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The economy may have come back from the brink, but demand for digital coupons appears to be picking up steam, according to new data released by Coupons.com. The company said savings from coupons printed out or loaded to a loyalty card from its online properties doubled to more than $1 billion from $529 million a year ago. The value of savings in June alone hit $110 million, the highest total to date for any single month via Coupons.com. That increase has come despite traffic to the site actually dropping in the last year from 18.2 million monthly visitors to 14.5 million. Read more at www.mediapost.com

Apparently, in-text advertisements, those seemingly annoying little ads that pop up when someone moves a cursor over a hot-linked piece of text in an article, can create impactful campaigns. According to a comScore study, Kontera’s in-text targeted ads delivered five times greater brand awareness than traditional display ads, and twice as much lift in brand purchase intent.

The study suggests 34% of consumers strongly felt Kontera in-text ads “clutter the page,” compared with 61% for interstitials, 52% for video ads, 45% for rectangle ads, and 36% for banners.

Twenty-one percent of consumers strongly agreed the in-text ads are “related to content,” compared with 14% for rectangle ads, 14% for interstitials, 10% for video, 15% for Google text ads, and 11% for banners.

Thirty three percent say in-text ads a less intrusive ad format, compared with 40% for rectangle ads, 53% for video ads, 63% for interstitial ads, and 29% for banners. Read more at www.mediapost.com

A flurry of paid-search reports released Tuesday may have marketers’ heads spinning, but each provides insights into specific parts of the process.

SearchIgnite released the Q2 2010 U.S. Search Market Report Tuesday. Year-over-year paid-search spend increased 14% in the U.S., following an 11% YoY increase, sequentially.

Similar to Efficient Frontier’s report, SearchIgnite found retailers spent more — about 7% — compared with the prior year. Microsoft’s search engine Bing gained market share by 26% from the year-ago quarter, but declined 9.6% sequentially. Overall, Bing dropped slightly to 6.2% share of search spend in the U.S., while Google and Yahoo reached 78.4% and 15.4%, respectively.

Google increased the average number of paid-search ads shown per search session by 15%, followed by Yahoo at 22% and Bing at 11%. More premium ads in sponsored listings and down the right rail don’t necessarily suggest good news, however. Increasing ad coverage can diminish returns, and result in a poor experience for consumers, according to the report.

Relying on Google for metrics, the report suggests that consumers can withstand between 5.5 and 6.0 ads per search query. Yahoo now serves up 6.85, making it unlikely the increase in ads will lead to additional revenue. Bing serves up about 3.85 ads per keyword, so it’s “extremely” likely that this will reflect in better-than-expected revenues for the search engine. Similarly, Google went from 4.97 to 5.72, so they could report healthy increases as well.

Google now monetizes nearly 8% more of their keyword searches. Stokes says keywords searched with no ads decreased from 43.6% in Q1 to 39.7% in June, making the inventory easier to monetize.

In the Americas, paid-search spending by tech companies increased 12% during the second quarter, while the Asia/Pacific region rose 33%, sequentially. Combined, spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew 25%. Google’s China strategy and move to serve content from Hong Kong has influenced performance. During the second quarter, Google’s share in the region dropped from 69% to 61%, while Baidu’s share of paid-search spending rose to 22% from 12%, sequentially. Read more at www.mediapost.com

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Interaction time translates to real-world branding impacts

Online marketers recognize the inadequacy of the clickthrough as an ad performance metric but still rely on it for its simplicity and ease of use. A joint study from comScore and MediaMind (formerly Eyeblaster) gives marketers in the entertainment industry reason to look further, to measures of interaction and dwell time, for a more accurate indication of performance.

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Very Effective SEO Objectives by Primary Market

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Many social media marketers are eager to tie a hard number to the value of their efforts. To that end, firms have attempted to analyze the worth of fans and followers on social networking sites like Facebook.

Digital consulting firm Syncapse and research company Hotspex have come up with an empirical formula that puts an average value of $136.38 on the Facebook fans of the site’s 20 biggest corporate brands. Most of that value comes from how much the fans will spend on the brand’s products, with additional dollars coming from customer loyalty, recommendations and earned media.

The study found that people spent significantly more on products they were fans of, compared with consumers who were not fans. In the case of many of Facebook’s most popular food and beverage marketers, fan spending was more than double that of non-fans.

The pattern of increased fan spending held across all of the top 20 brands on Facebook, with differences ranging from 51% for Oreo fans to 168% for fans of Nokia. Read more at www.emarketer.com

“Digital and mobile media will be a big focus this year,” he said, noting that 39% of users of Cars.com accessed mobile devices from dealership lots. “Since one in two phones today are smartphones, our biggest challenge, at least in this area, is how to communicate with consumers on mobile platforms.”Read more at www.mediapost.com

Data released by MediaMind show that for every 1,000 ads, users engage in 70 rich media impressions — but only click on three. That means nearly 95 percent of impressions that users engage with are never clicked. This confirms that advertisers must bring the experience to the user, rather than have the users seek it out on their own. Read more at www.imediaconnection.com

“There’s been a substantial increase in the number of consumers buying digital goods and an upward trend of players spending more on average than in the previous year,” said Mike Vorhaus, President, Magid Advisors.

According to the study, 13% of the overall population surveyed reported that they had bought virtual goods in the last 12 months, with the mean of digital good purchase up 14% from $87 in 2009 to $99 in 2010. The median of digital goods purchase is $50 in 2010, a 67% improvement from $30 in 2009. In terms of the heaviest concentration of digital goods buyers, iPhone owners took over the #1 spot, moving from 28% of iPhone owners in 2009 to 43% in 2010. Virtual worlds came in second place with 41% of regular visitors having bought a digital good. Of weekly handheld and mobile gamers, 33% and 32%, respectively, bought digital goods. Overall, more than one-fifth (21%) of those who bought digital goods said they plan to spend more in the next 12 months. Among ways to purchase digital goods, 16% of digital goods buyers say they have used Facebook Credits.

Largest demographic of consumers who have reported buying virtual goods: 1. Males ages 18 to 24 (31%) 2. Males ages 8 to 11 and 12 to 17 (both at 23%) 3. Males 25 to 34 (21%) 4. Females ages 8 to 11 (16%) 5. Females ages 12 to 17 (15%) 6. Females ages 18 to 24 (14%)

Where consumers are buying from: 1. In a game (57%) 2. The official Web site outside the virtual world or game (38%) 3. E-commerce site such as PlaySpan (16%) 4. Another player (8%) 5. Other (8%) 6. Not sure (8%)

Type of game or environment where consumers have bought from: 1. A free, web-based game (37%) 2. A social network site, other than a game (31%) 3. A free multiplayer computer game (29%) 4. A game on a social network site (29%) 5. A connected console marketplace (21%) 6. A paid, subscription based multiplayer game (18%) 7. An online virtual world (11%) 8. Other (6%)

Concentration of virtual goods purchasers within ethnic groups: 1. Asian American (26%) 2. Latinos (20%) 3. African American or Black (15%) 4. Caucasians (11%) 5. All others (12%) Read more at www.prweb.com

27.0% report more than 50% of their online sales are attributable to search engine marketing: Percent of Online Sales Attributable to Search Engine Marketing   % by Type of Retailer Percent of Sales All Chain Catalog Web  Manufacturer 5% or less 17.0% 16.7 27.3 16.2 11.1 6-10 9.0 25.0 0.0 8.8 0.0 11-15 11.0 16.7 9.1 10.3 11.1 16-20 7.0 8.3 0.0 7.4 11.1 21-25 9.0 8.3 9.1 8.8 11.1 26-30 8.0 0.0 36.4 2.9 22.2 31-40 9.0 8.3 9.1 8.8 11.1 41-50 3.0 8.3 0.0 2.9 0.0 > 50% 27.0 8.3 9.1 33.8 22.2 Source: Internet Retailer, May 2010 Google dominates the search engine landscape. Yahoo has been the perennial second-place finisher. Bing, has been making inroads since its launch in June 2009, and gaining increasing attention from retail marketers. 19.4% of respondents to the Internet Retailer survey say more than 90% of their search engine traffic comes from Google: ·      43.9% say 71% to 90%, ·      25.5% report 50% to 70% ·      11.2% report less than 50% Read more at www.mediapost.com

Criticism of behaviorally targeted ads by consumers, privacy advocates and the government has led to uncertainty in the market, which eMarketer expects to reach nearly $1.13 billion this year. Research from the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) indicates the high value of those ads, for both marketers and publishers.

The study, which looked at ads run on member networks during 2009, showed that among users who clicked on a behaviorally targeted ad, 6.8% converted. That compared with only 2.8% of those who clicked on a run-of-network ad. Clickers found behavioral ads more relevant, but the NAI did not study how likely they were to click in the first place, a key component of effectiveness.

CPM rates were likewise significantly higher for behaviorally targeted ads, with the average price of a behaviorally targeted ad 2.68 times greater than that of a run-of-network ad. Retargeting also provided higher CPMs.

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The “2010 Digital Marketing Outlook” report found that 81% of the brand executives surveyed expected an increase in digital projects in 2010, and one-half will be moving dollars from traditional to digital budgets. Further, more than three-quarters think the current economy will push more allocations to digital.

Senior marketers reported that social networks and applications were their biggest priority for 2010, followed closely by digital infrastructure. While social media marketing looks set to stay top of mind, a majority of respondents considered a range of digital activities at least “important,” with only games failing to inspire widespread interest.

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SUMMARY: Marketers face lengthy time spans as they progress from lead generation to conversion, making it difficult to nurture prospects while moving them through the pipeline. This chart highlights the percentages of leads in each stage of the pipeline that are likely to advance to the next stage.

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Dotomi announced results from the use of its attribution technology which reiterates the impact strong attribution models can have in driving display or any digital media’s future growth. From the release: “Dotomi found display increased performance by an average of 20 percent in paid search, 26 percent in natural search, 25 percent in affiliate marketing, 16 percent in CRM email and 26 percent in direct load, where the consumer goes directly to the retailer’s website.” Pour on the attribution for display, and it’s full steam ahead! Read the release. Read more at www.adexchanger.com

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