INSIGHT blogArchive: November 2008

Archive for November, 2008

Low E-commerce Sales Expected for Cyber Monday, 2008

24
November
2008

Bad news for retailers, good news for consumers.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

Viewed as the online equivalent to Black Friday, Cyber Monday is one of the busiest shopping days of the year when retailers offer special promotions to entice customers to shop online for their holiday gifts.  While the growth of online shopping has been slowing naturally as part of the channel’s maturation, the weak economy is causing an added decline on e-commerce sales this season.

comScore Inc reports that online retail spending grew only 1% in October from a year ago, its lowest growth rate since 2001. eMarketer predicts the online sales growth for the holiday and the year will be weaker than ever based on Q3 e-commerce data from the US Department of Commerce (DOC).  The DOC estimated that e-commerce sales grew only 4.6% in Q3 2008, compared with Q3 2007.  Benchmarked against the new DOC data, eMarketer predicts 2008 will now be the first year of single-digit growth of the decade.

The good news for consumers is that due to the economic circumstances, retailers are more aggressive with promotions this season.  Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, conducted a survey this fall which showed that 83.7% of retailers will have a special promotion for Cyber Monday, up from 72.2% in 2007. The most popular promotions are expected to be specific deals (38.8%), e-mail campaigns (32.7%) and one-day sales (24.5%).  Shipping costs is one of the biggest barriers to buying online, and to take away that burden, 22.5% of retailers will offer free shipping on all purchases.

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Internet Ad Revenue Resilient To The Economy

21
November
2008

A struggling economy has not stunted the growth of revenue from online advertising.

Ryan Moss
Media Coordinator

Despite a below average economy, online advertising revenue during the third quarter of 2008 was nearly $5.9 billion. According to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PWC), revenues increased by 2% from quarter two in 2008 and over 11% from quarter three in 2007. The $5.8 billion of revenue generated in Q3 2008 is the second highest quarter results ever, behind only quarter four in 2007.

Additionally, during the first nine months of 2008 revenues were $17.3 billion. This is a substantial increase of about 14% compared to the same period during 2007 when revenue was $15.2 billion.

"A weakening economy will continue to be a challenge to all forms of advertising-supported media," said David Silverman, a partner at PWC. "However, the Internet should be better poised to withstand the storm given its ability to combine performance-based advertising along with broad-based advertising."

The chart below shows the quarterly Internet Advertising revenue growth from 2000 to the present. As seen below, there has been a relatively steady increase in the past eight years, which gives reason to believe that this trend will continue.

Quarterly Online Ad Revenue

 

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Google Announces New Search-Based Keyword Tool

19
November
2008

This new tool is designed to help advertisers find appropriate Google AdWords keywords that are relevant to a particular landing page they want to use, essentially taking the guesswork out of keyword selection.

Keith Vera
Account Manager

Google announced yesterday the release of a new “search-based keyword tool", currently in beta. This new tool is designed to help advertisers find appropriate Google AdWords keywords that are relevant to a particular landing page they want to use, essentially taking the guesswork out of keyword selection. Just plug in your website and a list of terms is returned that will help you better understand what your “potential customers” are actually searching on to find your products or services.

The problem with this new approach, for service based businesses in particular, is that the site or pages the new tool will make keyword suggestions for are (or should be) already optimized for highly relevant terms based on search volume. These terms are found through traditional keyword research like using the keyword tool Google already offers. Just to test, I ran two different service-based sites through the new tool, one currently optimized for SEO, and one that is not. Naturally, the site optimized for SEO had many keyword suggestions that were highly relevant to the site, along with all the important information like monthly search volume, competition level, and suggested bid price. The site that is not currently optimized returned just one extraneous-for-paid-search keyword suggestion.

It appears that the new search-based tool is only significantly valuable if the site that it is analyzing is properly optimized or able to be crawled easily by Google. I can see this new tool being useful to help analyze current landing pages, or to possibly catch some keyword terms that advertisers may have missed during initial keyword development. Let us know your thoughts on Google’s new search-based tool.

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New Ad Format Released by Facebook Encourages Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

12
November
2008

Facebook’s new “engagement ads” geared towards promoting dialogue and simple brand interaction.

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

Facebook has released “engagement ads” which will leverage the constant dialogue and interaction between its users.  This new ad format will prompt users to a call-to-action, whether it may be a comment, RSVP or becoming a fan of the sponsored product.  Then, the action and marketing message within the ad will be broadcasted to those connected to that particular user.  Incentives, such as “free” virtual gifts, are offered to encourage the distribution of these ad messages.  Facebook believes they will operate successfully with this ad model based on the simple idea that “marketing messages are more effective when they come from friends.”

Since word-of-mouth marketing tends to be extremely profitable for advertisers, Facebook will charge more for these new engagement ads.  Due to the site redesign last August, sponsored video broadcasting has become available.  These video ads are also expected to provide great return, as these formats allow users to interact using the same call-to-actions as engagement ads.  At this pace, Facebook expects revenues to double to between $300 million and $350 million this year.

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EyeTraffic Media invites more than 30 various .ORGs to learn about online marketing best practices

11
November
2008

On Friday November 7, 2008 EyeTraffic Media hosted the first of a series of free seminars intended to educate cause-driven organizations on how to successfully apply online marketing strategies.  With the current economy and shrinking marketing budgets, associations and cause-driven organizations are looking for ways to optimize their marketing efforts at lower costs.  Through these [...]

On Friday November 7, 2008 EyeTraffic Media hosted the first of a series of free seminars intended to educate cause-driven organizations on how to successfully apply online marketing strategies.  With the current economy and shrinking marketing budgets, associations and cause-driven organizations are looking for ways to optimize their marketing efforts at lower costs.  Through these seminars, EyeTraffic Media intends to encourage the .ORG community to explore ways to efficiently manage their marketing dollars by leveraging low-risk and manageable online marketing efforts.

The seminar introduced how certain online marketing initiatives can produce more effective results at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. The event was held at The Melrose Hotel in Washington, DC and had a marketing representative from over 30 different non-profit organizations in attendance.  EyeTraffic Media is already planning for the next installment of the seminar series for mid January 2009.

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Online Marketing Seminar for .ORGs

11
November
2008

EyeTraffic hosts the first of a series of free online marketing seminars for cause-driven organizations.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

Last Friday November 7, EyeTraffic Media hosted the first of a series of free seminars intended to educate cause-driven organizations on how to successfully apply online marketing strategies.  With the current economy and shrinking marketing budgets, associations and cause-driven organizations are looking for ways to optimize their marketing efforts at lower costs.  Through these seminars, EyeTraffic Media will encourage the .ORG community to explore ways to efficiently manage their marketing dollars.

“With our headquarters in Washington DC, we are surrounded by associations coping with the struggling economy and limited marketing budgets,” said EyeTraffic Media’s Principal Manager George Assimakopoulos. “Having worked with several nonprofits, we have proven that we can help organizations achieve their online marketing goals in a cost efficient manner. It is important to us to share our knowledge of best practices with the rest of the community.” 

The seminar discussed how online marketing can produce more effective results at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. Online marketing allows non-profit organizations to attract awareness for their causes and events, and increase both sponsorship and membership.  This can be accomplished through the use of search engine marketing (SEM), viral marketing and email marketing; all of which were reviewed at the seminar.

The event was held at The Melrose Hotel in Washington, DC and had a marketing representative from over 30 different non-profit organizations in attendance. 

“EyeTraffic Media provided a great overview of the key aspects of a successful online marketing campaign,” commented Elizabeth Burrell from The Coalition for Government Procurement. “The seminar offered valuable information that I can now use to re-evaluate my organization’s online marketing efforts to better target appropriate audiences. I look forward to attending future seminars.”

To learn more about the free online marketing educational seminars please contact Christine Pepin, Media Coordinator, cpepin@eyetraffic.com.

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