Pay-per-click advertising unpredictable and complex

This finding came from a survey commissioned by Dutch firm Toading and conducted by Pulstracker. It was found that 71% of surveyed companies in Europe claimed some deterioration, with 21% of the total complaining of a major drop in performance.

The principle cause for this decline, according to the surveyed companies, was likely to be increased competition within their own industry sector, as more pay-per-click advertisers in their space had pushed up the bidding for keywords (63%). Nearly a quarter of the companies complained that they were unable or could not afford to bring in outside expertise to fine-tune their performance (24%). Only 3% believed that the change was down to fluctuating market conditions in their sector, resulting in less demand for their product or service.

The complexity of setting up account options was mentioned (22%), but a majority of unhappy respondents (52%) said the biggest practical hurdle for them was the `complicated’ keyword bidding process. 26% said that balancing the need for outside expertise and consultancy with the corresponding cost and impact on ROI was causing problems for them.

Businesses’ continued use of pay-per click advertising shows that they have benefited and still find it a valuable tool, but they find it an unpredictable and complex undertaking, as this study has found,” said Mathijs van Abbe, CEO, Toading.

“Keyword bidding in particular crops up as a frustration for advertisers. This is a sign that, as markets become more crowded, advertisers need to be more precise about their offerings, including pricing information. Not only is this helpful for potential customers, but it can dramatically improve conversion rates, and doesn’t have to be the complicated process many fear it to be.”

Google CEO bullish on mobile Web advertising

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a "huge revolution", Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Friday.

"It's the recreation of the Internet, it's the recreation of the PC (personal computer) story and it is before us -- and it is very likely it will happen in the next year," he told a panel at the World Economic Forum.

Current estimates for mobile advertising are cautious, with consultancy Forrester predicting revenues of under $1 billion by 2012.

But Schmidt said this figure was too low and failed to take into account the fact the mobile Web was reaching a tipping point.

Google aims to be a prime mover by bidding for coveted airwaves to launch an open U.S. wireless network, pitting it against established telecommunications players. The move will take the Silicon Valley-based company well beyond its core Web search and online advertising franchises.

Some analysts are worried at the high costs involved but Schmidt said he was confident location-based advertising -- which could, for example, direct hungry travellers to nearby restaurants -- would be "a very, very good business".

Content providers, already struggling in the modern world of music and film downloads, are less convinced that mobile Internet is a minefield.

"It is not going to be easy to hang on the price of content," said Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony Corp.

Study: Mobile Media Users More Receptive to Ads

Mobile media users are more receptive to advertising and more willing to use their mobile devices for commerce than conventional wisdom would hold, finds a new study released by Starcom USA.

Regarding mobile advertising, Starcom’s study found that among light and heavy mobile media users, consumers are OK with advertising as long as it carries some relevance. That is due to the personal nature of mobile devices, says Starcom, which found that most participants in its study (conducted among users in Chicago, Houston, New York and San Francisco) are willing to share personal information with marketers in exchange for targeted, relevant ads. That flies in the face of some industry thinking, as advertisers are often wary of consumers’ crossing personal boundaries in mobile.

Similarly, with mobile commerce, Starcom found that the issue holding back consumers from buying things with their mobile devices isn’t privacy concerns, but rather frustration with the mobile shopping experience. However, just 5 percent of respondents cited shopping as something they’d like access to on their mobile phones.

Overall, the new study is aimed at dispelling a variety of mobile myths, said Starcom officials. The research identifies ten key insights for the nascent medium, which Starcom says has created a new daypart – a 24/7 media time period.

“Mobile’s capabilities are changing consumer expectations and therefore will have broader implications on how marketers approach all forms of communication moving forward,” said Angela Steele, Starcom vp/activation director, who led the research study. “These insights blow the doors wide open for new meaningful content, formats and opportunities for ad placement in campaigns.”

However, it’s worth mentioning that usage of mobile devices for functions other than phone calls or text messages remains in its infancy. Indeed, Starcom’s research is limited to consumers from urban regions who identify themselves as mobile media users. According to a November report from Nielsen, just 16 percent of the total U.S. mobile audience, or 33.7 million users, accessed the Internet at all using a mobile device.

When's the Best Time to Send Email to Target Consumers at Work? Test Results

SUMMARY: Don't take every fact and figure you read as gospel. Marketers need to rely on their own tests to determine important email elements, including when's the best time to send your blast.

An eretailer wondered how much of a difference they could make by testing the time of day to send their blasts. Turns out a lot -- clickthroughs increased 15.63% and revenue jumped, too.
CHALLENGE
Matt O’Laughlin, Marketing Business Analyst, Second Act LLC, was brought aboard the electronics eretailer last year to modernize email marketing. At the time, their program amounted to a monthly newsletter blast.

O’Laughlin and his team started applying best practices to their email right away. They revamped their email signup page to include 16 preference selections and began segmenting their database accordingly. Then, they ran a series of best-day email tests.

When the results came back, they were surprised to find that Tuesday beat Monday and Wednesday for opens and clickthroughs. But O’Laughlin didn’t want to stop there. He wondered if time of day would make a difference, too.

CAMPAIGN
O’Laughlin knew a big portion of Second Act’s orders were being placed during regular business hours. He and his team decided to zero in on their at-work consumer audience.

Here are the four steps they followed:

-> Step #1. Use analytics to determine busiest time

To get started, they checked for their website’s busiest windows of time and verified what they suspected: The site was most active during the 9 a.m.-5 p.m. workday.

“Morning and noon were peak times for unique visitors,” O’Laughlin says. “We also wanted to see how another time that saw fewer uniques would affect clickthroughs.”

The difference in traffic wasn’t tremendously different between 9 a.m. and 30 or 60 minutes later, for instance, so they didn’t test slight variations. Instead, they used analytics to boil down the test to three different send times (in Central standard time). Their rationale for each:

- 9 a.m.: People are just getting settled at their desks and haven’t locked in on work yet.
- 12 p.m.: When most recipients begin their lunch hours and often make orders online.
- 4 p.m.: The time O’Laughlin wanted to test to determine whether email would perform better than the website at this slot -- when workers begin winding down their days and start thinking about home and their family needs there. The team speculated that a little call-to-action email might pick up sales.

-> Step #2. Segment the list

The team made use of recently instituted preference segmentation. O’Laughlin took a file of consumers who signed up specifically for weekly coupon alerts and split it evenly in an A/B/C fashion. This file made sense because it was filled with names mostly from the Central, Eastern and Mountain time zones (in that order).

This was important because O’Laughlin and his team weren’t ready to segment separately to all four U.S. time zones; all of their campaigns in the near future were going to be sent to an entire file at the same time.

Hence, it seemed smart to concentrate on the three time zones that were not only most prominent in their database, but also “closest together” on the world clock (e.g., 9 a.m. Central is closer in the work-day sense to both 10 a.m. Eastern and 8 a.m. Mountain when compared to 7 a.m. Pacific).

-> Step #3. Keep variables consistent

Because they wanted time of day to be the only variable, each file received the same subject line with the same message and the same offer (Apple iPods sale).

-> Step #4. Pay attention to what matters

O’Laughlin also focused only on clickthroughs. Opens were inconsequential, he says, because the subject line was the same for all three splits. Because the sophistication of their landing pages was still in their infancy, “what was most important to us was to get people from the email message to the site.”


RESULTS
Test returns produced a clear winner -- 9 a.m. The clickthrough rates for each:
o 9 a.m. performed 15.63% better than 4 p.m.
o 9 a.m. performed 9.4% better than 12 p.m.
o 12 p.m. performed 6.9% better than 4 p.m.

“As for email-driven revenue, the test was sent on Aug. 30th. Then, 85% of email-driven revenue for 2007 occurred between September and the end of December,” O’Laughlin says. “So, yes, this definitely increased revenue.”

Because the only variable was time of day, the results were conclusive enough for O’Laughlin and his team to implement the 9 a.m. mailing tactic as an important strategy from this point forward, although they plan to continually monitor with more tests down the road. In the end, his hunch that people at work most often read their emails first thing in the morning turned out to be correct.

“A lot of people right after they get into work, they check their email, log onto ESPN.com or their favorite news source and take care of those things before digging into their professional tasks.”

Useful links related to this article

Creative samples from Second Act’s email test:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/secondact/study.html

Past Sherpa article - Organic Dish’s day-of-the-week and subject line tests:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30280

Silverpop - Second Act’s email service provider:
http://www.silverpop.com

Omniture Inc. - Second Act’s analytics service provider:
http://www.omniture.com

Second Act LLC:
http://www.secondact.com

“Staycations” among top travel trends expected this year

Top trends predicted for this year include "Staycations," where travelers stay close to home and take long weekends instead of weeks away. Cruising, volunteer vacations, climate sightseeing and "couch surfing" to find stranger's homes to stay are also trends, according to JWT, the US's largest ad agency.

Also, medical tourism and babymoons where couples take a vacation before their first baby.

Other trends to look for:

· Yahoo Travel's destinations that got the biggest increase in page views in Yahoo Travel Guides were Lancaster, Pa.; Ocean City, N.J.; South Lake Tahoe, Calif.; Wildwood, N.J.; Helen, Ga.; and Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

· The top 10 destinations for 2008, according to a survey of Lonely Planet staffers, include many places in the US with an emphasis on national parks and Hawaii; and Mexico, with an emphasis on Mexico City and the Pacific Coast.

· According to the US Commerce Department's Office of Travel & Tourism Industries, air travel by US citizens January to September 2007 was up 2% to Europe, down 3.1% to the Caribbean, and down 3.4% to Canada.

· The top five destinations for US residents traveling abroad in 2006, the most recent year for which figures by country were available, were Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, according to wire services.

Cell phones and virtual worlds morphing shopper ways

Nicole Maestri and Martinne Geller

Reuters

Thursday, January 17, 2008

CREDIT: Second Life avatars shopping in an undated image. Virtual worlds, mobile coupons and bar-code readers on cell phones are the next technology wave that U.S. chain stores must ride if they hope to stay competitive in the fast-changing world of global retail. REUTERS/Linden Labs/Handout

CREDIT: A woman poses next to cell phones at the 'Internationale Funkausstellung' (IFA) 2006 consumer electronics fair in Berlin September 1, 2006. Virtual worlds, mobile coupons and bar-code readers on cell phones are the next technology wave that U.S. chain stores must ride if they hope to stay competitive in the fast-changing world of global retail. . REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Virtual worlds, mobile coupons and bar-code readers on cell phones are the next technology wave that U.S. chain stores must ride if they hope to stay competitive in the fast-changing world of global retail.

Retailers, gathered in New York this week for the National Retail Federation's (NRF) annual convention, were urged to go high-tech to stand out in the crowd and improve sales, especially amid a flagging U.S. economy.

"The cell phone is shifting the way consumers shop, and U.S. retailers need to get ready," said Pat Conroy, vice chairman at Deloitte & Touche USA, in a keynote speech at the convention.

Wendy Liebmann, chief executive of consulting firm WSL Strategic Retail, points to prom dress shoppers who take pictures of themselves with their cell phone cameras, then post the photos online so friends can help pick which outfit to buy.

The Internet has also become more interactive, with consumers spending more time -- and money -- in virtual worlds like Second Life and Webkinz.

"These technologies are going to change the way you interact with your customer, they're going to change the way people shop, they're going to change the way you manage your brands," said Giff Constable, general manager at Electric Sheep Co, which designs content for virtual worlds, like Second Life.

RETAILERS RESPOND

U.S. retailers need to adopt technological advances that have already changed shopper behavior across the globe, Conroy said.

For instance, he noted that customers at McDonald's Corp restaurants in South Korea can purchase food on cell phones, which then ring when their orders are ready.

In China, mobile commerce is expected to reach $1 trillion in 2010, while in Japan, cell phones have bar-code scanners so consumers can check the freshness of food with their phones.

"Asia's leading the way," he said, but changes are also taking place in the U.S. market.

"The lines between merchandiser and technologist are certainly blurring," said Philip Schoonover, chief executive of consumer electronics retailer Circuit City Stores Inc , where store and call center staff use tablet PCs to search the Web alongside consumers.

Constable said corporations are putting big bucks into virtual worlds -- three-dimensional parallel universes on the Internet -- where users typically create and dress up characters, buy goods and interact with others.

Last year, Walt Disney Co purchased kids' virtual world Club Penguin for $350 million in cash plus up to $350 million more, depending on the Web site's earnings in 2008 and 2009.

While some retailers have started building stores in these virtual worlds, others should consider doing the same, Constable said, to extend their brands and eventually, boost sales.

PROGRESS FOR A PRICE

But a pervasive undercurrent at the convention was worry over the state of the U.S. economy, and what that will mean for profits.

The NRF forecasts U.S. retail sales will rise 3.5 percent this year, the lowest rate of growth since 2002.

So while new technologies are appealing, there is little room in the budget for them.

At a panel discussion, the chief information officers of Michaels Stores and Circuit City said most of their technology budgets have been eaten up by maintaining day-to-day operations -- like paying the power bills.

Retailers said their top technology initiatives for 2008 were to replace or upgrade their merchandising and inventory management systems, according to a survey by International Business Machines Corp and the NRF Foundation. No. 2 was replacing cash registers.

Though keeping costs down is key this year, retailers such as Bon-Ton Stores Inc recognize the importance of upgrades, and are still spending despite the rocky economy.

"Return on investment on some of the technology ... out there, that we're thinking that we need, is absolutely crucial for us to take the next step," said Edward Carroll, a Bon-Ton vice president of sales promotion and marketing.

Nielsen: More Users Utilizing Mobile Devices for Search

A lot more people are using their mobile devices for search--but few are conducting such searches via the mobile Web.

Approximately 46.1 million mobile subscribers used some sort of mobile search option during the third quarter of last year, according to a new report released by Nielsen Mobile, representing 22 percent of the nearly 208 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. But most of those users conducted those searches not on the Internet, but through dialing 411 or by sending text messages.

In fact, just 9 million users, or roughly 4 percent of the total mobile audience, conducted searches via mobile Web sites like Google and Yahoo this past August, found Nielsen. And despite the excitement surrounding Apple’s iPhone and its descendants, just 16 percent of the mobile audience, or 33.7 million users, accessed the Internet at all using a mobile device as of Nielsen’s most recent estimate from November.

Thus, for the moment, most mobile users are sticking with mobile devices’ basic communication functions to conduct searches – perhaps limiting the short-term ad opportunities for mobile search. Nielsen found that 18.1 million users utilized 411 for searches during the most recent third quarter. Meanwhile 14.1 million users conducted searches – whether for local business, news or sports scores – by sending text messages to top mobile media players such as Google or Yahoo.

Gesture Based Outdoor Interactive POS



The Alternative has developed a gesture based interaction screen for Orange. According to The Alternative it's the first time that a technology like this has been shown to the public. Via the large projected image and a touch-free interface, the installation provides users with a new way to activate news, film clips and music videos.

Mobile Pitches Hit Home

JANUARY 17, 2008

Are you ready for ads on your handset?

Advertisers are starting to reach US consumers by mobile phone in large numbers, according to the Limbo-sponsored "Mobile Advertising Report," conducted by GfK NOP Research.

Limbo said that 78 million US consumers saw or heard advertising on their mobile phones in the fourth quarter of 2007, despite low overall spending on mobile compared with other media.

"There is a clear disparity between the high reach of mobile media and the low percentage of marketing budget currently spent on the medium, which creates an obvious opportunity for savvy media buyers," said Rob Lawson, president and co-founder of Limbo.

Those who had seen a mobile ad were most likely to have seen an SMS message. Fewer had seen mobile TV and video ads.

Limbo said that widespread SMS usage contributed to high ad reach, with more than half of mobile users saying they used SMS messaging.

Mobile ad exposure was highest among young adults. More than half of 18- to 24-year-olds said they had seen or heard a mobile ad.

SMS messaging is compelling for many marketers because consumers are very likely to pay attention to text messages.

Text messages had the highest rate of interaction for any rich media type measured in PointRoll's "Entertainment Analysis" report. Text messages had an interaction rate of nearly 13% when used as part of entertainment rich media campaigns fielded in 2006 and the first quarter of 2007—more than video, audio or gaming.

Google U.K. and comScore Reveal Importance of Search Engines

JANUARY 11, 2008. Google U.K. and comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR), announced the results of a study into online consumer behaviour in the travel sector, finding that consumers are using search engines in more sophisticated ways to research and purchase travel in the UK.

The Internet is rapidly becoming the number one resource for the travel consumer. The study revealed that 20 million people in the U.K. utilized search engines for travel information in the first quarter of 2007. Key findings include:

On average, consumers take nearly a month to go from their first search to a purchase
On average, customers make 12 travel related searches, visit 22 websites and take 29 days from the first time they search until they make a purchase. Forty-five per cent of transactions occur four weeks or more after the first search. The time spent online is lengthy, representing a prolonged opportunity for advertisers to reach and influence consumers while they search for information.

On average travelers visit the purchase website 2.5 times
Most shoppers visit the site they eventually purchase from more than once, averaging 2.5 visits. For tour operators this was significantly higher at 3.9. Just ten per cent of the transactions take place on the first search referral to a given site, and 38 per cent of transactions happen at four weeks or more after the first visit. Travel companies face a growing challenge to retain the online consumer as the proliferation of competition encourages travel customers to shop around.

Generic search terms play a significant role in the consumer journey to purchase
Many travel businesses could be missing out on the opportunity for additional bookings and branding opportunities by overlooking the value of advertising against generic search terms (e.g. 'package holiday', 'Italy travel').

Fifty-four per cent of online travel buyers started the shopping process with a generic product or destination search term, and 10 per cent did not use branded terms (such as 'Thompson holiday' or 'EasyJet flights') at all during their online travel shopping experience. Importantly, over a third of travel buyers use a generic term as the last search before they purchase, giving advertisers a key window to influence their purchase right up until the last minute.

Consumers change the type of keywords used as they move along the path to purchase. Of all consumers sampled that made a final purchase, 29 per cent start with a non-branded search term but end with a brand search term.

Google U.K.'s Robin Frewer, Industry Leader, Travel said, "This research proves travel searchers are becoming more brand fickle -- spending a large amount of time researching their desired purchase, and considering offers from competing brands. The fact that users are using more generic search queries gives ample opportunity for brands to attract new customers -- and brands that are not present during these searches are missing out on sales."

"Online research and more specifically search has become a critical first step for consumers considering purchases," said Bob Ivins, EVP of European Markets for comScore. "By studying the entire online purchase path from first search to actual transaction we are able to quantify the importance of that first search and subsequent searches, and help marketers impact purchase decision. We are delighted to have had the opportunity to leverage comScore's global Internet usage and e-commerce tracking systems to help Google better understand how customers behave during the purchase cycle."

Methodology
Sample: UK consumers using search engines to research travel (99 per cent of all travel website unique visitors). Analysis focused on Q1 2007, with the first search captured in January 2007 and individuals tracked for up to 12 weeks. Tracking more than 20,000 searchers from the comScore Media Metrix panel.

Time alignment: Each individual's activity was time-aligned to a "common" start point based on their initial query, in order to understand activity from a user perspective in the 12 weeks from the start of the process.

Search engines tracked: All major search engines in the UK, including but not limited to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask.

Search term categorization: Developed jointly by Google and comScore with tens of thousands of queries categorized. comScore, in conjunction with Google, categorized the search terms captured into three main categories -- brand searches, product searches and destination searches. The search terms that were categorized allowed the study to track 99% of all travel searchers in the period. The high level categorization is hierarchical: "brand" terms include any search term that contains a brand keyword, even if there are product or destination terms (e.g. easyjet to Nice), product terms include search terms that contain product keywords but not brand terms (e.g. cheap flights to Nice), and destination terms are terms that only included destinations and no product or brand keywords (e.g. Nice).

Analysis: The Top 10 Most Underappreciated Metrics To Track in 2008

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on December 18, 2007 - 9:05am.

This post is the continuation of a topic I started yesterday all about the right metrics to focus on and how many marketing teams may be using the wrong ones without realizing it. In Part I, I shared 10 meaningless metrics that brands should consider moving away from. Most of those metrics are either based on precedent (what brands have always measured) or ignorance (a lack of knowledge about other metrics to track). As a whole, the single word that defines the old view of metrics is to focus on impressions. A more sophisticated model measures engagement or interaction (ie - a more active consumption of content). Eyeballs are not enough. So, to help you start thinking outside your typical metrics, here are some of the underappreciated metrics that I believe more brands should focus on in 2008:

1. Inbound Links (from influential sources) - Most marketers right now are already paying attention to inbound links, but the problem with most is that there is no qualitative assessment. What this means, for example, is that getting included on the blogroll of a spam blog is the equivalent of getting mentioned in a post on a high influence blog. They are not equal, which is why the Technorati Authority rating made it onto my list of most meaningless metrics yesterday. Getting smarter about measuring inbound links, however, will be crucial - and this means paying more attention to where that link comes from.
2. Direct URL Access - Do you record how many people get to your site by directly typing in the URL? This may be the most important ignored metric of all. The reason is that it tells you volumes about your brand and your marketing if you can find a way to get better at measuring it. When someone directly types your URL into their browser, it indicates familiarity with your brand, recall of a particular message that made your URL stick in their heads, qualified traffic and a likeliness that they are seeking some piece of information specifically.
3. RSS Subscribers - Most bloggers have already started to pay more attention to how many RSS subscribers they have and even use it as a badge of honor when describing the traffic to their blog. Aside from being more accurate than inbound links as a measure of influence simply because it is much tougher to accidentally count spam as traffic, this allows you to measure a level of engagement as well. If someone has chosen to subscribe to your content, that indicates a depth of engagement that a simple page view does not.
4. Email Link Referrals - We all know that people cut and paste links and forward content to one another, but few marketers pay enough attention to tracking this. The reason is fairly obvious ... when you get a link coming through from a forwarded email, it is typically impossible to follow. As a result, it is rarely counted in referring links and ignored as a source of traffic. Yet, once again, if someone sends a link to your content to someone else, it is likely to indicate a level of engagement that is far higher.
5. Time Spent (engagement) - In my post yesterday, I noted that time spent can be a misleading metric because it can also unintentionally give you credit for having a confusing user interface that takes a long time for a user to navigate (thus inflating your time spent). This doesn't, however, mean that I think you should ignore the time spent metric altogether. It still provides a valuable data point, assuming you are confident that you are measuring actual engagement rather than time wasted.
6. Organic Keyword Referrals - Most large brands are getting far more sophisticated with search terms, targeting the popular ones and measuring their response. Alongside all this paid search marketing, however, users are typing in their own search queries, and arriving at your site organically. What many brands surprisingly forget to do is fully track and index all the keywords that people are using through organic search to reach their site. This gives you clues not only to help you focus a search campaign, but also to improve your content.
7. Email Longevity and Multiple Opens - As I shared yesterday, email opens are a useless metric because many emails are opened by accident. An interesting measure that is underappreciated by many email marketers is how long people keep an email in their inbox and how many times they open it. If you think about it, the most useful emails that you have gotten are ones that you are likely to keep on file and open at least a few times. Aside from forwarding an email, which pretty much everyone already measures, keeping track of multiple opens (and particularly the time between opens) can lend interesting insight into how evergreen your emails are.
8. Abandonment - One of the most useful areas to focus on gathering as many metrics as you can is around the idea of abandonment, or the moment when a user leaves your site for any reason. The types of metrics that could be useful here are time spent before leaving (which may indicate that they arrived at your site by accident if it is only a few seconds), last page viewed (which tells you whether there is a "dead spot" that tends to lose users), or shopping cart behaviour (obviously key to know why people don't complete purchases).
9. Clickstream - The clickstream can mean many things to people depending on how they term their metrics. what I mean by it are the sites visited directly before and after someone visits your site. This can tell you volumes if you learn how to read between the lines to what the data is actually telling you. For example, if people go straight to Google after your site, chances are they are still seeking something they didn't find on your site. Visiting a competitor site also gives you clues of what other products or services your customers consider. Finally, when someone is visiting an unrelated site, this may give you a clue about what they thought they might find on your site and perhaps why they left.
10. Microsharing - Of course, regular readers of this blog probably know that I couldn't get through a post like this without making up a new term ... so let's talk about "microsharing." This is the idea that people are sharing bits of knowledge in lots of ways that don't show up on traditional marketing metrics. They post a link on Twitter, they bookmark something on del.icio.us, or they add something to Digg. Each is a social method of sharing information, but brands typically don't track any of these effectively because few feel they have the means to do it. Unfortunately, there is no magic solution to help brands measure this today. There are conversation tracking tools, and manual analysis is always an option ... but in 2008, this will be something that most smart marketers will be paying a lot more attention to - and more vendors will likely be coming up with easier solutions to help track.

Any other favourite metrics that you would add to this list that you feel marketers have been ignoring and need to focus on in the new year?

How 2007's Key Search Trend Will Impact 2008

The search world is ever-changing. Although the changes may not be large, even small upsets to the system can throw an SEO (define) program into a tailspin. And no matter how small an update Google makes to its algorithm, what happened yesterday certainly impacts tomorrow.

In honor of the New Year, let's examine key changes in search from 2007 and project how they might impact 2008.

It's not just the individual events that really make a dent; it's the incremental impact of everything that's happened over time that really affects the way we execute SEO. The better term to use, therefore, is the "evolution" of search. The most significant trend that contributed to its recent evolution is social media's role in search.

Social Media for Dummies

Everybody's doing social media now. They're on MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Twitter, Flickr, and the like. And not only are they doing it, they're leveraging it for their search programs.

It started with corporate blogs. These were launched on the theory that if you're creating fresh, good content, people will link to it, and search engines will think it's important stuff. Most also throw an RSS feed in there to up inbound link potential.

But there are other ways social media has been leveraged for search. Savvy organizations have realized the benefit on search rankings for an article that's dugg by others on Digg. Other organizations have started viral campaigns to get their site bookmarked in del.icio.us.

Although many search marketers have dabbled in social media marketing (SMM), campaigns don't seem to be very strategic and fully coordinated campaigns. Not yet, anyway.

Aligning SMM and Search Marketing

If 2007 was the year of testing these social media vehicles on an ad hoc basic, 2008 could be the year search marketers start to formulate full SMM plans as part of their off-site SEO efforts.

In the current SEO landscape, on-site factors are playing a diminishing role in determining search rankings. The emphasis continues to shift to off-site factors -- most importantly, getting more inbound links pointing to your site. The search marketer's role is expanding to include such things as online PR, reputation management, and, yes, social media campaign management.

If your 2008 search plan doesn't include social media, you may want to reconsider.

Further Exploiting Social Media for Search

Businesses are already making use of the social media trend. But what will they do in 2008?

Likely much of the same, but more of it, and they'll likely do it better. But some new trends will also play a role.

Now that Facebook has opened up profiles to be indexed by the search engines and businesses can have their own profile pages, we can only imagine how much clamoring there'll be to have a presence there.

Because video content is now being indexed along with regular content in search engines, YouTube is sure to become more of a focus for search marketers in 2008.

But it's not just video -- audio files, images, news stories, and blog posts can all be indexed. Creating and optimizing multiple types of content will be the next challenge for search marketers.

These are just a few ways search marketers might leverage social media in the coming year. As new social media sites emerge, so too will new ways to exploit them for search.

Social Media and Search: Together Forever

Social media isn't poised to end anytime soon. In fact, the usage of social networking media and user-generated content on the Web continues to rise. Social media is now so ingrained in our Internet psyche that it's an institution. Marketers who are either unwilling or unable to leverage this space may find their search presence dwindling in the face of savvier competitors.

By Julie Batten, The ClickZ Network, Jan 7, 2008

Use this 9-step checklist to ensure your email sign-up process not only lures in users, but also keeps them subscribed -- and happy.

My biggest beef with email marketers is that they design and manage their programs based on marketing goals and internal objectives rather than their end users. Since my company keeps the lights on by working with marketers to create, optimize and manage their email campaigns, I need to be careful where I tread, but let's face it: Email programs that come across as created and delivered specifically for the email subscriber's benefit are few and far between.

Therefore, as we head into 2008 shining from the glow of the latest report telling us that email budgets are surging, let's use this as a chance to rethink our overall email program's value to our subscribers.

Your email program's (and often your brand's) first impression starts with offering up a value proposition to your website visitor (or maybe a catalog or in-store browser if you are a lucky retailer that collects email addresses via call center or in-store). Be relevant, and deliver real valuable and unique information, offers or something that is compelling enough to give your users a reason to read and respond -- and subscribe.

It all starts with the sign-up process, which is the permission email agreement you make with your opt-in database subscribers. This is a contract and, like with any contract, if you violate it any time during the email marketing process, there can be a penalty. In this case, it can be disengagement (or as some call it being unemotionally subscribed), actually unsubscribing or the dreaded THIS IS SPAM label, whether you received their permission or not.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to ensure you treat your email sign-up form/preference center like a binding contract:

What did you say you do?
Make it clear what the email will consist of. Don't just offer up "Sign up for our newsletter." That doesn't tell your potential subscribers anything. Offer up the benefits and a general overview of what they would be receiving.

Can you show me what you are talking about?
Samples, much like the snacks at gourmet retailers, can lead to a bigger purchase and convert browsers into buyers. In email, it can help seal the subscription deal or alleviate any fears of potential subscribers that they may just be receiving "a bunch of emails" with little value.

The Email Experience Council's RetailEmail.Blogspot, in its "2007 Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study" found that only 12 percent of major online retailers offer a sample of their newsletter(s) during the email subscription process.

How often will we be talking?
Spell out how often a subscriber will receive your emails. Daily or monthly can make a big impact on whether a user signs up or not. Don't mislead users. Signing up for a quarterly newsletter and receiving it three times a week constitutes a violation of trust and, in this case, the subscription agreement.

Most companies do a poor job in this area. Notably, retailers are missing the mark. RetailEmail.Blogspot's findings revealed that not even 7 percent of retailers give subscribers any kind of idea how many emails to expect.

What's in it for me?
An enticing reward can often help create the email relationship and convert many would-be email subscribers. It also provides an early indicator that there is real value in being an email subscriber. Remember, anyone can go to your website if all you are doing is cutting and pasting your home page and putting in an email template.

May I make a suggestion?
Let your new email subscribers choose some content and have some control over their subscription, whether it is HTML vs. text, the frequency, the language or just a nice menu of newsletter and email offerings.

How well do you want to get to know me?
The amount of information collected can often be the reason why (or why not) people sign up for your email program. KnowledgeStorm in a 2007 study found that 72 percent of buyers felt the "amount of detail in the overview" was a major factor in deciding to register for emails. Remember the general rule is that with more than four to five fields of information you may start to lose potential subscribers. If you are not using the information for segmenting, than just ask for a first name and email address.

Why should I trust you?
Every company should have a privacy policy. Make sure you make it accessible for your future subscribers with just a simple link as it can do the trick in confirming you are a legitimate company with respectable privacy practices. RetailEmail.Blogspot's study found that almost 50 percent of major online retailers address privacy concerns during the email subscription process.

How easy is it for me?
Finding your email sign up and ensuring the process isn't a laborious one is key to your strong first impression and foreshadows what kind of experience you should expect. Ensure your sign up form can be found (and completed for most) on the home page. Silverpop's 2007 study found that 80 percent of companies offered email sign-ups on their home pages.

Can you please confirm that with me?
A frustrating experience off the bat can be signing up for an email and not receiving a web-based or email confirmation -- or worse, not receiving an email for a lengthy period. Tying in with the incentive aspect, your confirmation email/page is a great spot to receive the actual coupon/white paper and engage the new subscriber right away. Twenty-seven percent of companies in Silverpop's survey failed to send emails to new subscribers confirming their registrations.

Use this guide to kick start your email sign-up process and list-building efforts for 2008 and ensure the value is going to be delivered in your future email campaigns.

G. Simms Jenkins is founder and CEO of BrightWave Marketing, an Atlanta-based email marketing and customer relationship services firm.

Organic and paid search are often better together; read on for tips to maximize your search campaign's performance.

About a year ago I came up with this clever (at least in my mind) catchphrase "Search is Search." It was my mantra to marketers who treated paid and organic separately.

As the year went on, marketers seemed to agree. As the search world evolved, the paid and organic synergies have evolved. You can't say that you want to manage search as one tactic and have it magically happen. However, that's what many marketers want. The feeling is this: "You're my agency. You do paid and organic. You make it happen."

I understand this feeling, but it's not that simple. What both clients and agencies need to understand is that there are criteria that need to be in place in order to reap the benefits of an integrated search plan. And I hate turning conversations like this back on clients; it seems like I'm passing the buck.

I'm only trying to be fair and actually do what clients pay their agencies to do: help them reach their goals and tell them when we're wrong. So let's share the responsibility of solving this issue and addressing those pesky qualifications.

Did you fix the analytics like I said?
I said it in the last article, but apparently, like my kids, nobody listened. Of the numerous clients I have worked with, only a small fraction have had their analytics configured properly. While this is a topic for another article, at a bare minimum one should filter paid and organic down to a keyword level. Remember that the goal here is synergy of paid and organic. Here is an all too typical conversation:

Client: "Can I stop buying certain terms?"
Me: "How well do you convert for those terms organically?"
Client: "I don't know."
Me: "Then keep buying them."

It's a mistake to assume that just because you rank well organically the organic traffic will convert the same as paid. The message and landing pages may be different, and users may have different intentions.

If you're too paralyzed with fear to tackle your analytics, work with your agency to implement Google Analytics or create a custom report in your current package to get the data. Even if you do it just for a month you will learn a great deal.

Where are you with your SEO project?
Just because you signed an SOW to do SEO it doesn't mean that paid and organic synergy will magically happen. If your SEO is focused on a site redesign, synergy can't be recognized until the new site launches. For clients that have their big book of SEO recommendations, the question becomes, where are you with implementation? If you haven't completed at least the most important recommendations then it is a little unfair to expect your agency to be able to help you with search synergy.

It's kind of like when a mechanic tells you that you need to fix several things on your car. You know it has to get done, but with limited time and money you're not sure where to start� so you don't. When your car dies on the highway, you really can't get mad at the mechanic.

Ask your agency to help prioritize the recommendations, and just get them done. If search is important to your brand then there are no excuses.

Brother, can you spare a dime?
Going back to the example of how to lower your paid search spending, how well funded is your current plan? The principle of saving money is basically this:

• I spend money on words that I rank for organically (usually brand or tail terms).
• There are words that convert well, but are more expensive (usually head or torso terms) so I cannot afford a high SOV.
• If I stop buying some words, can I divert the savings into those bigger words?

The challenge for many marketers is that their category is either too big or they are not funding search well enough to use the savings. I have a client working in the healthcare space. Its words are expensive, and the company maintains about a 30 percent SOV on "bigger" words. When I examined how much money the company would save if it pulled back words with good organic conversions, I found it would only have raised the SOV 2 percent. Since it has good analytics, we were able to test and discovered that the traffic and conversions lost when they did not have two listings were not worth it. That's why proper analytics are important.

It's great to see clients recognizing that paid and organic should be one tactic, and yes there are lots of ROI-based synergies that exist. However, there is also a lot of account management; we just can't expect these synergies to magically appear without being upfront and working through the qualifications that need to be in place.

Joshua Palau is group director of SEM at Avenue A | Razorfish.

Asia-Pacific B2C E-Commerce Awakens

Japan and South Korea rule, but not for much longer.

In 2006, B2C e-commerce sales for the five major markets in the Asia-Pacific region totaled only $59.1 billion, and Japan accounted for a tiger’s share of the sales.

But things are changing.

eMarketer forecasts that B2C e-commerce sales in the region will grow at a 23.3% annual rate, reaching $168.7 billion in 2011.

"Japan was the largest market in the region, by far, with a 62.3% share of online sales in 2006," says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Asia-Pacific B2C E-Commerce: Focus on China and India. "But by 2011, Japan and South Korea, the region’s other mature market, will both lose share to two up-and-coming online markets—China and India."

Both China and India are growing rapidly, but they are far from reaching their vast potential.

"A number of hurdles, common to both countries, must be cleared to ensure sustainable long-term growth," says Grau. “Immature online payment systems, poor delivery networks and distrust between buyers and sellers, to name just a few.”

According to a China Internet Network Information Center survey, the top reason that Internet users in China do not buy online is uncertainty about the security of the online shopping process.

Smaller developing countries in the region, such as Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, are also on track to become viable e-commerce economies.

"For Western e-commerce firms with global aspirations, the challenge is to decide what to do in this region and how to do it," says Grau. "These markets are very different, so prospective entrants must seek local solutions."

Before jumping in, however, companies should be warned that it will take longer for e-commerce to advance from its formative stage in India and China and other developing countries in the region than it did in advanced industrialized countries like the US, Japan and Western Europe.

"Most countries in the region, particularly China and India, lack a nationwide credit card system or an efficient delivery network," says Grau, "essential infrastructures that have greatly facilitated e-commerce growth in more advanced countries."

In addition, in developing countries, the online shopping process is often at odds with traditional business practices. B2C transactions in China and India are conducted on a cash-basis, requiring e-commerce companies to provide alternative-payment methods, such as cash on delivery and wire transfers.

"Still, no matter what the obstacles, the markets of the region are simply too big to be ignored," says Grau.

Proceed, but do so with caution. Download the new

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Three in Ten US Mobile Users Recall Seeing Mobile Ads

More than three in ten mobile users - some 78 million US consumers - saw or heard advertising on their mobile phones in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to a study by Gfk/NOP Research conducted for mobile entertainment community Limbo.