Internet Advertising : feature

Facebook Overtakes Yahoo as World's Third Largest Site

Administrator — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:44:00 GMT

Facebook will head into the New Year as the world’s third largest website after passing Yahoo in the most recent traffic rankings released from comScore. The research firm’s November 2010 report credits Facebook with an estimated 648 million unique visitors worldwide, enough to finally push it past Yahoo and its estimated 630 million visitors in November.

Google remains the world’s largest Web property with about 970 million unique visitors in November 2010, followed by Microsoft with 869 million and now Facebook. In comScore’s October rankings, Yahoo and Facebook were virtually tied with 633 million worldwide visitors each. Facebook had been gaining on Yahoo throughout the entire year, so it is more or less appropriate that the rapidly growing social networking site take hold of the No. 3 spot as we move into 2011.

Facebook held the fourth position for nearly a year and a half after passing the Wikimedia Foundation sites that include Wikipedia back in August 2009. Other notable sites it has passed along the way during its meteoric global rise include MySpace in April 2008, Amazon in August 2008, eBay in January 2009, AOL in February 2009, and now Yahoo.

Facebook also accounts for almost one quarter of all display ads in the United States, and recently became the second largest video site in the U.S. behind Google.

Keep in mind that Facebook’s own official traffic numbers differ slightly from the comScore data, claiming closer to 550 million worldwide unique monthly visitors. No matter how you score it, the audience is a massive one and the site’s popularity continues to spread across the globe.

AdKeeper Allows Users to Save Ads for Later

Linc Wonham — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:22:00 GMT

A new service is being tested that would allow Web users to click on an ad to save it so they can interact with it later. The company behind it is startup AdKeeper, whose CEO Scott Kurnit founded the Web property that became About.com.

The idea behind kept ads is that Internet users might be more likely to engage with them on their own time than when the ad is first served. For instance, someone who goes to a site for a very specific purpose may see an ad that interests them but not be willing to engage with it for fear it will disrupt their original mission – particularly if filling out a registration form is required. Or someone browsing the Web at work might be less likely to click on an ad that interests them from their employer’s computer than they would in the privacy of their own home.

The solution that AdKeeper is currently testing would allow those users to click on a box marked “save this ad”, and then they can access it later to read it, register if necessary, share the ad with a friend, print it or whatever they decide. The AdKeeper program includes a measurement system called Keep Metrics that will identify the number of times an ad is kept, the number of users who kept it, and on which websites the ad was kept.

Kurnit will be launching AdKeeper sometime in early 2011, and he will be publicly releasing regular Keep Metrics reports to show which websites are leading the various kept-ads categories. Publishers can sign up for the AdKeeper program, which will track their progress and – if successful in the ad-keeping department – provide substantial incentive for advertisers.

Nearly 1 in 3 Consumers Surveyed Like Targeted Ads

Linc Wonham — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:33:00 GMT

With the Federal Trade Commission recommending stronger regulations for online advertising, the future of behavioral Web marketing practices is somewhat uncertain right now. The FTC argues that consumers overwhelmingly consider these targeted ads intrusive, but a recent survey from Burst Media suggests that the issue is not so one-sided.

The study found that 27 percent of respondents said they like to receive ads that are targeted to their interests, and when separated by gender, 33 percent of the men would freely offer personal information to receive more relevant ads online.

That number was about equal to the 34 percent of men and women who said they dislike targeted ads, and slightly less than the 38 percent who reported that they were usually uninterested in the products offered through targeted advertising. A little more than half of the respondents, 54 percent, said that they find targeted ads to be “annoying and distracting.”

Broken down into age groups, 35 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they don’t mind targeted ads, and 25 percent of 35- to 54-year-olds said they like them.

Are E-books the Next Market for Digital Advertisers?

Linc Wonham — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:52:00 GMT

With e-book sales at about $970 million this year and expected to rise significantly in 2011, many in the digital advertising industry are experimenting with ways to penetrate the market. If successful, Web marketers will have achieved something that traditional publishers have fought off for decades – ads appearing in books.

Google entered the e-book arena in a big way last week, instantly joining Amazon and Apple as the top-level retailers and dramatically increasing the market’s reach. That news, combined with the anticipated influx of tablet computers and e-readers to rival the iPad and Kindle throughout 2011, has ramped up enthusiasm in the online ad industry.

Companies that are currently experimenting with offering ads in e-books include self-publishing website Scribd, digital bookseller Wowio and e-publisher ScrollMotion. Each model is slightly different, with Scribd trying targeted ads based on what users are reading and Wowio sampling different methods of inserting $1 to $3 ads between the chapters of its e-books.

ScrollMotion is still in the development stage, but it’s safe to assume that there will be dozens of other companies testing their own models in the early part of 2011. Helping to fuel the interest in e-book advertising are the following statistics from Forrester Research:

• 7 percent of adults online read e-books, a figure expected to double in 2011.

• Users of e-readers consume as many as 40 percent of the books they read in electronic form.

• 35 percent of U.S. e-book readers use their laptops to read books, while 32 percent use a Kindle.

• E-book sales in the U.S. are expected to grow from a little less than $1 billion this year to more than $2.8 billion in 2015.

Google Global for Global Advertisers

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:29:00 GMT

Google wants its advertisers to go global and it has made available a few incredibly interesting and valuable tools to make it happen.

Google announced the launch of Google Global Market Finder (a free tool that helps advertisers find new markets overseas) and Google Ads for Global Advertisers which brings together Global Market Finder, AdWords, Google Translate, and other tools to help advertisers find, engage with, and support customers across the world.

To use the Global Market Finder tool, simply enter keywords that describe your product or service and select a market or region to explore. You can choose from regions such as the European Union, the “G20” economies, Asia, Emerging Markets or the Americas to name but a few filters.

The tool automatically translates the inputted keyword into languages used in each of your selected markets, and then ranks each location by market opportunity by combining search volume, suggested bid price, and competition for each translated keyword. You will be able to tell at a glance how competitive the market is, how demand compares from market to market, and let's not forget of course how much it would cost to start advertising there.

The second resource launched by Google today is Google Ads for Global Advertisers, a resource for advertisers to learn how to expand a business overseas. The online destination provides guides and tools for finding the right markets to expand your business, localizing your website and campaigns into another language, running ads in a foreign market, and monitoring your global ad spend.

Cost-Per-View Ads at Google with TrueView

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:59:00 GMT

Google anounced the release of a new video ad format dubbed TrueView Video Ads today. TrueView givers users what I would consider total control over which advertiser's message they want to see (and when). Advertisers are going to jump on board in droves as they are only charged when a viewer has chosen to watch the ad and not when an impression is served.

Google believes the cost-per-view video advertising model is good for everyone - it's not difficult to see why. Through TrueView Video Ads InStream (its first cost-per-view format) viewers can choose to skip a video ad after 5 seconds, and advertisers will only pay when the viewer has watched the full ad or 30 seconds, whichever is shorter.

According to Google, the early results were encouraging with view-through rates of 20-70%. View-through rate measures how many viewers have opted-in to watch an ad. The ad format is available for customers in the US and Canada and is in limited testing for advertisers in the UK.

Google also indicated that advertisers will soon be able to use TrueView Video Ads to increase a video’s view count.

Holiday Ad Budgets Get Social

Mike Phillips — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:00:00 GMT

More advertisers are spending more of their ad budgets on social network advertising this holiday season, according to financial consulting firm BDO, USA. The BDO USA Retail Compass Survey of CMOs examined the opinions of 100 chief marketing officers at leading retailer and consumer product companies* located throughout the country.

They found that:

27% of CMOs claim online advertising accounts for most of their holiday advertising and marketing budget, up from 18% in 2009.

75% of CMOs say they included social networking in their marketing strategies this year, up from 51% in 2009 and just 4% in 2007.

62% say social media advertising accounts for 10% or less of their marketing efforts.

Email promotions were cited as the top online moneymaker on Black Friday by 45% of respondents, yet only the thrid highest traffic driver. (A good argument for targeted email marketing.)

Not surprisingly, Facebook led the way for onilne retail marketing budgets. A full 92% of CMOs say they are focusing their social media budgets on Facebook. That's up from 76% in 2009. Twitter was next (61%), followed by YouTube (20%), LinkedIn (15%) and MySpace (8%) as a key marketing focus.

*Revenues of $100 million to $100 billion.

Better Insights on Facebook Pages

Administrator — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:50:00 GMT

Facebook has launched a new feature of Facebook Page owners and FB Platform developers that provide additional metrics about Page content. If you've been looking for a way to better understand your social media followers - this is it.

Page admins (at least those with at least with pages liked by 30 people) can now see per post impression (PPI) counts for any posted item back to June 25th, 2010. The PPI can be seen in two locations - on the page wall directly beneath each post and now on the Interactions portion of the Insights page.

Geographic and demographic data is also now available. Demographic data (anonymized) is broken down into gender and age. Location data is based on the geographic location of the user as determined by their browser IP address and is limited to at most the top 20 countries and cities. All other demographic information is aggregated and non-personally identifiable. If that weren't enough, insights on media consumptions (video, audio, photos) is available.

There are a few other features that will also be interesting to social media enthusiasts, namely that the data can be exported from the dashboard - perhaps Facebook's first attempt at some data portability. Really interesting development all the way around and lots of good data to dig into - so get started!

Did you know that Website Magazine's Facebook page is closing in quickly on 19,000 fans? Help us push past 20,000 before the holiday - tell your friends!

Some Like-able Facebook Stats from Hootsuite

Administrator — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:00:00 GMT

Hootsuite has added Facebook Insights to enable its pro members the ability see the interaction on their Facebook pages directly from the dashboard of the platform.

Users will be able to see new fans to their page, demographics (region, age, gender), amount of page comments, number of “likes”, new discussions, and the number of new wall posts. While a quick look into the actual Facebook page will reveal pretty much the same information, sans demographic data, for social media power users this is a great addition to HootSuite.

Hootsuite Pro members will also have access to historical comparison to see which way pages are trending. Printable reports which can be shared are also available. Pro plans at Hootsuite start at $5.99/mo – there is a 30-day free trial.