The proportion of online retailers with mobile-tailored sites has tripled in the last year but still remains small, according to a new study. In its second annual mobile commerce audit, digital strategy firm Acquity Group found that 12% of the top 500 Internet retailers had sites optimized for mobile phones, up from 4% a year ago. And despite all the buzz around mobile apps, the share of companies with downloadable mobile apps is only 7%, up from 2% last year. Only 5% had both a mobilized site and an app and only 2% had an e-commerce-enabled app. In terms of specific devices, 11% had apps for the iPhone — up from 1% last year — but few had ones geared to other smartphone platforms such as Android, Palm or the BlackBerry. Only 12% of retailers had mobile sites that allowed customers to complete a transaction through checkout on at least one type of smartphone, and only 2% offered apps with check-out capability. Read more at www.mediapost.com

By far, the biggest barrier to an effective measurement strategy is a lack of budget and resources, named by over one-half of responding companies. Fewer than one-third selected any other issue. Budget problems were more severe than in 2009, when 45% of respondents complained of them.

Agencies disagreed somewhat with their clients, claiming a lack of understanding was the top issue, but admitting companies were improving in this area over 2009.

See more at www.emarketer.com

See more at www.emarketer.com

In the comScore panel, we are able to see cookies passing between Web sites and panelists’ computers; and we are able to see and identify the different persons using those computers at those points in time. We recently conducted a study across some major online ad sales entities to determine how often the identifying cookie is associated with the behavior of a single user. Across 17 major entities — publishers, ad networks, and third-party services — we found an average of 44% of cookies were associated with a single user. Among the 56% of cookies that point to multiple users, if we assume that the wrong user is identified 50% of the time (which strikes as a conservative assumption), then on average, 28% of the time (half of 56%) the cookie involved in direct audience guarantees is pointing to the wrong person. Read more at www.mediapost.com

Online marketers had better not be negligent. Good creative makes a successful campaign, but data from Dynamic Logic suggests that the worst-performing campaigns can actually negatively affect brand metrics.

Top-performing campaigns, by contrast, boosted online ad awareness, message association and aided brand awareness by more than 8 percentage points each. Read more at www.emarketer.com

The 2009 Omniture Online Conversion Benchmark Survey, conducted in July, reveals that most marketers miss opportunities to increase conversions. About 80% of the 1,000 online or interactive marketers responding to the survey do not serve up personalized content to Web visitors, not do they promote Web site content based on performance metrics.

Forty-two percent of marketers participating in the survey spend less than five hours per week optimizing advertising media. Less than one-third frequently test online content. And 70% of the content decisions that appear on Web sites are made by one person, unsupported by data.

See more at www.mediapost.com

Dominos discovered the power of viral marketing this week when two employees filmed a “prank” video of themselves stuffing cheese up their noses and then putting it into sandwiches. The video went nuts on YouTube, and Twitter lit up with disgusted customer complaints. Dominos has since apologized and put its own CEO on YouTube, and the employees have been fired, sued, and charged with the crime of “delivering prohibited food.”  But consumer perception of Dominos quality has already gone from positive to negative on YouGov, and a spokesman says folks who have been customers for decades are now “second-guessing” this relationship.

Consumerist has the videos here > Read more at www.businessinsider.com

If a battle were fought across Internet search engines to crown the business segment most SEO-savvy, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers would crawl home battered and bloody. That's according to a three-year research study by marketing firm Internet-Engine. The Retail Search Presence Study compiles search results from Google, Yahoo and MSN Live during the holiday season. The results reveal that brick-and-mortar retailers are returned in search engine query results far less then manufacturers, media and hobby companies, comparison shopping sites and online retailers.

For the most part, Disch said, brick-and-mortar retailers know how to place PPC ads, but haven't really started to use SEO tools.

Analyzing 6,000 Web pages reveals that pure-play online retailers represent more than 30% of the listings, while brick-and-mortar retailers consistently had the weakest presence of any group studied. Putting it in perspective, consumers searching on the Internet will find three listings from online retailers for every one listing from a traditional retailer. In fact, online retailers claimed 38% of the listings in 2006, 30% in 2007 and 35% in 2008. Compare this with shopping comparison sites at 25% in 2006, 26% in 2007, and 19% in 2008. Brick-and-mortar retailers lagged at 8% in 2006, 12% in 2007 and 2008.

See more at www.mediapost.com

The importance of online product reviews to retailers, manufacturers and consumers cannot be underestimated. They’ve become a prominent fixture on ecommerce websites and are used extensively by consumers to make purchasing decisions. The key to their value: authenticity. Any manipulation of these reviews threatens the credibility of the reviews, and in the case of retailers and manufacturers, potentially the perception of their brands.

Belkin, which manufactures computer accessories and electronics equipment, has learned this the hard way. It has come under fire after it was discovered that one of its employees attempted to use Amazon’s crowdsourcing service, Mechanical Turk, to generate positive online reviews for its routers.

Bayard’s posting requested that Mechanical Turk users:

Always give a 100% rating (as high as possible)

Write as if you own the product and are using it

Thank the website for making you such a great deal

Mark any other negative reviews as ‘not helpful’ once you post yours

In return for each online review, the fake reviewers would be paid 65 cents.Read more at econsultancy.com

AT&T has offended some customers by sending a text promo for American Idol. The text message went to a “significant number” of its 75 million customers, reminding them of the premiere of American Idol on Fox Tuesday night.

Twitter was abuzz with negative comments about the campaign, writes The New York Times. A spokesman for AT&T Wireless said the message was meant to be nothing more than a friendly reminder.

A record-breaking 78 million text messages were sent on AT&T’s network during last year’s American Idol season, according to the Washington Post.

In a letter to the editor, Associate Professor and AT&T customer Tom Fauls of Boston University wrote, “Unsolicited text messages broadcast in this way are ILLEGAL under the CAN-SPAM law. The only technicality AT&T can cite is that they have — by definition — a prior business relationship with their subscribers. Read more at www.mediabuyerplanner.com

Burger King’s Whopper of a Virginal Search Slip-up

Looking for its Latest Viral on Google? Good Luck

Burger King’s been around the block with cross-channel campaigns centered around online marketing. Heck, Subservient Chicken practically became synonymous with viral marketing, while Whopper Freakout was so good it made me visit the Burger King across the street from my apartment for the first time since I moved there. Whopper Virgins, its latest endeavor, may be the best yet… if you can find it.

The Whopper Virgins experience begins with a TV commercial with a brief teaser that directs you to WhopperVirgins.com. The spot was compelling enough that I noticed the spot while watching the time-shifted “My Own Worst Enemy” through my DVR; it’s running heavily during weekend football games. Go to the site and you’re treated to a video of Burger King running a Whopper vs. Big Mac taste test with people in Romania, Thailand and Greenland who have never eaten a hamburger before. It’s poignant and amusing, if you can tolerate the implicit ethnocentrism.

There are three areas of neglect here:

The domain: WhopperVirgin.com is a parked domain filled with ads for Burger King store listings, Virgin Mobile gifts, Virgin Atlantic flights, Virgin Islands vacations and Virgin Mary checks.

Search engine optimization: The microsite doesn’t appear on the first three pages of Google results for “whopper virgin” searches.

Paid search: While reviewing Google’s listings over several days, there hasn’t been a search ad running on “whopper virgin” queries. Read more at adage.com

eMail Not A Favored Marketing Channel for Students

A recent Student Survey by eROI to determine how high school and college students, as well as recent college graduates communicate digitally, reports that the mean number of email addresses per student surveyed is 2.4. Most college students have had an email address for about 8 years, with the average student getting an initial email address at the age of 13.  When students choose a primary email service, Gmail is the clear favorite. 32% of college students use Gmail as their primary email address 19% select yahoo 18% pick MSN/Hotmail 17% use their school email address as their primary address 14% use another address as their primary Read more at www.mediapost.com

Hi. I’m a PC ? and I Was Made on a Mac [UPDATED]

A PC is not a stereotype. And neither are you. If you’re a PC, you belong to a community of more than a billion individuals, working, playing, and connecting. Doing their own thing. If you’re a PC, we want to celebrate you. So stand up.”

It was made on a Mac. Metadata in the images of the stereotyped PC user featured on Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” site reveal that they were produced using Macs running Adobe Creative Suite 3, not PCs running Microsoft Expression Studio software.

UPDATE: Microsoft issued the following statement on the matter:

As is common in almost all campaign workflow, agencies and production houses use a wide variety of software and hardware to create, edit and distribute content, including both Macs and PCs.”

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Oops: WSJ.com Ad Calls McCain Win Before Debate

By Jason Lee Miller - Fri, 09/26/2008 - 3:25pm.

This morning, before Senator John McCain even agreed to attend tonight’s debate, a Web ad paid for by the McCain campaign appeared alongside a Wall Street Journal article boldly declaring him the winner. The foreign policy debate with Barack Obama isn’t scheduled until 9 p.m. tonight.

Credit for the screenshot goes to a reader of Chris Cillizza’s now aptly titled “The Fix” blog at WashingtonPost.com. The ad read, “McCain Wins Debate!” unfortunately recalling the Chicago Tribune’s 1948 error declaring Republican Thomas E. Dewey victorious over Harry Truman.

Another ad, according to the same report but lacking a screenshot, quoted campaign manager Rick Davis relaying that “McCain won the debate—hands down.” The Journal would not confirm this second ad appeared.

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