Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Friday, March 14th, 2008 |
by Sarah Mahoney | Source: Online Marketing Daily
JUST AS MARKETERS HAVE BECOME used to building paid-search into their media plans, a new study from a leading search agency finds that it’s time for the next wave: Making bigger investments in “natural” searches.
“In most cases, natural and paid search campaigns perform better together than they do separately,” reports Oneupweb, an integrated online marketing company based in Traverse City, Mich. “Greater awareness of a Web site created by a paid ad can lead to more natural traffic. In similar fashion, people are logically more likely to click on a paid promotional ad of marketers they recognize, such as those they’ve encountered during a natural search.”
A key reason that search strategies are evolving, says Tim Kauffold, Oneupweb’s director of business development, is (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 |
[Big Idea] You don’t even need to buy magazines to learn what’s hot, stylish, or what you & your customers like. This research is free! Find what you like and adapt it to your store. ##
Tanya Irwin | Source: Online Media Daily
The people at Time Inc. have launched MyHomeIdeas.com, a home and garden portal featuring original content, plus material from magazines including Cottage Living, Coastal Living, Southern Living, Southern Accents and Sunset as well as Oxmoor House books.
The portal includes 60 in-house staffers with expertise in design, décor, architecture and landscaping who share their knowledge on the site. MyHomeIdeas.com offers decorating basics, interior design trends, how-to videos, step-by-step instructions for home and gardening projects, virtual tours, new products, “before and after” images, resources, polls and blogs.
Posted in Internet, Niche Marketing, Product | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 |
[Big Idea] If you intend to use pay-per-click advertising (those Google “Sponsored Results”) you need to read up on the recent economy’s effects on PPC ads, to minimize your losses. It’s really easy to lose a ton of money on PPC ads that make you no sales. ##
by Tameka Kee | Source: Online Media Daily
FRESH OFF A WEEK OF doubts about the resilience of Google’s paid and natural search value proposition, one of the giant’s top engineering brass aimed to still the hearts of financial types feeling antsy over declining ad clicks and a slumping economy.
“If an advertiser knows that they’ll make five dollars by spending one dollar, the chance is high that they’ll spend it,” said Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering & research at Google. “We’ve stressed measurability and providing a clear return on investment since we started our advertising business–and the growth of paid search shows that advertisers have bought into that. That’s what will help us in times like these.” (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 |
[Big Idea] … so don’t bust your back trying to be all over them. Not only do people spend less time there, but it’s been documented time & again that social media traffic has a much lower conversion rate (they buy less!) than traffic from other sources. ##
by Mark Walsh | Source: Online Media Daily
ADDING A NEW CATEGORY TO its index of Internet activity, the Online Publishers Association found that community sites–including social networks such as Facebook and MySpace–account for only 7.5% of time spent online.
That puts community sites ahead of search (5%), but well below content (42.7%), communications (28.7%), and commerce sites (16.1%) in time spent. The OPA defines the community category as Web sites and applications that combine user-generated content with communications to foster relationships among their members.
“The addition of Community reflects the increasing popularity of sites such as MySpace and Facebook that don’t clearly fit into a single existing (Internet Activity Index) category, said OPA President Pam Horan. Even so, adding social networking sites to the mix hardly displaced content as king when it comes to monopolizing users’ time online.
Separately, Web measurement firm HitWise estimates that social networking sites and other online forums, such as Craigslist, accounted for 9.3% of U.S. Internet traffic in February. Social networks alone made up almost 6% of traffic.
While still small, advertising on social sites is growing rapidly. In its recently released 2008 Digital Outlook Report, Avenue A|Razorfish identified entertainment and community sites as the two fastest-growing ad categories last year, with the latter growing more than 50% to $55 million.
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Statistics | No Comments »
Monday, February 25th, 2008 |
[Our Thoughts] Be careful… remember, whatever you put on Facebook, is saved forever, and cannot be removed. Heaven only knows what similar type issues will arise with other sites you don’t 100% control. (And the ONLY website you 100% control is your own!) ##
by Tameka Kee | Source: Online Media Daily
EMPLOYERS SEE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES as one of the most promising channels for finding new hires, and 61% anticipate spending more of their recruitment budgets on sites like Facebook this year, according to a new report from Classified Intelligence, LLC.
Business networking sites like LinkedIn and employee referral programs followed closely behind, with 55% of employers saying they will allocate more dollars to them in 2008–while roughly the same amount said that they plan to spend less on print. (more…)
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Media Trends | No Comments »
Monday, February 25th, 2008 |
[Our Thoughts] Our including this article today is not political. We know you’re dying to believe it is. We know you’re dying to imprint your own prejudices about the media onto this report. Please, resist the urge to judge this right out of the box. Instead, visit each of the sites yourself, and evaluate your reactions to what you find. Not to the political content, but to the graphic design and how the candidate’s language, photos and layout tugs on your emotions. All these people are doing is marketing to you. So, use them to your advantage. Study them and identify what it is that speaks to you. Then implement those successful bits into your own website. ##
Source: Online Media Daily
MORE THAN HALF OF THOSE who visited the Web sites of Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul had a more favorable view of the presidential candidates after viewing their sites.
By contrast, only 36% thought better of Hillary Clinton based on her campaign site, according to a study by marketing research firm RelevantView. Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain finished in between, with 44% improving their view of him after visiting his site.
The results were based on a February survey of 780 people self-identified as Democrats, Republicans or Independents and RelevantView’s online behavioral tracking technology. Respondents were asked about candidates’ stands on the Iraq war, health care, taxes and spending, and immigration before and after visiting their sites.
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Lessons in Marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 |
[Big Idea] If your target marker is younger adults (ages 18-34), consider advertising on your local newspapers’ websites. ##
by Erik Sass | Source: Media Daily News
NEWSPAPER WEB SITES ARE REACHING elusive younger readers, a new analysis by Scarborough Research indicates–giving a much-needed boost to the ailing newspaper business. The growth in online audiences is offsetting losses in print readership, at least somewhat.
The Scarborough survey tracked 88 newspapers in the top 50 local markets from August 2004 to March 2007. It found that local newspaper audience weekly “coverage” or penetration grew 14%, from 6.4% of the total adult population in the year ending September 2005 to 7.3% in the year ending March 2007. (more…)
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 |
[Karin's Take] The message on this is simple: if you don’t have a website and aren’t helping your customers online, you’re missing the boat. Customers are now more satisfied buying online than offline. Give them what they like. ##
BY GRETA GUEST | Source: Detroit Free Press
Online retailers are delivering the goods and better customer service than traditional stores, according to a University of Michigan study expected to be released today.
Advertisement
Customer satisfaction with online retail was even with last year at 83 points on a 100-point scale, but surpassed brick-and-mortar retailers by 12%, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
“Against a backdrop of weakening consumer spending and talk about recession, e-commerce will continue to be a bright spot for multichannel companies,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results in Ann Arbor, which partnered with U-M’s Ross School of Business on the survey.
Satisfaction with the online marketplace has risen by 8.5% since 2000, according to the index.
At the same time, online retail has grown into a $136.4-billion industry, up from $32.6 billion in 2001, according to U.S. Census Department data.
Overall customer satisfaction with goods and services purchased declined in the fourth quarter and that combined with falling home prices, rising energy prices, tighter credit and higher unemployment may mean even more challenges ahead for consumer spending growth, said Claes Fornell, head of the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
“In such an environment, customer satisfaction becomes even more important because satisfied buyers tend to reduce seller’s cash flow volatility,” Fornell said.
Customer satisfaction with the offline retail sector…
Read the full story at the Detroit Free Press >>
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Statistics | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 |
By Jeremy Mullman | Source: Advertising Age
Shrinking newspapers forced to make cuts are increasingly regarding their stand-alone business sections as expendable.
The Denver Post — which folded its business section into other sections on every day but Sunday — this month became at least the eighth daily to cut its stand-alone daily business section since early 2007. The Orange County Register made a similar move just a week earlier.
While the cuts are a source of much consternation among business journalists — and also to public-relations executives at small local firms and agencies that may have trouble securing news coverage without them — analysts, advertisers and publishers say that the stand-alone sections were relatively poor sources of ad revenue that tended to be overmatched by national and online competition on anything beyond the most hyperlocal stories.
Said veteran newspaper-industry analyst Ed Atorino, of Benchmark Capital: “You do get a story once in awhile about a local storeowner or a closing or something, which you might miss, but most of what’s in those sections is rip and read [wireservice copy],” he said. “With all the business news on TV and the internet, the consumer is getting it someplace else.”
Read the full story at Advertising Age >>
Posted in Bookkeeping, Internet, Media Trends | No Comments »
Friday, February 15th, 2008 |
[Karin's Take] “Web 2.0″ and “Social Networking” have become huge catch-phrases and in-crowd type marketing over the past 18 months. Yet, is it such a great idea? has been slow to play out. There have been plenty of adopters to Facebook (at least as evidenced by frequent referrals to the service on news broadcasts) but now we are finally seeing the Dark Side of Facebook… do you really want to subject yourself to this kind of headache? Will it be a headache for you? Think carefully before jumping in. Your short-term marketing gain today could be a long-term black mark tomorrow. ##
by George Simpson | Source: Online Media Daily
MULTIBILLIONAIRE BILL GATES, WHOSE COMPANY invested $240 million in Facebook just last year, has already abandoned his Facebook account. A Microsoft spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Gates hasn’t deleted it, but that he has stopped using it because he was inundated with friend requests. More likely, he tried to delete it and found out it is nearly impossible to do so. Even if you deactivate your account, according to The New York Times, Facebook still keeps a copy of all the information you ever posted. And, it’s still possible to contact people through deleted Facebook pages.
Not to pile on, but according to MSNBC, Facebook-types are turned off by too much advertising on social-networking sites–one reason the amount of time the average person spends on a social-networking site has dropped 14% over the last four months, according to comScore.
Did we just hear the death-knell of Web 2.0? Probably not, but I think we are seeing a divide between those who have a life and those who invent a life online. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Legal, Lessons in Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, February 14th, 2008 |
by Nina M. Lentini | Source: 02/12/08 Marketing Daily
- 41% report that their online spending has increased during this period
- 63% are spending time online looking for special discounts, coupons and offers from their favorite brands and products
- 74.2% would sign up for one-off coupons and discounts for their preferred brands and products (more…)
Posted in Internet, Media Trends, Niche Marketing, Statistics | No Comments »
Thursday, February 14th, 2008 |
by Erik Sass | Source: Online Media Daily
PHISHING AND SPAM INCREASED 100% in 2007 compared to 2006, according to Des Cahill, the CEO of Habeas, speaking on the second day of the Email Evolution conference hosted by the Direct Marketing Association in San Diego. Understandably, this means consumers are also becoming more vigilant.
For example, a survey of a representative group of 2,300 U.S. Internet users found that 61% don’t open mail if they aren’t sure that it’s actually from the purported sender. They’re also signing up for multiple email accounts, shunting all non-personal emails to catch-all accounts. “So now it’s not just a question of deliverability,” Cahill said. “It’s: ‘Are you getting to the right inbox, the trusted inbox?’” On the positive side, 73% use email seven days a week, and most think they cannot get along without it, even with the crime.
In this context, Cahill warned that “really good content is no longer enough” to ensure delivery of emails. He urged email marketers to adopt the standard best practices, including conferring regularly with ISPs, frequently cleaning email lists of non-responders, and (of course) hiring email deliverability companies like his own.
But wary marketers are going further. Sal Tripi, the director of operations and compliance for Publishers’ Clearing House, said the company guards its reputation as an email sender so closely that it now monitors all the advertisers who appear in its electronic marketing messages.
In cases where advertisers have bad email reputations, or even just questionable practices, “we’ll walk away from the business,” Tripi said. PCH has already broken off some profitable relationships because “the person who gets our email won’t remember the advertiser as the problem; they’re going to remember PCH.” Tripi applies similar standards to companies PCH employs to drive traffic to its site.
Alison Shaffer, group manager of database marketing and analytics for WebEx Communications, an online conference company, said her company employs third-party vendors for tasks like list suppression, to protect the privacy of consumer email addresses. Email deliverability is key to WebEx’s business because customers use a software link in the text of an email to patch into conferences; they can also invite other people to join their conferences via email–provided WebEx email gets delivered.
Finally, Cliff Seltzer, the CEO and co-founder of Puresend, said marketers should steer clear of “piggybacking” strategies–for example, getting “prospecting” emails delivered by sending them from an IP address previously used only for cleaner transaction emails. This strategy is likely to backfire before long, he said. In fact, he advised marketers who send prospecting emails to set up a separate IP for each different class of mail to avoid damaging the reputation of their “good” address.
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 |
Source: Center for Media Research
According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on internet shopping habits, more than 85% of the world’s online population has used the internet to make a purchase, increasing the market for online shopping by 40% in the past two years.
Bruce Paul, VP, Customized Research, Nielsen US, said “When The Nielsen Company conducted its first global survey into internet shopping trends two years ago, approximately 10% of the world’s population (627 million) had shopped online. Within two years, this number has increased by approximately 40% to 875 million.”
Globally, more than half of internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month, according to Nielsen.
Among internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is in South Korea, where 99% of those with internet access have used it to shop, and 79% of these internet users have shopped in the past month. Other prolific shoppers are in the last month are:
(more…)
Posted in Internet, Media Trends, Statistics | No Comments »
Monday, July 23rd, 2007 |
by Tanya Irwin | Source: MediaPost’s Marketing Daily
CONSUMERS CONDUCTING ONLINE HEALTH-RELATED RESEARCH favor general health information Web sites and specific ailment-focused sites rather than pharma company sites, a survey shows.
The survey, conducted by Woburn, Mass.-based Prospectiv, shows that of the 800 nationwide consumers who responded to the online poll June 20-22, 54% favor general health Web sites and 37% prefer specific ailment-focused sites, while only 4% prefer pharmaceutical company sites. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Product | No Comments »
Monday, July 23rd, 2007 |
Source: BBC News
Credit information group Equifax said members of sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook may be putting too many details about themselves online.
It said fraudsters could use these details to steal someone’s identity and apply for credit and benefits.
About 80,000 people in the UK were victims of identity theft last year, at a cost to the economy of £1.5bn.
Passwords
Neil Munroe, external affairs director for Equifax, said: “Fraudsters are taking advantage of the new craze for social networking.
“The problem is that people don’t realise the significance of the kind of information they are putting out on the web and who may be accessing it.
“More and more consumers are signing up to these sites every day and chances are they’ll put on their date of birth, location, e-mail, job and marital status.
“Fraudsters can use this information to steal an individual’s identity and open accounts in their name.”
The group advised people to limit the personal information they make available about themselves online.
It said people should avoid putting their full date of birth on one of the sites, as well as the names of children or pets as these are often used as passwords.
Mr Munroe said: “We don’t want to stop people using these sites, but we do advise them to limit the amount of information they make available to stop people stealing their identity.”
Posted in Internet, Legal, Media Trends | No Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007 |
By Evan Schuman | Source: Storefront Backtalk
The average time it takes a consumer to make an E-Commerce purchase decision has jumped from about 19 hours in 2005 to 34 hours and 19 minutes this year, according to a report that is slated to be published next week.
The report, created by a security service called ScanAlert and based on about 128 million visitors to 470 web sites, makes the reasonable conclusion that the increase is based overwhelmingly on the increase in the number of E-Commerce sites today. In theory, this allows for much more extensive—and time-consuming—comparison shopping. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Product, Statistics | No Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007 |
Source: PROMO Magazine
Despite the popular of social networking sites and other online communities, they have little effect on influencing online retail sales, a new report has found.
Such sites are only driving about 12% of online shoppers to buy more than planned, the study by JupiterResearch found.
The effectiveness of these sites, like MySpace, in driving retail sales is still emerging.
Some 53% of people making online purchases go directly to the retailer’s site versus 3% using blogs. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing, Statistics | No Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007 |
by Chad White | Source: MediaPost’s Email Insider
WHICH DAY OF THE WEEK you send your emails can have a major impact on your open and click-through rates. And the choice of that day is influenced by how many emails you send in a particular week and what your competitors are doing with their campaigns. While in some cases your competitors are creating competition for attention in your subscribers’ inboxes, in other cases their collective wisdom may give you a signal on which days you may want to choose for your own launches. Whether you want to avoid them or go with the pack, it’s definitely helpful to know what your competitors are up to.
With that in mind, I’ve mined data collected on 104 major online retailers tracked via RetailEmail.Blogspot during a 26-week period (Dec. 30, 2006, through June 29, 2007) to determine the most popular days of the week to send emails.
But before I get into that, I wanted to report the preliminary results of the Email Experience Council survey I mentioned in my column last week on button vs. link calls-to-actions. Seventy-five percent of respondents said that buttons perform better as primary calls-to-action, while only 25% said that links perform better. If you’re currently using links, this is some community wisdom worth considering.
So back to choosing the best day of the week. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007 |
by Ari Rosenberg | Source: Online Publishing Insider
IF CREATIVE SELLING IS DRIVING your business of online publishing, the wheels are made of math. Not the return on investment kind of math that comes to mind first when talking about online advertising metrics — but rather, a more natural-fitting math connecting your own revenue goals and how close or far you reside from them.
This distance between should be steering your publishing organization’s behavior, down to daily decisions. This trickles down to every salesperson who owns a piece of quota. How they spend their time any given day should stand up to the question of “How will this get you closer to your numbers?”
This doesn’t mean members of your team coming up short should start hocking inventory on every street corner — not at all. But where you stand versus your quarterly quota should affect the balance kept between effort allocations against short-term opportunities versus mid- to long-term ones. (more…)
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007 |
by Gavin O’Malley | Source: Online Media Daily
CONSUMERS MIGHT ASSUME THAT CNN.COM’S latest Web 2.0 iteration — including a cleaner layout, blog-like interface, and spotlight on video — was all meant for them.
Not so, said David Payne, senior vice president and general manager of the site: “Literally, the first stop we made when redesigning the site was to agencies like Avenue A and Digitas to get a sense of what they wanted, and the trends they thought were most important to consider.”
The redesign, which launched earlier this week, was planned first and foremost to please advertisers, Payne insisted, and less cluttered and cleaner experiences were at the top of agencies’ wish lists. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 |
Source: MediaPost’s Marketing Daily
SKOKIE, ILL.-BASED INTERNET GROCER PEAPOD based has launched its largest direct mail effort to date, sending pieces to more than one million households in its Chicago, Milwaukee, and New England markets.
The direct mail campaign offers discounts on services to customers through the use of promotional codes, which customers could redeem online.
Peapod created the program with InnerWorkings, Inc., a provider of print procurement solutions.
Peapod, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Royal Ahold, is the leading Internet grocer in the country. Currently, Peapod serves 18 U.S. markets, including the metro areas of Chicago, Milwaukee, Boston and Washington, D.C., and suburban New York, and communities in the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, Rhode Island and New Jersey.
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Marketing, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 |
See article at BBC News
New research from the University of California-Berkeley shows there’s a pronounced class divide between those who frequent the popular social networks Facebook and MySpace. According to the report, Facebook users are more likely to be white, come from wealthier homes and attend college, while MySpace users tend to get jobs after finishing high school instead of continuing their education.
Facebook got its start as a social network for high school and college students. Last fall, founder Michael Zuckerberg and co. open up its 9 million-strong user base to anyone, which means it’s likely to see its exclusivity numbers drop.
Report author Dana Boyd, a UC-Berkeley PhD student, said “class” in the U.S. is something directly tied to one’s social life — rather than income. “Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus ‘class’,” Boyd wrote in the report. “They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities,” said the report, whereas “MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school.” The report makes no judgments, but advertisers might find the data useful.
See article at BBC News
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 |
by Erik Sass | Source: Online Media Daily
PEOPLE WHO BANK ONLINE ARE far more likely to engage in e-commerce activity, according to a study from Moda Solutions, a company that links the two by bringing online banking to the virtual checkout.
The cause and effect behind the phenomenon isn’t clear–i.e., which affinity drives the other one. But the strong correlation suggests that an increase in online banking could see a concurrent lift for e-commerce. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing, Statistics | No Comments »
Thursday, June 21st, 2007 |
Eight merchandising tips
By: Lauren Freedman | Source: Practical E-Commerce
Just as most consumers begin to enjoy summer, it’s time for savvy merchants to put the finishing touches on holiday sales plans. While it is difficult to estimate the volume of “gifting” purchases made online, there is no doubt about the customers’ penchant for buying gifts via this channel.
During the 2006 holiday season, the e-tailing group, in conjunction with StartSampling, a marketing services company, conducted the inaugural Mindset of the Multichannel Shopper Survey. The survey found that 54 percent of those who intended to do any holiday shopping online did so because it saves time and money, with the latter being at the forefront of shoppers’ minds. We don’t anticipate much will change during the coming year except the web channel’s share of wallet will continue to expand.
Merchants who understand a customer’s desire for saving time have embraced ways to showcase products in robust gift centers: they’ve integrated gift finders that allow shoppers to effectively search by price and other features and they’ve implemented tools that enable buyers to shop for multiple recipients during a single shopping experience.
To help you capitalize on this important (and hectic) time of year, we thought it would be prudent to share the e-tailing group’s “Gift-savvy Merchandising Top Eight Tips.”
1. Build A Service Culture
Recent research shows consumers do not want any roadblocks in their online shopping experiences. (more…)
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Marketing, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 |
Source: Around the Net in Online Marketing
So-called “widgets” (no, not the economics term for “product”) could become major drivers of advertising on social media sites, says The Wall Street Journal. In the Web 2.0 world, “widgets” refer to interactive photo, video and music tools that allow everyday users to post content–movie trailers, photo slide shows, music playlists–to their site or social networking profile. New research from comScore shows that consumers are increasingly interacting with this type of broadband content: in April, nearly 178 million people Web-wide viewed content made with these so-called widgets. The comScore report is one of the first to measure the reach of widget-producers like Slide, Inc. RockYou Inc., and PictureTrail, Inc.
Advertisers, no doubt, must now sit up and take notice. Those are some big numbers from a relatively new phenomenon, and the sky’s the limit: a widget could also be anything from an interactive video ad to a branded advergame. For a video provider like YouTube, a “widget” is another piece of content to sell advertising against.
Part of the reason that widgets have caught fire is their ease of use. Slide, the category’s top provider with 117.1 million users in April, makes producing a video slide show on your MySpace page as easy as clicking a few buttons or copying and pasting a piece of code. As the Journal report says, widgets are rapidly becoming the de facto form of self-expression through broadband content. However, the problem for widget makers is that they largely depend on MySpace and Facebook, which have a history of blocking third-party content makers, for distribution.
Full article at Wall Street Journal (subscription required) >>
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 |
by Les Luchter | Source: Online Media Daily
COMPANIES USING WEB ANALYTICS ARE placing too much faith in technology and people, and not putting enough effort into education and training, according to former JupiterResearch analyst Eric T. Peterson, whose new consulting firm Web Analytics Demystified has just released the results of its initial research. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing, Statistics | No Comments »
Friday, June 8th, 2007 |
Source: MediaPost’s Online Media Daily
GOODMAIL SYSTEMS HAS ADDED COMCAST, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner and Verizon to the list of ISPs supporting its CertifiedEmail trusted class email. Certified Email messages are marked with a blue ribbon envelope icon to let consumers know they come from a legitimately vetted source. The program is already in place at AOL and Yahoo. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
Monday, June 4th, 2007 |
By Erika Morphy | Source: Tech News World
Blogs are increasingly being used to shine a spotlight on companies that provide poor service or otherwise annoy — sometimes enrage — consumers. For consumer advocates, they are a true equalizer: Bloggers have been able to shame companies into fixing mistakes or changing policies, especially when they cause a mainstream media reporter to come calling.
What should companies do — and what should they refrain from doing — when reacting to blog postings about their products or services? Robert Cox, president of the New York-based Media Bloggers Association and a consultant to consumer packaged goods companies, has very specific ideas on the subject.
What they shouldn’t do: Ignore the situation, or worse, try to intimidate bloggers into shutting up — unless, of course, they are writing defamatory statements. More on that below. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Monday, June 4th, 2007 |
By Kelly Shermach | Source: E-Commerce Times
“Don’t give an incentive or reward to a valued customer and then make it difficult to use,” said Steve Georgeou, loyalty consultant and president of Geocom. Airlines immediately spring to mind. For instance, limited availability of airline award seats occurs all too frequently in frequent-flier programs.
Consumer loyalty has become such a ubiquitous goal for marketers that its definition is murky, at best. Ten years ago, a loyal customer participated with a chosen brand more frequently than the average shopper.
For marketers, the term has evolved to encompass frequency, recency of interaction and monetary value — typically of the customer’s transaction. For a while, customer satisfaction occupied the dais as the chief metric of consumer loyalty. The understanding of just what loyalty is, though, is shifting — and that means methods for building it are changing too. Following are some dos and don’ts that take current conditions into account. (more…)
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Marketing, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, May 31st, 2007 |
by Chad White, | Source: MediaPost’s Email Insider
ARE YOU sending your subscribers too many emails? While the answer to that question depends in large part on the value your subscribers receive from your emails, it’s also impacted by the frequency of your competitors’ emails. Being terribly out of line with the industry norm may make users think you’re “spamming†them with too many emails — and lead to unsubscribes.
With that in mind, I looked at the frequency of 92 major retailers tracked via my RetailEmailBlogspot during the 16 weeks ended May 25. I found that on average those retailers sent 1.7 emails per week during that period, and that nearly 10% sent more than twice as many emails as the group average.
(more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Niche Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 |
Google & Yahoo! Dominate With 86% of U.S. Searches
Source: Center for Media Research BriefÂ
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Statistics | No Comments »
Sunday, May 27th, 2007 |
[SS NOTE] Website 101. If you have a website (or are considering getting one) you need to be aware of this. (You don’t have to be able to regurgitate it… just have a basic handle on/feel for it.) Google any words you don’t understand. /ss
by Darrell Long | Source: Search Insider
WE NOW KNOW THAT THEÂ planning of a site’s navigation structure is crucial to search engines and users navigating through your site. This, however, can all be in vain — as certain technology can keep search engines from crawling your Web site, or not allow users to fully access your navigation. For example, if your navigation was built in java script and uses drop-down menus to showcase particular sections, the search engines most likely will not be able to follow those links. This limitation can also be felt by visitors who currently have java script disabled within their Web browsers. Also, if there are errors within the java script code it will most likely crash the Web browser. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing | No Comments »
Saturday, May 26th, 2007 |
by Laurie Petersen | Source: Online Media Daily
THE ONLINE HEALTH INFORMATION CATEGORY reached an average of 55.3 million monthly U.S. visitors in the first quarter of 2007, which represents a 12% year-over-year increase for the period, comScore reported yesterday.
Health-related search continues to be a key traffic driver. “Pregnancy” was the top health-related search phrase for the first quarter, with more than 17 million entries. “Cancer,” “flu” and “fitness” each generated at least 15 million searches. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Niche Marketing, Statistics | No Comments »
Thursday, May 24th, 2007 |
Source: Center for Media Research
According to Netpop I Play, a new report from Media-Screen, broadband users spend an hour and 40 minutes (48% of their spare time) online in a typical weekday, and more than half of that is spent accessing activities related to entertainment and communication.
Josh Crandall, managing director of Media-Screen, says “Many broadband consumers go online for entertainment, and to talk about entertainment with other fans. Marketers need to leverage that interest…” (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
Thursday, May 24th, 2007 |
[SS NOTE] If you do any e-mail newsletters through your website, this is a must-read. /ss
by Chad White | Source: MediaPost’s Email Insider
WITH KMART REINCARNATING THE BLUE Light Special as a helpful spokesperson/”retail superhero” named Mr. Bluelight, I thought it was an auspicious time to talk about deal-a-day emails. Just like the Blue Light Special, these promotional emails promise a good deal for a limited time.
… During the past holiday season, several retailers including Petco, Home Depot and the Sears brands (Sears, Kmart and Lands’ End), which sent emails collectively as part of their ReadySetHoliday.com Web site, launched special deal-a-day email programs that were separate from their core email marketing programs and required separate opt-ins. Home Depot highlighted one product per email, while the Sears brands highlighted three. Those programs were temporary, however, wrapping up in December and January after the holiday selling season. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 |
[SS NOTE] Is your shop, agency or business on Facebook AND Friendster??? Why not? It’s free. Grab every bit of networking power you can. /ssÂ
by Gavin O’Malley | Source: Online Media Daily
MOVE OVER, CRAIG. FACEBOOK ON Friday said it would add free classified ad-listings to its popular social networking site. The new service, dubbed Marketplace, poses a potential threat to a number of companies–from Craigslist and newspapers to Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com. Also on Friday, Friendster announced that it had added classifieds through a partnership with Olx.com.
Marketplace will allow Facebook’s some 22 million active users to create classified listings in four categories: housing, jobs, for sale, and “other.” Users will be able to limit the exposure of their classifieds to individual networks such as immediate friends and coworkers. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 |
By MICHAEL BARBARO | Source: New York Times
Maybe Americans don’t need dressing rooms after all.
For the first time since online retailing was born a decade ago, the sales of clothing have overtaken those of computer hardware and software, suggesting that consumers have reached a new level of comfort buying merchandise on the Web.
In 2006, revenue from skirts, suits and shoes reached $18.3 billion, surpassing that from PCs, printers and word-processing programs, which totaled $17.2 billion, according to a report to be released today by a major trade group.
The surging popularity of clothing on the Web defies predictions that fashion — which is hard enough to buy in stores, with the aid of sales clerks and fitting rooms — would be difficult, if not impossible, to translate onto the Internet. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends, Product | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 |
COMMENTARY // by Stephanie Miller | Source: Online Media Daily
MELINDA SMITH AND CAREY DIETZ of Expedia wound up the Email Insider Summit with a great presentation on creating compelling subscriber experiences every week when most people take 2-3 trips each year.
Melinda said: “How many of us are tasked with sending less email this year?” No one raised a hand. It’s a great illustration of the lack of understanding among executives (and frankly, some email program managers) about the importance of subscriber experience.
Sending more email generates more revenue. Our task as subscriber advocates and great marketers is to prove that sending more targeted email to segments of the file will actually result in more revenue. Testing gets you there.
“Less is More” is not just a wise maxim for email contact strategy (cadence), but also a great way to think about data crunching and analysis. (more…)
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Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 |
[SS NOTE] If you’re not doing this in some way with your business’s website, you’re being left behind. The lesson here is simple: get it in gear, NOW. /ss
by Karl Greenberg | Source: MediaPost’s Marketing Daily
USER-GENERATED CONTENT (UGC) HAS GONE mainstream, according to a new report from Internet market consultancy JupiterResearch. Per the firm, in the past month, half of all online users have either created UGC or read items posted by others. In a study titled “User-Generated Content: Strategies for Media Sites,” JupiterResearch reports that UGC is now a mainstream activity for millions of consumers. According to the study, users under the age of 25 are especially active UCGers. Three-quarters of users 18 to 25 are reading or writing UGC, and few of them are passive participants. A third of those over age 55 are participating in UGC as well. Additionally, active users of UGC haven ‘t abandoned off-line media for online, but they are learning to balance the two.
Posted in Business Success, Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 |
[SS NOTE] This is a technique that independent operators can use, too. Find sites in your niche, and send free samples. Ask them to write about your product if they like it. If they don’t like it, no harm, no foul. It could be some of the most affordable and effective advertising you’ve done in a while!! #
They Lavish Freebies Upon Eager Web Scribes
By BROOKS BARNES | Source: Wall Street JournalÂ
TV critics have called “The New Adventures of Old Christine” one of the decade’s funniest comedies. But when CBS recently wanted to create buzz for the show, critics weren’t the targets of the publicity campaign.
Neither were newspaper feature writers, whom a publicist for the show’s star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, declared weren’t “worth her time.”
The so-called “mommy bloggers” were another matter. Warner Bros., the studio that produces the show for CBS, identified 12 blogs about motherhood, a key theme in “Old Christine,” and invited the writers to spend the day on the set. The bloggers got free DVDs, watched a rehearsal and made videos with Ms. Louis-Dreyfus and other cast members to post on their sites. “It was totally rad,” says Yvonne Marie, the publisher of a Web log called Joy Unexpected.
Who says you can’t buy love? Trying to tap into the burgeoning power of blogs as promotional tools and fed up with the jaded attitudes of professional critics and TV feature writers, studios and networks are flooding bloggers with free stuff in hopes the flattered recipients will reward them with positive coverage. Flowing into the trough is everything from fancy gym bags and toasters to video iPods and free trips. Some networks — in the spotlight this week as they unveil their fall schedules to advertisers — have even borrowed a term from the technology industry to describe the strategy: blogola. (more…)
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Media Trends | No Comments »
