developments that are expected to increase Bing’s clout:
- Microsoft’s beta release of Bing Visual Search (similar to Google Image Search).
- Yahoo! and Microsoft’s recent alliance, which will see Yahoo! using Bing as its primary search engine.
According to Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, Inc.:
“I think it will be another couple of quarters before we can tell if Bing will be a serious competitor for Google search,” he added. “Google is definitely taking the Bing threat seriously, despite its still-overwhelming market position. Google understands just how important this battle is. More importantly, they know that Microsoft and Yahoo are determined this time to grab a big slice of the market. The resources that Microsoft and Yahoo can devote to the battle, along with their determination, make them a serious threat to Google. And Google knows it.”
While Olds has it right in saying that Bing has not significantly affected Google’s position as the world’s foremost search engine, it is safe to say Bing’s recent success is nothing less than impressive. Further, these new findings are sure to lead to more resources being used by each of the major players, as they compete to further (or retain) their market reach.
via Sharon Gaudin@ computerworld.com
We recently published a graphic that illustrated the contribution of the top 100 AdWords spenders to Google’s total daily and monthly revenue. Today, we decided to use complementary data in order to determine ad volume, by industry, for these top spenders. Perhaps intuitively, ‘Retail ‘constitutes the largest percentage of AdWords ads at 54%, followed by ‘Search Engines’ and “Travel and Accommodation”, which are both at 14% respectively. We have also included a list of the the top 100 advertisers, and figures on industry-wide ad volume:
It’s no secret the recent economic crisis has forced many businesses to rethink their marketing and advertising expenditures. While, not long ago, many were once satisfied with ad reach and exposure, ad executives and business owners have become increasingly concerned with ad efficiency and ways to increase ROI. If you currently spend money advertising online, or are interested in advertising online you should do your research; there many potential pitfalls, and no shortage of ways by which money is spent with little to no conversion impact. For businesses large and small, the following constant the ten most commonly made mistakes in online advertising — and should be avoided at all cost:
Turning Potential Shoppers Away
source
While high-conversion traffic should be a primary goal of advertisers, discouraging all types of traffic is never a good idea. One way advertisers can seriously curtail multiple flows of traffic is by turning potential shoppers off from their brand. Aesthetically unappealing, offensive, or altogether annoying (ie., pop-ups, or forced advertisements) can turn customers off.
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