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

Performics Weekly Research Recap

Posted by Cristina Lucero & Christina Mannarino, Performics Research & Insights Team

Hello Everyone!

Highlighted below are some emerging trends and insights that maybe of interest to you from October 28th. 

United States

Channel Insights

Social

- Social Media Marketing and Darwin: Can Marketers Evolve? (MediaPost)

• Marketers can no longer program participants with advertising; instead, now your imperative is to attract people through unique content and authentic brand experiences.
• The next generation of retail is a blended in-store experience enhanced by digital technologies.
• To succeed, you’ll need to understand where your brand fits into your customers’ lifestyles.

Search

- Google Introduces “Bid For Calls” On The PC. (Google)

• Depending on the amount of bids and how many calls are received, Google will begin to include calls in its ads quality score.
• Advertisers whose paid-search ads are generating lots of calls may see a boost in their AdWords rankings accordingly.
• In other words, “call-through rate” will now be a factor in ranking

- Understanding Google’s Latest Landing Page Quality Score Release. (Google)

• Google announced that going forward, landing page quality will be a larger factor in an ad’s overall Quality Score.
• The behavioral signals that Google traces must therefore be related to what they can track for all advertisers, not just those with Google conversion tracking: bounce rate, propensity to search again in short order, time on site, etc.
• At the end of the day, it will reward advertisers for picking the best page among the available choices for your PPC landing pages, and design those pages for maximum effectiveness in monetizing traffic.

Mobile & Tablet

- Paid Search, Mobile Take Front Seat In Holiday Strategies. (Marin)

• Keep local in mind by separating mobile from desktop campaigns, so the content includes location and mobile-specific content.
• Increasing mobile response rates means marketers should tap into position-based bidding to ensure that ads serve up above the fold.
• Another benefit of having separate campaigns is that you can show location ex­tensions within the ad creative.
• Quickly pointing mobile shoppers to your nearest location can be the difference between buyers walking into your store instead of your competitor’s.

Thanks for your time!

Research Team

Additional articles added to the Research Library:

CHANNEL INSIGHTS

“Mobile Social Usage Soars To Nearly A Quarter Of U.S. Population”

“How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing”

“Tablet Users Keen On News, Not Payments”

“Stat of the Day: Half of Kids Under 8 Have Access to Mobile Media”

“The Alterian Brand Relevancy Tour”

Performics Weekly Research Recap

Posted by Cristina Lucero & Christina Mannarino, Performics Research & Insights Team

Hello Everyone!

Highlighted below are some emerging trends and insights that maybe of interest to you from October 21st. 

United States

Channel Insights

Search

 - Google To Begin Encrypting Searches & Outbound Clicks By Default With SSL Search. (Google)

• The change to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) search also means that sites people visit after clicking on results at Google will no longer receive “referrer” data that reveals what those people searched for, except in the case of ads.
• Google analytics will only track SEO generally, not specifically. This means the search terms won’t be associated with a particular visit, because they aren’t being passed along.
• Referrer blocking won’t be happening with ads. If someone clicks on an ad, the advertiser’s site will continue to receive all the same information it currently gets with unencrypted search.

- Microsoft To Turn Bing Into Improved Search Service Via Apps. (MediaPost)

• Search today provides a more programmed experience, but in the future on Bing, it will happen naturally.
• The app would recommend things you likely want to see to provide a much more implicit search, rather than typing into a Web browser and typing 'restaurants near Belleview' and then going back to the map.
• The Bing team will focus on connecting queries, a proxy for intent, with actions, not just information.

- Paid search spending increases 7% in Q3. (Internet Retailer)

• In the United States, 81.6% of paid search spending went to Google Inc., up slightly from the same period last year.
• In Europe, spending on paid search ads increased 20% in the third quarter compared with the same period in 2010.
• As the Yahoo/Bing alliance approaches its one-year anniversary, it shows little impact on the search engine landscape.

Mobile

- Marketers: Mobile Social Networking Scores With Users. (Experian Simmons)

• The study found voice calling applications (usually a native app on the phone) had the highest daily reach, at 62%, followed by messaging (51%), browser (47%), email (45%) and social networking apps (38%).
• Social networking highest the frequency, with people checking social apps on average 17.7 times a day.
• “…It can be appreciated how significant the role of social networking plays in mobile behavior, and marketers may be well advised to focus their attention in this area.”

Social

- The State Of Social Media 2011: Social Is The New Normal. (FastCompany)

• The state of social media is about how people are spending their time, interacting and connecting with one another, and what happens as a result.
• Facebook is now the size of the entire Internet in 2004. And, as Nielsen shows us, at 53.5%, Facebook accounts for the majority of total time spent online.
• Marketers must create an online experience for the social participant through multiple channels in order to engage and connect with them.

International Insights

Demographics

- In Asia, Marketers Pay Heed to a Growing Older Population. (AdAge)

• Companies are so caught up in wanting to be young and hip and they're ignoring this issue that the seniors are going to be a force to be reckoned with.
• In Asia, home to large populations of older participants -- in places such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong -- marketers have found unique ways of tweaking their products or marketing to appeal to golden lifestyles.
• Marketers: don't underestimate the 50-plus set, a group that will have increasing importance as developed economies age.

 

Thanks for your time!

Research Team

Additional articles:

CHANNEL INSIGHTS

“YouTube’s e-commerce push”

“Mobile Commerce Forum Report: Mobile drives big results for a small retailer”

DEMOGRAPHICS

“Targeting Millennials? You Have to Think Outside the Traditional Color Lines”

Performance Never Rests: Our People’s Top Picks

Performance Never Rests: Our People’s Top Picks  

Curious about the latest and greatest tools, technology and toys? Fear not, we turn to our teams and present their take on what’s hot, what’s not, and the issues making waves around the industry.

Gadget Geeks:

Dan P. - Is Sprint betting their company on the iPhone5?

• Sprint committed to $20B worth of iPhone5's, possibly securing exclusive rights in the process... (CNET)

Tet S. - Creative and visionary genius Steve Jobs passes on :(

• Apple’s Visionary Redefined Digital Age (NY Times)

Kristina N. – “I love Amazon more and more! #sold”

• Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire Costs $209.63 to Make [STUDY] (Mashable)

Performics Weekly Research Recap

Posted by Cristina Lucero & Christina Mannarino, Performics Research & Insights Team

Hello Everyone!

Highlighted below are some emerging trends and insights that maybe of interest to you from October 7th: United States

Channel Insights

Social

-Facebook unveils a new type of advertising unit and measurement tool to help brands communicate better with users. (Facebook)

• The new Insights is designed to let administrators of Facebook fan pages see the total audience their content and ads are reaching, going beyond impressions and "Likes."
• Four metrics will be presented at the top of the page: Total Likes, Friends of Fans, People Talking About This, and Weekly Total Reach.
• "There's a shift taking place inside Facebook where marketers will not only look to connect with their fans, but look to influence the friends of their fans. Enabling word-of-mouth marketing at scale is a huge opportunity for marketers and for Facebook."

Reviewing the Latest Google Eye-Tracking Study

Posted by Sam Battin, Senior Natural Search Specialist

How do People See Universal Search Results?

Recently the folks at SEOMOZ released an eye-tracking study of Google’s search results pages. As you know, today’s results on Google aren’t just a list of ten hyperlinks with a descriptive snippet.  “Universal search” results pages will show you maps if your search query has a local intent; if your search can benefit from an image, Google will show you image thumbnails at the top of the page.  Google will even show you direct links to videos if it determines videos are relevant to your search. 

Participants in the eye-tracking study were shown a variety of Google landing pages that included universal search results like the ones mentioned above.  The most surprising finding was the participant’s attraction to the so-called “map pack” that Google displays in local-intent results.  For example, when you do a search for “pizza” Google will most likely show you several local pizza places, as shown below:

 

 
According to the eye-tracking study, the map pack links in a search like this received a lot of eye-tracking, as did the map image on the upper right side of the page.

Performics Weekly Research Recap

Posted by Cristina Lucero & Christina Mannarino, Performics Research & Insights Team

Hello Everyone!

Highlighted below are some emerging trends and insights that maybe of interest to you from September 30th:United States

Channel Insights

Social

- Google+ Lays the Groundwork for Business Profiles (Google)

• Google+ will soon be unveiling business profiles that will permit companies to create pages and circles like those of an individual user of the social network.
• Currently, GM and Ford are in Beta testing even as the unofficial profiles and squatters spread across platforms.
• "Given Google's strong track record, both +1 and Google+ are platforms that [retailers] are closely watching. [Retailers] are most interested in +1 because of its potential impact on search."

Performics Online Hispanic Trends Infographic

Performics Hispanic Online Trends Infographic

View more presentations from Performics

Five Performance Marketing Strategies to Engage Online Hispanics

Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing minority segment in the United States.  And 30 million U.S. Hispanics—60% of the U.S. Hispanic population—are online.  Performics outlines five performance marketing strategies to grow your Hispanic customer base:

1. Search   
80% of U.S. Hispanics use search to research products (comScore)

Everyday, 8% of all Google queries are in Spanish.  80% of these queries are performed through Google’s English interface (i.e. the searcher’s computer language is set to English); 20% are performed on the Spanish interface.  This presents a huge opportunity for brands to engage Hispanic searchers via the English interface, as well as the Spanish interface:

• Bid on Spanish keywords even when targeting English-language users.  Spanish search volume is rising while cost-per-clicks (CPCs) remain below English keywords.
• Align Spanish keywords with Spanish ad copy and landing pages
• Don’t simply translate English copy and landing pages into Spanish; seek to truly understand the Hispanic culture to craft unique messages
• Utilize Google’s Spanish site.  Although search volume is lower, click-through rates (CTRs) are higher than Google’s English site

Trend Tip: The Multicultural Web
Third and fourth generation Hispanics remain Hispanic by heritage, but English-speaking by habit.  This is the future of the Hispanic online marketplace.  75% of Hispanics embrace media in both English and Spanish.  Language is not a barrier. 

Performics Weekly Research Recap

Posted by Cristina Lucero & Christina Mannarino, Performics Research & Insights Team

Hello Everyone!

Highlighted below are some emerging trends and insights from September 23, 2011:

Search Strategies for Holiday 2011: Black Friday is Closer Than You Think!

eMarketer predicts online holiday sales will grow 12% YoY, and queries for “Black Friday” and “holiday shopping” have gained traction since July.  We outline four key components to holiday search success.

Download the PDF, or read the full post below.

2011 Holiday Search Strategies from Performics: Black Friday Is Closer Than You Think

View more documents from performics_us

1. Ready Your Web Site

At this point in the year, any major changes to your site must be complete and you should have:

• Built new landing pages
• Optimized on-site content/tags
• Built incoming links for holiday terms
• Created a mobile version of your site (Research proves people are 51% more likely to purchase from retailers that have mobile-specific websites (Luth Research))

Three months out, there is still time to make impactful changes and the quickest win comes from proxy landing page optimization (LPO). Proxy technology can swiftly create, test and optimize landing pages without using internal IT resources. Boosting conversions even
a percentage point may help you meet – or exceed – holiday goals.  Five steps to successful holiday LPO:

• Conduct research to garner insights that inform design
• Assess your site’s critical paths to conversion
• Hypothesize about page concepts that will boost conversions
• Test landing pages to uncover the most effective conversion paths
• Optimize based on iterative testing