Email wins best marketing medium title

Search Engine Journal - Datran Media (an online marketing firm specializing in email marketing) recently published the results of a survey which consists of 2,000 online marketers in December 2007 on the best performing medium for their online marketing efforts.

eMail marketing came ahead of search and display. There are some very interesting statistics in this survey that many will find helpful.

  • 82% of the marketers surveyed indicated that they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2008, and 55% of the respondents said they expect ROI from email to be higher than any other channel.
  • Email ROI will hit $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008, more than twice the ROI of other mediums including search and display, said Datran Media, citing data from the Direct Marketing Association.
  • Some 67% of respondents stated that email has helped boost sales through other channels. In these scenarios, email is a tool for sales as well as a media channel.
  • Search is the favored channel for complementing the email channel.

Marketers from 90 companies including OgilvyOne Worldwide, Avenue A/Razorfish and Stamps.com offered valuable insight into major brands’ overall positive outlook for the email channel. Across these companies and others, 67 percent of respondents stated that email has helped boost sales through other channels. In these scenarios, email is leveraged as a tool for sales as well as a media channel.

Although eMail may seem and look to be the greatest thing through this survey, keep in mind email can be very tricky.

Just like there are many SEOs that promise you the world and don’t deliver, search marketing companies that provide no results through PPC marketing, eMail can provide with you horrible ROI’s if you don’t do the right research and carefully choose who you use to do your email marketing.

More Americans use web as source of political info

ClickZ - The percentage of Americans who regularly go online for news about the presidential campaign has increased from 13% in 2004 to 24% for the 2008 elections. "Internet's Broader Role in Campaign 2008" released by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and Pew Internet & American Life Project looks at the increased usage of social networking sites and online videos for topical election news.

42% of young adults ages 18 to 29 use the Web as a primary source, up from 20% in 2004. As a whole, nearly one in four American adults regularly learn about campaign information from the Internet, up from 9% during the 2000 presidential campaign.

People get campaign news from many sources. MSNBC leads the pack; 26% of the respondents say they go there. MSNBC is followed by CNN (23%) and Yahoo News (22%). The survey identifies sources it categorizes as long-tail sites such as the Drudge Report (3%); MySpace (3%); and YouTube (2%).

Younger audiences cast a wider net to find relevant news. When asked which Web sites they head to for campaign news, 41% of 18 to 49 year olds listed more than one Web site, compared to 24% of people 30 and over. Younger audiences look at more than long-tail news sites; 61% of 18 to 29 year olds get campaign news from at least one of the three top sites (MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo News) versus 46% over 30 years of age.

The data are part of a quadrennial survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project on campaign news and political communication. The survey was conducted in December 2007 among 1,430 adults.

China has 210m internet users!

SEJ - China has now 210 million users according to a press release from the China Internet Network Information Centre (The CNNIC is a government agency).

That’s a lot, considering that half a year ago there were only 165 million users and a year ago 137 million. In one year the number of users has gone up with 73 million users.

Full story here.

Top 30 newspaper sites Dec 2007

Editor and Publisher - Monthly Top 30 Most Popular Newspaper Sites

NEW YORK Newsday's online traffic edged past The Wall Street Journal Online in the month of December, according to the latest data from Nielsen Online (owned by E&P's parent company). Newsday had 6.4 million unique users in December compared to the Wall Street Journal, which had 5.4 million uniques.

Newsday managed to almost triple its traffic compared to December 2006 data.

The New York Times once again tops the chart of the top 30 newspaper Web sites with 17.1 million unique users, a 29.9% year-over-year gain.

The number of people visiting the Orlando Sentinel surged 78.6% to 1.5 million uniques in December 2007 compared to December 2006.

Politico.com continued to do well, in the 21st slot.

The number of unique users slipped in San Francisco. SFGate.com and the San Francisco Chronicle fell 30.9% year-over-year for that month. Visitors to AZCentral (part of the online arm of the Arizona Republic) dropped off 36.6%.

Below is the list for the top 30 newspaper Web sites for December. As always, this is custom-made by Nielsen. Look for the average time spent data at these papers in the coming days.


Brand or Channel -- Unique Audience (000) -- Year-over-year % Change


NYTimes.com -- 17,177 -- 29.9%
USATODAY.com -- 9,939 -- 9.1%
washingtonpost.com -- 8,478 -- 11.2%
Newsday -- 6,450 -- 182.8%
Wall Street Journal Online -- 5,409 -- 109.0%

LA Times -- 4,607 -- (-6.4%)
Boston.com -- 4,364 -- 15.0%
Chicago Tribune -- 3,891 -- 14.0%
Daily News Online Edition -- 2,956 -- 23.2%
New York Post -- 2,851 -- (-5.7%)

SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 2,785 -- (-30.9%)
Philly.com -- 2,300 -- 33.4%
International Herald Tribune -- 2,250 -- 14.9%
Village Voice Media -- 2,224 -- 70.6%
Chicago Sun-Times -- 2,186 -- 8.3%

Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 1,974 -- 26.2%
The Houston Chronicle -- 1,946 -- (-18.6%)
The Seattle Times -- 1,840 -- (-19.3%)
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 1,828 -- 21.9%
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 1,785 -- (-0.1%)

The Politico -- 1,672 -- N/A
Orlando Sentinel -- 1,522 -- 78.6%
NJ.com -- 1,455 -- 40.1%
Azcentral.com -- 1,435 -- (-36.6%)
Baltimore Sun -- 1,332 -- 26.2%

MercuryNews.com -- 1,315 -- (-15.1%)
The Detroit News -- 1,256 -- 21.4%
The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 1,180 -- 10.4%
Detroit Free Press -- 1,168 -- (-22.9%)
The Washington Times -- 1,161 -- (-24.9%)

AFP reporters barred from using Wikipedia and Facebook as sources

journalism.co.uk - Agence France Presse (AFP) has banned its journalists from using Facebook and Wikipedia as sources, the agency's London bureau chief told a Lord's Committee yesterday.

In response to a question from the Lord's Committee on Media Ownership and the News about the trustworthiness of online sources, Pierre Lesourd said that internal rules that governed the entire organisation prevented journalists from relying on many new 'virtual' sources for news.

"We have internal rules that are regularly updated [on this matter]. Wikipedia for example, we have a written rule inside the company that forbids any journalist using Wikipedia," he said.

"We have the same thing, updated last week, for Facebook because of the incident with Bilawal Bhutto in Oxford.

"Some newspapers picked up pictures on Facebook about Mr Bhutto, which turned out to be fake.

"We are trying to be vigilant about it but, obviously, everyday a new virtual source appears. We have to be very careful."

Speaking to Journalim.co.uk today, Mr Lesourd clarified the policy, stating that reporters working for the international agency could not pick up information from these sites for news without referring to other, more reliable sources for factual clarification.

Internet 'significant in 14 or 15 years time' until then the paper makes the money

journalism.co.uk - The editor of The Sun newspaper told a Lords' Committee the internet edition can't yet replicate the economic operations of the newspaper.

Giving evidence to the Lord's Committee on Media Ownership and the News, Rebekah Wade said that The Sun's revenue from the internet would only become significant in '14 to 15 years time'.

Staggering growth of online operations did not mean that much, she added, as growth was from a base of nil and revenue from the newspaper's daily print sales of nearly three million remained most important economically.

However, she added, that may change in the coming years as internet operations developed.

"We have a set of projections [for internet development] and sets of targets that we want to achieve, and so far we are achieving them.

"Long-term I can't be detailed and say this percentage will come from the internet but it will become significant in 14 to 15 years time. Right now the newspaper makes the money."

Asked by the Committee about an aging print readership Wade said that the aim of the paper was to bring younger readers to The Sun brand through its digital operations.

"Out of the 300,000 daily unique users [on Sun Online] 70% will be under 35. It's very different from the newspaper, online we are bringing young readers to the Sun world. This is our strategy," she said.

2008 new media trend

New Communications Review - Entertainment of the Future is Circular
"Circular Entertainment," identified by Nokia as a result of a global study into the future of entertainment, predicts that up to a quarter of the entertainment consumed by people by 2012 will have been created, edited and shared within their peer circle rather than coming out of traditional media groups. The study, "A Glimpse of the Next Episode" by The Future Laboratory, combines views from industry leading figures with Nokia's research from a sample of 900 million consumers around the world to construct a global picture of what it believes entertainment will look like over the next five years. Read the full article here.

Want A More Successful Business? Meet Social Needs
New research from Communispace, supporting the hypothesis that people are looking to fulfill six essential social needs online, and drawing on the Maslow hierarchy of human needs, concludes that businesses that help facilitate those needs are more likely to create deeper emotional bonds than usually exist between companies and customers. In the report by Julie Schlack, Michael Jennings and Manila Austin "Meeting Business Needs by Meeting Social Needs...", the Communispace researchers, building on the work of social scientists, have identified the specific social needs that are met through participating in social networks. The study addresses "Six Social Needs" and relates them to Online social networks, suggesting that business can take advantage of these observations in creating more affinity with their prospects and customers. Read more about the study here.

Get Back to The Basics for 2008, Marketers Say
According to the first annual survey of Top Marketing Trends for 2008 of 1700 MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) members, conducted by Anderson Analytics, key areas for 2008 are found to be:
(1) Marketing basics (60% "Very Important") which include specific concepts such as customer satisfaction, customer retention, segmentation, brand loyalty and ROI were of greatest interest. (2) Search Engine Optimization (42%) had relatively wide appeal, and cut across marketers in all fields. (3) "Green Marketing" (32%) was another important emerging concept and it was identified as the trendiest marketing buzzword. Read more about it here.

Almost 50% of Internet Users Google Themselves
Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint; 47% have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago. However, few monitor their online presence with great regularity. Just 3% of self-searchers report that they make a regular habit of it and 74% have checked up on their digital footprints only once or twice. Access the full report here.

Yahoo to Dominate 2008 $8.6B Graphical Ad Market
Get ready to pay more for both premium and remnant display ad inventory. JP Morgan is forecasting the U.S. graphical ad market to hit nearly $8.6 billion this year--a 20% increase from 2007, with much of that cash flow being driven by costlier CPMs. Analysts on JP Morgan's U.S. Equity Research Internet team gave their bullish predictions for the display market during a recent 2008 Global Internet Outlook conference call, Analyst Imran Khan named Yahoo as one of the "greatest beneficiaries of improved graphical advertising trends." MSN, AOL and CNET were included as winners in the buoyant display market, but Khan went so far as to peg Yahoo as the leader in 2008--forecast to snag 10% of the $20 billion global graphical ad market. MSN is slated to snag roughly 7.2%, while AOL and CNET will own 5% and about 2% of the global display market, respectively. Read more about it here.

Online Advertising Spending up 48% for 2008
According to the Executive Summary of a newly released Borrell Associates study on the 2008 outlook for local Online advertising, a 48 percent increase in local online ad spending is anticipated in 2008, bringing it to $12.6 billion. Driving most of the growth, says the Summary, is the popularity of local search and online video advertising. Local search advertising will more than double next year, to $5 billion, while locally placed online video will triple, to almost $1.3 billion. A major component of local video advertising will be long-form pieces for home, automotive and health-related categories. Access the whole story here.

U.S. Advertising Spending up 4% in 2008
According to a new study from GroupM, advertising spending in the US measured media is expected to increase almost 4% in 2008 compared with 2007, when spending was up about 3%. Worldwide spending is expected to go up 7% in 2008, after an anticipated 6% increase in 2007. US advertising spending is expected increase 3.7%, to $168.6 billion, in 2008. Spending in 2007 is expected to come in at 2.8% higher than in 2006. Worldwide spending is expected to go up 6.8%, to some $479 billion. Read the full article here.

The End is Near for Netscape
Marking the end of an era, AOL has decided to retire the Netscape Web browser after nearly 14 years of operation. As a result, AOL has decided to throw its weight behind Mozilla's Firefox browser. "AOL's focus on transitioning to an ad-supported Web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be," AOL/Netscape development director Tom Drapeau said in a recent blog posting. AOL, which acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion in 1998, will maintain Netscape only as a general-use portal as of February 1. Read more about it here.

Is Your TV Ready for All-Digital Format in 2009?
According to the CTAM Pulse, a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers conducted last month by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, forty-eight percent of U.S. households are aware of the planned digital TV transition, compared to just 29 percent from a survey taken in July 2005. After February 17, 2009, the nation's broadcast television stations will begin broadcasting exclusively in digital. Any consumer receiving broadcast TV over the air on an analog TV set must take some action for that TV to continue receiving programs from the local TV stations. Read the full article here.

Media Use Differs Between Teens and Tweens
From Mediapost: The Nielsen Company recently announced some of the findings of an in-depth study, "Kids on the Go: Mobile Usage by U.S. Teens and Tweens," on the mobile media and cross media behavior of U.S. "tweens" (ages 8-12), finding that 5% of tweens access the Internet over their phone each month. While 41% of tween mobile Internet users say they do so while commuting or traveling (to school, for example), mobile content such as the Internet is also a social medium for this audience. 26% of tween mobile Internet users say they access the web while at a friend's house and 17% say they do so at social events. Nielsen reports that tweens spend less time surfing the Internet than their teen counterparts. In this report, 48% of U.S. tweens said they spend less than one hour per day online. When they are online, 70% of tweens use the Internet for gaming. Comparatively, 81% of U.S. teens say they spend one hour or more per day online, with e-mail being the most pervasive online activity for this age group. Read more about the study results here.

Google Leads Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites
According to AddThis.com, the top 10 social bookmarking sites for November were: Google (#1 at 17%), Favorites, Facebook, Live, Del.icio.us, Digg, MyWeb, Ask, Furi, and StumbleUpon (#10 at 3.6%). Find out more here.

TV Watchers Also View Video on Other Devices
According to the recent release of The ChoiceStream 2007 Survey of Viewer Trends in TV and Online Video, 55% of connected consumers who watch TV watch some type of video on devices other than their TV sets, including their computers, mobile phones and digital media players (e.g., iPod). Not surprisingly, video-watching on these alternative devices is more popular among younger consumers (66%) than older ones (36%). Get more information about the survey here.

Online Reviewers Bring Goodwill Toward Men (And Women)
Bazaarvoice recently released the findings of a study that surveyed over 1,300 online reviewers to discover what moved them to share their opinions. Overwhelmingly, the survey found, reviewers are motivated by goodwill and positive sentiment: 90% write reviews in order to help others make better buying decisions, 70% want to help companies improve the products they build and carry, 79% write reviews in order to reward a company, and 87% of the reviews are generally positive in tone. Read the full story here.

Young adults show significant interest in free ad-supported TV show downloads

Ipsos Reid release - Recent research conducted by Ipsos Insight among U.S. online adults hints that future growth in online video services may be predicated more on downloading models than on streaming models – and potentially more on free ad-based content than on paid content – particularly as younger consumers spend an increasing amount of their disposable time online.

As part of a wider survey of online adults on technology and media trends, consumers were asked to rate their overall preference for a variety of online video service models if they were going to use them to view their “favorite TV shows.” The service models tested included streaming-only and downloading-only versions of both fee-based video services and free, ad-subsidized versions. Two very interesting stories emerged. First, the results clearly illustrate the consumer appetite for free, ad-subsidized online video services, in this case specifically for television programming. In addition, the data also articulates a division in preference among younger and older consumers in general: younger consumers – those ages 18 to 34 – prefer downloading longer form television programming online, while consumers 35 and older have a greater affinity for streaming television programming content.


Please indicate your preference for the following types of online video services if you were going to use them to view your favorite TV shows. Letters indicate the value is significantly higher than the value in the corresponding column at the 95% confidence level.

While today there are very few options offering legitimate free downloads of original television programming on the Internet, the data here suggest there is significant latent demand for these types of services explains Adam Wright, Director with Ipsos Insight: “Directionally, it’s clear the younger generation of consumers have a stronger preference for downloadable options when it comes to accessing television programming on the internet. Many of these consumers have grown up downloading music online, and simply want similar flexibility in how they access television programming online. The challenge for many in the space will be to crack the code on how free downloadable television programming could co-exist with the other traditional video delivery models for delivering an advertising audience.”

Younger Consumers Flocking to Online Video Streams & Downloads

Whether downloads or streams, it is clear that online video services are quickly building an audience with Americans – particularly younger consumers. Today, online adults age 18-34 spend more time surfing the Internet (13.1 hours per week) than they do consuming any other entertainment media, including watching TV (12.3 hours per week). This is quite different from their older counterparts age 35-54 and 55+, who still consume more TV (watch 15.2 and 16.3 hours per week, respectively) than any other entertainment medium. In terms of online behaviors, roughly two-thirds of online adults age 18-34 have streamed a video off of the Internet in the past 30 days, and nearly three in four teenagers have done so in the past 30 days. Far fewer online adults are downloading videos off the Internet today – just over one in four (28%) have downloaded a video file online in the past 30 days, which represents only a modest gain compared to the close of 2006 (23%).

Yet despite the fact the video downloading market today remains relatively niche, the reality is that video streamers and video downloaders are typically the same people. Taking a closer look at the relationship between downloading and streaming reveals an overwhelming majority of online video consumers have accessed video content using both acquisition methods. For example, two in three adults age 18-24 have downloaded and streamed video content off of the Internet. The data here also underscore a similar trend that was noted earlier: the older the market segment, the greater the reliance on streaming vs. downloading as the primary way to access video content online. A number of factors are likely influencing these trends, including a far greater number of free, ad-subsidized video streaming options online in comparison to free video downloads. Other behavioral-driven factors are also likely contributing to this trend, as Wright explains: “Perhaps what’s most striking about the data here is how this illustrates older consumers’ preference for the broadcast model for watching video.”


Specifically, have you ever downloaded or streamed digital video files or both? Letters indicate the value is significantly higher than the value in the corresponding column at the 95% confidence level.

Given what we know – that younger consumers love online video, and are the most likely to prefer downloadable video content online – the question now is just when will video downloading begin to take off in the U.S, and what impact might this have on traditional video delivery models. Wright concludes, “Clearly younger consumers are growing an affinity and expectation for downloadable video content, but they are also spending an increasing amount of their disposable time surfing the Internet, so we may be witnessing the gradual shift in how the next generation will consume video content. As opposed to broadcast models, these consumers want to possess video content so they can view it when and where they want, whether in the living room or ‘on-the-go’ from a portable device. The digital medium is really about empowerment, and video sites that enable younger consumers to access the television content they want in the format they prefer will be in position to quickly build an audience with this highly sought after market.“

Methodology
Data for this study were collected through an Internet-based sampling and data collection methodology using the Ipsos U.S. Internet Panel, and accurately reflects the online population (18 years and older). A total of N=1,033 respondents completed the online questionnaire between October 19 and October 25, 2007. With a total sample size of n= 1,033 respondents, one can say with 95% certainty that the results are accurate to within +/- 3.05 percentage points.

Additional data was sourced from Ipsos Insight’s MOTION Summer Wave study, which was conducted via telephone interviews among a representative U.S. sample of consumers aged 12 years and older in July 2007. To learn more about MOTION, Ipsos quarterly syndicated tracking programming researching the U.S. online video market, please visit: http://www.ipsosinsight.com/knowledge/techcomm/products/motion.aspx