Several comScore studies have confirmed that online campaigns drive offline sales, according to Fulgoni. In the first study, comScore took four categories, 53 brands and 200 of the most trafficked sites. The company looked at people exposed to display advertising and what they did in the month following. Findings reveal that 18% searched on the brand advertised and 29% went to the advertisers’ sites. Consumers who were exposed to the display advertising spent 55% more time than the average visitors to these sites the next month. The rise in time spent is matched by a similar increase in page views — about 51%.

Then, comScore analyzed the impact that online campaigns have on retail sales by matching the name and the address of consumers to retail loyalty card databases. The supermarket Kroger, for example, has issued about 60 million loyalty cards, which provide a massive data set to understand the degree that online search and display campaigns drive retail sales. The findings suggest a lift that is five times stronger when people are exposed to search ads alone, compared with display. Search alone produces an 82% lift, compared with display at 16%, and 119% when search and display are combined. About 82% of online ad campaigns measured by comScore have generated an average lift of 22% in CPG brand sales in retail stores. Read more at www.mediapost.com

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According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries, recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising worldwide. 90% of consumers surveyed said that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trusted consumer opinions posted online.

Read more at www.mediapost.com

Forms of Advertising in Which Consumers Trust “Somewhat” or “Completely” (April, 2009)
Advertising	Percent of Respondents Trusting
Recommendations from people known	90%
Consumer opinions posted online	70%
Brand websites	70%
Editorial content (e.g. newspaper article)	69%
Brand sponsorships	64%
TV	62%
Newspaper	61%
Magazines	59%
Billboards / outdoor advertising	55%
Radio	55%
Emails signed up for	54%
Ads before movies	52%
Search engine results ads	41%
Online video ads	37%
Online banner ads	33%
Text ads on mobile phones	24%
Source: Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey, April 2009

With 77% of U.S. Internet users watching online video and 43% viewing weekly, the medium has hit critical mass, according to a new study by Frank N. Magid Associates. The research commissioned by video site Metacafe also found that more one-third (37%) of consumers who watch professionally produced video clips online — including TV clips, movie trailers, sports highlights and music videos — found them equally or more entertaining than watching full-length shows on their TV sets. Forty-one percent found them “somewhat” as entertaining. The findings were based on an online survey of 1,927 people between the ages of 12 and 64 conducted in April as part of the Magid Media futures practice. Not surprisingly, young males between the ages of 18 and 24 were found to the heaviest video consumers, with 70% of that age group watching weekly. Read more at www.mediapost.com

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Who knew that Dell had 600,000 Twitter followers?  In any event…the company has apparently tweeted its way to $3 million in sales over the past two years, including $1 million in the last 6 months. Read more at www.businessinsider.com

Looking at Twitter’s visitor growth charts every month is like watching a rocket go to the moon. ComScore released its U.S. numbers for April, 2009 today and it shows Twitter reaching 17 million unique visitors in the U.S. during the month, an 83 percent increase from March when Twitter had 9.3 million domestic visitors. While Twitter nearly doubled its audience in April, its monthly growth rate did temper down from the 131 percent growth in March.

See more at www.techcrunch.com

SAN FRANCISCO — The first reaction many people have to Twitter is befuddlement. Why would they want to read short messages about what someone ate for breakfast?

It’s a reasonable question. Twitter unleashes the diarist in its 14 million users, who visited its site 99 million times last month to read posts tapped out with cellphones and computers. Individually, many of those 140-character “tweets” seem inane. But taken collectively, the stream of messages can turn Twitter into a surprisingly useful tool for solving problems and providing insights into the digital mood. By tapping into the world’s collective brain, researchers of all kinds have found that if they make the effort to dig through the mundane comments, the live conversations offer an early glimpse into public sentiment — and even help them shape it. Companies like Starbucks, Whole Foods and Dell can see what their customers are thinking as they use a product, and the companies can adapt their marketing accordingly. Last week in Moldova, protesters used Twitter as a rallying tool while outsiders peered at their tweets to help them understand what was happening in that little-known country. And over the weekend, Amazon.com learned how important it was to respond to the Twitter audience. After one author noticed that Amazon had reclassified books with gay and lesbian themes as “adult” and removed them from the main search and sales rankings, a protest broke out on blogs and Twitter. The company felt compelled to respond despite the Easter holiday, initially saying the problem was due to a “glitch in our system” but later blaming a “ham-fisted cataloging error” that affected more than 57,000 books dealing with health and sex. Soon, machines could twitter as much as people. Corey Menscher, a graduate student at New York University, developed the Kickbee, an elastic band with vibration sensors that his pregnant wife wore to alert Twitter each time the baby kicked: “I kicked Mommy at 08:52 PM on Fri, Jan 2!” Mr. Menscher is now considering selling the product. Read more at www.nytimes.com

If a blogger received a free sample of skin lotion and then incorrectly claimed the product cured eczema, the FTC could sue the company for making false or unsubstantiated statements. The blogger could be sued for making false representations.

Spending on social media marketing reached $1.35bn in 2007 and is expected to reach $3.7bn by 2011, according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. Read more at www.ft.com

Who Says Everything Has to Be Monetized?

Marketers Use ‘Communication Machine’ Twitter to Engage Consumers With Their Human Side

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — There’s no end to the number of angles the Twitter story offers: the massive ecosystem of third-party apps the microblogging site has spawned, the ability to create breaking-news reporters out of ordinary citizens and, perhaps biggest of all, the still-absent revenue model.

JetBlue, for example, views Twitter as a virtual “information booth,” said Morgan Johnston, manager of corporate communications. “The ability to engage directly with our customer humanizes the brand, creating a deeper level of engagement with our customers that fosters loyalty.” JetBlue has 203,935 followers.

Comcast uses it as a quasi helpline, listening for Twitter users who have an issue with the company and then reaching out to see how it can help. In doing so, its Twitter evangelist, Frank Eliason, has started to markedly shift the poor customer-service perceptions that the company has battled for years.

Slam dunk The National Basketball Association provides its 140,000 followers, amassed in just two months, with up-to-the-minute news and updates.

The concept is simple: Users sign up for an account, collect followers and build out their own network of Twitterers worth following. When a person “tweets” a message, all of his followers instantly receive it on their phones or computers. Those followers can choose to forward — or “retweet” — the message, and so on, and so on.

Multi-purpose tool For Southwest Airlines, which launched its Twitter profile in July of 2007, the tool has become, in the words of the airline’s lead Twitterer, Christi Day, a multipurpose communication machine. She uses it for media relations, customer service, relationship building and to promote specials and deals. “It has evolved into what our followers want, a place to get news and promotions,” said Ms. Day, whose official title is emerging media specialist. “And it helps us keep tabs on what our customers want and are saying, in real time.” Read more at adage.com

Read more at adage.com

Facebook Page Statistics — Top Pages
	Name	# of Fans	Daily Growth Rate	Weekly Growth Rate
1	Barack Obama	5,881,499	0.10%	1.45%
2	Coca-Cola	3,287,101	0.19%	2.93%
3	Nutells	3,052,502	0.18%	2.98%
4	Pizza	3,005,922	0.20%	3.52%
5	Cristiano Ronaldo	2,730,570	0.23%	3.93%
6	kinder surprise	2,581,651	0.18%	3.13%
7	Facebook	2,492,881	0.27%	4.22%
8	Windows Live Messenger	2,469,402	0.13%	2.75%
9	Sid	2,409,639	0.17%	3.25%
10	Boo	2,343,221	0.20%	3.95%
Source:

According to a new report from Netpop Research,  ”Media Shifts to Social,” the percent of time people spend communicating online has increased 18% since 2006, while time spent on entertainment has declined 29%. The Executive Summary says that Online entertainment is shifting to a small, powerful proportion of social media contributors fueling Web activity through blogs micro-blogs, social media, video and photo sharing.  Key Findings from the study include data such as: 105 million Americans contribute to social media Social networking has grown 93% since 2006 7 million Americans are “heavy” social media contributors (6+ activities) who connect with 248 people on a ‘one to many' basis in a typical week 54% of micro-bloggers post or “tweet” daily 72% of micro-bloggers under age 18 post or “tweet” daily The report concludes that market trends and customer opinion are being shaped by end users more rapidly and with greater impact on business than ever before as an entirely new form of leisure develops around talking and sharing, providing opinions and perspectives… and suggests that Websites need to connect directly with users or the users will create their own venues that are harder for companies to track and participate with effectively Read more at www.mediapost.com

Skittles' Web site redesign via Twitter put the colorful coated candy in the spotlight, but the company pulled the campaign on Tuesday after pranksters started tweeting profanities that ended up on the company's home page.

By Tuesday the conversation soured on Twitter. The buzz quickly degenerated to pranksters writing negative and unrelated comments to fill Skittle's home page. By trusting consumers with content, Skittles opened up the brand to a wrath of backlash by losing control of the conversation.

Brand Keys President Robert Passikoff said the fiasco demonstrates the power of consumers. “If we had any doubt that the consumer is in control, this is the perfect case study that proves it,” he said. “It's also additional proof that brands need a resonating authenticity among the community they want to serve.”

Passikoff said the campaign also brought to light consumer sentiment about the brand based on freedom of speech on the Internet. “The good news is there is freedom of speech, and the bad news is there is freedom of speech,” he said. Read more at www.mediapost.com

“Video snacking” describes how millions of people are creating viewing habits around quick & consistent consumption of video. I see evidence of this trend everyday in my work with Grab Networks, based on our server data. And, last month comScore published highlights of its video reporting for November 2008 that support this trend: 146 million people, or 77% of the U.S. Internet audience, viewed online video. Those viewers watched 34% more online videos than they did last year. The average online viewer watched 273 minutes of video, up over 40% vs. the previous year. The average duration of online video is fairly short, at 3.1 minutes per video. And, the audience viewed 87 videos per month on average, 18 more videos per month than last year. The last two points highlight the trend of video snacking: “more people, watching more videos, more often.” Read more at www.mediapost.com

More than one in ten (11%) online adults in the US say they have used Twitter - or a similar service – to share updates about themselves or view updates about others, and those who use Twitter have a greater affinity for mobile devices, according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The most recent Pew study on the topic found that the number of tweeters, which was gauged in December 2008, appears to be growing quickly. In contrast to December’s 11%, only 9% said they had used Twitter in November 2008, and 6% of internet users responded yes to a similar question in May 2008.

Younger Users Tweet More

The research also found that, not surprisingly, younger internet users lead the way in using Twitter and similar services. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18-24 have used Twitter and similar services, as have 20% of online adults age 25-34.

Use of these services drops off steadily after age 35 with 10% of 35 to 44 year olds and 5% of 45 to 54 year olds using Twitter, Pew said. The decline is even more stark among older internet users; 4% of 55-64 year olds and 2% of those 65 and older use Twitter.

Given the youth of most Twitter users, it is not surprising to find that online Americans who live in lower-income households are more likely to use Twitter than more affluent Americans, said Pew.  Some 17% of internet users in households earning less than $30K annually tweet and update their status, compared with 10% of those earning more than $75K. Read more at www.marketingcharts.com