Friday, December 30, 2005

Online Shopping Surges - 12/30/2005
comScore Networks reported: "the total online shopping revenues for the period Nov. 1 through Dec. 25 totaled $18.11 billion--25 percent more than last year. "

Friday, December 23, 2005

Hitwise: Google Dominates Search - 12/23/2005

SEARCH GIANT GOOGLE CONTINUES TO dominate all other search engines and directories sites, according to new data by research company Hitwise. Of the top 15 search engines and directories, Google's market share last month came to around 42 percent, with an average session time of more than 12 minutes. Google's next closest competitor, Yahoo!, garnered a market share of just 17 percent--although average session time, at more than 11 minutes, was close to Google's. MSN Search came in third, with around 14 percent market share and an average session time of almost seven minutes.
DoubleClick: Consumers Growing Clever, Comfortable With E-Mail

"New consumer data shows that e-mail marketing works--quite well, in fact. Seventy-eight percent of respondents to DoubleClick's sixth annual consumer survey, "E-mail Solutions," said they've made a purchase as a result of receiving an e-mail, 59 percent said they've redeemed an e-mail coupon in a store, and nearly one-third said they've clicked on an e-mail and made an immediate purchase. Users are now comfortable with e-mail; the report says they understand and accept the fact that marketers collect and use data to send them relevant e-mails. However, they are very worried about viruses, spyware and phishing scams: 75 percent fear viruses, 67 percent worry about identity theft, 66 percent are concerned about spyware, and 61 percent fear scams. For the report, DoubleClick polled one thousand e-mail users between May and June, working with ROI Research and Greenfield Online's panel of 900,000 U.S. households."

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

MediaPost Publications - Yahoo! Search Tells Marketers To Tighten Ads - 12/20/2005

Click above to read an article, but the details of my email read:

"How this change impacts your listings:
* Yahoo! will display shorter descriptions for SponsoredSearch listings
* You don't have to make any changes to your listings; they'llbe automatically shortened for you when displayed on Yahoo!
* If you'd like to optimize your listings for Yahoo!, beginyour description with one short sentence that includes yourkeyword and focuses on your most important information inthe first 70 characters
* Over time, we will fine tune the exact character count thatwe believe works best for advertisers and search users
* Most of our partners, including MSN, CNN, ESPN and Infospace,will still display longer descriptions for your SponsoredSearch listings, though the exact length may vary frompartner to partner"

This really makes it easier for us becase Yahoo has decided to copy the Adwords style. No more separate ad creation! :) Life is good!
According to a Holiday eSpending report, online shoppers spent $18.6 billion (excluding travel), from November 05 through Dec. 9, 2005. That is up almost 16 percent from last year.

And accoring to an online survey of 1000 adults around 19 percent of adult shoppers indicated they haven't started their holiday shopping.

I can't wait to see the December numbers, but I don't think online spending numbers will compare unless there is a really a Santa that can deliver by Christmas Eve. :)

Happy Holidays!

Bill

Wednesday, December 14, 2005



Global Spec Confirms what we all know is true.

From the GlobalSpec's 2005 seminar series, "Leads to Sales: Building the Bridge," they presented facts about a supplier's technical audience, including: more than 70% of engineers and technical professionals state their preferred way to contact suppliers is through e-mail or supplier Web sites.
Pheedo Study: Stand-Alone RSS Ads See Higher Click-Throughs - 12/14/2005
"CONSUMERS USING RSS READERS ARE more likely to click on ads presented as stand-alone posts than on ads within posts--7.99 percent to 0.85 percent--according to research conducted this fall by RSS company Pheedo and set for release today. "

The report also notes readership rises at the beginning of the week--peaks on Wednesday then declines. Avg weekend readership is 70 percent lower than weekdays. Bloglines is also the RSS reader of choice.
Search Use Continues To Grow:
"by Gavin O'Malley, Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005 6:00 AM EST

WEB USERS CONDUCTED MORE THAN 5.1 billion search queries in October--marking a 15 percent increase from June, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings report released Tuesday.

Google maintained its leadership position, garnering 2.4 billion search requests, or almost half--48 percent--of all searches. Yahoo! accounted for 21.8 percent of all searches, followed by Microsoft's MSN, which was responsible for 11.3 percent of search activity.
Time Warner's AOL was in fourth place, with 358,667 searches, or 7.2 percent of search activity. Currently, Google powers AOL's search engine and receives revenue from the company. But, with Time Warner considering a range of options for AOL--ranging from spinning off the company to doing some sort of joint venture with either Google or Microsoft--that deal might not continue for long.

If Microsoft starts powering AOL's search engine, and AOL continues to account for the same proportion of search activity as at present, MSN would have nearly the same traffic as Yahoo!, the current second-place holder.

Nielsen//NetRatings also reported that search activity on InterActiveCorp's Ask Jeeves almost doubled--growing from 75.81 million searches in June to 133.93 million searches in October--still, the engine accounted for just 2.6 percent of all searches.

Additionally, consumers searched for images 328.28 million times in October--a 36.6 percent jump from June, reported Nielsen. Local searches grew by 19.2 percent in that time. "

Friday, December 09, 2005

Search Execs: Big Brands Muscling Out Small Players - 12/09/2005

"THE INCREASING POPULARITY OF SEARCH engine marketing for branding purposes has brought well-monied advertisers into the game, while crowding out smaller advertisers, panelists said Thursday at an SG Cowen and Co. Internet conference.
Describing the expenditures as 'irrational,' Panelist Bill Wise, CEO of Did-It.com, said that branding-focused advertisers are willing to spend whatever it takes to get their keywords listed. 'Big companies will spend a lot of money to get that market share,' he said. "

Bill: This is not a bad strategy, ranking number one gives revelance (in a searchers mind). Perception is reality. Little guys can compete cheaply in the easy to enter PPC space and look like big guys. Can big advertisers could push out the little guys out and then return to lower PPC pricing (Due to less competition) to achieve the same position?

Friday, December 02, 2005

Online Video Advertising to See Tremendous Growth: Report

"November 30, 2005 -- Is the explosive growth of Internet video advertising bad news for television advertising? Not really.

"Television and the Internet will find ways to complement each other, winner-take-all is not the name of the game," says David Hallerman, Senior Analyst at eMarketer and author of the Online Video Advertising report. "Video represents common ground for the two media, not a field of battle."

EMarketer estimates that spending for Internet video advertising in the US will nearly triple in 2007 to $640 million from this year's $225 million. By the end of the decade, advertisers will spend at least $1.5 billion on video ads online. One of the main drivers of online video advertising is broadband adoption in the home.

According to eMarketer, the number of US broadband households will more than double from 2004 (at 34.3 million) to 2008 (at 69.4 million).

The key barrier was passed earlier this year, when more than half of US online households connected via high-speed access. Advertisers seeking a mass audience can now look online. By early 2008 more than half of all households - online or not - will log-on via broadband. "
comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings
By Danny Sullivan, Editor
August 23, 2005

"The comScore Media Metrix qSearch service measures search-specific traffic on the internet. qSearch data is gathered by monitoring the web activities of 1.5 million English-speakers worldwide (1 million in the United States) via proxy metering."

Here's the results -

"Search Provider Percent Of Edit Listings Percent Of Paid Listings
Google 46.4% 52.5%
Yahoo 30.5% 46.0%
MSN 15.5% 0.0%
Ask 6.1% 0.0%
Other/Mix 1.5% 1.5%

Here's a breakdown on how Search Engine Watch has compiled these figures from those in the chart above.
Google: Editorial is combined share of searches at Google and AOL, while paid includes searches at Ask. Ask does have its own self-serve paid listings program, but this was not active in July 2005.

Yahoo: Editorial is share of searches at Yahoo, while paid includes searches at MSN. MSN does have a relatively small paid listing program of its own, one due to greatly expand toward the end of 2005.

MSN: Editorial is share of searches at MSN, which uses its own technology. Paid is covered by Yahoo, as explained above.

Ask: Editorial is share of searches at Ask. Note that some at My Web Search, other search engines beyond Ask are offered. At Excite, meta search results that include Google and others are shown. There's no way to separate out non-Ask powered results from the Ask figure provided by comScore.

Other: Share of searches from other sites that use their own technology or editorial processes. May include also some share that belongs to the other provider categories already named. However, there isn't enough detail to properly break out these shares. "