Search is going social: Eye tracking study

A fresh report from Forrester Research indicates that the number of people who visit a network at least once a month has about doubled in the last two years. Adam Ostrow writes, “Specifically, 55.6 million adults – or just less than 1/3rd of the population – in the US now visit social networks at least monthly . . . .  That’s up from just 15 percent of adults in 2007, and around 18 percent last year.”  Which is a rather extreme rate of growth, especially considering the huge numbers involved.

So as social media usage is increasing, people using social media as a search tool has also increased. According to comScore,U.S. Search Engine Rankings, May 2009 – Search queries are up on Facebook, showing a 5% increase in May 2009; Google search queries are down 2%. As search options advance on the social networks, there may be a different search-behavior than reflected by people on traditional search sites.

Oneupweb, a search engine  and digital marketing agency used Eye Tracking technologies to investigate how users interact with sponsored ads while conducting search tasks on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Click Here the full report. This is a good read! Breaks few myths here & there, but personally would have been great to see this study based on more participants. (this study is based on 25 participants)

Internet is good!

Till two weeks back I’ve been arguing with myself about internet. A part of me felt, internet is awesome & other part felt, it is so intrusive & messed up my real life. I spend more than half of my day on internet. Become more responsive to emails or tweets than anything else. Newspapers sounds like a concept of 60′s and have more online friends than I have in real life. That’s my typical relationship with internet. My girl friends hates it, coz I am still browsing internet while talking to her. It’s so bad that iPhone or internet on my mobile will break the relationship. That sucks, but that’s reality

This Spring-Break I had to visit a my friends in Cleveland, Ohio. To most of my friends, it was a unusual Spring-Break destination. To me it was fun to be with my old friends! But this lasted only till I reached there. I realized that my friends had moved in to a new apartment has no access to internet and it was a place where ATT had very poor reception. So, to my surprise… I was disconnected to most of the world – couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I had no choice, but to read newspaper – watch boring television (I did not have the leisure to select the show I wanted to watch, at my convenience – as we can do it internet). I was again reading all the newspapers lying in front of me. Days suddenly became longer & started to realize how peaceful my mind has become without the information overload I was pushing into my brain. It was great talking to my friends and their families, suddenly felt I was enjoying this back in time. It was awesome! being disconnected to internet filled my heart with joy and felt  rejuvenated to some extent. It is this spring break I realized, life is beautiful – in real world too!

But, don’t get me wrong. I love internet and have understood the role it plays in my life. During the break, more than the internet… I missed being disconnected to awesome amount of information and new things I was learning. It is this internet that helps me learn about things that I would have never been exposed to. Following are 25 reasons why I still love internet

1. Quick & easy saves me time to process information

2. Postal service is way too slow for today, hence email works!

3. Twitter or live feed is even better.

4. To talk is boring, interacting is so much fun

5. Encyclopedia will be too heavy for me to carry around wit me, I am happy to have Google / Wikipedia … and innumerable other resources

6. In the business of marketing communications, focus group is a very important tool to generate insights – to me internet opens the door for 24hour long continuous focus group

7. Just a “hey, what’s up?” on a friend’s profile is good enough to be in touch

8. No one can beat the on-line discounts & promotions

9. Twitter brings me closer to so many wonderful people & information to empower my knowledge! I love Twitter, you should give it a try.

10. I can see & talk to my parents & loved ones through internet, anytime and how much ever I want to. By the way, at no extra cost!

11. Internet entertains me through on-line TV shows, movies, songs, social networking & almost real-time news

12. I am not a writer nor a journalist. Internet makes me want to express, hence this blog. Still not a writer, but at least a blogger

13. Internet is eco-friendly & so am I.

14. Internet has opened this wonderful digital world for me to explore, get inspired and enhance my point of view.

15. Internet gives me spreadability.

16. I have the power to make change, in quick & easy manner. (only thing is I have to be relevant and do it in a awesome manner that makes it contagious for people to talk about).

17. Internet was instrumental in making Barack Obama what he is today.

18. Thanks to internet I am still talking to most of my friends from my high school.

19. Internet has changed the world of advertising & brand management, now brands want to come closer to consumers! [probably this will be my next post ]

20. Wonderful internet has also been a huge job generator. I am happy to see millions of people making money only through internet.

21. This should have been the first point, but doesn’t matter… internet has erased boundaries. You have one real world divided into maximum pieces possible. And you have digital world, wherein people with similar interests are out to help  & share knowledge with each other.

22. Thanks again to internet, it has given rise to social media to a extent that it now has the power to make social change!

23. I keep coming back to advertising & marketing… I am sorry, but I love it! internet has made communicating with consumers so much fun! All those digital billboards, user-generated contents, interactive & engaging ads, digital platforms like Nike+ it has become so much fun! Sincerely feel, internet has spiced up the advertising!

24. Makes me feel like god, am connected to each and everything happening around the world, gives me opportunity to participate in anything and everything I choose to participate in, opened up a world with limitless opportunities.

25. The best thing about internet, it is so interconnected with the real life that most of the things you do affects your real life.

I have now learned to balance my real life with the digital… it took me a trip to friends house & be disconnected to internet compeletely. I am glad I realized this. I hope you too realize this in some way appropriate to you.

To life! (online & offline both)

Make your customer happy in 5 minutes!

Before:

A blogger posts negative comments about recent communication by Hallmark.

Next Day:

With a new post, his negative comments turn to positive. Infact he advocates the Brand

why?

He receives a personal response from the Public Affairs at Hallmark.

Great Job! Ms. Deidre Mize! I am sure it must have taken her less than 5 minutes to check the feed & reply to this dissatisfied consumer. Controlling consumer reaction on digital medium becomes very difficult. But, tools & technologies are in place to make things easier for brand manager & the PR personnel. Even free services like ‘Google Alert’ are a hand stretch away… only if one cares about customer satisfaction. According to me, a brand has to continously interact with their consumer at various touch points. Their reaction is the best Key Performance Indicator one can ask for.

Once again great job Ms. Mize & great job Hallmark! This post has been a great learning for me, especially because it tells me how a small amount of investment can make a customer happy. A small email made such a difference! These are small things that we can keep in mind, but we somehow tend to forget, ignore or jut don’t understand. Afterall,  a ‘life time value’ of a smiling customer will be way higher than and hence very essential for a brand manager to keep them happy. This lesson learned will remain with me for long.

“Things turn out best for the people who (brands that) make the best out of the way things turn out.”

- Art Linkletter

Microsoft Thumbtack is here! Google Notebook beware….?

I am an avid Google Notebook user, but Thumbtack looks impressive! (but will still stick to Google Notebook)

download Thumbtack

my first Thumbtack.

Top Product searches (on Google) this holiday season

Word of Mouth, Online Reviews – Most Influential in Purchase Decisions.

A new study by Rubicon Consulting states that word of mouth and online reviews are the most influential factors in consumer purchasing decisions. According to the study, the Internet is also an important medium of providing customer support. Following are few other survey findings in the periphery of consumer’s use and perceptions of different websites:

• The Web is the #2 resource for customer support information, after user manuals. It ranks ahead of calling the manufacturer or asking a dealer.
• Website categories that get the most daily usage are search, social communities like MySpace and Facebook, general news websites like CNN.com and NYTimes.com, and online banking.
• The websites that Americans value most are (in order), Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook.
• Although Yahoo’s financial challenges have generated a lot of press attention, it continues to have a very large and loyal following.
• Facebook appears to be ahead of MySpace in terms of number of users in the US, and perceived value of the site.
• Despite extensive publicity, the community sites SecondLife and Twitter reach only a few percent of US Internet users.
• Democrats are more active online than Republicans. Democrats are more likely to participate in online communities, and say they are more heavily influenced in their voting decisions by information they find online.
• Young people (age 22 and under) account for about half of all the content and comments posted online.

Learnings from the survey:

• Its important to go beyond website. include Search marketing, Social Media in your marketing budget
• Work towards developing an efficient online customer service platform.
• Do not downplay the importance of online communities
• Increase your focus to those few to write about your brand & build content for you. Connect with them, nurture these online communities. Because these online communities connect to most other internet users who get influenced by the reviews they read on internet.

@ anishvshah

Thanks to Google & MySpace: Display ads are back again!

On October 14th, analysts lowered their expectations from internet biggies like Google & Yahoo. They also predicted that Display ads will be hit harder. “While we expect solid September quarter results from companies such as Google, IAC Interactive, and even Yahoo, all eyes are on 2009,” Canaccord Adams analyst Collin Gillis said. “Display-advertising business models are under siege, as revenue visibility is increasingly unpredictable…Display remains the domain of brand advertisers–and with its softer metrics is more readily seen as a source of spend that can be reduced.”

Everything said & done, display ads are back again! thanks to MySpace & now Google!

On October 12th 2008, MySpace launched their self serve ad platform (still a beta), called My Ads. Like Facebook, it allows anyone to quickly create a targeted ad and serve it on MySpace. But one thing that sets MySpace My Ads is display ads (Facebook only allows text ads). Users can choose between a 728×90 or 300×250 ad unit and can create an ad with pre-built templates and a Flash tool, or upload their own.

Soon after MySpace, Google announced the launch of display ads. I kind of find this funny. Because Google was the one to kill display advertising. Through its Google AdWords, company blew the lid off of online advertising with its simple text-based ads and its cost-per-click model. Advertisers were able to quickly create a terse, compelling chunk of text. Users were clicking. Revenues were rolling. All was right with the world. But, that is past now. Today, Google is getting into the market with the do-it-yourself display ads.

Keeping the value proposition of the brand intact, Google has made the ad design interface absolutely simple. Few clicks here & there will make your display ads. Here’s a video to see how simple it is to open your own advertising shop to design display ads:

When Google launched the ‘text based ads’ it revolutionized the industry. Will is be the same from the ‘display ads’? Lets see. No one knows, With MySpace & Google’s power anything is possible.

@ anishvshah

Obama billboard in Xbox 360!!!

Presidential candidate; Senator Barack Obama’s campaign has made incredible use of virtual media.  Obama already has a group of followers on ‘Second Life’, He is connected to people through his website, all their campaign events have been streamed live on his site; they use Twitter to keep people informed about them. Recently the campaign launched an iPhone application ‘Obama 08’ – and they’re not done yet.

Barack Obama billboard on EA's "Burnout Paradise"

The Obama campaign is now advertising in a very popular video game for the Xbox 360. Obama campaign has bought ad space within video games including Electronic Arts’ “Burnout Paradise”. One in-game ad, seen on a virtual billboard in the racing game, informs gamers that “Early Voting Has Begun” for the election, and includes a link to an Obama website.

Electronic Arts confirmed to GameSpot (a very popular gaming site) that the ads have been appearing on virtual Obama billboards since October 6, and will continue to run until election day in November.

According to the Seattle Times, the ads were sold by Massive, a Microsoft-owned ad agency (Microsoft makes the X-box, for the non-gamers here). The ads are also highly targeted and are only visible to gamers in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The deal with Massive suggests that the ads are appearing in the following games: Burnout Paradise, Madden 09, Nascar 09, NBA Live 08, NFS Carbon, NFS Prostreet, NFL on Tour, NHL 09, Skate

In a report on GigaOM,  Holly Rockwood, director of corporate communications at Electronic Arts, told GigaOM. She adds, “Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates,” she continued. “Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”

In my earlier post I spoke about Google leveraging this medium & future of in-game advertising, but for a political campaign to be savvy enough to realize this opportunity exists and take advantage of it is really impressive. To my knowledge, this Burnout ad is far and away the most prominent use of a major online game to promote a presidential candidate’s campaign.

Now that Obama has entered this periphery! I really believe that we will see more in-game advertising  & effective use of virtual media in next presidential elections. However, the challenges in this periphery will be very game-specific:  advertising message will have to blend with the game & avoid falling into those obviously loud marketing tactics.  Last thing a gamer wants is, an intrusion of marketers in their me-my time with their hobby time. If the advertising message is communicated in a clever & non-intrusive manner, the message will be received positively.

Very funny: YouTube introduces ‘Audio Preview’

YouTube has added “audio preview” for the YouTube comments section. For now, audio previews are restricted to the first 150 characters of a comment. I like this tool, I never expected this from YouTube! But according to me YouTube is all about fun & ‘audio preview’ is funny! Even though audio preview is rather useless right now, but I surely feel that Google is working on something big text-to-speech territory. Let there be anything, I am sure it will help me make my life easier!

I learned that, few days ago Randall Munroes’s popular web comic XKCD recommended that Google should add an audio preview for all comments, so that commenter might realize how inane some of their comments really are. Now, Google has implemented exactly this feature: audio previews for YouTube comments. ( I am sure, this is just a coincidence as Google would have started working on audio preview long time ago)

Here’s the Web comic by Randall Munroes

Google Adsense for games: spreads its influence to ‘in-game advertising’

Last year Google strengthened its arsenal by acquiring Adscape Media last year & working along side developers & publishers such as Konami, Demand Media, Playfish, Zynga and Mochi Media. Google has done it yet again!

Few days back, Google announced ‘Google Adsense for Games’.  As per the details released by Google, the revenue generated by the ads will be split between Google and the game company hosting it. This announcement now enables Google to spread its immense advertising influence in to the gaming periphery.

As Google is spreading its reins towards online gaming, its arch rival Microsoft (through its wholly owned subsidiary Massive) will continue to be the exclusive in-game ad network for PC & Xbox 360 platforms of the world’s largest racing franchise.

A research conducted by Massive inc. estimated that in-game advertising will reach $1.8 billions by 2010. As per DecisionNote report in-game advertising is estimated to reach $732 million by 2010. As we can see there is a startling difference between these figures. But one thing is sure, In-game advertising is here to stay & grow!

As demand for video games continues to grow, Advertisers see in-game advertising as a prime way to target the male 18-34 demographic, who are increasingly neglecting television in favor of computer and video games. Several advertisers are making strategic use of this medium & investing resources into in-game advertising.

Richard Dance, Group Account Director at MindShare Interaction UK, said: “The growing channel of in-game advertising provides an exciting and creative medium in which to work. Although we are only scratching the surface with regards to the opportunities it provides, more and more of our clients are keen to include in-game advertising as a part of their multichannel strategy.”

Other developments:

• Last year Microsoft acquired Masive Inc. for $200 million.
• In June 2008, IGA signed a deal with EA,  to provide all their plugging for the Play station 3. (means the 13 million PS3 owners will now be bombarded with in-game advertising.)
• In March 2008, EA and Massive Inc. announced an expansion and two-year extension of their agreement to offer dynamic in-game advertising for EA video games.

Introduction to Search Engine Marketing

Your INFLUENCE is now trackable: Google applies for patent, Traackr already on beta

Google has a applied for a patent on technology for ranking the most influential people on social networking sites like MySpace & Facebook. This takes into account number of people you know, your friends of friends, frequency of interaction, number of referral,how strongly they value your opinion, and the list goes on & on.

To Summarize the technology:

More connected & active you are – more influential you become – more influential you become – more attractive you become to the advertisers

“Google search displays Web pages with the highest influence—it makes complete sense for them to extend this to online communities and people,” says Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester Research (FORR).

This technology sounds interesting, but I don’t think this is great enough! It is again a step towards exploiting consumer data for revenue generation & online domination. I as a marketer would absolutely adore this information because it will help me connect my brand message with relevant audience. But, as a common consumer I feel cheated… It’s like, I upload videos, photos, and other content every week, creating mountains of inventory that the sites can sell to advertisers—and the sites don’t have to pay a dime for any of it. it’s my profile, my content, my friends, my life & a marketer is making money out of it! not done right?

Traackr a start-up company from Boston acknowledges the the plight & has come up with a revolutionary concept that gives the generators of all this user-generated content a way to monitor how influential, and therefore how valuable, their content is becoming—and, someday, to make some money on it.

“We think there’s a market for influence, but it has not emerged yet because there is no currency for it; no one knows what it’s worth,” explains Traackr’s co-founder, Pierre-Loïc Assayag. “If you happen to be one of the power users on YouTube and Google is making tons of money on you through contextual advertising, or if you’re a book reviewer on Amazon and your review inspires 10,000 people to buy a particular book, you should be getting a cut. At Traackr, we are going to tell you that you are worth x amount compared to other users—and you can use that as a negotiating angle.”

This Boston-based company scans Web pages and aggregates data about how people interact with each other online. For instance, Traackr generates statistics about how many comments their YouTube videos generate, their number of social network connections and the number of views pictures on sites like Flickr receive. The data is then normalized and assigned a value relative to other Traackr users.

How do I start Guide?