MediaPost Publications - Study: Online Video Influences IT Purchases - 11/14/2006
Study: Online Video Influences IT Purchases
by Wendy Davis, Tuesday, Nov 14, 2006 6:00 AM ET
A new study by Universal McCann and KnowledgeStorm suggests emarketers should consider ads in online video, and social networks.
Researchers surveyed over 5,300 business and IT professionals. Nearly all respondents said they viewed online video sites.
63% of respondents said they view online videos at least once a week, another 27% view videos once month.
82% of people share video at least monthly (44% do so once a month, 32% weekly, and 6% daily). A majority said online video had an impact on work-related IT purchase decisions.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
In Online Spin Today,
Seana Mulcahy notes:
The latest Future Spending Index from consultants Retail Forward Inc. just came out, predicting that shoppers will increase their spending in October. The Future Spending Index stands at 99.1 in October, up from 92.7 in September. There are some critical factors that seem to be boosting consumer confidence: gas prices finally dropping, the stock market hitting new records and job openings.
and
52 percent of consumers plan to shop online. These consumers plan to spend about the same as they did last holiday season. Up Market consumers (those with incomes of $75,000+) are predicted to spend 20 percent more online, while Down Market consumers ( Incomes less than $22,500) say they don't shop online.
Seana Mulcahy notes:
The latest Future Spending Index from consultants Retail Forward Inc. just came out, predicting that shoppers will increase their spending in October. The Future Spending Index stands at 99.1 in October, up from 92.7 in September. There are some critical factors that seem to be boosting consumer confidence: gas prices finally dropping, the stock market hitting new records and job openings.
and
52 percent of consumers plan to shop online. These consumers plan to spend about the same as they did last holiday season. Up Market consumers (those with incomes of $75,000+) are predicted to spend 20 percent more online, while Down Market consumers ( Incomes less than $22,500) say they don't shop online.
A holiday shopping forecast by The Performics 50 states that fourth quarter 2006 online sales will eclipse those of last year by 53 percent. This will be about equal to the total sales of both Q1 and Q2 2006, combined. The company also noted that competition for higher-priced, more popular keywords in sponsored search engine advertising has increased significantly.
Monday, October 02, 2006
E-Mail Marketing Getting High Click, Open, and Conversion Relative to Cost
WebSurveyor Corp.'s August survey reveals that web merchants plan to increase e-mail marketing spending efforts. 18.4% expect to grow their opt-in lists by more than 50% within the next year, while another 25.1% will increase their lists by 16% to 50%.
Reported by Mark Brohan in a recent article, he says that 73% of chain retailers, catalogers, virtual merchants and consumer brand manufacturers taking part in the monthly survey on e-mail marketing, spend 5% of their marketing budget or less on e-mail marketing, yet just over half of respondents, 50.6%, report that 6% or more of their sales come from e-mail marketing, with 25% saying the proportion is over 11%.
63.8% of retailers conduct up to three e-mail campaigns each month and another 25.2% conduct between four and eight campaigns, says the report. 62.8% also indicate that they've increased the frequency of e-mail campaigns in the past year.
E-mail marketing consultants consider an open rate of about 20% and a click-through rate of 4% to 5% to be a highly effective e-mail campaign.
- 26.5% of participants in the survey report open rates of 20% or more (11.2% reported 20% to 25% while 15.3% said more than 25%)
- 11.8% report open rates of 16% to 19%
- 14.6% report e-mail open rates of less than 5%
- 6.2% say open rates of 1% or less.
Click-through and Conversion averages are growing:
- 17% report e-mail click-through rates of 16% or more
- 28.9% report click-through rates of 6% to 15%.
- 20.2% of respondents report e-mail sales conversion rates of 1% to 2%
- 26.5% with conversion averages of between 2.1% and 4%
- 14% with conversion rates of between 4.1%
- 10%, and 3.2% with sales conversion averages greater than 10%
Compared to paid search, he says, which can absorb up to 50% of a big retailer's total annual online marketing budget, e-mail marketing remains relatively inexpensive.
- 41.6% of all retailers taking part in the research spend less than 1% of their total annual marketing budgets on e-mail. That compares with
- 31.3 % spend between 1% and 5%
- 13.8% commit 6% to 10%
- 5.6% spend from 11% to 15%
- 3.8% from 16% to 25%
- 4.1% with e-mail budgets that account for 25% of their overall marketing budgets
WebSurveyor Corp.'s August survey reveals that web merchants plan to increase e-mail marketing spending efforts. 18.4% expect to grow their opt-in lists by more than 50% within the next year, while another 25.1% will increase their lists by 16% to 50%.
Reported by Mark Brohan in a recent article, he says that 73% of chain retailers, catalogers, virtual merchants and consumer brand manufacturers taking part in the monthly survey on e-mail marketing, spend 5% of their marketing budget or less on e-mail marketing, yet just over half of respondents, 50.6%, report that 6% or more of their sales come from e-mail marketing, with 25% saying the proportion is over 11%.
63.8% of retailers conduct up to three e-mail campaigns each month and another 25.2% conduct between four and eight campaigns, says the report. 62.8% also indicate that they've increased the frequency of e-mail campaigns in the past year.
E-mail marketing consultants consider an open rate of about 20% and a click-through rate of 4% to 5% to be a highly effective e-mail campaign.
- 26.5% of participants in the survey report open rates of 20% or more (11.2% reported 20% to 25% while 15.3% said more than 25%)
- 11.8% report open rates of 16% to 19%
- 14.6% report e-mail open rates of less than 5%
- 6.2% say open rates of 1% or less.
Click-through and Conversion averages are growing:
- 17% report e-mail click-through rates of 16% or more
- 28.9% report click-through rates of 6% to 15%.
- 20.2% of respondents report e-mail sales conversion rates of 1% to 2%
- 26.5% with conversion averages of between 2.1% and 4%
- 14% with conversion rates of between 4.1%
- 10%, and 3.2% with sales conversion averages greater than 10%
Compared to paid search, he says, which can absorb up to 50% of a big retailer's total annual online marketing budget, e-mail marketing remains relatively inexpensive.
- 41.6% of all retailers taking part in the research spend less than 1% of their total annual marketing budgets on e-mail. That compares with
- 31.3 % spend between 1% and 5%
- 13.8% commit 6% to 10%
- 5.6% spend from 11% to 15%
- 3.8% from 16% to 25%
- 4.1% with e-mail budgets that account for 25% of their overall marketing budgets
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Google Removing Top Adsense Ads Based on Searchers Behavior
"A WebmasterWorld thread reports that the top blue AdWords ads have been removed from the Google search results page. But in fact, it seems to be a user by user setting. Some users will see the top blue ads and some users will not. What does it depend on? It seems it is based on your ad clicking behavior."
Bill: Refresh a search a few times and Google will stop displaying ads at the top of the results.
This is good news for SEOs, providing more search results above the fold to researchers in the early buying cycle who don't usually click on ads.
"A WebmasterWorld thread reports that the top blue AdWords ads have been removed from the Google search results page. But in fact, it seems to be a user by user setting. Some users will see the top blue ads and some users will not. What does it depend on? It seems it is based on your ad clicking behavior."
Bill: Refresh a search a few times and Google will stop displaying ads at the top of the results.
This is good news for SEOs, providing more search results above the fold to researchers in the early buying cycle who don't usually click on ads.
Supplemental Results at Goggle just got way fresher!
Results are now much fresher, and thanks to Rusty Brick I found a cool way to check results.
Supplemental results are stored in a separate index than main results, and different spiders are used to index them. I expect they aren't spidered as regularly and are considered less unique/valuable pages to the searchers than the main index results from the same site. If your key message content is on supplemental pages, non-supplemental pages will dominate in the search results. Basically if your page is in the supplemental index, Google has decided it's content is not unique and there is better information out there. A view Supplemental information link is displayed after all search results and I'm assuming is rarely (.0001%) ever used.
To see all site supplemental results do a search in Google for www.url.com/ *** (include space).
Example:
Search "site:industry.siemens.com/ ***, envirex" and you'll see all the pages/files in the supplemental index with the word "envirex" on it. You can even add a negative or positive variable example "+.swf".
To see the number of supplemental results rolling out in google data centers, use the main URL (The tool adds the space and ***, Note it doesn't work for sites having more than 1000 pages) automatically using this tool http://oy-oy.eu/google/supplemental/ unfortunately It doesn't work with variables.
Results are now much fresher, and thanks to Rusty Brick I found a cool way to check results.
Supplemental results are stored in a separate index than main results, and different spiders are used to index them. I expect they aren't spidered as regularly and are considered less unique/valuable pages to the searchers than the main index results from the same site. If your key message content is on supplemental pages, non-supplemental pages will dominate in the search results. Basically if your page is in the supplemental index, Google has decided it's content is not unique and there is better information out there. A view Supplemental information link is displayed after all search results and I'm assuming is rarely (.0001%) ever used.
To see all site supplemental results do a search in Google for www.url.com/ *** (include space).
Example:
Search "site:industry.siemens.com/ ***, envirex" and you'll see all the pages/files in the supplemental index with the word "envirex" on it. You can even add a negative or positive variable example "+.swf".
To see the number of supplemental results rolling out in google data centers, use the main URL (The tool adds the space and ***, Note it doesn't work for sites having more than 1000 pages) automatically using this tool http://oy-oy.eu/google/supplemental/ unfortunately It doesn't work with variables.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Industry Benchmark Reveals Site Search Impacts One Third of All Online Sales for Leading Retailers
Coremetrics LIVEmark Index Indicates Site Search Users Purchase 86% More Often and Spend 11% More
"San Mateo, California - April 20, 2005 - On-site search engines are used by consumers in more than one third of all visits that result in a purchase, according to LIVEmark Index data released today by Coremetrics, the leading provider of hosted Web analytics and precision marketing solutions. Coremetrics LIVEmark Index data collected during the second week of April also showed that site search users purchase 86% more often and have an 11% higher average order size than the typical site visitor."
Note: The LIVEmark Index includes over 110 leading web leading web retailers in seven sub-categories: Apparel & Accessories, Specialty Retail, Sports and Outdoor, Home, Garden, General Merchandisers, and Books/Music/Video.
Coremetrics LIVEmark Index Indicates Site Search Users Purchase 86% More Often and Spend 11% More
"San Mateo, California - April 20, 2005 - On-site search engines are used by consumers in more than one third of all visits that result in a purchase, according to LIVEmark Index data released today by Coremetrics, the leading provider of hosted Web analytics and precision marketing solutions. Coremetrics LIVEmark Index data collected during the second week of April also showed that site search users purchase 86% more often and have an 11% higher average order size than the typical site visitor."
Note: The LIVEmark Index includes over 110 leading web leading web retailers in seven sub-categories: Apparel & Accessories, Specialty Retail, Sports and Outdoor, Home, Garden, General Merchandisers, and Books/Music/Video.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Time of Day Impacts PPC Clickthroughs
September 06, 2006
By
Marketing Experiments examines significant differences in clickthrough rates depending on the time of day.
When one sets the parameters for a particular Google AdWords campaign, it is all too easy to ignore the impact of the time of day at which your ads are shown.
Recently we decided to go through a very large amount of AdWords data to try to determine at which time of day we would get the highest clickthrough rate.
First, here is how we broke down the different times of day. We segmented the day into six segments, or "zones," of four hours each.
We then went through our data to determine, across four different research partners, whether the conversion rates achieved varied significantly according to the time of day.
As you look at this data, keep in mind that we are measuring only clickthrough rates across six different periods of time.
There are other factors to consider before making changes to your campaigns:
- While conversion rates for one particular campaign may be high early in the day, the volume of traffic may be considerably higher later in the day.
- Your clickthough rate may also impact your average cost per click, as Google adjusts your costs according to clickthrough rates at different times of day.
In other words, be sure to take all factors into consideration as you refine your campaign.
With regard to clickthrough rates at different times of day, here is what we found out:
There are significant differences in clickthrough rates depending on the time of day.
As mentioned, this is just one element to consider when fine-tuning your campaign. But when you see a change as high as 61.15 percent between different "zones," it is a strong indicator that the time of day at which you show you ads is a factor you need to take seriously.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Buying For Others Changes Key Word Search Criteria
Research Brief
"According to the Q1 Search Trend Report recently released by Performics, a division of DoubleClick, sales growth between Q1 2005 and Q1 2006 markedly outpaced campaign growth, While campaign size and cost each grew nearly 40 percent, year-over-year sales surged more that 70 percent. In fact, the return on investment realized by search advertisers in March was stronger than it had been at any time in the previous 15 months."
"The report found that consumers in Q1 2006 versus Q4 2005 tended to click on more specific keywords rather than generic category terms, which garner higher costs per click. The percentage of keywords priced above $1.00 fell from seven to five percent from the end of Q4 to the end of Q1, while the percentage of total clicks on these keywords dropped more during the same time period.
"Shoppers in the fourth quarter were buying for others... (but) weren't necessarily sure what," said Frankel. "However, in the first quarter, when shoppers were buying for themselves, they had likely already narrowed down the options, and therefore were searching with more specific terms."
Bill - This has a lot of implications for 4th quarter consumer search terms like "present for dad" etc and be a great cheap buy.
Research Brief
"According to the Q1 Search Trend Report recently released by Performics, a division of DoubleClick, sales growth between Q1 2005 and Q1 2006 markedly outpaced campaign growth, While campaign size and cost each grew nearly 40 percent, year-over-year sales surged more that 70 percent. In fact, the return on investment realized by search advertisers in March was stronger than it had been at any time in the previous 15 months."
"The report found that consumers in Q1 2006 versus Q4 2005 tended to click on more specific keywords rather than generic category terms, which garner higher costs per click. The percentage of keywords priced above $1.00 fell from seven to five percent from the end of Q4 to the end of Q1, while the percentage of total clicks on these keywords dropped more during the same time period.
"Shoppers in the fourth quarter were buying for others... (but) weren't necessarily sure what," said Frankel. "However, in the first quarter, when shoppers were buying for themselves, they had likely already narrowed down the options, and therefore were searching with more specific terms."
Bill - This has a lot of implications for 4th quarter consumer search terms like "present for dad" etc and be a great cheap buy.
Shoppers Check It Out Online, Then Go To The Store
"According to BIGresearch's June Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, when asked how often they research products online before buying them in person or in a store, 87% of nearly 7,500 respondents said they did so occasionally to regularly.
Of those who said they researched products online before buying them in the store:
* 58% made less than $50K per year
* 51% were female
* 59% were between the ages of 25 and 54
In both income groups, the top search engine used for product research was Google.com by a large margin, but WalMart.com made a surprising appearance in the top 5 websites used first among those who did their comparative shopping online before buying in the store."
"According to BIGresearch's June Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, when asked how often they research products online before buying them in person or in a store, 87% of nearly 7,500 respondents said they did so occasionally to regularly.
Of those who said they researched products online before buying them in the store:
* 58% made less than $50K per year
* 51% were female
* 59% were between the ages of 25 and 54
In both income groups, the top search engine used for product research was Google.com by a large margin, but WalMart.com made a surprising appearance in the top 5 websites used first among those who did their comparative shopping online before buying in the store."
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
How Podcasts Impact B2B Purchase Decisions
Nice set of stats on b2b podcasting..
"Podcasts are a great way to share your thought leading content which is why I found this report by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann very compelling. They just announced the results of a joint research study on the emerging role of new media, particularly podcasts, on B2B technology purchase decisions. "
Nice set of stats on b2b podcasting..
"Podcasts are a great way to share your thought leading content which is why I found this report by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann very compelling. They just announced the results of a joint research study on the emerging role of new media, particularly podcasts, on B2B technology purchase decisions. "
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