Tag: Reports

Google Generated $54b for Businesses, Publishers, Non-profits in ’09

Google has released a report that details its economic impact in each of the 50 states in the U.S. In the report, Google says it generated $54 billion of economic activity for American businesses, website publishers, and non-profits in 2009.

"In a time of tighter budgets and a slow economic recovery, we’re glad to support so many small businesses and entrepreneurs across the country by helping them find new customers more efficiently and monetize their websites through targeted advertising," says Claire Hughes Johnson, Vice President, Global Online Sales.

"The report is filled with really wonderful stories about the direct economic impact that AdWords, AdSense, Google Grants and our search engine have across the country," she adds. "These are the stories of entrepreneurs across the country growing their businesses with Google."

In addition to the report, if you go to this site, you can look at each state on a Google Maps application, to see how much economic activity Google’s generated.

The lengthy report can be found in its entirety here (pdf).

May 25, 2010
How Business Questions About Social Media Have Changed in a Year

Last year we looked at a study about the state of social media marketing, looking at common questions businesses had about it. A lot has happened in the social media world in a year’s time, and many businesses have gotten into the swing of things since then. However, Michael Stelzner, author of the study and founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com shared findings with us from this year’s version of the study, and businesses still have plenty of questions.

"A year ago, businesses were uncertain about social media," says Stelzner. "Now it’s here to stay and companies are rapidly adopting social media marketing. According to his findings, the majority of marketers surveyed (about 1,900) have either just begun using social media or have only been using it for a few months:

"Measuring the return on investment for social media is the hottest question on marketers minds right now," Stelzner tells WebProNews. "Most marketers are seeing great value with their social media campaigns, but they just cannot figure out how to measure their results." Here are the top ten questions businesses have about social media marketing, based on the analysis of 1,356 open-ended responses:

Top Ten Questions

1. How do I measure social media return on investment?
2. What are the social media marketing best practices?
3. How do I best manage my time with social media?
4. How do I reach my target markets with social media?
5. How do I generate traffic and leads using social media?
6. How do I implement social media tactics?
7. What are the latest social media trends?
8. How do I get started?
9. How do I integrate my social media activities?
10. How do I evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each platform?

One thing worth noting is that last year, the top question was related to tactics, but now it’s ROI. Perhaps businesses have learned some effective tactics in a year’s time, and have realized that these vary depending on needs and goals. Another significant change is that a year ago, one of the top questions was "Does social media marketing work?" and this isn’t even on the list anymore. It’s become abundantly clear over the past year that if you figure out how to do it right, it works. Brands have confirmed this time and time again.

Stelzner notes that his survey indicates marketing interest has fallen off significantly, with 81% either indicating they will not use MySpace or will decrease their use of it. "Another hot finding is that 81% of marketers will actually be increasing their use of blogs," he adds. "That came as a surprise to us."

It is indeed a bit surprising that so many would indicate an increase in blog use, but that is simply because their is this false notion out there that social networks are replacing blogs, and as we’ve discussed on numerous occasions, it’s just not the case.

Stelzner’s extensive report can be viewed here. It’s full of interesting stats and graphical information.

April 19, 2010
Are You Wrong About What it Takes to Get Conversions?

SeeWhy has released an eBook with an interesting premise for online retailers. It looks at how the top 10 converting e-commerce sites drive their website conversions. The main takeaway, a representative for SeeWhy tells WebProNews is that "the top 10 converting e-commerce sites, on average, convert roughly 10 times as many visitors into customers as the typical site — 23 percent vs. 2-3 percent."

The strategies employed by these top-converting sites don’t necessarily reflect conventional wisdom of how to increase conversions according to the eBook’s author SeeWhy Founder Charles Nicholls. "When we set out to study the top ten converting websites, we expected to find short shopping cart processes, guest checkouts, and highly tuned websites focused around getting the sale. But we didn’t," he says. "Instead, we found companies focused on lifetime customer value, seeking to thrill shoppers with a superior experience and to make it incredibly easy to purchase again. Moreover, we found companies willing to sacrifice a small proportion of initial sales lost as a result of their desire to capture user data. Because once captured, they use details very effectively to remarket to website visitors, driving highly qualified buyers with intent to their sites."

"Conventional wisdom emphasizes SEO and streamlined conversion and shopping cart processes — reduce the number of steps, offer guest checkout, and the like — to optimize conversion rate," he says. "But the top 10 conversion leaders don’t care about one night stands; they want long term relationships. Still, they convert about 10 times as many visitors as the average ecommerce site. Their secret, quite simply, is their focus on long-term relationships with their customers, and that cardinal rule drives all of their activities."

What are the Top 10?

   1. Schwan’s (food) 41.7 percent
   2. ProFlowers (flowers) 26.5 percent
   3. Vitacost.com (health and nutrition) 24.0 percent
   4. Woman Within (catalog/clothing) 22.4 percent
   5. Blair.com (catalog/clothing) 20.5 percent
   6. Lands’ End (catalog/clothing) 19.5 percent
   7. DrsFosterSmith.com (pet supplies) 18.6 percent
   8. Office Depot (office) 18.4 percent
   9. Roaman’s (catalog/clothing) 18.4 percent
10. QVC (jewelry) 18.3 percent

For comparison, Amazon has a conversion rate of 16.5 percent, almost two percentage points below the lowest-ranking member of the top 10, SeeWhy says. Here are a couple tables from the eBook that present some interesting stats about the top 10:

So is the lesson here to throw out conventional wisdom? I’d say a better strategy would be to build upon that conventional wisdom with strategies that are successful for these other sites. In e-commerce it’s ok to have long-term commitment and one-night stands. The top 10 sites, according to the eBook are optimized for repeat purchases, not for the first purchase, and make it easy for returning visitors to purchase. They make their sites easy to browse and "pleasurable to shop — especially for unplanned purchases."

They each use remarketing vs. 25 percent of companies in the e-commerce sector, Nicholls says, and as a result, recommendations, suggestions and relevant content delivered through email, get very high open – and very low unsubscribe — rates.

The top ten converting sites were determined using Nielsen data for six months, ending in November. Sites achieved a minimum of 5 million unique visitors per month, and conversions were measured based on the ratio of site visitors to purchasers in a given session. SeeWhy is taking requests for a free copy of the eBook in case you’re interested at a more in depth look.

For those looking to optimize their conversions from search, Google recently started making data available to help with this. Search professionals are calling it a reason to use Google’s Webmaster Tools.

April 19, 2010
Mobile Ad Report Shows Big Gains for Android, RIM, PSP

Mobile advertising firm Millennial Media has put out a report mobile devices and their impact on advertising. "For the past year Millennial Media has released a monthly SMART report (Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting), which discusses trends in the mobile ad space. Beginning this month, they’ve decided to release an additional device-focused report, the Media Mobile Mix," a representative for the firm tells WebProNews.

"The Media Mobile Mix will highlight monthly device-focused trends, including growth, percentage of ad impressions, etc," she adds. "For example, data for March shows that although Apple continued to represent the majority of impressions, the number served by Android and connected devices, like Sony PSPs or iPads, increased drastically."

Some other interesting data from the report:

– U.S. device impression data breakout: Smartphones (45%), Feature Phones (34%), and Connected Devices (21%).

– Apple’s OS remains the leading OS on our network in March with 70 percent share of Smartphone impressions. Apple’s OS has maintained the leading OS position since Millennial began reporting OS mix in August 2009.

– RIM remained the second largest OS for the eighth consecutive month with a 14% share of impressions; and four devices in the Top 20 Mobile Phone ranking.

– While Apple represented 40% of overall network impressions in March (top slot for the 6th consecutive month); manufacturers supporting Android enabled devices represented over 50% of the Top 15 Manufacturers. Samsung was firmly embedded as the second largest manufacturer on our network, with four devices in the Top 20.

"As the largest independent mobile advertising platform in the U.S., we support every major operating system and device. In March, one out of every five ad impressions on our network were seen on a mobile connected device, and not a mobile phone," said Erin (Mack) McKelvey, SVP of Marketing, Millennial Media. "We have reported monthly device trends from our network for a year, but given the proliferation of smartphones and connected devices, we felt that it was now time to spotlight this data for industry-watchers who are trying to understand the role of devices and consumer behavior in the overall mobile market."

For the first time, Android’s OS was in the top three in the ranking of smartphone impressions in March, and Android OS impressions share increased 3% in March alone mankind it 6% of U.S. Smartphone impressions for the month. Globally, Android impressions increased 72% month over month, while RIM also surged 25% globally, on the network.

April 16, 2010
Most Businesses Still Only “Experiment” with Social Media

Social media use among businesses has grown significantly over the past year or two, but new research from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit (where WebProNews is conducting exclusive interviews this week), indicates that most businesses are largely still in the experimental stage when it comes to their efforts.

There are a great deal of interesting stats to pick through in the report, but to me, one of the most striking is that 61% (nearly 2/3) say they have experimented with social media, but not done that much. Various stats suggest businesses are starting to get to the place where they view social media as crucial, however. For example, the vast majority (90%) say they expect social media to take up more time internally "in a year’s time," while only 8% expect it will take up the same amount of time, and 2% expect less time to be spent on social media next year.

Some other highlights from the report:

– The majority of companies have difficulty measuring the return on investment (ROI) from social media. Almost two-thirds of respondents (61%) say their organizations are “poor” (34%) or “very poor” (27%) at measuring ROI.

– Increased traffic to Web site is the business goal that marketers are most likely to be trying to influence through social media marketing. Three quarters (74%) of companies say they use social media to increase traffic.

– Direct traffic to Web site is by far the metric most commonly used to measure the impact of off-site social media, measured by just under two-thirds of company respondents (63%).

– More brand recognition (64%) is the second most important business objective in terms of impact of social media. A similar proportion of respondents (62%) cite better brand reputation.

– Despite the widespread recognition that social media marketing impacts brand reputation and brand visibility, only a quarter of all respondents (25%) surveyed use online brand mentions and brand awareness as a metric for measuring off-site social media success. Just 15% use brand perception as a metric.

– Just over half of companies (56%) say that they try to achieve increased sales through social media activity. But only a quarter of companies (24%) use sales as a metric for measuring social media success.

Facebook is the Web property mostly commonly used in social media, with 85% of companies surveyed using it as part of their marketing strategy. This is followed by Twitter (perhaps more closely than expected, given Facebook’s much larger user base) at 77%, LinkedIn at 58% and YouTube at 49%.

Over two-thirds of company respondents say that the amount of money spent on social media has increased since last year, while 30% say it has stayed the same, and 81% of companies expect social media budgets to increase over the next year, while 18% expect spending to stay the same. So while companies are still experimenting, they must be generally seeing good enough results to keep at it, or see the potential to use it on an expanded basis.

Do you have a concrete social media strategy or do you simply experiment? Discuss.

March 1, 2010
Consumers Getting More Comfortable with Mobile Shopping

As you know, smartphone usage is on the rise, and that means more opportunities for businesses to sell to customers via their mobile devices. We often hear about how important mobile is to the marketing strategy and especially future strategies, but how much are consumers really into shopping from their phones?

Retrevo shared some findings with us, and concludes that consumers are increasingly warming up to the concept of shopping from their phones. Andrew Eisner, Retrevo’s Director of Content says, "With the Mobile Internet becoming more available on everything from smartphones to tablet computers, we see an encouraging number of consumers researching and actually purchasing products with their mobile devices."

Not surprisingly, the mobile shopping is most popular with the young in pretty much every capacity, and the older the demographic, the less inclined they are to use mobile devices to shop.

The young also appear to be most likely to engage with mobile advertising, and even notice mobile ads at all. Furthermore, when asked about their experience when they used a mobile phone to shop, most said they searched for deals, found them, and got the best price, while nearly half also found that it made shopping easier and more fun. A much smaller percentage didn’t think it was worth it and wouldn’t try again.

Highlights from Retrevo’s Findings:

– 59% of people said they found the shopping information they were looking for, when using a mobile phone.
– Only 8% of people said they did not intend to shop from their mobile phone
– Only 9% of people, over 35 years old, have responded to an ad on their mobile phone, compared to 20% of people under 35.
– 55% of people, ages 18 – 24, have used a mobile phone to aid in the shopping process.
– 52% of people, ages 25 – 34, have used a mobile phone to aid in the shopping process.
– 36% of people, ages 35, 44, have used a mobile phone to aid in the shopping process.
– 17% of people, ages 45 and up, have used a mobile phone to aid in the shopping process.
– 17% of people, ages 18 – 24, have made a purchase using their mobile phone.
– 15% of people, ages 25 – 34, have made a purchase using their mobile phone.
– 10% of people, ages 35 – 44, have made a purchase using their mobile phone.
– 3% of people, ages 45 and above, have made a purchase using their mobile phone.

The research indicates that the future of online shopping via mobile devices is bright. Eventually, these younger users are going to become the older ones, and the future youngsters will probably find it hard to imagine a world where shopping from mobile devices wasn’t the norm.

A fitting quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "Today’s generation doesn’t call it a mobile phone; they call it a phone."

Do you shop from your mobile device? Do you purchase items from it? Comment here.

February 17, 2010
As Companies Relax on Social Media, Threats Increase

Even as social media has grown to be a much more widely accepted form of communication among businesses over the years, there is still plenty of data out there depicting the flaws and setbacks that can occur when social networks are used in the business environment. Just as with email or web surfing in general, there are security concerns, and a new report (pdf) from security firm Sophos claims that malware and spam have increased by as much as 70% on social networks from a year ago.

How big of a security concern do you find social media to be? Discuss here.

The firm surveyed over 500 organizations and found that 36% of users claim to have been sent malware via social networking sites, which is an increase of 69% from last year.

"Computer users are spending more time on social networks, sharing sensitive and valuable personal information, and hackers have sniffed out where the money is to be made," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "The dramatic rise in attacks in the last year tells us that social networks and their millions of users have to do more to protect themselves from organized cybercrime, or risk falling prey to identity theft schemes, scams, and malware attacks."

Of course front and center of everybody’s attention is Facebook, the world’s most popular social network. Sophos found that out of those surveyed, 60% believe Facebook poses the biggest security threat out of social networks, compared to just 18% naming MySpace, 17% naming Twitter, and 4% naming LinkedIn.

"We shouldn’t forget that Facebook is by far the largest social network – and you’ll find more bad apples in the biggest orchard," says Cluley. "The truth is that the security team at Facebook works hard to counter threats on their site – it’s just that policing 350 million users can’t be an easy job for anyone. But there is no doubt that simple changes could make Facebook users safer. For instance, when Facebook rolled-out its new recommended privacy settings late last year, it was a backwards step, encouraging many users to share their information with everybody on the Internet."

Although LinkedIn was cited as the network among the top four that sparks the least amount of concern from survey participants, Cluley notes that it has its own significant risk factors, which should not be overlooked.

"Targeted attacks against companies are in the news at the moment, and the more information a criminal can get about your organization’s structure, the easier for them to send a poisoned attachment to precisely the person whose computer they want to break into," he explains. "Sites like LinkedIn provide hackers with what is effectively a corporate directory, listing your staff’s names and positions. This makes it child’s play to reverse-engineer the email addresses of potential victims."

According to Sophos’ findings, 49% of firms allow all their staff unfettered access to Facebook, a stat that is up 13% from last year.

"The grim irony is that just as companies are loosening their attitude to staff activity on social networks, the threat of malware, spam, phishing and identity theft on Facebook is increasing," says Cluley. "However, social networks can be an essential part of the business mix today, and the answer is not to bar staff from participating in them, but to apply some ‘social security’ instead."

As Cluely suggests, social networks have simply become part of the way we do business. At this point for a lot of companies, shutting down access in not an option. The reality is that no matter which way you communicate online, there are going to be threats. This is true not only in the corporate world, but in general life. As social networking becomes more location-oriented, you have to wonder if cyber crime might lead to an increase in physical world crime. That’s a scary thought.

Is social media worth the security risks to your company? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> Businesses Benefit as Customers Share Current Locations

> Customer Connections Now Important for Google Results

> Facebook Most Popular Mobile Social Website

February 2, 2010
Report Suggests More Revenue, but Less Advertisers for Google

AdGooroo, a competitive intelligence agency, has released a new report, which indicates that there as has been a decrease in active advertisers for Google, despite projected Q4 gains.

"Google experienced a quality purge this quarter and banned what we believe to be more than 30,000 advertisers, accounting for about 5.3 percent of its active advertiser base," said AdGooroo Founder and CEO Rich Stokes. "While this typically signals a negative impact on revenues, AdGooroo also tracked increased competition for ad placement, resulting in higher ad prices for Google and unusually high clickthrough rates. Google seems to be taking advantage of a strong Q4 to make some quality improvements."

The report maintains that ad coverage, which has been steadily climbing for the past 12 months took a sudden dive in December, dropping nearly 10% — from 5.48 ads per keyword in November down to 4.97 in December.

In the report, the firm notes that the fourth quarter has traditionally been strong for Google, and expects this to be the case again this year. "This seasonal improvement has less to do with total search query volume (which historically is about the same as November), and more with increased competition for ad placement (higher ad prices) and unusually high clickthrough rates," says AdGooroo.

Here are some interesting graphs from the report:

Other interesting information in the report includes lists of the top 25 advertisers on Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and the most expensive keywords on each of these search engines. These are based on the total number of recorded first-page ad impressions, and doesn’t necessarily reflect total ad spend. You can check out the report in its entirety here (it’s complimentary).

Related Articles:

> Consumers Expected to Spend $6.2 Billion on Mobile Apps in 2010

> Click Fraud Rate Spikes In Q4

> Bing Makes Out Well In Search Spend Report

January 19, 2010
Consumers Expected to Spend $6.2 Billion on Mobile Apps in 2010

Gartner has released some research findings that indicate consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores. Meanwhile, advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide.

According to Gartner, mobile app stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free. Gartner also forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013, and free downloads to account for 82% of all downloads in 2010 (87% in 2013).

"As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads," said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. "Games remain the No. 1 application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money."

"Growth in smartphone sales will not necessarily mean that consumers will spend more money, but it will widen the addressable market for an offering that will be advertising-funded," added Baghdassarian. "The value chain of the application stores will evolve as rules are set and broken in an attempt to find the most profitable business model for all parties involved."

"Application stores will be a core focus throughout 2010 for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms," said Carolina Milanesi, another research director at Gartner. "Consumers will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover applications they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support but also which store to promote their applications in."

Some of Gartners numbers have been brought into question by another research firm, comScore. In reference to a Gartner claim that Apple App Store downloads accounted for 99.4% of all mobile app downloads in 2009, comScore analyst Alistair Hill is quoted as saying, "I think somebody’s missed something out on the maths there…I find that hard to believe. We know iPhone users buy a lot more apps than anybody else, but that still doesn’t work."

Still, we haven’t seen anything solid to dispute the claim. But we might see something surface soon.

Related Articles:

> Best Buy Now Installing Google Mobile Apps On Smartphones

> Google Launches Analytics for Mobile Apps

> Usage of Mobile Web and Apps Doubles in 2 Years

January 19, 2010
Skype Sees Big Jump in International Calls

Skype announced that its share of international calling minutes has jumped by 50% year-over-year. This data comes from a new report released by research firm TeleGeography.

According to this report, Skype’s share of international calling minutes jumped to 12% from last year’s figure of 8%. Telegeography says that the volume of traffic routed via Skype is growing at an "astonishing" pace. The following graph shows the net increase in international phone and Skype traffic from 2005 to 2009.

Skype’s Peter Parkes writes on the Skype Blog:

Skype retains its top spot as the ‘largest provider of cross-border communications in the world, by far’ according to the same report. Skype-to-Skype international calling minutes grew by 21 billion in 2009, a phenomenal acceleration of almost 100%. Telegeography strategy VP Stefan Beckert said at a meeting in Honolulu (why can’t we have meetings there?) that ‘he knew Skype hit a tipping point when his grandmother started using it’.

Sten Tamkivi’s presentation at eComm in Amsterdam explored some of the backstory behind Skype’s conquest of the international long distance calling space, and included some discussion of the reasons behind Skype’s increasing ubiquity. Definitely interesting viewing, if I say so myself, and there’s a transcript over at Skype Journal if you’d prefer to digest it in text form.

It should be noted, as Skype points out, that Telgeography has slightly altered its methodology for the report this year. The firm is now comparing international Skype-to-Skype minutes to the total number of international minutes to get the 12% figure. In the past, the Skype share included Skype calls to landlines and mobiles too.

Details of the TeleGeography report, which covers much more, can be viewed here. Samples can be downloaded.

Related Articles:

> eBay Completes Skype Sale

> eBay And Skype Settle Litigation

> Skype Founders Reportedly Close to Settlement with eBay

January 19, 2010
Enterprises Seeing Increased Complexity at Data Centers

Symantec has put together its "State of the Data Center" report, which is the product of a survey of 573 businesses in 26 countries.

"Although mid-sized enterprises tend to evaluate and adopt new technologies at a faster rate than larger organizations, they still face similar data center complexities that are compounded by adopting new initiatives," says Deepak Mohan, senior vice president, Information Management Group at Symantec. "Standardizing on cross-platform solutions that can manage new technologies and automate processes will drive immediate cost reduction and make their jobs easier in the long run."

Symantec cites the following as highlights of the survey:

– Mid-sized enterprises are adopting new technology initiatives such as cloud computing, replication, and deduplication at 11-17 percent higher rates than small or large enterprises.

– Most enterprises have 10 or more data center initiatives rated as somewhat or absolutely important and 50 percent expect "significant" changes to their data centers in 2010.

– Half of all enterprises say applications are growing somewhat/quickly and half are finding it difficult and costly to meet service level agreements (SLAs).

– One-third of all enterprises say staff productivity is hampered by too many applications. Adding to the complexity is the continued increase in data causing 71 percent of organizations to consider data reduction technologies such as deduplication.

– Security, backup and recovery, and continuous data protection are the most important initiatives in 2010, ahead of virtualization. Eighty-three percent of enterprises rated security somewhat or absolutely important. Seventy-nine percent said backup and recovery is somewhat/absolutely important and 76 percent rated continuous data protection as one of their top initiatives.

– Staffing and budgets remain tight with half of all enterprises reporting they are somewhat/extremely understaffed. Finding budget and qualified applicants are the biggest recruiting issues. Seventy-six percent of enterprises have the same or more job requisitions open this year.

– One-third of disaster recovery plans are undocumented or need work and important IT components, such as cloud computing, remote office and virtual servers are often not included. Almost one-third of enterprises haven’t re-evaluated their disaster recovery plan in the last 12 months.

– Virtual machine protection continues to be a focus for enterprises, with 82 percent of enterprises considering virtual-machine technologies in 2010. Respondents cited granular recovery within virtual machine images as the biggest challenge in virtual machine data protection.

The security company recommends that businesses employ software that supports heterogeneous environments and eliminates islands of information, and deploy deduplication closer to the information source to eliminate redundant data and reduce storage and network costs.

Symantec also highlights the importance of disaster recovery planning, saying enterprises should seek to improve the success of testing by evaluating and implementing testing methods that are non-disruptive.

Related Articles:

> Google Preparing For Future With 10 Million Servers

> MySpace Tackles Data Center Costs

> Twitter Tops MySpace In UK, Spurs Data Center Expansion

January 11, 2010