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

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

View more presentations from Performics

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%).