Performics Performance Marketing Blog: SEM, SEO, Social & Display

Mobile Search Surges into 2012

Posted by James Beveridge, Senior Analyst

Due to relentless month-over-month increases in mobile paid search impression and click share, Performics is predicting that 2012 will be a huge year—even bigger than 2011—for mobile search.  Mobile search has already started with a bang in January.  By the summer, we project that Google mobile paid search impressions will be 20% of all mobile paid search impressions, and Google mobile paid search clicks will approach 28% of all mobile paid search clicks.  Below, we report on mobile impressions, clicks, click-through rates (CTRs) and cost per clicks (CPCs) through January 2012 for our aggregate client base.  While December 2011 was the biggest month ever for mobile paid search, January 2012 followed closely behind:

Impressions

Total mobile paid search impressions on Google (as a percentage of all impressions (computers + mobile)) peaked at 16.4% in December, the highest of all-time.  And mobile paid search impressions remained high in January, at 15.9% of all paid search impressions (computers + mobile).  Tablets have been a significant factor in the mobile search surge; they represented 38% of all mobile impressions in Nov/Dec 2011, and continued to rise in share to 40% of mobile impressions in January.

Based on recent trends, we believe mobile impression share could rise to 20% over the next 6 months.  The below graph forecasts mobile impression share through June 2012:

2012 CES Key Trends and Highlights

2012 CES Summary

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Google’s Privacy Policy Update: Paid Search, Display & SEO Implications

Topic: Google’s integration of user data across all Google properties
Opportunity: More relevant paid search and retargeting opportunities; more personal organic SERPs
Channels Impacted: Paid search, display, SEO, social, video

Last week, Google announced that—as of March 1, 2012—it will be updating its Privacy Policy to enable the combination of user data from one Google service with user data from other Google services.  Google currently has 70+ different privacy policies covering its various products.  With the March 1st update, Google will have a new main Privacy Policy that treats each signed-in Google user as a single user across all Google products, including Google Search, Android, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube.  Google notes that the update will allow it “to integrate our different products more closely so that we can create a beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google.” 

In order to sign in to Google, users must accept the new Privacy Policy.  However, users can opt out of the customized experience or adjust/delete information that Google has collected on them via the Ads Preferences Manager.  Additionally, since Google’s announcement, sites like Gizmodo have outlined alternative options in search, email, social, calendar, photo, docs, and video for privacy-concerned Google users.  The update has also generated a request by lawmakers for Google to explain why the changes are necessary and how user privacy will be protected.

Implications for Advertisers

The point of the new Privacy Policy is to allow Google to gain user permission to share valuable user-interest data across all Google properties.  This sharing enables Google to better customize ads and search listings to each individual user.  The key is user data, including demographics and interests.  Google is already a powerhouse in search, video (YouTube) and display.  With the Privacy Policy update, Google is positioning itself as a one-stop shop for targeted advertising and exclusive use of data for buying media via its advertising channels.

As Google is able to link more user data across its properties, it will be able to provide more relevant, tailored paid search ads, display ads and organic listings.  For example, Google can tailor advertising based on each user’s interests—interests that Google discovers through what the user is talking about on Gmail, sharing on Google+ or watching on YouTube.  For search and display marketers, this could increase relevancy, thus boosting conversions and lowering advertising costs:

Paid Search & Display

Google can now leverage cross-property user data to create more unique, relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) for each user.  Let’s provide a real-life example: Informed by interests that a user expresses on Google+, Gmail and YouTube, Google can better understand which version of “Delta”—airline or faucets—a user is searching for, and provide more relevant results.  If that user has been talking to his Google+ friends about replacing his sink faucets, Google could display a Delta Faucet paid search ad on top of a Delta Airlines ad.  This can increase performance for Delta Faucet as the brand will drive more relevant clicks.  Relevancy fosters better Quality Scores, thus lowering paid search costs.

Applying Paid Search Optimization Techniques Beyond the Search Engine Results Page

Posted by Craig Greenfield, SVP, Performance Innovation

This blog was orginally posted on emarketing & commerce

In 2010, Forrester’s The Future of Search Marketing report predicted that “search marketing will become an umbrella term that applies to using any targeted media to help an advertiser get found.” Forrester was right. It’s now clear that search isn’t limited to being just a channel.  Search is the science of understanding intent and acting on it to efficiently connect people to your brand—no matter if that connection is made on a search engine, social networking site, display network, affiliate network or other emerging medium. To foster these connections, search engine marketing best practices can be extended well beyond the search engine results page.

First, I’ll consider how traditional paid search techniques can be applied to display advertising to drive new-to-file customers. Like search, biddable display provides advertisers with targeting capabilities to find the right customer at the right price.  While search marketers create segmentation via keywords to find the right audience, display marketers create segmentation via data sources. For example, during back-to-school season this past year, one of Performics’ apparel retailer clients sought to efficiently boost year-over-year daily sales though performance display. Like we do with search campaigns, we restructured the retailer’s display campaign at a more granular level (31 different ads in 2011 versus 6 ads in 2010) to support product/offer testing.  The restructure revealed deeper audience insights, helping us buy only the impressions we wanted (i.e. the right placements at the right price). We also increased relevance through site retargeting (i.e. serving display ads to people who visited the advertiser’s website but didn’t take action). These strategies resulted in a 211 percent year-over-year increase in average daily sales at a 120 percent return on investment.

Search Plus Your World’s Impact on Paid Search & SEO

Topic: Google’s incorporation of social and personal content to the SERP
Opportunity: Achieve prominent search visibility through Google+ presence
Channels Impacted: Organic search, paid search, social

Google recently began rolling out its new “Search, Plus Your World” features to the search engine results page (SERP).  The update introduced two new features that significantly impact paid search marketing and SEO:

1. People and Pages: The SERP now prominently features the Google+ Pages of both people and brands—for branded and generic queries—even when the searcher isn’t logged in
2. Personal Results: When logged in, the Google SERP now shows the searcher’s personal photos and posts from Google+ and Picasa.  Personal results include the searcher’s own content, as well as content shared with the searcher.  This new content is exclusive to the searcher, so everyone’s SERP is different.

People and Pages: Search Implications

Since Google+ Pages for Businesses launched, we’ve advocated that having a branded Google+ Page is essential for your search campaigns (see Why Your Brand Needs a Google+ Business Page Now).  We noted that the primary reason to create a Google+ Page was to aid your SEO efforts.  For instance, social content from brands is increasing achieving prominent visibility on the Google SERP, especially for branded searches.  We told brands to expect to see their Google+ Business Pages in the top organic results for branded keywords very soon.  What we didn’t expect was the prominence that Google would give Google+ Business Pages.  For instance, the below search for “fashion” gives H&M’s Google+ Page visibility equivalent to a position-1 paid-search bid, even when the searcher is not signed in:

Multiply the Effect of Your Brand’s Super Bowl Commercial through Digital Integration

Topic: Digital strategies to support your Super Bowl commercial
Opportunity:  Maximize your Super Bowl commercial investment
Channels Impacted: TV, paid search, organic search, mobile, social, display

This year, Super Bowl advertisers will spend a record $3.5 million per 30-second spot.  This investment positions advertisers in front of the largest television audience of the year; for instance, Super Bowl 2011 drew a record 111 million U.S. viewers.  And this year—for the first time ever—the big game will air online (including on mobile devices).  Football fans—and commercial fans—won’t miss a second of the action, even as they run to the fridge and the bathroom.

A Super Bowl commercial buy is the ultimate branding play.  But getting your product/service in front of 100+ million people doesn’t mean your job as a marketer is done.  Your Super Bowl ad boosts brand awareness, thus spurring people to search online for your brand or talk about your commercial on social networks.  Once this happens, you must maintain the connection that your Super Bowl commercial created with your participant.

We’ve provided five tips to strategically optimize your Super Bowl investment and position your brand to capture the demand created by your 30-second spot:

1.  Ensure 100% Search Coverage, Especially on Mobile

This year more than ever, Super Bowl viewers won’t be glued to their television screens.  They’ll be multi-viewing—using their tablets and smartphones to see online-only camera angles, in-game highlights, live stats, commercial replays and behind-the-scenes access.  Since last Super Bowl, we’ve seen an explosion in mobile device usage, and smartphones and tablets were among the top holiday gifts.  Super Bowl 2012 is the perfect time for viewers to complement their TV with tablets and smartphones. 

In particular, we expect mobile search usage to spike during the game as viewers seek out their favorite commercials.  This means that brands must support their Super Bowl commercials with paid search campaigns on desktop, smartphones and tablets.  Ensure that you have ample paid search budget allocated to support potentially huge traffic spikes—Super Bowl commercial keywords are always among the hottest Google search terms during and after the game.  Bid on brand and brand + “Super Bowl commercial” keywords on the engines and YouTube.  Align your Super Bowl search campaign with marketing/PR plans to ensure coverage and ad rank during commercial launch, as well as two to three weeks post-Super Bowl to extend shelf life.  Test your commercial on smartphones and tablets to ensure an optimal mobile experience for your viewer.

2. Beware of Hijackers

You’re the one investing $3.5 million for your 30-second spot.  But your competitors may seek to steal your thunder.  The most notorious example of hijacking occurred in 2006 when Pontiac ran a Super Bowl commercial that encouraged viewers to Google “Pontiac.”  Competitor Mazda took advantage, aggressively bidding on the “Pontiac” keyword and driving searchers to a landing page that compared Pontiac to Mazda. 

Retailers Spent 58% More on Paid Search this Holiday vs. Last, Driving 53% More Clicks

Posted by Ryan Hornacek, Analyst, Strategy & Analytics

The biggest paid search story of holiday 2011 was that Performics’ aggregate group of retailer clients made early-season investments that led to incremental clicks throughout the entire season.  Every holiday, we see retailers increasing paid search spend earlier and earlier.  Early investments allowed our retailers to level off spend later in the season, but maintain large YoY click increases during the critical holiday weeks.  This was most apparent in the final week before the ground shipping cutoffs (Week 11 on the below chart), where clicks were up 52% YoY but spend was only up 26%.  The effect of early investment also showed in CPCs during the three critical weeks following Thanksgiving (Weeks 9, 10 and 11 on the below chart).  CPCs during this time period were consistently lower than last year (a 3-week average YoY decline of 10%).

In total, Performics’ retailer clients spent 58% more on paid search in Q4 2011 vs. Q4 2010, driving 53% more clicks YoY.  Despite the large increase in spend, CPCs finished the quarter just 5% higher.

We closed out the year with a post-Christmas uptick in clicks as a result of increased spend.  Clicks were up 51% in the week following Christmas (Week 13 on the below chart), while spend was up 64% YoY.  The last-minute spending push caused a slight bump in CPCs, which were up 8% for the week.  However, in the final days of the year, CPCs finally fell back to their pre-Thanksgiving levels.

Holiday Online Sales Wrap-Up

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

For the holiday season-to-date, $35.3 billion has been spent online, marking a 15% increase versus the corresponding days last year (comScore).  The most recent week (ending Dec. 25) witnessed $2.8 billion in spending, an increase of 16% versus the same week last year.  Peak online holiday spending occurred on Nov. 28th (Cyber Monday); according to comScore, “online retail sales topped $1.25 billion that day—the heaviest online shopping day in history.”

Building Inbound Links at the Enterprise Level (Video)

Posted by Lauren Bradley, Associate Account Manager

Mobile’s Influence on Holiday Foreshadows a Huge Mobile 2012

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

Traffic from mobile devices accounted for 18.3% of overall Web traffic on Christmas Day according to an IBM survey (up from only 8.4% a year ago).  Of total mobile traffic, 7% came from iPads, 6.4% from iPhones and 5% from Android smartphones.  In terms of Christmas Day online sales, 14.4% came from mobile devices, up from 5.3% on Christmas Day 2010. 

Mobile device activations also shot up on Christmas Day, indicating that many people received tablets and smartphones as gifts this year.  Android and iOS device activations averaged around 1.5 million per day in December versus 6.8 million activations on Christmas Day alone (Flurry).  And of course, new devices need new apps—prior to Christmas day, December app sales were steady around 1.8 million a day, but on Christmas Day, app downloads jumped 125% to 242 million (Flurry):

Last-Minute Holiday Shopping Trends

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

As holiday approaches, shoppers will become heavily reliant on discounts and sales to help with last-minute holiday gifts.  A PriceGrabber survey found that 41% of shoppers plan to shop between Dec. 21 and Dec. 24.  In fact, 43% said that they believe the best discounts can be found during that time period; another 43% indicated that they’re too busy to finish their holiday shopping earlier; 26% admitted to procrastinating; 22% think last-minute shopping is fun; and 10% are waiting for year-end work bonuses.

Other last-minute shopping trends include:

• To date, the average person has completed 46.5% of their shopping.  At the same time last year, the average person had completed 49.5% of their shopping.  (BIGresearch).
• 80% of U.S. shoppers plan to buy gift cards this season (NRF)
• 9% of shoppers will wait until January to purchase holiday gifts.  By gender, 11% of men say they’ll wait until January to buy gifts vs. 8% of women.  (PriceGrabber).
• 27% of shoppers indicated that they plan to shop for last-minute gifts on sites like Groupon and LivingSocial (PriceGrabber)

The Year of Free Shipping

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

According to comScore, over the last two weeks, more than 63% of all online purchases were accompanied by free shipping—that’s up roughly 10 percentage points over the same period last year.  In previous years, 47% of shoppers said they would abandon an online purchase if they discovered at checkout that shipping wasn’t free (comScore).  Because free shipping has become a priority for many online shoppers, “Free Shipping Day” was created to encourage online shopping without accruing additional shipping costs.  This year, Free Shipping Day was Friday, Dec. 16 and more than 2,000 merchants offered free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve in the contiguous United States.  According to comScore, Free Shipping Day saw shoppers spend $1.072 billion online, a 14% YoY increase.

The Latest Online Holiday Sales Forecasts: Revised Upward

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

For the first 46 days of the November/December 2011 holiday season, online spending increased 15% YoY to $30.9 billion according to comScore.  This increase has caused the National Retail Federation (NRF) to revise its holiday forecast upward, expecting holiday sales to rise 3.8% this year to a record $469.1 billion. NRF’s initial forecast called for anticipated sales growth of 2.8%.  While a 3.8% sales increase is considerably above the ten-year average sales increase of 2.6%, it’s still lower than the 5.2% increase the retail industry saw last year.

In addition, NRF’s most recent holiday survey found that the average American has completed far less of their holiday shopping than in previous years—an indication that many shoppers bought for themselves in November and have plenty of holiday shopping left to do.

Holiday Paid Search Metrics Continue to Rise YoY, But Have Peaked for the Season

Posted by Ryan Hornacek, Analyst

Last week, online retailers started to flatten out paid search holiday spend. As a result, our aggregate group of retailer clients' YoY spend was only up 26%, compared to 43%, 65%, and 97% over the previous 3 weeks. This decline was more a result of advertisers investing in paid search earlier in the season and maintaining that level rather than a decrease in spending. In fact, our retailers increased YoY paid search investment every week during the holiday season, not just the last part of the season as they did last year.

Furthermore, paid search spend—and clicks—have peaked for the season. As spend levels off, clicks have also leveled off, up 52%, roughly the same amount as the previous week. And as the market has been more stable this year, retailers have been able to find more efficiencies in their campaigns. The result is CPCs down YoY for the third consecutive week. During the 12/11 to 12/17 week, CPCs were 17% lower YoY. This week—as we cross the holiday ground shipping cutoff—we expect spend, clicks and CPCs to decrease further.

Mobile Paid & Organic Search Trends and Tips: December 2011

Mobile Search Trends and Best Practices- Dec. 2011

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Post-Cyber Week Paid Search Metrics Remain Strong; YoY CPCs Fall for Second Consecutive Week

Posted by Ryan Hornacek, Analyst

During the week of 12/4 to 12/10, our aggregate group of retailer clients spent 43% more on paid search than they did the same week in 2010, gaining 53% more YoY clicks.  Although spend was still up 43%, this is the lowest YoY spend increase we’ve seen this holiday season since the week of 10/16–10/22 (where spend increased 38%).  This shows that retailers have tapered-off spend increases after huge YoY increases during Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.   However, we do expect retailers to make major spend pushes in the coming week, especially on Free Shipping Day. 

Additionally, we’ve now seen two consecutive weeks of lower YoY CPCs.  During the 12/4 to 12/10 week, CPCs were 7% lower than the same week last year.  It will be interesting to see whether CPCs remain low as competition heats up again on Free Shipping Day.  The below charts and graphs show YoY trends in clicks, spend and CPC:

Holiday Spending to Date Rises Year-Over-Year

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

Online retail spending has seen a big year-over-year jump this holiday season to date.  According to comScore, retail e-commerce spending for the first 34 days of the November/December 2011 holiday season saw a 15% increase to $18.7 billion versus the corresponding days last year.  This year-over-year increase was driven by two billion-dollar days, including Cyber Monday ($1.25 billion).

Emerging Holiday Trends: Social Shopping

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, but many people still have shopping lists to finalize.  Getting every last gift on that list can be an easier and more enjoyable process thanks to social media, which is currently changing the shopping experience.  Social networks enable shoppers to leverage friends for holiday ideas, opinions and shopping tips.  This social shopping experience, powered by friends, presents tremendous opportunity for retailers during the holidays.  Below are a few tips to optimize the social shopping experience for your brand’s potential customers:

Holiday Wish Lists: Gadgets

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

This year, many holiday wish lists include gadgets like smartphones, TVs, tablets, Blu-ray players, 3-D TVs and desktop computers.  Of all demographics, dads with young kids are most likely to want these gifts, as well as purchase them for others.  For instance—according to Ipsos—42% of dads said they were planning to purchase a smartphone this year compared to 34% of moms. 

Additionally, African-American and Hispanic parents of children aged 6–14 are more likely to buy smartphones and TVs than their Caucasian counterparts—47% and 48% respectively, compared to only 33% of Caucasian families.  Below is a table from Ipsos showing which demographic groups plan to purchase various consumer electronic products this holiday.  Some interesting findings include that 25% of Asian/Pacific Islanders plan to purchase the iPad 2, and 22% of Hispanics plan to purchase a 3-D TV:

Is SEO the Future of Internet Marketing?

Exploring SEO and Small Business Surveys

Posted by Sam Battin, Senior Natural Search Specialist

As we’ve seen recently, the advertising spend on Internet marketing continues to rise, alongside the growing number of purchases made online.  Businesses and customers are finding out that it’s much easier to search online for merchandise than it is to get in the car, brave the streets and drive to several different stores in search of products which may or may not be there.

Underscoring this point, Search Engine Land found a recent survey of 2500 small to medium businesses that could indicate that SEO has become a preferred marketing channel.  Good SEO can connect your business to all the people who are staying home and searching online.  The exact question the small business owners answered was “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?”  The top answer was search engine optimization, which almost 40% of responders chose by large margins.  SEO beat out both “Traditional Media” (19.7%) and “Paid Search Advertising” (9.8%).

Performics Appoints New Global Leadership Team

Daina Middleton Elevated to Worldwide CEO; Frederic Joseph, Gareth Mulryan Named Regional Leaders

CHICAGO – December 8, 2011 – Performics, the performance marketing agency owned by Publicis Groupe, today announced a new global leadership team in support of its burgeoning worldwide network. Daina Middleton, current U.S. CEO, expands her role and is promoted to Worldwide CEO based in Chicago, effective immediately.

Performics currently operates in 14 countries and plans additional expansion in 2012. To further support this growth, Performics also announces a new regional management structure. Frederic Joseph becomes CEO for Performics in Europe, Middle East, Africa, based in London; and Gareth Mulryan is the new Regional Director in Asia Pacific, based in Shanghai.

Joseph and Mulryan will report to Middleton and, with Vice Chairman Andras Vigh, complete the new global management team. Vigh will have network development responsibilities for Performics, in addition to his role as Chairman for VivaKi in Greater China.

“Performics has achieved phenomenal growth over the past year through the development of our worldwide network of talent,” commented Middleton. “We are committed to redefining performance marketing around the world, and will achieve this by providing performance marketing services across search, affiliate partnerships, performance display and social marketing resulting in a consistent global offering for our valued clients.”

Cyber Monday Paid Search Spend & Clicks Accelerate YoY; Holiday CPCs Finally Drop

Posted by Ryan Hornacek, Analyst

For Performics’ aggregate group of retailer clients, paid search spend and clicks accelerated year-over-year on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  On Black Friday, clicks were up 69%, and spend was up 112% vs. Black Friday 2010.  On Cyber Monday, clicks were up 89% and spend was up 68% vs. Cyber Monday 2010.  But the biggest Cyber Monday story for our clients was that CPCs dropped vs. 2010—this is the first time we’ve seen year-over-year CPCs trend downwards this holiday.  This Cyber Monday, CPCs were 11% lower than Cyber Monday 2010.  Thus, our retailer clients saw bigger bang for their paid search buck on Cyber Monday than Black Friday:

Cyber Monday: By the Numbers

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

Last year, for the first time, the Monday after Thanksgiving was the biggest online shopping day of the year by sales and the first day ever that online sales passed $1 billion, according to comScore.  However, this Cyber Monday surpassed last year’s, reaching $1.25 billion in online spending.  Cyber Monday 2011 took the cake as the heaviest online spending day in history and the second day on record to surpass the billion-dollar threshold.   Heavy discounts contributed to the big day—78 percent of retailers offered online promotions, almost half offered discounts, 38 percent ran limited-time flash sales and one third offered free shipping (Shop.org).

 

Green Gift Ideas for Holiday

Posted by the Performics Planeteers

If you’re still looking for the perfect holiday present for that special someone (or yourself), why not consider a gift that’s environmentally friendly?  At Performics, we’re always looking for little ways to help the environment.  So we pulled together a list of our favorite green holiday shopping sites, as well as a few green gift ideas:

Green Sites

• Greenheart Shop sells recycled accessories, clothing and home décor.  It uses sustainable materials, fair trade practices and is based in Chicago.
• Green Depot provides green products and green building materials, the perfect place to shop for someone planning a home improvement
• Patagonia—through its Common Threads Initiative—encourages shoppers to reduce, repair, reuse and recycle.  Patagonia will repair your old gear, find a home for gear you no longer need and recycle gear that’s worn out.
• MATT & NAT sell high-fashion green products like bags featuring linings made of recycled water bottles
• Alternative Outfitters is a veggie-friendly retail boutique that sells products like vegan shoes, vegetarian shoes and vegan bags

Black Friday Online Sales Wrap-Up

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

‘Tis the season for record-breaking Black Friday online retail sales.  According to comScore, U.S. shoppers spent $816 million online on Black Friday, a 26% increase over 2010.  Approximately 50 million shoppers visited online retail sites on Friday, a 35% increase over last year.  Additionally, shoppers ramped up their Thanksgiving Day online shopping, spending $479 million—an increase of 18% over Thanksgiving Day 2010.  November online spending up to Black Friday hit $12.7 billion, a 15% increase over November 2010 (comScore).

Black Friday, By the Numbers

Macro-trends

• Shoppers spent 3% more per order on Black Friday 2011 vs. 2010 (NPD Group)
• Interestingly, NPD reported that about 44% of Black Friday purchases were self purchases, up from 33% last year.  This indicates that people still have a lot of gifts to buy this holiday.
• The average male spent $201.62 online vs. $101.93 for the average female (NRF)
• The top 3 product categories were (1) clothing, (2) electronics and (3) toys.  Electronics in particular surged this year (23% of Black Friday shoppers bought electronics vs. 8% last year) (NPD).
• The most-visited sites were (1) Amazon, (2) Wal-Mart, (3) Best Buy, (4) Target and (5) Apple (comScore)