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Fewer Women Online Spending More Time

In Most Regions, Women Spend More Time Online The average 15-plus female spends 8% more time online than her male counterpart. In April, the global average was 24.8 hours per month for women, compared to 22.9 hours for men. Read more at www.marketingcharts.com

Women Do More Social Networking

More Women Visit Social Networks, Spend More Time “How Women Are Shaping the Internet” indicates 75.8% of all women online visited a social networking site in May 2010, compared to 69.7% of men. Globally, women demonstrate higher levels of engagement with social networking sites than men. Although women account for 47.9% of total unique visitors to the social networking category, they consume 57% of pages and account for nearly 57% of total minutes spent on these sites.

Latin America, North America Display Strongest Social Networking Reach Among Women Across each global region researched by comScore, social networking reached a higher percentage of women online than men. Social networking’s reach among women is highest in Latin America where it reached 94.1 percent of females online (and the highest reach among males online, 91.9%), and in North America where it reached 91% of females (and the second-highest reach among males, 87.5%).

Gays, Lesbians Active SocNet Users In addition to gender gap, there also appears to be a gap between homosexuals and heterosexuals in social networking, at least in the US, according to a recent Harris Interactive survey. Read more at www.marketingcharts.com

Usability Key Feature for Auto Sites

Usable Sites Earn High Marks Two high-performing sites, Honda and Kia, are found by J.D. Power to each focus on usability and allow shoppers to access information quickly and easily. As a result, both Honda and Kia perform well in each of the four measures examined in the study: speed, appearance, navigation and information/content.

‘Edgy’ Sites Fare Worse In contrast, some of the lowest-ranking websites use what J.D. Power identifies as an edgy, brand-centric design that put marketing goals ahead of meeting shopper needs. As a result, they perform particularly poorly in the appearance measure. Certain design elements on these sites hinder speed, ease of navigation and user access to information and content. Read more at www.marketingcharts.com

Based on the quantity and quality of leads generated, companies said email was their best lead generation program, followed by live events, website registrations and webinars. The effectiveness of online channels, coupled with the fact that prospects indicate the web is the first place they look for more information, makes it natural for companies to be increasing their investments in web design, email marketing and search engine optimization.

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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

According to new data from The Nielsen Company, airing an ad both on TV and online greatly increases its effectiveness. In a Nielsen study of direct-to-consumer drug advertising, exposure on TV and online was more than twice as likely to prompt patients to ask their physician about the drug than on TV or internet alone. Compared to consumers who had only seen a TV ad for a specific drug, consumers who had seen both a TV and online ad were 100% more likely to ask their doctor about it.

Consumers who had been exposed to the ad both online and on TV in the last seven days were 157% more likely to ask their doctor about the drug than consumers who had only been exposed online in the last seven days.

Ad Exposure on TV Plus Online (Index vs. 100)   Internet & TV vs. Internet Only (Past 24 Hours) Internet & TV (Past 7 Days) TV & Internet Exposure vs. TV Only Memorability 89 87 100 Brand communication 88 91 103 Intent to ask doctor 212 157 100 Source: The Nielsen Company, July 2010 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

According to the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans’ use of the Internet by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Pew American Internet and American Life Project, six-in-ten American adults are now wireless internet users, and mobile data applications have grown more popular over the last year.

The definition of a wireless internet user includes the following activities:

Going online with a laptop using a wi-fi connection or mobile broadband card. Roughly half of all adults (47%) go online in this way, up from the 39% who did so at a similar point in 2009.

Use of the internet, email or instant messaging on a cell phone. Two-in-five adults (40%) do at least one of these using a mobile device, an increase from the 32% of adults who did so in 2009.

Taken together, 59% of American adults now go online wirelessly using either a laptop or cell phone, an increase over the 51% of Americans who did so at a similar point in 2009. Read more at www.mediapost.com

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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

Google Slips, AOL Gains in Customer Satisfaction

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Mobile Banners Beat Standard Online Ads in Clicks and Conversions

Clickthrough rates, which were best for rich media formats like floating ads and commercial breaks, were twice as high for mobile banners than standard banners.

Only floating ads performed better than mobile in both clicks and conversions. Mobile banners had a higher conversion rate than several online display ad types, and again performed twice as well as standard banners. Read more at www.emarketer.com

CHART OF THE DAY: Everybody Wants A Piece Of Groupon

The chart below tracks the growth in interest in buying shares of private companies between Q1 2010 and Q2 2010 from SecondMarket’s 14,000 users.

As you can see Groupon is the fastest growing, then Gilt Groupe. At the end is TechCrunch, which doesn’t have any shares available. A SecondMarket rep says investors can just list companies they would like to buy shares of as a signal to the employees or owners of the company.

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CHART OF THE DAY: The iPad Is Already Bigger Than The iPod — And Half As Big As The Mac

In the June quarter, the iPad business generated $2.2 billion of revenue for Apple.

That’s more than Apple’s iPod business generated last quarter — $1.5 billion. (Though the cheaper iPod obviously had larger unit sales.) And it’s almost half as big as Apple’s 26-year-old Mac business, which put in its best quarter ever at $4.4 billion.

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Amazon on Monday said sales of e-books have surpassed hardcover sales. In fact, e-books took the lead three month ago, since which time Amazon says it’s sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books. What’s more, leaving their physical counterparts in the proverbial dust, e-books have outsold hardcovers at a rate of 180-to-100 over the last four weeks. The news marked “a day for the history books — if those will even exist in the future,” quipped The New York Times. The shift is “astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months,” Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos said in a statement. Read more at www.mediapost.com

CHART OF THE DAY: The Tale Of Two Smartphone Companies

On Jan. 9, 2007 — the day Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at Macworld — Nokia was the biggest cellphone company in the world. It still is today, but a lot has changed since then.

While Nokia still sells more mobile phones than any of its competitors, it has lost most of its mindshare — specifically in smartphones, where the likes of Apple, Google, HTC, and others have taken off. That’s why it’s looking for a new CEO.

What’s more, Apple — despite its tiny unit-shipments market share — has completely sucked the profits out of the mobile industry, completely humiliating the old guard companies like Nokia.

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Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Videos Viewed May 2010 (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations) Property Videos (000) Share of Videos (%) Total Internet Audience 33,950,891 100.0 % Google Sites 14,628,095 43.1 Hulu 1,174,844 3.5 Microsoft Sites 642,027 1.9 Vevo 430,257 1.3 Viacom Digital 346,755 1.0 Yahoo! Sites 336,314 1.0 CBS Interactive 333,189 1.0 Turner Network 331,897 1.0 Fox Interactive Media 328,492 1.0 Facebook.com 245,120 0.7 Source: comScore Video Metrix Google Sites attracted 144.6 million unique viewers during the month, followed by Yahoo! Sites and Vevo. Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers May 2010 (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations) Property Unique Viewers (000) Average Videos per Viewer Total Internet Audience 182,918 185.6 Google Sites 144,550 101.2 Yahoo! Sites 46,031 7.3 Vevo 45,579 9.4 Facebook.com 45,492 5.4 Fox Interactive Media 44,266 7.4 Hulu 43,541 27.0 CBS Interactive 41,028 8.1 Microsoft Sites 39,416 16.3 Turner Network 35,307 9.4 Viacom Digital 34,572 10.0 Source: comScore Video Metrix Read more at www.mediapost.com

Mobile Ticketing Drives M-Commerce

Mobile Ticketing to More than Double “Mobile Commerce Strategies” indicates that rapidly increasing usage of mobile devices for tickets for all kinds of travel and entertainment, as well as sporting events, will be one of the main factors driving the growth of mobile commerce. Mobile ticketing transactions are forecast to exceed $100 billion (based on gross transaction value) as soon as 2012. This is more than double the market in 2010.

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