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Tag: Reports

  • New Report Looks At Email Engagement Across 3.5 Billion Commercial Messages

    New Report Looks At Email Engagement Across 3.5 Billion Commercial Messages

    Return Path released a new email engagement benchmark report called The Hidden Metrics of Email Deliverability, which gives readers sector-specific results for email metrics including read rate, forward reate, and complaint rate. These, the company says, collectively reveal a lot about subscriber engagement and play a role in determining which messages reach the inbox.

    “Of note, the study found that verticals with the highest read rate in 2015 were utilities (47%) and distribution/manufacturing (31%),” a spokesperson for Return Path says. “Business/marketing and social/dating companies had the lowest read rate (9%).”

    The study draws from over 3.5 billion commercial emails. It found that the amount of promotional emails delivered to the spam folder ranged from just 2% (utilities) to 28% (automotive/accessories).

    It also found that most industries saw a flat to slightly declining read rate in Q4. Only one industry – utilities – experienced a double-digit drop (-14%).

    The average deleted before reading rate across industries remained steady at 9% throughout 2015, according to the report. The Office Supplies, Pets, and Flowers/Gifts industries exceeded this significantly at 14%, 13%, and 13% respectively. Return Path calls this a sign of poor subscriber engagement and a possible indicator of over-mailing.

    Spam complaints increased by an average of 0.5% in the fourth quarter, which the firm sees as a sign that subscribers may not appreciate the increased volume of promotional emails around the holidays.

    “Major mailbox providers like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! rely on subscriber engagement signals in addition to sender reputation to filter out unwanted email and deliver more desired emails to the inbox,” said Scott Roth, General Manager, Email Optimization at Return Path. “These are metrics that many marketers are not yet tracking, and can have a major impact on deliverability. But there’s also opportunity for marketers to optimize consumer engagement and improve their marketing campaigns using this data.”

    You can find the full report here.

    Image via iStock

  • Can Twitter Curb Abuse or Is It Just Too Easy to Be a Troll?

    Can Twitter Curb Abuse or Is It Just Too Easy to Be a Troll?

    Though many social networks, forums, and websites struggle with how to deal with abuse and harassment, Twitter is usually the first one mentioned when the issue is discussed. Twitter is more public than, let’s say, Facebook (where you choose your friends) – so the instances of harassment are much greater. Twitter is also more high-profile than many other social media sites – with many more users. Also, when your CEO publicly admits that you really suck at dealing with abuse, people are going to fixate.

    But the fixation is justified. Twitter does have a problem with bullying, abuse, and harassment. It’s not just a problem for Twitter’s 300 million+ users – it’s also a problem for Twitter itself. Getting a reputation as a place where foaming mouth vitriol is lurking at every turn is bad for business. Twitter, both for its own sake and the sake of its users, has a vested interest in somehow curbing the level of trolling on the site.

    So Twitter has taken steps – most of them incremental. Twitter, by its own admission, is trying to walk a delicate line between protecting users and preserving free speech.

    Have you witnessed abuse and harassment on Twitter? What should the social network do about it? Let us know in the comments.

    “Balancing both aspects of this belief — welcoming diverse perspectives while protecting our users — requires vigilance, and a willingness to make hard choices. That is an ideal that we have at times failed to live up to in recent years. As some of our users have unfortunately experienced firsthand, certain types of abuse on our platform have gone unchecked because our policies and product have not appropriately recognized the scope and extent of harm inflicted by abusive behavior,” said Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde in a recent op-ed.

    To combat the problem, Twitter has taken some small steps as of late. It tripled the team that handles reports of abuse and harassment, and began asking suspended users to verify a phone number and delete offending tweets before reinstatement. It updated its policies to specifically ban revenge porn and other content posted without a user’s consent. It made reporting threats to the police a little easier. It implemented a new notifications filtering option.

    The most recent, and arguably most substantial move Twitter has made is to deploy a new algorithm to try to reign in abuse on the site. Twitter is currently working on a way to automatically detect abusive tweets – using indicators like account age and a tweet’s similarity to previously-flagged tweets.

    “We have begun to test a product feature to help us identify suspected abusive Tweets and limit their reach. This feature takes into account a wide range of signals and context that frequently correlates with abuse including the age of the account itself, and the similarity of a Tweet to other content that our safety team has in the past independently determined to be abusive. It will not affect your ability to see content that you’ve explicitly sought out, such as Tweets from accounts you follow, but instead is designed to help us limit the potential harm of abusive content. This feature does not take into account whether the content posted or followed by a user is controversial or unpopular,” says Twitter.

    Once again, clearly trying to toe the line.

    Twitter hasn’t been too forthcoming about what this all means. What this likely means is that Twitter won’t simply yank a tweet when it’s detected by the system, but will instead hide it from the mentioned users’ notifications. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has hinted at this sort of approach in the past, saying that Twitter users have a right to free speech – but Twitter doesn’t always have to be a megaphone for said speech.

    Long story short, Twitter is trying. Some may say it’s not enough, and that’s fair, but the company is at least taking steps.

    But just how big is Twitter’s problem? Do these new protocols really have a chance of succeeding in the fight against harassment?

    In November of 2014, months before Twitter made some of the moves mentioned above, the company partnered with a group called Women, Action, & the Media (WAM!) , a nonprofit “dedicated to building a robust, effective, inclusive
    movement for gender justice in media”, to study the online harassment of women and Twitter’s reaction to it.

    Today, that report is ready.

    The report is based on over 800 reported instances of harassment on the site, so it’s important to know that going forward. All of these instances of abuse were reported to WAM! by either the person being harassed (43%) or someone who saw the harassment taking place (57%).

    What WAM! found was that the biggest type of reported abuse was hate speech (sexist, racist, homophobic slurs) at 27% of total reports, followed by doxxing (revealing a user’s private information) at 22%. Violent threats made up 12% of all threats reported, and impersonation tallied 4%.

    WAM! says that in 43% of instances of harassment it received, it “escalated” them – meaning it passed them along to Twitter.

    Here’s how Twitter responded in those cases:

    WAM! collected data on the process and outcome of all 161 tickets opened with Twitter in the three week monitoring period. In 55% of cases, Twitter took action to delete, suspend, or warn the alleged harassing account. Most of Twitter’s actions against alleged harassers were associated with reports of hate speech, threats of violence, and nonconsensual photography.

    Was Twitter more likely to take action on some kinds of harassment and not others? In a logistic regression model, the probability of Twitter taking action on reports of doxxing was 20 percentage points lower than tickets involving threats of violence, in cases where WAM! recorded an assessment risk, an odds ratio of 0.32. This is likely due to the common practice of ‘tweet and delete,’ in which harassers temporarily post private, personal information and remove the content before it can be reported and investigated by Twitter.

    The practice of “tweet-and-delete,” as WAM! calls it, is clearly an obstacle for Twitter when it comes to users self-reporting abuse. Sometimes, an online harasser will leave a tweet up just long enough for the target to see it. Since Twitter’s reporting mechanisms involve providing Twitter a link to the tweet(s) in question, it’s easy to see how this is a big problem.

    “Twitter currently requires URLs and rejects screenshots as evidence; consequently, Twitter’s review process doesn’t address ‘tweet and delete’ harassment, which often involves doxxing. While Twitter updated its reporting system in February 2015 to accept reports of doxxing, there have been no public changes with regard to the evidence it accepts for harassment reports,” says WAM!’s report. “Twitter’s default URL requirement makes it complicated to report harassment that is not associated with a URL, such as exposure to violent or pornographic profile images or usernames via follower/favorite notifications.”

    Another issue? What WAM! called “dogpiling” – where victims are inundated with a barrage of harassing tweets from various accounts. Without a way to report all of this together, it’s rather hard to manage.

    WAM! also identified other issues with Twitter’s reporting system – “false flaggers” and “report trolls”.

    False flaggers attempt to use Twitter’s mechanisms against the victim.

    “This person falsely reports an account for harassment. This person intentionally tries to use Twitter’s policies and the complexity of determining harassment to silence an account. This person may also report accounts falsely to draw reviewers’ attention to themselves and their stance on issues under contention, often as an act of intimidation or warning. They may provide inaccurate contact details.”

    Report trolls try to logjam the system by making false reports.

    “This person performs a character, pretending to have been harassed. Their reports are marked by reductive narratives and stereotypical expressions, and often contain internal indicators such as word play, name choices, etc., that point to the performance aspect. They may provide functioning contact details under their character’s persona in order to lengthen the performance.”

    In the end, WAM! concluded that additional policies are needed to combat abuse on Twitter. It offered these suggestions:

    More broadly and clearly define what constitutes online harassment and abuse, beyond “direct, specific threats of violence against others” or “threats of violence against others, or promoting threats of violence against others” to increase accountability for more kinds of threatening harassment and behavior. 19% of reports were defined as “harassment that was too complex to enter in a single radio button.” See “Summary of Findings” and page 15 of the report.

    Update the abuse reporting interface, using researched and tested trauma-response design methods. Twitter should acknowledge the potential trauma that targets may experience; additionally, connecting users to support resources would go a long way in offering to inspire constructive discourse and structural changes. See page 34 of the report.

    Develop new policies which recognize and address current methods that harassers use to manipulate and evade Twitter’s evidence requirements. These policies should focus particularly on the “tweet and delete” technique, where harassers share, but quickly delete, abusive comments and information.The problem of evidence prevents comprehensive resolution for all reports acknowledgement and validation. See page 35 of the report.

    Expand the ability for users to filter out abusive mentions that contain “threats, offensive or abusive language, duplicate content, or are sent from suspicious accounts,” to counter the effect of a harassment tactic known as dogpiling– where dozens, hundreds or even sometimes thousands of Twitter users converge on one target to overwhelm their mentions and notifications. This kind of filtering would be opt-in only, enabling users to decide whether to use it or not. See “Summary of Findings: Dogpiling” in the report.

    Hold online abusers accountable for the gravity of their actions: suspensions for harassment or abuse are currently indistinguishable from suspensions for spam, trademark infringement, etc. This needs to change. Ongoing harassment was a concern in 29% of reports, where reporters mentioned that harassment started more than three weeks before the report. See page 15 of the report.

    Diversify Twitter’s leadership. Twitter’s own 2014 report reveals that its company leadership is 79% male and 72% white. Systemic changes in the hiring and retention of diverse leaders will likely expand internal perspectives about harassment since women and women of color, disturbingly absent, are disproportionately targeted online.

    Twitter has already begun work on some of these suggestions – for instance the aforementioned new filtering tools and algorithms to limit certain tweets’ impact.

    But it’s clear that Twitter trolls can game Twitter’s current anti-abuse policies – and quite easily at that.

    You can check out the full report here.

    How can Twitter curb abuse on its platform? Is there any point at which Twitter would cross the line and stifle free speech – something the company says it’s committed to protecting? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via Rosaura Ochoa, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Twitter Makes Reporting Threats to Police a Little Easier

    Twitter Makes Reporting Threats to Police a Little Easier

    It’s not a giant new feature or anything, but Twitter has taken yet another in a long line of recent steps to deal with abuse and harassment on the site.

    Starting now, if you report a threatening tweet, Twitter will give you the option to email yourself a copy of said report. The packaging of the report will contain the tweet’s content, links to the tweet and users involved, timestamps, and other information that could help law enforcement officers investigate the threat – if that’s the direction you chose to go.

    And Twitter actually suggests that you go to the police if you feel genuinely threatened by another user on its service.

    “While we take threats of violence seriously and will suspend responsible accounts when appropriate, we strongly recommend contacting your local law enforcement if you’re concerned about your physical safety. We hope that providing you with a summary of your report will make that process easier for you,” says Twitter’s Ethan Avey.

    Here’s what the report will look like:

    So you can just pass that on to the police, should they need it.

    Last week, Twitter specifically banned revenge porn and any other content posted without a user’s consent. Before that, Twitter tripled the amount of people on the team handling abuse reports, in an attempt to be able to handle them all in a timely manner. It also streamlined the reporting of impersonation, self-harm and the sharing of private and confidential information – just like it did with harassment and abuse.

    Twitter has taken these recent strides in user safety after some high profile instances of abuse and harassment on the site. CEO Dick Costolo made a promise to make the service safer, and today’s step is just one of many that Twitter has and will surely continue to take. Scared, frustrated users aren’t good for Twitter’s brand or business.

    Once again, this isn’t some giant move from Twitter to battle harassment, and it’s easy to see why some would call it a useless punt. Twitter’s not beefing up its relationship with law enforcement when it comes to threatening content, it’s just making it a little bit easier for you to have your ducks in a row if and when you decide to go to the police yourself.

    Image via Rosaura Ochoa, Flickr Creative Commons

  • People Are Now More Glued to Their Phones Than the TV

    Mobile devices have, for the first time, overtaken television in the fight for our eyeballs.

    According to a report from Flurry, using data from comScore and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans now spend 177 minutes per day, on average, on their mobile devices. That’s nine minutes more on average than they spend watching TV.

    Compare that to the beginning of this year, when Americans spent 162 minutes per day on their mobile devices but 168 minutes glued to the TV.

    Of course, “glued” to the TV might not be entirely accurate. Americans are surely not spending nearly three hours a day on their phones and then more than two and a half hours watching TV. Anyone with a smartphone knows that there has to be some overlap. When’s the last time you watching a couple hours of TV without looking as your phone or tablet as well?

    Flurry agrees, but still notes the impressive shift in consumer attention.

    “While we don’t have a way to measure the overlap in time spent, other than our own families’ experiences, we believe that there is plenty of overlap between the time spent on TV and that on mobile devices. It is a tall order to believe that the smart device (and app) industry, which didn’t exist six and half years ago, can take out an industry entrenched in every American household since the middle of the last century. But it has happened. Smart devices are practical, and are glued to consumers 24/7/365. Those factors, combined with the content explosion on these devices through millions of apps, helped mobile snatch the big prize from television. As of September 2014, it is a new world in the American living room,” says the company.

    Still, TV isn’t dead. For the past two and a half years boob tube viewing has been steady. In Q1 of 2012, we watched 168 minutes of TV a day, and in Q3 2014, we also watch 168 minutes on average.

    Over the past two years, our devices have been pulling more and more of our attention. Remember how we’re now spending nearly three hours a day buried in our phones? Just a couple years ago we weren’t even spending a full two hours. In the past couple of years, your mobile devices have stolen more than an hour of your daily time.

    How do you feel about that?

    Image via Thinkstock

  • Facebook Says Government Data Requests Up 24%

    It’s Election Day in the US, and Facebook is reminding everyone to vote with a giant banner at the top of the news feed which asks people to share the vote with friends. By the looks of my news feed, it’s working.

    The company has also chosen today to release its third-ever transparency report – which provides info on how many data and content removal requests it receives, as well as national security requests initiated through FISA. By law, Facebook can’t really say a lot about the latter – but as far as the former goes, things are up in a pretty big way.

    During the first half of 2014, government requests for data and content removal were up 24 percent and 19 percent, respectively, from the latter half of 2013.

    Facebook makes a point to say how they fight “overly broad requests”:

    “As we’ve said before, we scrutinize every government request we receive for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests.”

    The company also reminds people that it’s been busy fighting an unprecedented data grab – a set of “sweeping search warrants” issued by a New York court.

    Finally, Facebook talks legislation:

    “As such, we support recent efforts in the U.S. Senate to pass the USA FREEDOM Act, and we’re hopeful that Congress will update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to codify our requirement of a warrant to compel disclosure of the stored contents of an account. We will continue to work on our own and with partners, such as the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, to protect the information of the people who use our services.”

    You can check out the full report here. And remember – go vote. It could have an impact on whether or not Facebook is required to give up more and more of your data.

    Image via Facebook

  • Which Content Is Being Shared More On Which Networks

    Which Content Is Being Shared More On Which Networks

    ShareThis has released results from its Q2 2014 Consumer Sharing Trends Report, looking at sharing behavior across social channels on desktop and mobile devices. It found that mobile sharing is “dramatically” outpacing desktop sharing with sharing from smartphones and tablets growing over 30% compared to a 5% decline in desktop sharing.

    Twitter and Pinterest in particular are seeing some major mobile usage. Half of Facebook sharing is on mobile, according to the report, compared to 75% of shares on Pinterest and Twitter. Pinterest users are more active on tablets, and Twitter users are more active on smartphones, it finds. Android users are more active on Facebook, while iOS users are more active on Pinterest and Twitter.

    The report also provides an interesting look at the different types of content categories that are shared more on different platforms. For example, more political and parenting content is shared on Facebook, while Twitter sees more business and sports content. Pinterest is unsurprisingly very shopping oriented.

    “Mobile may be a millennial-centric phenomenon, but tablets are gaining popularity among older users,” says ShareThis’ Kurt Abrahamson. “Tablet sharing among users aged 55 and up nearly doubled since last quarter. This quarter, 43% of social activity on tablets was driven by users 55+, compared to 21% on smartphones and 34% on desktop. Social engagement on mobile devices grew 13% among African Americans and 6% among Hispanics. For African Americans, smartphone adoption was a major contributor to mobile growth. Hispanic audiences have been particularly receptive of tablets, on which they shared 8% more than last quarter.”

    You can see which social channels are driving the most referrals in this recent report from Shareaholic.

    Images via ShareThis

  • Fab Shutting Down? CEO Calls Report ‘Bullsh*t Hate’

    Though e-commerce and “everyday design” website Fab has in fact gone through multiple layoff periods over the last year or so, the company’s CEO is saying that the report of its death was an exaggeration– in so many words.

    Valleywag’s Sam Biddle recently declared, based on confirmation from multiple sources, that “Fab.com is probably dead this year.” He says that last month’s layoffs were actually the beginning of the end, not a restructuring and refocusing effort (as some struggling companies often do).

    From Valleywag’s article:

    Last month’s bloodletting, multiple sources say, was the beginning of the end of Fab, a company once considered one of the most promising new internet retail outfits in the world. The layoffs were not part of some last-ditch effort to stabilize the company, but the start of a longer process that will see the company slowly unscrew and disassemble itself, like so many overpriced designer sofas.

    Insiders tell me that even the Fab.com survivors—down to between 10 and 15 in the New York HQ—have all been given ending dates for their remaining jobs. These stragglers who weren’t immediately fired will be gradually let go over the course of six months, with the latest remnants of Fab departing by January 2015 (a Fab spokesperson denied these are end dates, instead saying employees “have minimum guarantees of employment”).

    He adds:

    “None of the Fab insiders who’ve spoken to me seem surprised by what appears to be the company’s imminent and final implosion. Those still at the office spend their time on Facebook. There’s little real work left to do, except maybe job hunt..”

    Now, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg has taken to Twitter to denounce the report, calling it nothing but “bullshit hate.”

    He also took a swipe at Business Insider for reporting Valleywag’s original report.

    It is important to note that the Goldberg-Biddle back-and-forth isn’t a new phenomenon.

    Image via screenshot, Fab.com

  • New E-Commerce Benchmark Study Out

    MarketingSherpa and eBay’s Magento have a new E-commerce Benchmark Study out, which utilized data from 3,000 hours of research, survey responses from 4,346 marketers, interviews with “key e-commerce leaders,” and a review of academic works related to e-commerce. It has nearly a hundred charts looking at various points of analysis aimed at illustrating trends, those with the most prevalent marketplace strategies, and insights into successful tactics.

    The research found that email marketing and organic search were the most frequent sources of e-commerce traffic across all revenue ranges.

    While the percent receiving significant traffic from each channel was mostly consistent across product categories, percentages were increased for those using email in the apparel market and using referrals in business services. Jewelry and gifts, publishing, computer software, and business services are using content marketing less than other categories.

    Among other key findings were that those lacking robust reporting tools giving a “360-degree view” of all aspects of a customer purchase and profile are significantly hindered when it comes to growth and optimization.

    It also found that companies with a testing and optimization strategy based on extensive historical data saw higher median conversion rates than those that test based on intuition, best practices or that don’t do any testing.

    Additionally, the research found that margins are generally either holding steady or rising for the majority of companies.

    The paper was led by Diana Sindicich, PhD, Senior Director of Data Sciences for MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingSherpa.

    You can find the whole report here.

    Image via MarketingSherpa

  • Mobile Local Ad Revenue Expected To Triple Over Next Five Years

    Mobile local ad revenues in the U.S. are expected to hit $4.5 billion this year, according to a new report from BIA/Kelsey. That would be a massive increase over last year, which saw $2.9 billion.

    And that’s really just the beginning. The firm is projecting mobile local ad revenues to more than triple over the next five years, reaching as high as $15.7 billion in 2018.

    It expects mobile ad spending in general in the U.S. to reach $11.4 billion in 2014 and $30.3 billion in 2018. By the end of that year, it says, locally targeted mobile ads will be 52% of overall mobile ad spending in the U.S.

    “Advertiser demand will be driven by natural market forces to follow undervalued inventory,” said Michael Boland, senior analyst and VP of content at BIA/Kelsey. “Mobile advertising’s appeal includes higher performance, clearer ROI, tangible conversions and a shorter purchase funnel. These qualities of mobile content and advertising present a rare alignment between typical mobile user intent and advertisers’ stated objectives.”

    Tactics like geo-fencing, click-to-call, and click-to-map are helping drive up spend on mobile local advertising, according to the firm.

    BIA/Kelsey expects mobile search ad revenues to grow from $4.3 billion in 2014 to $10.9 billion in 2018, native social ad revenue to grow from $3.3 billion in 2014 to $9.9 billion in 2018, mobile display (app and mobile web) ad revenue to grow from $2.4 billion in 2014 to $6.1 billion in 2018, mobile video ad revenue to grow from $1.1 billion in 2014 to $3.1 billion in 2018, and SMS ad revenue to grow from $332 million in 2014 to $381 million in 2018.

    Image via BIA/Kelsey

  • Two Out Of Five Salespeople Aren’t Meeting Their Quotas [Report]

    Qvidian has some new research out finding that only 63% of salespeople are making their quotas. As a result, improving overall quota attainment is one of the top goals of executive managers.

    The report, based on data from CSO Insights, is visualized with some graphs created by eMarketer (even Qvidian itself links to eMarketer for the report). As you can see from this one, the goal falls under only increasing win rates.

    According to the report, the most likely reason quotas aren’t being reached is that opportunities end up as “no decisions”. Other reasons include salespeople being burdened with tasks with less time to spend selling, being unable to effectively communicate value, selling content and resources that aren’t aligned to the buyer, inability to find the necessary content or resources for selling, and selling content not tailored to the specific selling situation.

    Areas cited by respondents as needing improvement include (from most to least): conducting thorough needs analysis, identifying and gaining access to all decision-makers, clearly understanding customer’s buying process, generating winning proposals and personalized selling, differentiating from competition, providing content specific to selling situation and buyer, and effectively presenting value.

    SurePayroll president Michael Alter wrote an article for Inc.com a few years ago discussing ways to overcome unmet sales quotas. He suggested considering each sales rep’s experience and performance when developing individual quotas, getting more by asking for less, comparing results to past performance, and compensating successful reps adequately.

    Joseph DiMisa, who has written multiple books on salesforce effectiveness, shares some insight into designing effective sales quotas in a more recent article.

    Image via eMarketer

  • Look At How Facebook Referrals Have Skyrocketed This Year

    Just over a month ago, Facebook introduced the new Like and Share buttons, which have been rolling out slowly (though perhaps not as slowly as some Facebook updates).

    New Facebook likes and shares

    Facebook said it had seen a “favorable increase” in likes and shares in testing the new design. Shareaholic is sharing some findings, suggesting, “they were right”.

    In its new Facebook Referrals Report, it finds that in the last month, Facebook’s share of visits jumped 47.44%. The report is based on 13 months of data collected from over 200,000 publishers who reach over 250 million unique monthly visitors.

    “Although Shareaholic does not offer the new FB buttons among our own share buttons, we still track inbound traffic on sites that use any of our other offerings (analytics and related content). Some of our publishers have adopted the new Like and Share buttons from Facebook and are obviously reaping the benefits,” says Shareaholic’s Danny Wong. “Others that use our share buttons still see gains in Facebook referral traffic.”

    The report’s’ other main finding is that Facebook’s share of visits jumped 169.88% in the past year.

    Facebook referrals

    Clearly, based on this graph, Facebook referrals were climbing ahead of the new buttons, but look at that spike for November. If these buttons really are making a significant difference, that’s got to be good news for publishers, especially if it’s getting harder to be found in the news feed itself, thanks to Facebook’s version of the Panda update.

    Image: Shareaholic

  • Netflix Is Absolutely Dominating Data Traffic In North America [Report]

    Data from a Sandvine report is making the rounds through the tech Blogosphere today, finding that together, Netflix and YouTube account for 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks in North America, with Netflix dominating between the two.

    According to Sandvine, Netflix is the leading downstream application on the continent with 31.6% of the traffic. YouTube holds 18.6%.

    Netflix is also making a major mark in Europe. It now accounts for 20% of downstream traffic on “certain fixed networks in the British Isles,” according to Sandvine. As the firm notes, this is less than two years after Netflix launched in Europe and it took Netflix four years to have that kind of share of data traffic in the United States.

    There is still a lot of world left for Netflix to conquer. It has no presence in the Asia-Pacific today, and the region’s average monthly mobile usage alone now exceeds a gigabyte, which is driven by video, according to Sandvine. This accounts for 50% of peak downstream traffic – more than double the 443 megabyte average in North America.

    In Africa, video still accounts for less than 6% of mobile traffic.

    The report also found that Instagram and Dropbox are the top-ranked apps in mobile networks in many regions, and Instagram’s launch of video has played a significant role in its usage.

    Sandvine also found that P2P filesharing accounts for less than 10% of total daily traffic in North America. That’s compared to 31% five years ago.

    [via All Things D]

    Image: Netflix.com

  • Another Record For Internet Ad Revenues

    Online advertising revenues continue to hit record highs. The Interactive Advertising Bureau released a new report today finding that revenues for the first half of 2013 hit a record high of $20.1 billion. That’s an increase of 18% over the same period last year ($17 billion).

    The second quarter also saw an 18% year-over-year increase at $10.3 billion, up from $8.7 billion. Here’s a look back:

    Ad Revenue

    “Digital has steadily increased its ability to captivate consumers and then capture the marketing dollars that follow,” said IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. “Mobile advertising’s breakneck growth is evidence that marketers are recognizing the tremendous power of smaller screens. Digital video is also on a positive trajectory, delivering avid viewership and strong brand-building opportunities.”

    Last year, mobile ad revenue jumped a whopping 83% hitting a record $8.9 billion. It will be interesting to see what this year’s numbers look like when they eventually come out.

    “This report not only confirms that brands are making a greater commitment to interactive, but also points to the fact that mobile and digital video are being identified as integral elements of the marketing mix,” said David Silverman, a partner at PwC US, which prepared the IAB’s report. “Internet advertising’s ability to impact and engage is evident across digital screens, whether big or small.”

    “Consumers are embracing new screens, new content and transforming how they shop, communicate and consume content at an accelerated clip,” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics and Measurement at the IAB. “And, in response, marketers are turning to those same interactive arenas just as quickly.”

    You can see the full report here.

    Image: IAB

  • Apple And Google Are Now Bigger Than Coke

    Apple And Google Are Now Bigger Than Coke

    The big Best Global Brands report from Interbrand has been released, and for the first time, Coca-Cola is not the number one brand. It actually fell to number three, with Apple and Google holding the first and second spots respectively.

    In fact, Coca-Cola is sandwiched in between tech companies, with IBM holding the number four spot, followed by Microsoft at number five and GE at number six. Rounding out the top ten are McDonald’s at number seven, Samsung at number eight, Intel at number nine and Toyota at number ten.

    Global Brands

    Some other noteworthy tech and Internet companies on the list are Cisco at number thirteen, HP at number fifteen, Oracle at number eighteen, Amazon at number nineteen (one of the “top risers”), SAP at number twenty-five, eBay at number twenty-eight, Seimens at number forty-five, Facebook at number fifty-two, Nokia at number fifty-seven, Dell at number sixty-one, and Adobe at seventy-nine.

    It will be interesting to see if Coca-Cola can climb back up next year, but it’s not looking good, considering recent stories about its products contributing to obesity, and things like this:

    Of course, it’s not as though Apple and Google are without their brand problems. Apple’s new iPhone has already shown that its fingerprint sensor security technology is hackable, and Google is frequently in the news for privacy-related issues.

    “Every so often, a company changes our lives—not just with its products, but with its ethos. This is why, following Coca-Cola’s 13-year run at the top of Best Global Brands, Apple now ranks #1,” said Jez Frampton, Interbrand’s Global CEO. “Tim Cook has assembled a solid leadership team and has kept Steve Jobs’ vision intact – a vision that has allowed Apple to deliver on its promise of innovation time and time again.”

    The total value of all 100 brands listed in the report is $1.5 trillion (up 8.4% from last year). Apple’s brand value, according to Interbrand, is $98.3 billion.

    Chart: MarketingCharts

  • Apple Is Working On Larger iPhones, iPads [Report]

    A rumor emerged last week that Apple had delayed the public unveiling of the iPhone 5S so that it could implement a larger display at the last minute. Now a new report suggests that Apple is considering larger displays for all of its devices.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple’s Asian suppliers are currently testing larger displays for the company’s devices. To be more specific, Apple is testing iPhone display sizes larger than 4-inches, and it’s also looking into a 13-inch display for the iPad.

    These devices will probably not see the light of day this year, or anytime soon for that matter. The WSJ is quick to point out that Apple is only testing these new display sizes. There’s no word yet on whether or not Apple actually wants to make a larger iPhone or iPad.

    Of course, a larger iPhone is far more feasible than a larger iPad at this point. It’s been rumored for months now that Apple would be introducing a larger iPhone in 2014. Many point to increased competition from Samsung and its larger screens as the leading cause behind Apple’s decision to increase the display sizes of its own devices.

    What’s interesting about this latest report, however, is that it shows an Apple that might start offering more than one display size. Instead of alienating one consumer base in favor of another, Apple might try to be like Samsung and offer a display size for every need. What this means is that we might soon see an iPhone that’s offered in both 4 and 5-inch variants.

    As for the iPad, it’s hard to see Apple going for a 13-inch display just yet. The WSJ’s supply sources confirmed just as much by saying that the new iPad will remain at 9.7-inches. The only difference between the new and old iPad is that the new one will be thinner, and use touch sensors with a thin film instead of glass for the display.

    All of this doesn’t change the fact that we’re going to see a new iPhone and iPad this year. Like usual, we’ll be seeing the new iPhone first with its launch reportedly set for August. Production on the new iPad has just started to ramp up this month so we’ll probably not see new tablets from Apple until September or October.

  • Customer Acquisition Via Email Is Skyrocketing Compared To Other Channels

    Custora has a new report out looking at ecommerce customer acquisition, finding that email continues to trend upward rapidly from year to year, and is well ahead of affiliate, banner ads, Facebook and Twitter. In fact, email had quadrupled over the past four years, according to the firm.

    Do you have more success acquiring customers through email or through social channels like Facebook and Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

    “The last few years have spawned massive changes in the world of online marketing,” the report says. “With U.S. e-commerce sales now topping $200 billion annually, digital marketers are getting savvier than ever. Customer acquisition trends reflect this evolution. Organic search still leads as the largest channel for online customer acquisition. But as more retailers move towards a ‘free-to-paid’ subscriber model and rely on third parties to help drive visitors to their sites, email and affiliate channels have seen an explosion in growth over the past few years.”

    “Email marketing has been a growing trend in e-commerce, with an increasing number of retailers building communities and collecting email addresses, then converting those ‘members’ into customers,” it says. “Organic search continues to grow as a reliable channel, (accounting for nearly 16% of customers acquired) reinforcing efforts to complement products with relevant and informative editorial content along with investing in search engine marketing.”

    Email Channel Growth

    Percentage

    Here’s where email stacks up compared to other channels for customer lifetime value, according to the report:

    Custoer lifetime value

    Custora analyzed data from 72 million people shopping on 86 retail websites, tracking where they were coming from, and how much they purchased over a two-year period.

    You can download the full report here.

    Interestingly, since this report came out showing the huge disconnect between email and Twitter for customer acquisition, Twitter announced that it has started experimenting with email-based ad targeting. Here’s how Twitter described it in a blog post:

    How does this work? Let’s say a local florist wants to advertise a Valentine’s Day special on Twitter. They’d prefer to show their ad to flower enthusiasts who frequent their website or subscribe to their newsletter. To get the special offer to those people who are also on Twitter, the shop may share with us a scrambled, unreadable email address (a hash) or browser-related information (a browser cookie ID). We can then match that information to accounts in order to show them a Promoted Tweet with the Valentine’s Day deal. This is how most other companies handle this practice, and we don’t give advertisers any additional user information.

    Josh Wolford has more on the offering here.

    How is customer acquisition by email doing for you compared to other channels? Is email working better than social or vice versa? Let us know in the comments.

    [via Wired]

  • Is International SEO More Important Now?

    Is International SEO More Important Now?

    Ranking in search engines, particularly Google, is not getting any easier, but how often are you considering the search engines around the globe? Many in the industry see international SEO as only gaining in importance.

    Do you think it’s more important for marketers to optimize for different search engines around the world than it used to be? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    A recent report from BrightEdge indicates that the majority of search marketers think that it is becoming more important for sites to rank in global search engines. According to the firm’s survey, six out of ten believe it will become either “more” or “much more” important this year, compared to last year. 36% said “more,” while 27% said “much more.”

    Global SEO

    “SEO marketers at global companies aspire to reach customers worldwide, and drive leads, revenue and traf!c through global SEO initiatives,” says BrightEdge in the report. “Looking beyond a single country also helps them demonstrate a greater ROI on marketing investments. Not only does this boost marketing ROI but also maintains global brand consistency while accommodating local nuances. A global concerted approach to SEO marketing addresses these needs.”

    Respondents were specifically asked about Chinese search giant Baidu, with 31% saying it would be much more important to rank in Baidu in 2013, and 10% saying “much more important”.

    BrightEdge - Baidu

    “With roughly 540 million internet users, 900 million mobile users and 388 million mobile internet users, China is the world’s largest internet market,” says BrightEdge. “Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, is one of the most valuable gateways to this large internet user base.”

    You can download the report in its entirety here. It deals with numerous topics, far beyond the topic of global SEO.

    Another recent report (via MarketingCharts) from Covario found that Baidu generated three times more global paid search clicks than Yahoo/Bing in Q1.

    “I no longer believe it makes sense for any company to roll out an international SEO programme to multiple countries without also having a PPC campaign in place,” writes WebCertain CEO Andy Atkins-Krüger in a post for Search Engine Land about multinational SEO. “In some cases, we would recommend leading with PPC and landing pages first, rather than full blown (and relatively expensive) international SEO.”

    He adds, “There are a number of reasons why we recommend this, but one is that user satisfaction on your site can be measured much more quickly with PPC than with SEO. Behavior really matters — so if you can study it first and quickly with PPC, your SEO efforts later will work out to be much more successful. I do worry that the association of search engine warnings with SEO being ‘bad’ are beginning to stick with people who are newer to the industry, and therefore, SEO is having a health warning attached.”

    Dave Davies has a great article on international SEO considerations at Search Engine Watch, in which he concludes, “While expanding one’s market is generally a good thing, what people often forget is that you still have to maintain what you have, so make sure you have the resources. Many wars have been lost simply by trying to fight them on too many fronts.”

    “If you have just enough resources to dedicate to a successful SEO strategy in your own country, it doesn’t make sense to expand in that you’ll be drawing resources away from the strategy that’s keeping the lights on,” he adds. “You need to make sure it’s the right decision for your business and if it is, make sure that you’re picking the right strategies to maximize your odds of success in the shortest period of time.”

    In your international optimization efforts, you may also want to keep in mind some recent changes Google has made to its indexing systems. They’re now treating some country-code TLDs differently in terms of geography vs. generic. The list will change over time, but right now, these are the ccTLDs Google is considering generic: .ad, .as, .bz, .cc, .cd, .co, .dj, .fm, .gg, .io, .la, .me, .ms, .nu, .sc, .sr, .su, .tv, .tk and .ws.

    Are you increasing your focus on international SEO, or are you simply focusing on your own region? Let us know in the comments.

  • EFF: Twitter Has Your Back, Apple Not So Much When It Comes to Protecting User Data

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation, champions of the public interest in matters related to free speech and digital privacy, has just released their latest report on which companies actively help protect your data from the government. It’s called the “Who has your back” report and this is the third year that EFF has published it.

    The methodology is simple enough. The EFF looks at 18 prominent tech companies including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Apple, and Amazon, and judges them based on 6 different categories (up from 4 last year). It then awards stars to the companies if their actions in those categories are on the side of protecting user rights.

    This year, Twitter and ISP Sonic.net were the only two companies to receive full 6-star ratings from the EFF. Last year, they were the top two performers in the report, scoring a 3.5 and 4 star rating, respectively.

    Here are the 6 categories that the EFF looks at for their report:

    1. Does the company require a warrant for content of communications?
    2. Does the company tell users about government data requests?
    3. Does the company publish transparency reports?
    4. Does the company publish law enforcement guidelines?
    5. Does the company fight for users’ privacy rights in court?
    6. Does the company fight for users’ privacy in Congress?

    Verizon and Myspace received zero stars, while Apple, AT&T, and Yahoo received 1 star. On the flip side, Dropbox, Google, LinkedIn, and Spideroak got nearly perfect marks, coming in with 5 stars out of 6.

    Readers of this year’s annual privacy and transparency report should be heartened, as we are, by the improvements major online service providers made over the last year. While there remains room for improvement in areas such as the policies of location service providers and cellphone providers like AT&T and Verizon, certain practices – like publishing law enforcement guidelines and regular transparency reports – are becoming standard industry practice for Internet companies.

    And we are seeing a growing, powerful movement that comprises civil liberties groups as well as major online service providers to clarify outdated privacy laws so that there is no question government agents need a court-ordered warrant before accessing sensitive location data, email content, and documents stored in the cloud.

    Remember: you entrust most of these companies with almost everything in your digital life – photos, personal info, location, financial info. It’s important to know exactly where each stands in terms of protecting that info against prying eyes. The EFF warns that the absence of a star doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is thwarting user rights in that category – it simply may mean that they haven’t been given the chance to defend user rights in that arena. Here’s the EFF’s full star report:

  • Dengue Spreading, But Tropical Diseases Closer to Extinction

    The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that significant progress is being made against tropical diseases including guinea worm, rabies, and yaws. In a new report, the organization shows that “new momentum has shifted” toward the elimination of many diseases which disproportionately affect the world’s poorest people.

    “With this new phase in the control of these diseases, we are moving ahead towards achieving universal health coverage with essential interventions,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO. “The challenge now is to strengthen capacity of national disease programmes in endemic countries and streamline supply chains to get the drugs to the people who need them, when they need them.”

    Of the 17 neglected tropical diseases charted in the report, two are targeted for global eradication: dracunculiasis (guinea worm disease) in 2015 and yaws in 2020. Between January and September 2012 only 521 cases of guinea worm were reported, a step up from the 1006 that were reported during the same period in 2011.

    The report also sets targets for the elimination of five diseases in 2015 and 10 targets for the elimination of nine diseases in 2020, either globally or in certain regions. Rabies has been eliminated in “several” countries and could be regionally eliminated by 2020.

    “The prospects for success have never been so strong,” said Chan. “Many millions of people are being freed from the misery and disability that have kept populations mired in poverty, generation after generation, for centuries.”

    Unfortunately, progress has not been as exceptional against dengue fever. The disease was the fastest spreading vector-borne viral disease of 2012, and the WHO states that it has “epidemic potential.” Cases of dengue have increased 30-fold over the past 50 years. The WHO recommends preventive measures against dengue, rather than a reactive treatment approach.

    (Image courtesy WHO /Christopher Black)

  • Google Sees Lowest Search Market Share In 5 Years In UK [Report]

    Experian Hitwise has released new data about the search market in the UK, indicating that Google’s share has fallen below 90% in the country.

    Google’s market share for the month was 89.33%. That’s the first time in as much as five years that Google has dropped below 90% in the United Kingdom, according to the firm. Here’s a look at the numbers:

    UK Search Market

    “As Google’s market share dropped it was a positive month for Microsoft, Yahoo!, Ask and the all Other search engines monitored by Experian Hitwise,” writes James Murray on the firm’s UK blog. “Microsoft Sites, led by the bing engine increased market share by 0.72% up to 4.71% of all searches. This was a 2012 peak for Microsoft which was also ahead by 0.86% year-on-year.”

    “October saw the launch of Windows 8 with Bing set as the default search engine which may have gone some way to increasing Microsoft’s market share,” Murray adds. “Online searches for Windows 8 increased by 120% throughout October showing the increased online interest for Microsoft’s new operating system. As search continues to diversify however, the market is likely to continue to shift and change.”

    It will be interesting to watch, not only in the UK, but everywhere else, especially in light of recent developments on the Bing front.

    There are still 18 times more searches conducted on Google sites in the UK than on all of the other search engines combined.

  • HIV Diagnoses on the Rise in Australia

    Three annual reports on HIV and sexually transmitted infections in Australia released this week show a rise in HIV diagnoses. The reports were released at the Australasian HIV/AIDS Conference 2012 currently taking place in Melbourne.

    The reports show that new diagnoses of HIV in Australia have risen 50% over the past 10 years. Also, an eight percent spike in HIV diagnoses occurred in 2011, when 1137 Australians were diagnosed with the virus.

    “It remains critical to continue to invest in effective programs and campaigns to reinforce condom use and inform men of the appropriate use of other sexual risk reduction practices, such as limiting condom-less sex to partners of the same HIV status,” said John de Wit, University of New South Wales professor and lead editor of the Annual Report of Trends in Behaviour 2012.

    The trends show that unprotected anal intercourse with casual partners among gay men has also increased over the past decade. In 2011, 34.6% of Australian men who had sex with a casual partner reported having unprotected anal intercourse in the past six months.

    However, David Wilson, UNSW associate professor and head of the Surveillance and Evaluation Program for Public Health at the Kirby Institute, stated that part of rise in HIV diagnoses could be due to better testing trends for Australians who are at risk for HIV.

    “We believe that between 20 and 30 per cent of HIV cases in Australia remain undiagnosed and that earlier diagnosis among these people and initiation of antiretroviral therapy would have large health benefits for the individual and reduce new infections in the community,” said Wilson.

    The reports also revealed the trends in the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections in Australia. Gonorrhoea and chlamydia infections are on the rise, especially among remote indigenous communities. However, the rates of genital warts are on the decline due to the availability of the HPV vaccine.