Display Makes Searchers Buy Faster
Eyeblaster released a study yesterday showing that “display ads stimulate search by increasing the speed at which people searching enter the purchase funnel,” reports MediaPost. The study examined over 1300 search and display campaigns over a 15 month period.
They found that early one in five people who convert after using search had seen at least one display ad before searching. Eyeblaster concluded that display advertising increases the reach of campaigns, pushing more consumers to search. Those consumers then move through the purchasing funnel faster.
And this wasn’t just in a single industry: Eyeblaster looked at more than 200 advertisers in over 20 verticals. 72% of conversions resulted from display advertising, while 23% of the conversions were a direct result of the search channel and 5% were the result of display ads that were followed by a search.
Eyeblaster Principal Analyst Ariel Geifman says that display can thus be used to enhance search and reach a greater audience. “Since search is down the funnel, you need more prospects in the intent-to-purchase phase,” he says. He also notes that display scales more easily than search.
Display may help because search campaigns only show ads to people who’ve shown interest in that subject. Type “digital camera” into a search engine and you’ll get digital camera ads. But if you’re browsing the Internet, the random sites you come across won’t know you’re in the market for a digital camera. Display advertising is usually less targeted by intent, but reaches a greater audience across all target demographics.
On the other hand, as MediaPost says:
Search works on the lower parts of the funnel by targeting prospective customers in the consideration stage or in the intent-to-purchase stage and pushes them to complete their purchase. Display works on all stages of the funnel, bringing prospective customers into the funnel by generating awareness for the products or the services.
What do you think? Does display+search help people buy faster?
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Hitwise: Google Gets >71% of Searches
For the first four weeks of November, Google fielded 71.57% of all online searches in the US, according to Hitwise reports today. They’re up a percentage point over their October 2009 numbers—but they’re the only one doing so well.
Yahoo, still #2 in searches served, fell three quarters of a percentage point—and when your share is down to 15.39%, that tiny change represents a drop off of nearly 5%. Bing, meanwhile, also fell in November, but only 2% (a quarter of a percentage point). Ask, that big winner, saw a 1% increase over October—but considering that’s a shift of 0.03 percentage points, maybe it’s not something that should go on their resume. The 52 other search engines Hitwise monitors accounted for 1% of searches.
Perhaps most interesting in this release is the look at Bing’s boost for verticals. While Google continues to send the most traffic to sites in the automotive, travel, and shopping categories, Bing has made double digit (percent) improvements over Live’s position last year for sending downstream traffic:
Percentage of U.S. upstream traffic from search engines among verticals
|
|
|
Yahoo! Search |
Bing |
||||||
|
Vertical |
Nov-08 |
Nov-09 |
YoY % Change |
Nov-08 |
Nov-09 |
YoY % Change |
Nov-08 |
Nov-09 |
YoY % Change |
|
Automotive |
18.38% |
21.10% |
15% |
4.26% |
3.96% |
-7% |
1.26% |
2.34% |
86% |
|
Health |
32.69% |
31.62% |
-3% |
6.31% |
5.05% |
-20% |
1.78% |
3.40% |
91% |
|
Shopping |
18.12% |
19.29% |
6% |
4.22% |
3.91% |
-7% |
1.30% |
2.26% |
74% |
|
Travel |
26.77% |
28.87% |
8% |
4.95% |
4.26% |
-14% |
1.86% |
2.86% |
54% |
Note: Data is based on monthly upstream traffic from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users and does not include news searches.
*This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.
Source: Experian Hitwise
What do you think? Could vertical search be the big thing for Bing, or is that too specialized for a would-be Google competitor?
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Yahoo Goes Hollywood With New Video Search Refiners
Building on its previous travel and music search refinements, Yahoo has now announced new refinements for TV shows and actors.
The new feature acts similarly to what Yahoo’s done in the other verticals. Now, when using Yahoo Video Search to find TV shows, searchers will get a series of refinements in the left-side column that offer [...]
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Forrester Looks at Interactive Marketing by Segment
Interactive marketing as a whole is a good place to be relative to the rest of the marketing world. Anywhere where the worst numbers show low single digit decreases and the happy numbers are still in the positive teens despite a continued overall economic morass you have to smile at least a little. We need to, however, remember that the overall interactive marketing is doing fine it is still like any other market. That means, simply, that some industries are going to be much better off in the interactive space than others. It is not a silver bullet for everyone.
Forrester is starting a series of reports that tell just how particular industries are utilizing the interactive marketing environment. The first is called “US Interactive Marketing Forecast by Industry, 2009-2014″. It is interesting to see how some of the verticals are using the medium in its various forms and what lessons can be potentially learned.
Not surprisingly it’s the retail and financial sectors that account for nearly 1/ 3 of the interactive spend and that trend is likely to continue through 2014. What is interesting is that their overall marketing budgets still hold room for their growth to be significant. I wonder when other industries will find that they are completely under utilizing the Internet channel and will take more of their traditional spend online?
Our readers are knee deep in this stuff every day. Do you see any verticals / industries that may be missing the boat to this point? Where are there spots in the B2B and B2C world that will be hot growth areas for the next five years for interactive marketing. C’mon now. Don’t think you have some big secret that you can’t share. Remember that 99.999 % of the people that hear your ‘great idea’ probably couldn’t even begin to figure out how to execute it so don’t hold back.
Gulli Leaves Ask.com For Microsoft Bing, Finally Has “Resources”
Ten days ago, we reported that Antonio Gulli left Ask.com after 4 years heading up their technology team in the European R&D center. Gulli announced his new plans are to continue in search, but switch ships and work for Microsoft Bing.
Gulli said he will be “leading all the engineering development for UX and verticals [...]
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What Micro-Hoo Might Mean For Local Search
As the dust begins to settle on the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, we’re finding that this week’s announcement raised as many questions as it answered. The companies told Danny and Greg that the agreement covers “web, image, and video search.” But what about the many search verticals that Yahoo and Microsoft are involved in? These are [...]
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Ning Rings VC Bell Again
With all of the talk regarding social media it seems that the inordinate amount of the attention goes to the big 2; Facebook and Twitter. While they do tend to generate significant drama and even some real news there is more to the social media space. In fact, there are those who see the social media universe fragmenting into very specific verticals so those of like mind can gather online without having to see that your friend just had a great breath of air. There’s got to be more right?
One of the biggest ‘sideline’ players in this space is Ning. They are doing very well despite some recent decline in numbers. They are doing so well that they picked up some more VC investment. The amount of the investment is not the focus, however, as pointed out over at AllThingsD. It’s the valuation that the investment is based on, which is a hefty $750 million. Not bad for getting just a small percentage of the attention that social media gets in the online press. For the uninitiated here is an overview of the company
Ning is working in a different corner of the social media space than the others
Ning is a platform aimed at offering customizable tools that lets users create their social networks about their interests, such as for fans of the movie “Twilight.”
Ning puts online ads on the sites, using Google (GOOG), and is also working on its own advertising platform. It also offers an array of other services and is planning more soon, such as a virtual gift offering.
Founded in early 2007, it currently has 29.3 million registered users, using 1.3 million social networks, and it adding one million registered users every 15 days, said the company.
Despite the positive news of investment interestTechCrunch reports
In the U.S., unique visitors actually declined 10 percent from May, 2009 to June, 2009, according to comScore. Ning had 5.1 million visitors in the U.S. in June (its worldwide audience is about three times as large).
The company attributes the decline to “some downtime in June as we expand and optimize our infrastructure to support the growth that we are expecting in the next 12 months.” Ning says it is adding 4,000 new Ning Networks every day and one million registered users every 15 days.
Ning lands this relatively small investment while it wasn’t even seeking more. Having Lightspeed Venture Partners on board, however, makes the roster of investors more impressive as the folks at Ning continue to grow their business. that can carry some value later on when they may actually look for money intentionally.
What is your experience with Ning? Do you have any experience at all with the service? What place does a service like Ning truly have? Ning CEO Gina Bianchini says that “We want to be the social network for interests and passions online.” Are there ways one can express passions online without such a service? Give us your passionate thoughts on the subject.
Back From the Dead: Lycos Search (But WHY?)
Don’t you just hate it when someone doesn’t know they’re dead? Lycos Europe insists that it’s feeling much better after spending the last two years in come back attempts, the clearance rack and, finally, utter oblivion. Yes, they think they’ll go for a walk now!
At least that’s what TechCrunch reports from Lycos execs. In addition to regaining the European rights to trademarks on “Lycos” and “Hotbot” (holy 1996, Batman!), Lycos is making a for European domination to rival a nineteenth-century tyrant.
Only, you know, a lot less popular than Napoleon.
Lycos CEO Jungwook Lim says, “Lycos continues to have a loyal user base and we expect this consolidation to help revitalize and strengthen our search businesses within Europe.” And Edward Noel, General Manager of Search and Business Development for Lycos, is in on the act, too:
Over the next several weeks Lycos will be re-launching the provision of search services within the European territory. Locally targeted content verticals will gradually be rolled out and we will be taking steps to enhance our users’ search experience.
Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it?
Oh, I get it—they’re on an alternate timeline, aren’t they? The one where Yahoo bought Google way back when and Lycos still has market share in Europe. Or anyone else.
What do you think? Does Lycos have a “loyal user base” or is this a case of wishful “if I say it, maybe it’ll come true”?
Yahoo CEO Downplays Search, AOL Deal
Over sixteen months after Microsoft’s first offer to Yahoo, many people in the tech world are still watching them, waiting with bated breath. Will they or won’t they? Although Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has spent a lot of time lately downplaying the possibility, she stops short of saying there’s no possible deal with Microsoft in an interview with Fox Business (via paidContent) this week:
If you’re reading this via RSS and there’s no video, click through to view the video
Instead, she focuses on Yahoo’s strong properties that dominate their verticals—finance, sports, etc. She says that the social fragmentation of the has confused many users, and Yahoo is still a simple, centralized place for them to go for many different interest areas (not to mention email).
Meanwhile, back in the search business, Bartz is careful to stress that Yahoo is so much more than search. In fact, she goes so far as to say that Yahoo search is primarily designed to serve people who are already on their site, using it in other areas, who want to look something up. Their market share, solid at 20%, “meaningful” and they want to hold on to it—but, again, she stopped short of saying they want to grow their share.
The anchor points out that Bing beat Yahoo for one day (according to one stat service), to which Bartz replies:
I’m actually glad Bing was that strong. They didn’t beat us by much, it was one day, I think it’s gosh maybe it was in Omaha someplace, I think it was some small area. [The stats were global, however, they may not have been accurate.] I’m glad Google has competition.
One day is one day. It does not a trend make. But we don’t want anybody getting a toehold [in the market]. . . .
[Yahoo is more than just search.] We have a much bigger job than this narrow area.
She also goes on to put the nails in the coffin on the old rumors of a deal with AOL: “No, not any time in the forever future. . . . Yahoo is a much stronger property in a different direction. There is no sense confusing all that.”
As Danny Sullivan points out, all these protests that “we’re so much more than search,” are an obvious effort to downplay Yahoo’s failure to grow or win back significant share from Google. Meanwhile, they make Yahoo sound like it’s also not that interested in search in the first place.
What do you think? Is that what Yahoo really wants to say, or is this their “active compensatory feature”? (And if so, should they maybe take up drums? An awesome prize* goes to anyone who can name the movie I’m alluding to here!)
* Prizeiness and awesomeness of prize subject to subjectivity and available only where availability and legality permit.
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Forrester Report: Here Come the Mobile & Social Media Ads!
OK, so we already know that online advertising spending in 2009 is likely to be lower than 2008, but where exactly will companies funnel their ad dollars?
According to Forrester, if you’re in the mobile marketing or paid social media space, the glass is either half-empty or half-full.
It’s a half-empty kind of world, if you consider that these two verticals are currently under-funded by companies of all sizes. It’s a half-full world, if you take the view that there’s plenty of growth left in these areas–and companies appear to be ready to invest in them over the next 12 months.
So, where does that leave email and search marketing? Are we close to topping out?
