Spend on online advertising hit €98.2M in 2009 in Ireland according to research by PWC and the IAB. This is approximately 10% of the estimated €940M overall advertising buget for Ireland in 2009.

This means that there should still be strong growth in the online ad spend for Ireland as it is low when compared to our neighbours. The UK has the highest proportion of online advertising at 30%, followed by the Nordic markets at between 20% - 25% and France and Germany close to the European average of 18-19%.

References

Irish adspend approaches €100m IAB 28th July 2010

Europe’s online ad market continues to grow IAB 2nd June 2010

Google has added significant new functionality into Top Search Queries under the Your Site On The Web menu of Webmaster tools. The new information shows a fine-grained drilldown into your websites performance for its top performing search queries.

There is amazing information to be mined here as it shows the positions, impressions and click throughs for each query. What’s the benefit of this information?

1. Allows you to more accurately assess your SEO efforts for particular terms

2. Gives you an indication of the missed opportunity - difference between impressions and clicks

3. Demonstrates the relative value of positioning (based of the CTR differences for the different positions)

4. Allows you to evaluate the performance of your SERP snippet as a compelling “Ad” based to the CTR for postion 1

I’m sure there’s a lot more information in here and we’re only just tinkering with it at the moment - but definitely worth a look. The numbers look a little odd in some cases but I think that’s related to the relatively small date range for which this tool is currently available. As more data comes on stream I’m sure it will settle down.

Adding a site to Webmastertools is easy - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters just register, add a file or some code to your website to verify and you’re up and running. A must for anyone who wants to know how their site is performing…

The collapse of Ning’s free social network offering and the noises being made by Twitter at Chirp (Twitters first developer conference) underline the need to have a sound business model (yes even online!). Ning was the brainchild of Marc Andreessen (of Netscape fame) a network of social networks. It took in over $120M of investment, had 20 Million visitors a month and over 2 Million networks used the platform… Now staff numbers are being slashed by the new CEO Jason Rosenthal and they are going to drop all free users.

“When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to do now to make Ning a big success.

My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services business. Our Premium Ning Networks[...] drive 75% of our monthly U.S. traffic, and those Network Creators need and will pay for many more services and features from us.

So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning[...] All of our product development capability will be devoted to making paying Network Creators extremely happy.”

Jason Rosenthal

This news is sending shockwaves throughout the internet community (and more specifically the Ning networks who have built businesses on the platform). Unfortunately just having huge numbers of users and masses of traffic is not necessarily a viable business strategy in and of itself. This is also slowly dawning on Twitter and rumblings of needs for revenue streams reared their head at Chirp…

facebook publishes some of it stats online at http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics it’s an amazing insight in to the growth of the community and the usage of the platform.

It’s growing at an amazing rate (a couple of weeks ago I notice that there were 3.5 billion pieces of content shared each week - that’s now up to 5 billion!) Given the recent Hitwise data that puts them in the No1 spot for traffic in the US for the first time, I thought a snapshot for March 2010 could be interesting so here it is…

Statistics

Enterprise Ireland is looking for business partners - people not companies. They want to collaborate with experienced entrepreneurs to convert research in startups into economic benefit…

Enterprise Ireland is currently seeking new Business Partners to help us create start-up companies. We want to hear from successful business people to partner with us to transform State funded research projects into profitable commercial ventures. Our Business Partners Programme is fast tracking the creation of new companies by giving you access to our portfolio of potential start-ups. It will be your job to lead them to the marketplace. We would like to hear from you if you have:

• a strong commercial track record
• excellent business credentials
• capacity to invest
• ability to identify commercial opportunity
• vision to transform new technologies into solid businesses

Customers may be talking about your brand online - even if you are not!
It’s important to monitor activity around your brand online - here’s a classic customer service nightmare for United Airlines which obviously touched a nerve…

This is a humerous (but clearly serious for the target brand) version of the increasing phenomenon of the consumer hitting back online - Mommy (& Power Titterati - with over a million followers) Heather Armstrong took on Maytag and gave them a bloody nose - see the article in Forbes

Google Resources
Google has a wealth of online tools and resources - this should be your first port of call when trying to develop your search strategy…

Webmaster Guidelines

Google Search Insights

Google Browser Labs

Google Analytics

Google AdWords

Webmaster Tools

Jeff Bezos on Amazon and customer focus

Zappos - Getting to a billion dollars in sales

Tony Hsieh CEO Zappos on Company Culture


Link to the video

Hitwise - traffic map for UK
A fascinating map of the movement of traffic between the largest trafficed sites in the UK
Read the article on the Hitwise blog here…

Social Media
The rise of the importance of social media is captured succinctly in the
current stats on Facebook usage published by facebook - yes that really is 3.5 Billion pieces of content generated each week!

Yogatic.com is a fascinating case study of a small company leveraging the available tools to create a brand online…

With almost 12,000 subscribers and over 4.5 Million views to her Youtube Channel Esther is reaching a global audience from her studio in West Cork.

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

We would like to wish everyone a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year! Best regards from all the team at Aonach. We look forward to talking to you in the new year. Our offices will be closed from 23rd of December until 4th of January 2010

See it in action over here - Google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats/

I noticed it’s not as accurate as one might have imagined…

In January 2009, JP Morgan estimated that 2008 worldwide retail eCommerce spending, excluding travel, totaled $438 billion - of which one third ($152m) was in Europe.JP Morgan, January 2009

Now I presume that they meant $152 billion - so as ever with this type of thing you need to check for accuracy and you also probably need to understand the context of the research and the statisitical tools used for analysis. But as a quick thought provoking snapshot of the state of the Markets I think it’s great…

Some of the interesting eCommerce Stats that caught my eye were as follows:

41% of Europeans claim to have changed their mind about what brand to buy as a result of researching choices online, according to EIAA’s latest Mediascope survey.Mediascope Europe, November 2008

In the past year, UK female Internet users have made an average of 17 online purchases of products/services and spent an average of £600. eMarketer, February 2009

97% of UK female Internet users research products online and 92% of UK female Internet users buy products online. eMarketer, February 2009

In February 2009, Eurostat reported that 32% of citizens in the EU-28 had purchased an item over the Internet during 2008. (Figures for big markets: UK 57%, FR 40%, DE 53%, IT 11%, ES 20%). Commission of the European Communities, February 2009

According to Forrester, nearly 45% of European Internet users say that in the past three months they have researched a product online and then bought it in a shop. Forrester, March 2009

33% of shoppers in the UK shop a lot more online since the recession.  Media & Marketing, March 2009

Online spending in the UK grew 25% to £18.4 bn in 2008, outperforming the 2.1% increase in total retail. Verdict Research, May 2009

Price has become a less significant determinant in online purchasing: online shoppers citing price as the deciding factor in choosing a retailer has fallen to 44.0% in 2008 from 50.0% in 2007. Verdict Research, May 2009

Despite the recession, UK online shoppers had spent an average of £10 more per site visit in April 2009 than this time a year ago. (April 08 to April 09) NMA, May 2009

34% of Brits spend a whole day trying to find the best holiday deal online. Greenbee.com survey, January 2009

20% of Brits will spend at least 8 hours trawling the Internet for a cheap travel-related deal. Greenbee.com survey, January 2009

50.1% of online shoppers who placed items in their shopping carts did not go on to place an order. Core Metrics, March 2009

Remote (home) shopping has grown three fold in a decade - from £9.7bn to £26bn. Growth fuelled by the Internet accounts for 74% of the market, compared with 4% in 1998. Verdict Research UK, 2009, December 2008

Over 1 in 3 (34%) UK adults have researched a brand that they have seen advertised online. TGI Net Q109 (Oct 07 - Sept 08), Q2 2009

According to the European Commission, cross-border eCommerce remained stable between 2006 and 2008, despite EU consumers shopping online increasing from 27% to 33%. Verdict Research, May 2009

In December 2008, Eurostat reported that 60% of all homes in the EU-27 countries had Internet access and 48% had broadband. This equates to 4 in 5 homes with Internet access in the EU-27 having broadband. In 13 out of the EU-27 markets, over 50% of all homes had broadband - including the UK (62%), Germany (55%) and France (57%). Eurostat, December 2008

Worldwide, over 6 billion songs have been sold on iTunes.  TechCrunch, January 2009

UK mobile search increased from 3.2m in July 2007 to 4.3m in July 2008. eMarketer, December 2008

84% of the UK population owns a mobile phone. Deliotte, April 2009

Nearly two million people in the UK use their mobile phones for a growing number of services, from text alerts that confirm when they have been paid to transferring money between accounts. Times Online, February 2009

Japanese etail giants can make as much as one quarter of their sales via cellphones. Nearly half of Tokyo’’s single females are accessing the mobile web more than five times a week, with the peak shopping time between 1pm and 3pm reflecting the part-time employment status of many young Japanese.Internet Retailing, May 2009

Click and collect services, where goods are ordered online and picked up from a store, are one of the fastest-growing trends among internet retailers. Argos last week reported its Click & Reserve service was up 45% on last year and is responsible for 17% of all sales. Halfords.com were another early mover and their reserve and collect service has driven an increase in multichannel sales of 90% in the year to April 2009, having passed the million customer mark.

This trend makes huge sense for the consumer and the retailer. The consumer doesn’t have to wander round the shop or queue endlessly for checkouts, but can select goods from a reputable brand at their leisure online. For the retailer the upside is this makes the nightmare of shipping goods to individual homes (and trying to find people when they are at home) go away. Indications are that these multichannel approaches also drive more people to the store (above and beyond the online purchasers). Nevertheless, it’s not all easy - it requires accurate realtime stock levels and a slick customer experience both on and off-line to succeed. ]]> http://aonach.com/chatter/click-and-collect-gains-momentum/feed/