Marketing Pilgrim

Google is rolling out an updated user interface to approximately (initial) 1% of Google Analytics users.

In its announcement, Google says…

Our goals for the new version are to make it easier and faster to get to the data you want and to enhance the Google Analytics platform to bring you major new functionality. Many of the changes in the new version are the result of your feedback. For example, you can now view multiple advanced segments without needing to also use All Visits. You’ll find some of the other most requested features like multiple dashboards in the new version as well.

And, while I’ve not had a chance to thoroughly poke around the new interface, it appears the new version is mostly a change to the “look and feel” of Google Analytics. Kind of like when a car manufacturer does a facelift each year, not a full redesign.

Kantar Media calls it the “feel good headline” and it’s likely that everyone but the newspapers would agree. According to their new report, ad expenditures across the board rose 6.5% in 2010 for a total of $131.1 billion. The downside is that not everyone benefited from the growth.

Have a look at the chart:

Kantar says that political advertising and a fresh push by the car companies helped lift TV advertising. Auto ads alone, rose 19.8% over last year while Direct Response and Pharma both dropped by 5 to 8%.

Running a close second in growth is Internet Display advertising which rose 9.9%. A bit surprisingly, Outdoor was right there with 9.6% growth.

The famous Monday Night Football announcer Don Meredith (R.I.P) used to sing when the game was all but over “Turn out the lights, the party’s over!”. Well, if he were here today he could sing the same tune regarding the days of a completely free New York Times online edition.

As of March 28th the paywall will be built and the grand experiment for “All The News That Fit to Digitize” will be underway. Here’s how the Times reported their own news.

Beginning March 28, visitors toNYTimes.com will be able to read 20 articles a month without paying, a limit that company executives said was intended to draw in subscription revenue from the most loyal readers while not driving away the casual visitors who make up a vast majority of the site’s traffic.

In a recent survey conducted by AT&T,  65% of small businesses surveyed said they could not survive — or it would be a major challenge to survive — without wireless technology.

The respondents felt that wireless technology helped them be more flexible and it allowed them to keep in constant touch even when they were away from the office. In fact, they found wireless to be so essential that even when faced with budgetary issues, 80% of owners said they wouldn’t cut back on wireless. 49% (versus only 16% in 2007) said that wireless was key to staying competitive.

A large part of the reason for the rise in wireless use is the proliferation of easily affordable devices. More than 80% of those surveyed said they used a smartphone for business including:

Based on claims that its subscriber base has doubled over the past three months and a push into 100’s of new cities there are rumblings that Groupon’s eventual IPO could peg the service at a $25 billion valuation.

Bloomberg reports

Groupon Inc. has held talks with banks about an initial public offering that would value the online-coupon company at as much as $25 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

The two-year-old startup’s IPO may happen this year and is unlikely to assign Groupon a valuation of less than $15 billion, according to the people, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its March 21 edition. They asked not to be identified because the talks were private.

Ecommerce continues to grow but as with everything else in the Internet age there seems to be an acceleration of the maturity of the channel.

This isn’t really an issue but it does cause online marketers to focus their efforts less on new customer acquisition and more on helping existing online shoppers do even more of their shopping online.

An eMarketer study revealed that percentage growth numbers for ecommerce should decline. That only makes sense. The danger in this is that people will look at a chart showing a supposed decline in numbers when all it is really showing is strong growth in a dwindling number of new ecommerce users.