SUMMARY: Competition between companies and their affiliates is natural. Affiliates can be very effective at creating revenue-generating traffic through search so there’s an inherent tension in the system. See the main attitudes/policies with which merchants attempt to deal with this issue. |
********AS ALWAYS, if you’re interested in any brief, please follow the link to the full article…the full chart appears as well. *******
Here is a short list of highlights and findings from the report: - As mentioned above, search traffic increased by 13.7% with an optimized display campaign running. - A third-party display campaign ran in contrast to our own campaign in a separate period, and CPCs and CTR metrics reached all-time lows during this period. - Search visits decreased by -30.8% when the optimized display campaign was not running (again, keep in mind that this gap may be partially attributed to the change in the economy over the time period surveyed). - Daily unique visitors to the subject site increased by 2.5% in the second period, with an optimized display campaign running. - Online users who viewed the display ads likely remembered the client’s brand after seeing the display ads, which translated to higher clicks and recognition when performing a search. - With the optimized display campaign running, paid search click-throughs increased 14.87%, and costs-per-click decreased by 11.22%. - ROI also increased with the optimized display campaign running. Read more at www.mediapost.com |
| More US adults use the internet than they use doctors for obtaining health and medical information. |
| Consumers are much more likely to begin their quest for health information with a search engine rather going directly to a website. |
| Consumers who visit product sites are nearly three times more likely than the average US adult to request prescriptions by name from their doctors. |
| When consumers use search engines for pharmaceutical or health information online, they are most likely to search by the name of a specific condition/disease or the name of a specific product. |
Several comScore studies have confirmed that online campaigns drive offline sales, according to Fulgoni. In the first study, comScore took four categories, 53 brands and 200 of the most trafficked sites. The company looked at people exposed to display advertising and what they did in the month following. Findings reveal that 18% searched on the brand advertised and 29% went to the advertisers’ sites. Consumers
who were exposed to the display advertising spent 55% more time than the average visitors to these sites the next month. The rise in time spent is matched by a similar increase in page views — about 51%. |
Then, comScore analyzed the impact that online campaigns have on retail sales by matching the name and the address of consumers to retail loyalty card databases. The supermarket Kroger, for example, has issued about 60 million loyalty cards, which provide a massive data set to understand the degree that online search and display campaigns drive retail sales. The findings suggest a lift that is five times stronger when people are exposed to search ads alone, compared with display. Search alone produces an 82% lift, compared with display at 16%, and 119% when search and display are combined. About 82% of online ad campaigns measured by comScore have generated an average lift of 22% in CPG brand sales in retail stores. Read more at www.mediapost.com |
A McAfee report analysed the risk from searching for more than 2,600 of the most popular keywords in 2008, looking at the maximum percentage of risky sites a user could encounter on a single page of search results. |
Worldwide, it found that the riskiest term was “screensavers”, with six out of 10 search results containing malware, while the keyword “lyrics” had a risk factor of one in two. |
Searchers clicking on the word “free” had a 21.3 per cent chance of encountering an infected website, which suggested that hackers were targeting users who were looking to budget and save money. |
In Britain, the riskiest term was “bebo”, with 33.3 per cent risk, followed by “friv” - a popular flash game site - at 22.2 per cent, and “hotmail” at 20 per cent. |
At Re:think 2009, the 55th annual convention of the Advertising Research Foundation, Angela O’Connell, head of cross media research at Google Europe, and Lucas Hulsebos, media research director at MetrixLab, presented research validating what many of us have postulated for years: search can build brand lift. In particular, dramatic brand lift occurs after the click. I doubt that U.S. and European customers behave differently with regard to search and brand lift, but even if they do, the results are so positive that it would require a different species to invalidate the research. |
Even after giving respondents a four-day gap between exposure to search and completing the survey to see the long-term effect of the medium, there was still a great deal of lift from the search component, particularly when there was click-through and engagement with the marketer’s site. |
The results in lift are significant and, because PPC search marketers pay only for the click, the lift in branding due to the sponsored link is free. The huge branding metric lift as a result of visits is powerful and should be taken into account when the overall campaign objectives include branding. |
The study also defined effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness combined the branding effect, multiplied by reach; efficiency was effectiveness divided by the spend for that media. By dividing by spending, the efficiency number was normalized to reflect the efficiency per exposed person, regardless of the size of the media buy. |
Search indexes at 1,049 vs. TV’s 100. Sure, you reach fewer people with search, but when you reach consumers and they click through, you’ve very efficiently raised their brand perceptions. The study stated that: “Search is 10x more efficient than TV and 3.5x more efficient than radio in raising Top of Mind Awareness.” Read more at www.clickz.com |
7 marketing mistakes to avoid on Twitter |
It is important to recognize and understand the nuances of Twitter as a communications channel. The genius is in its simplicity, but it’s still a tool that consumers and businesses can leverage many ways. |
Conversations on Twitter happen quickly, and there are many benefits to your brand. Below is a tweet from Scott Monty from Ford on the value of Twitter as Ford sees it.
So how can and should your brand use Twitter? And more importantly, what are the most common mistakes and pitfalls on Twitter that could have a negative impact on your business or brand? Read more at www.imediaconnection.com |
| According to a survey of marketing executives by Datran Media, E-mail leads all other channels by a wide margin in terms of performance for their companies. 80.4% of more than 3,000 executives surveyed chose e-mail as a strong advertising performer, compared to 56.8% who chose search, the second leading performer. In addition: - 42.1% chose online display advertising as a strong performer
- 32.8% selected offline media, such as television and print
- 32.1% chose direct mail
- 22.9% selected social media
- 9.2% chose mobile marketing
| Anticipated Online Advertising Budget Allocation in 2009 (% of Respondents) | | Media | Expected Change | | | Reduce | Stagnant | Increase | Unsure | | | | | | | | Display | 21.9% | 33.8% | 23.6% | 21.1% | | Email | 5.7 | 23.0 | 58.5 | 13.2 | | Search | 3.6 | 28.2 | 54.4 | 13.9 | | Social media | 5.7 | 24.3 | 43.9 | 26.5 | | Direct mail | 25.6 | 31.2 | 14.1 | 29.1 | | Offline media | 34.9 | 24.6 | 13.8 | 27.2 | | Source: IPSOS Marketing & Media Survey, January 2009 | Read more at www.mediapost.com |
| Web users are mission minded. Cramped for attention. Bent on standards. And uninterested in learning new navigation methods. |
That means when someone arrives at your website, blog or article, they should know immediately what to expect. Everything–even your microcontent–should be simple, succinct and scannable. |
Most people will find your website through a search engine. That’s where you have to start. From the beginning. |
| This is how you need to think. You need to think like a searcher. |
This means you need to avoid cleverly ambiguous headlines. Subtitles that don’t push the ball forward. Cutesy sentences. |
| What you have to remember is that people don’t go to the web to window shop. |
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Sherpa Chart: How Merchants Manage the Affiliate Search Marketing Dilemma
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