Google's Share of Search Traffic Continues to Grow

Google accounted for 64.35 percent of all US searches in the four weeks ending July 28, nearly four points more than the comparable period a year earlier, according to Hitwise, MarketingCharts reports.

Also according to Hitwise:

• Yahoo Search received 22.31% of searches in July (nearly unchanged from last year).
• MSN Search accounted for 8.79% (a significant 3 percentage points more than last year).
• Ask.com's share of searches was 3.21% (nearly unchanged from last year).

The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.52% of US searches, the online research firm said.

While search engines remain the primary way for internet users to navigate to key industry categories, Google's share of that traffic has been increasing significantly, according to Hitwise:

The Travel, News and Media, Entertainment, and Business and Finance categories received double-digit increases (comparing July 2007 to July 2006) in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

Americans Use Cellphones for, Well, Calling

U.S. Still Lags Other Countries in Multimedia Use

By Megan McIlroy

Published: August 23, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- American mobile users are still using cellphones primarily for calls, falling behind other countries in adopting them as multimedia devices, a new study by Universal McCann discovered.

Americans are increasingly using multimedia services on their phones, but at lower-than-average rates.

The study, conducted in June, covered 10,000 internet-connected mobile-phone users in 21 countries. It found 65% of mobile-phone usage in the U.S. is made up of phone calls, one of the highest percentages in the world. Internet usage on mobile phones in the U.S. is above the global average -- the average U.S. user makes 12 visits a month -- but still lags behind the leading market, Japan, where users go online an average of 40 times a month, the study found.

Need multiple strategies
For marketers, the study results mean "that if you are going to do internet and online marketing, one strategy for the U.S. may not be used as a blueprint; you have to adapt it to other markets," said Graeme Hutton, senior VP-director of consumer insights at Universal McCann.

Americans are increasingly using multimedia services on their phones, but at lower-than-average rates. The study found 52% of Americans have taken a photo on their phone vs. 80% globally, 22% have recorded a video vs. 62% globally, and 24% have downloaded a game vs. 31% globally.

Americans' use of other portable technology is partly responsible for the lower-than-average adoption of mobile phones as multimedia platforms, Mr. Hutton said, adding that "here we are used to having more than one mobile device; abroad it is being focused on the phone."

Don't want do-it-all products
Just over 60% of U.S. mobile users already own three or more devices including their phone -- with more than 42% owning a portable media player, 36% owning a laptop and 67% owning a digital camera, the study found. It also found that demand for converging devices that do everything is low in the U.S. compared with other countries.

Some other findings of the study: The U.S. is the only country apart from South Korea where more people have paid for music downloads than have downloaded them illegally. More than 17% have paid for music downloads, while 15% have downloaded illegally from a peer-to-peer sharing site. Music downloads are more popular among U.S. mobile users than TV or film downloads.

Welcome to the new world of room service

Tuffled Wagyu beef, 1,000 wines to choose from — our guide to the best

By Shivani Vora

Forbes

Goodbye limp French fries, hello fine dining: Room service has woken up from a long, dull nap.

Whatever you want, you can get it 24 hours a day at some hotels—whether it's on the menu or not. And it when it arrives, it may come in courses served sequentially, as in a fine restaurant. Can't decide between the 1,000 different wines offered? No problem. The room-service sommelier will be happy drop by.

Kosher? Vegan? Gluten-free? It's all available.

Foodies take note: In hotels worldwide, what used to be an afterthought has become a top room-service priority—in part, because customers are demanding it.

"We're finding that baby boomers are spending more time in their rooms when they travel, just relaxing, and younger generations are spending more time in their rooms working," says Bjorn Hanson, a principal in the Hospitality and Leisure Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "As a result, there is a higher level of demand for room service, and hotels are forced to improve it."

Options for all
For example, Peninsula Hotels, which has seven worldwide locations, including Hong Kong and Beverly Hills, launched a wellness program last year that provides healthy and organic food on their room-service menus. At the Chicago branch, there's even an organic menu for children.

W Hotels offer room service through its Whatever/Whenever department, which means that guests can order whatever items they like, 24 hours a day, and the hotel will prepare the meal for them—even if its not on the menu. At the Mandarin Oriental in Bermuda, room-service fare expands beyond the typical seafood and meat options. Stay here, and you can order a rum and chocolate pairing or an afternoon champagne tea to enjoy in your room.

Now this is service
One of the biggest changes hotels are implementing, says Hanson, is to bring a restaurant-like experience to your room.

The Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., for example, revamped its room service last year and now offers fine dining in guest rooms instead of delivering food all together on one tray.

A server arranges a table in the room with Frette linens, white Bernardaud china and sterling silver, and delivers each course one by one. Guests call when they are ready for their next course; it may also arrive in 20-minute intervals. Start with a tomato basil soup with garlic croutons, then move on to the organic baby greens with aged vinaigrette and the milk-fed veal chop. End with the orange blossom crème brulee. If you're not in the mood for such pomp and circumstance, it is possible to have your food delivered all together.

"We were finding that more guests wanted to eat in their rooms," says Tiffani Cailor, director of public relations for the property. "Many are business travelers who eat in courses between phone calls, so it made sense to make these changes."

Besides the Peninsula, The Metropolitan in Bangkok is another example of a hotel that offers healthy meal choices. Guests can order from Glow, the hotel's restaurant that emphasizes healthy, natural and organic food using only fresh ingredients. When you order from here, there's no need for deprivation. Choices include steamed fish in a fragrant mushroom, chili and ginger broth with greens and brown rice or udon noodles, baby corn, shiitake mushrooms and snow peas with a spicy lemon-garlic dressing.

Drink up
Given the limited wine choices room-service menus typically have, oenophiles usually can't indulge, but that's not the case when they stay at the One & Only Palmilla in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Nearly a thousand bottles of wine are on the room-service list here, including Italian makes like Gaja, French vintages like Joseph Drouhin and Chilean names like Almaviva. If you need help selecting the best wine for your meal, a sommelier can come to your room to help you choose; he can even help you identify its flavors when it arrives.

The only drawback? When one's room is so appealing, it makes sightseeing difficult.

© 2007 Forbes.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20393013/

Southwest Keeps Fans From Straying
August 20, 2007
By Joan Voight

SAN FRANCISCO In its signature folksy manner, Southwest Airlines over the last two years has used techie social marketing tools, including a widget and a blog, to inject itself into customers' everyday lives.

As other mainstream marketers are now discovering these marketing tools, Southwest shares the insider knowledge it has gained from its long-term efforts. Its experience offers first-hand evidence of what works and what doesn't for a discount-oriented target market.

The company introduced its online "Ding" service in February 2005, before most marketers or airline customers ever heard of marketing widgets.

The Ding is a computer application—or widget—which consumers can download on their personal computers. Whenever exclusive discount fares are offered, the program emits the familiar ringing sound of the in-flight seatbelt bell. The discounts last only 6-12 hours and can only be accessed online by clicking on the Ding application. The audio cue is the same sound used with the slogan, "You are free to move about the country," in the company's TV campaign, which ties the service to the airline's brand advertising.

In its first two years, the Ding application was downloaded by about 2 million consumers and generated more than $150 million in ticket sales, said Kevin Krone, vice president of marketing. While Southwest has been steadily increasing its Ding promotions with e-mail, direct mail and TV advertising, the most effective marketing method has been word-of-mouth referrals, said Krone. "The ratio of referred [Ding] installers to total installers is very high, which tells us that people who download the program often convince their friends to do it as well," he said.

He added that the pace of both monthly Ding downloads and ticket sales has steadily increased each quarter. However, the Ding application's effectiveness as a launch pad for the company's Rapid Rewards loyalty program and other services has remained fixed, he said. The company declines to give conversion rates, but industry sources say 45 percent of Ding users come back to book again, compared to the industry rate of 27 percent repeat ticket sales.

Based in part on the success of Ding, the airline in April 2006 launched a "Nuts About Southwest" blog, written by employees and soliciting comments from the public. An internal search engine helps visitors zero in on the topics that interest them. Designed to give customers an inside look at the company and access to 30 cross-department employee bloggers, the blog generates a decisive response from Southwest loyalists. In July 2007, the blog attracted more than 100,000 total visits and more than 40,000 unique visitors. A blog post by CEO Gary Kelly about the airline's consideration of assigned seating drew more than 600 comments, mainly in support of the current non-assigned seating practice.

Over the last 12 months, the blog has featured 260 posts, and has received about 6,200 comments, or about 20 per day, said a company representative.

As a result, Southwest is committed to digital social marketing as a way to drive business, said Krone. For instance, the airline is considering other online widgets that could provide travel services to customers, he said. All future initiatives will be informed by the evolution of these early efforts.

For instance, the Ding program showed that digital interaction operations must be easy. Over time, the company repeatedly simplified the Ding installation process to prevent any customer frustration. It also made the deals more selective. "Customers felt overwhelmed when we showed them all the Ding discounts to all the cities we serve. So we allowed them to filter which cities they wanted with each session," Krone explained. "That evolved to the present system, in which customers identify the 10 cities that interest them when they sign up for Ding."

From its blog, the company learned that talking directly with customers requires a more honest, direct approach than typical marketing. "If there is something that customers demand and you can't change it, it is best to be transparent," said Krone.

For example, Southwest expanded its time frame for booking advanced tickets due to customer comments, but did not go as far as some people wanted. Rather than ignore that unsatisfied minority, the blog explained company policymakers understood some customers wanted to book further ahead, would study the issue and might later expand the time window. The blog showed the marketer that "explanations and transparency are as important as solutions," said Krone.

A McKinsey report supports Southwest's firsthand experience with social marketing. "How Businesses Are Using Web. 2.0" states that marketers find online discussions using collaborative and communications technologies "offer immediate value for their organizations." Blogs, in particular, "help engage prospects and detractors in a positive and productive discussion," thus helping brands manage their reputations, according to the March 2007 study.

Southwest says that online social marketing is a natural extension of its offline efforts to connect with customers. "It fits like a glove on a hand. We were doing social networking long before it was cool and digital," said Krone. "If customers are digital, we will be digital. If they are online, that is where we have to be," he said.

Travelers' migration online shows no sign of abating. Eighty-one percent of leisure travelers and 90 percent of business travelers are shopping online, and those e-consumers are demanding both control and customization, cites a June study by Forrester Research.

A year ago, online marketers were advised to listen to online conversations to gauge what was being said about their products, said Rob Crumpler, CEO of BuzzLogic, "but as social media matures as a marketing channel, now it's more important for brands to actually engage in the conversations."

Google says mobile usage has surged this summer

Wed Aug 22, 2007 4:48PM EDT

By Eric Auchard

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Google Inc has seen a spike in usage of its mobile services since May, partly offsetting the traditional summer slump in computer-based Web surfing for the first time, an executive said on Wednesday.

"We are seeing more and more mobile activity," Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products, told a Web marketing conference in Silicon Valley.

Traffic to Google's maps, e-mail and mobile searches on mobile phones and wireless handheld devices rose 35 percent between May and June. That reversed the previous annual pattern in which both mobile phone and computer use declined, the Google official said.

The much anticipated U.S. launch of Apple Inc's iPhone Internet phone in late June led to a jump of 40 percent to 50 percent in use of Google Maps on mobile phones, according to Mayer, Google's vice president of search.

Google Maps is one of the handful of featured applications on the iPhone.

Mobile use remained high into August, even as overall traffic searches surged then fell in the summer months. The traffic traditionally drops by 20 percent to 40 percent between May and June, as computer users in the Northern Hemisphere go on vacation.

"I think this is sort of a sign that people are becoming savvier with their mobile devices, and that there are better devices" available for the Web, while away from computers, Mayer told reporters after a presentation to marketers at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose.

"The technology curve is catching up," she told reporters after the presentation. "The phones are just better."

While the numbers of mobile users of Google search services remain tiny compared to the hundreds of millions of computer users of Google, the higher traffic reflects the growing acceptance of the mobile Internet, Mayer said.

While there are tens of millions of mobile searches on Google each day, they are a far cry from the billions of daily Google service requests done via computer.

So far, Google services are mainly designed for use on higher-priced "smart phones" that have faster browsers and bigger screens than typical mass-market mobile phones that are commonly used for voice-calling and text-messaging.

Mayer said internal traffic data appears to show a growing number of users switching off their computer and signing on to Google services via their mobile phones.

Google's mobile traffic still comes largely from U.S. users, reflecting the wider number of services available in the company's home market, including Google Maps, which offers detailed real-time traffic maps in more than 30 U.S. cities.

Japan and Europe are also seeing growing demand for Google services such as Gmail and mobile search, Mayer said.

Overall growth in the usage of Google services has begun to pick up again in the current week, as U.S. students go back to school and vacationers begin to return to work.

Call Tracking for Campaign Longevity

By Stuart McKelvey


If advertisers and agencies are only tracking the success of online campaigns through clickthrough rates or online conversions, they are missing out on the true value of advertising.

Numerous studies have shown that consumers increasingly use the internet to research upcoming purchases. But did you know that recent data reveals that the majority of consumers are going offline to complete these transactions?

In March of last year, comScore Networks issued a study showing that 63 percent of purchases completed as a direct result of a search query were offline purchases, with 37 percent online.

In fact, this trend is even more significant when consumers search for local information, as shown in a TMP Directional Marketing/comScore proprietary 2007 study measuring consumer usage of all online media sources when looking for localized information.

According to this study, 90 percent of consumers who went on to make a purchase after searching locally completed the transaction offline vs. 10 percent online.

The point is that if advertisers and agencies are only tracking the success of online campaigns through metrics such as an increase in website traffic, clickthrough rate or online conversions, they are missing out on the true value of advertising. Period.

So how does one start recognizing and tracking the offline benefit of online campaigns? One very simple and effective way is to set up a call-tracking line, whereby a unique phone number (local or toll-free) is placed on a website or search engine-sponsored ad. The number routes into the normal phone line allowing the total number of calls received from a specific advertisement to be tracked and reported daily, monthly or any other desired frequency.



In addition to the number of calls, basic call tracking lines can also provide other valuable performance information such as the following:

1. Length of the call
2. Date and time of the calls
3. Basic caller ID data that can then be used to match consumers from initial contact through to purchase
4. Area the call came from via area code or ZIP code

A sample of a basic call-tracking report is shown below:



Below is an example of one of TMPDM's advertisers who was able to see the true value and performance of its local online advertising through the use of call-tracking lines. Without the additional performance tracked via these lines, the campaign would have been discontinued as a result of the client's perception that the advertising had not met the desired cost per lead (CPL) and cost per sale (CPS) metrics. At the time, the campaign was measured solely by total online contacts and sales.

Case study
Situation analysis: A national pest control company was looking to generate additional lead volume at an efficient CPL and CPS rate. A desirable CPL target was set at $20 as well as a target CPS of $50.

TMPDM implemented competitive advertising placements across the top three local search/internet Yellow Pages sites. Although the client didn't typically set up call tracking as part of any of its other online buys, TMPDM was able to negotiate this tracking at no cost to the advertiser for the first year of the campaign.

The Results (January-December 2006):

* Total Ad Investment: $160,230
o Target CPL = $20
o Target CPS = $50

* Results if measured solely on online performance:




As a result of the added performance, the advertiser not only renewed the buy in 2007, but increased the overall campaign more than 200 percent. To date, the advertiser is still generating a large volume of leads and sales from the buy at 20-30 percent below its targeted lead/sales amount.

There are many call-tracking providers, and price points have decreased considerably thanks to some of the newer VoIP-based providers. Some leaders in the field include:

* eStara
* Who's Calling
* Call Source
* VoiceStar

As the lines between online and offline conversion continue to blur, it is more important than ever for marketers to understand the real performance of their campaigns and how each complement and compete with each other. Without this understanding, the advertiser or agency will never really be able to recognize or convey the true performance or ROI of campaign strategies. This may result in missed opportunities or, worse yet, the abandonment of proven, highly performing ad placements.

Ryan Naraine, PC World Wed Aug 22, 4:00 AM ET

Pickleview, an app written during the three-day iPhoneDevCamp, lets you Webcast baseball games while chatting with other users.What if Dell released a new computer with nothing but a Web browser on it? Well, as slick as the iPhone is, if it's missing an application you need--instant messaging, for example--a tiny PC with a browser is really all you have. But as today's explosion of Web-based applications demonstrates, you can do a lot with just a Web browser. Eager developers are already creating new Web-based applications for the iPhone (see some of our favorites on the last page), and high-profile sites like Facebook and Netvibes have gone a long way toward making themselves more iPhone friendly. But questions remain about how much the iPhone's current incarnation can really do and what that means for the future of mobile computing. Citing security and reliability concerns, Apple opted against releasing a software development kit, or SDK, to allow the creation of native iPhone programs. Instead, Apple provided hooks to let developers access many of the iPhone's basic functions, such as sending e-mail, dialing a phone number, or tying into the embedded Google Maps through Apple's Safari browser. Ideally, developers would use those capabilities to build Web sites and apps that behave just as native iPhone programs do. So how is the effort going so far? Just one week after Apple shipped the iPhone to droves of drooling early adopters, Richard Herrera traveled to Adobe's San Francisco office for iPhoneDevCamp, a three-day event where Web developers and designers brainstormed ideas for delivering applications to the shiny new device. Just four hours into the first day, Herrera and three other developers he barely knew delivered Pickleview, an iPhone Web interface that shuttles real-time, interactive baseball scores from MLB.com to a live Twitter chat stream. "When Apple said that any application fully compatible with Safari 3 would integrate perfectly with iPhone, I knew it would be real easy to build some fun apps," Herrera says. "It's only been a month [since the release of the iPhone], and I've seen some really interesting things being done." While coders are still getting a handle on what they can and can't accomplish through Safari, impressive applications are already starting to emerge, and events like iPhoneDevCamp have produced some fun new features. But several developers believe that many serious business programs will require an SDK. Early ApplicationsRaven Zachary, open-source research director for the technology-analysis company The 451 Group and one of the organizers of the iPhoneA-DevCamp, says he was blown away by some of the creations that came out of the development event. "I saw a voting application that was motion controlled, where you could vote 'yes' if the iPhone was horizontal or 'no' if it was moved into a vertical position. That was neat," Zachary says. "Pickleview's interface was really impressive," he adds. Other software coming out of the camp provides an early glimpse at what can be ported to mobile devices. Telekinesis, for example, turns the iPhone into a remote control device to access Mac OS X computers through a collection of mini Web applications on the phone. There's even an iPhone-specific social network called iRovr that offers MySpace-like functionality for groups of iPhone-using friends. Some other ideas include Gas.App, which delivers gas prices based on an iPhone user's zip code; txtDrop, which provides free Web-based SMS on the device; iPhone My eBay, for bidding and tracking auctions in a customized iPhone interface; iChess, a touch-screen chess game by Australian developers who have never laid hands on an iPhone; and FlickIM, an AOL instant messaging chat tool designed for the iPhone. Then there are "launchers," or app aggregators, Web sites that mimic the iPhone screen layout on the Web, giving iPhone users a way to easily access third-party apps without having to bookmark individual Web pages. Three launchers that have gained momentum are AppMarks, MockDock, and Mojits, each offering preloaded programs and the ability to add and delete apps from a single iPhone Web page.

Tracking Development

Connect with your techno-hip friends on iRovr, the first iPhone-specific social network.Steven Schopp, a New York-based developer who is working on iPhone gaming software, came up with the iPhone Application List to track the many new apps created every day. He says the Safari app-delivery model makes it "supereasy" for anyone to hop aboard the iPhone gravy train. "It really opens up the iPhone to everyone with basic Web developer knowledge. Once you stick to Web standards on Safari, your app will work perfectly on the phone. This makes it so easy for anyone to get involved," Schopp says. Still, the big question on everyone's mind is whether Apple will bite the bullet and release a full SDK so that more people can write native iPhone programs, much as it did with Cocoa, the object-oriented application environment designed specifically for building Mac OS X-only native apps. Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at New York-based Jupiter Research, notes that most current iPhone programs are consumer focused and fill a very small niche; he also argues that the iPhone won't truly be a killer device until third-party applications can attack issues such as compatibility with Office documents, allowing the creation of Word or Excel files. "These things can be easily addressed with an SDK, but we'll have to wait to see what Apple decides to do," he adds. Veteran developer Dave Winer, who bought an iPhone the day it hit retail shelves, isn't impressed with the Web-based application approach either. "How different the situation would be if the iPhone had a full SDK, if you could run Mac OS apps on the device, or if it had a built-in HTTP server that would allow you to browse or configure it over Wi-Fi from a Mac or Windows machine," Winer wrote on his widely read Scripting.com blog. "In other words, if it had the kind of revolutionary features and was an open platform in the tradition of Apple and the PC industry." But could that level of openness be coming? Joe Hewitt, a software engineer who created the user interface rendering engine behind America Online's new AIM platform, believes Apple will give developers tools to tie Web utilities to different parts of the device, like the camera or the calendar app. "They say they're going to focus on Web apps, and I believe this is going to be the main approach," says Hewitt, whose free tool iUI aids the creation of Web sites that look as if they belong on the iPhone. Hewitt expects Apple to add Flash support to Mobile Safari, opening up the iPhone to gaming and video delivery. He also anticipates an offline caching utility similar to Google Gears so programs won't need constant connectivity. iPhone 2.0?The 451 Group's Zachary agrees that future iPhone updates--both to the firmware of the device and to revisions of the hardware--will find ways around the Web-delivery stumbling blocks, but he thinks it's inevitable that Apple will release an SDK to help build native iPhone software. "Ideally, I think we'll see feature revisions with GPS to add location-based services. That will make online mapping apps much more effective. Right now, [Apple CEO Steve Jobs] is comfortable with Mobile Safari, but I think we'll see an SDK that allows native apps in some kind of sandbox to get around the security and stability fears," Zachary says. "The guys who have dedicated their lives to building Mac apps are not going to do the Web paradigm. They will want to wait for an SDK before committing to any kind of iPhone development," he argues. Web-based delivery could also limit iPhone application availability by making it harder for some developers to earn money with their creations. Gartenberg believes that more native software and games will arrive, but that Apple will continue to work with a few select companies, as it has with Google and YouTube. "That's pretty much the model they've done with the iPod, where you can get third-party games, but only if you buy them directly from Apple. They're only working with select developers on those iPod games, and that's pretty much what they'll do with the iPhone," he says. While selective development of native applications will continue--Steve Jobs has already promised an iPhone voice recorder--most of the action will be confined to Web-based applications. And that should be a good thing for mobile apps in general: Once a Facebook or a Netvibes runs on the iPhone, adapting it to operate on the next great mobile device becomes that much easier.

Our Favorite Safari-Based iPhone Applications

Looking for a few new programs for your iPhone? These nine Safari-based gems (and one traditional Web site) are among our favorites: iPhone Application List: Though it's short on iPhone-specific presentation, this iPhone Application List is the place to start. App Launchers:AppMarks, MockDock, and Mojits all come with a selection of applications preloaded and let you add new favorites to a customized page. Remote Access:Telekinesis gives you access to files, media, and more on systems running OS X. Communications: Check out the txtDropFlickIM for access to AOL instant messaging. On the Go:Gas.App helps you find the best gas prices in your zip code. Games & Sports: Some favorites include an iPhone-ready Duck Hunt Clone and pickleview.com which lets you chat while watching live baseball scores. service to send free Web-based SMS and