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Top In August: Groupon Drops and Weather Rises

posted on September 30, 2011

Which websites topped the list of the most visited in August? Google, Facebook, Yahoo and YouTube. But that’s not really new news, is it? But scan down Kantar Media’s list of the Top 250 Websites for August and there are some lines of note.

Take, for example, Groupon.

That’s quite a hit. LivingSocial also saw a drop in numbers but it wasn’t nearly as dramatic. Still, neither site is crying since they’re still way ahead of where they were last year. Even with the drop, Groupon is sitting at 164.9% year-over-year.

Other losers include Netflix (no surprise there) with a 4.06% drop, MySpace, down 55.84% for the year and Flickr down 8.75. Could it be that Facebook and now Twitter are siphoning off some of Flickr’s traffic now that photo handling is easier on both social networks.

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Study Shows Multi-Screen Advertising Aids Recall

posted on September 30, 2011

You know how two heads are better than one? Apparently, three screens top that when it comes to advertising recall.

Google and Nielsen got together on this study to determine the effectiveness of multi-screen marketing. They gathered groups of people and had them watch a 15-second video ad for a Volvo S60 sedan. Some saw the ad only on TV. Some saw it on TV and on a smartphone. Then they mixed up more combos including ads on PCs and tablets.

Here’s what they got:

Look at that nice hike in recall. Now, my first thought was, of course recall was better because they saw the ad four times where the base-level group only saw it once. Then I noted this line in the results, “different combinations of screens controlling for frequency.” So, I guess that means that the TV only people also saw the ad four times.

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Companies Cannot Live on Websites Alone

posted on September 30, 2011

You have probably heard it said that man cannot live by bread alone. In case you are wondering, that wasn’t said by a nutritionist who was promoting a more well balanced diet but instead from an offer of something bigger than what we think we need. It’s a good subject to consider but for now let’s keep the discussion to the web.

It appears as if companies may be making a similar mistake in that they are somewhat disenchanted with the performance of their website as a lead generation tool. The chart below comes from a study conducted by Demandbase and shows that the biggest point of concern is the website and lead gen.

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Google Analytics Gets New Design, Real Time Feature and Paid Premium Service

posted on September 30, 2011

Google Analytics has been one of those helpful “freebies” that Google hands out to everyone for free because they can (and because they love the fact that websites the world over are dependent on them to analyze their success or failure). The last few days have been really busy with announcements from Google regarding the continued upgrading of the service from its presentation, a real time update and a fee based premium offering.

First, be ready for a new look which is coming next week. According to the Google Analytics blog

The biggest change you’ll notice is that we have simplified the primary navigation into three tabs – Home, Standard Reporting, and Custom Reporting – to give you quicker access to the information that matters. We also incorporated the second layer of navigation that appeared in “My Site” throughout the Home and Standard Reporting tabs.

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Connecting With Your Influencers

posted on September 30, 2011

Social networks have become the primary source of new content for many professionals trying to stay current in their field or to discover the latest insights. This is especially true for Internet Marketing professionals: we must constantly seek new opportunities for improvement while maintaining a thorough understanding of current tools.

Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ can offer access to a great deal of content. However, one must understand how to navigate and curate the billions of available tweets, posts, and viewpoints. Identifying and following your own group of experts will get you started.

Twitter is a fantastic way to gain a deeper understanding of who is really listening to whom:

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Social Gamers Rock the Online Marketing World

posted on September 29, 2011

There are those who believe that video gamers are anti-social misfits who step outside their cave-like comfort zones only in search of food and the occasional shower. And while that might of been true of a generation who consumed Pac-Man cereal for every meal, it’s no longer the case.

Today’s gamers come from a wide variety of age groups and educational backgrounds, and the majority of them are women. Even more amazing? They’re social. They may be sitting home alone while they peck on the keyboard (though it’s more likely they’re surrounded by several young children), but inside the game, they’re communicating with real people from all around the world.

I’m talking, actual humans, not figures programmed to act like one.

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Twitter Ad Revenues Also Continue to Climb

posted on September 29, 2011

Yesterday, we took a look at the general state of affairs in online advertising and from a revenue perspective, it’s was all, up, up, up. Today, eMarketer has numbers on Twitter alone and it’s right on trend with the rest of the market.

eMarketer predicts that Twitter will pull in $139.5 million in global ad revenues this year. That’s an increase of 210% over last year. Not bad, huh? The prediction for 2013? $400 million.

What’s amazing about Twitter’s ad success is that it’s been incorporated into the site in a very unobtrusive way. The ads are there in my stream, and I notice them, but they don’t bother me. Occasionally, I even click on one. This is not the case with Facebook.