'Net Features : burst media

Back-to-School Shoppers Not Holding Back This Year

Linc Wonham — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:25:00 GMT

There was encouraging news this week for e-commerce merchants anticipating a slower than usual back-to-school season due to continued economic uncertainty. A survey released from Burst Media reveals that the majority of consumers do not plan on cutting back from their spending this year, and that nearly half said they will use the Internet for their back-to-school shopping.

Burst polled nearly 2,000 consumers who identified themselves as parents or guardians of school-aged children, and 54.4 percent said that they planned to spend at least the same amount or more on clothing and supplies than they did last season. Two-thirds of respondents (65.9%) said they have not done their back-to-school shopping yet, and 48.9 percent plan to do at least some of their shopping online. A whopping 79.3 percent responded that online coupons or back-to-school promotions could influence their purchasing decisions.

Those shopping for college-aged students will be the biggest spenders this year, with 26.2 percent saying they would spend $500 or more.

Content Sites Rule, Boomers Hate Social

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:02:00 GMT

According to a survey from Burst Media, that while a majority of respondents (53%) belong to at least one social networking site, the amount of time spent on these sites is somewhat short compared to overall time spent online.

The research found that while 40% of 18-34 year olds spend 11 hours or more per week online—less than ½ hour a day (or 3.5 hours/week) of that time is spent on social media sites.

What this means is that content sites still rule; at least in terms of time spent online when considered collectively. “There is no denying the fact that social networks are hugely popular, but it is important to recognize that Internet users still spend a significant portion of their time online visiting content sites,” said Chuck Moran, Vice President of Marketing at Burst Media.

“The results of this survey reveal a tremendous opportunity for marketers to utilize both social media and the thousands of high quality Long Tail web sites to reach their target audiences.”

Also of interest was the fact that over half (52.5%) of Baby Boomers surveyed indicated that they did not belong to a social networking site - pointing to potential opportunity in the social networking space to reach this active demographic. This opportunity, however, may not be fully realized with the current selection of social networking options. Among Boomers not belonging to a social networking site, a huge majority (96.3%) feel these sites are focused on age groups other than their own.

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Ad Agencies Fighting Click Fraud

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:12:00 GMT

No one is immune from the recession. When advertisers cut back by spending less it impacts everyone - even those perpetuating click fraud.

Agencies, whose margins are slim enough as it is, are increasingly aware of the trend and are looking towards solutions to ensure that their piece of ad revenue isn't reduced any more than neccessary. Case in point, media and technology company Burst Media partnered with Anchor Intelligence to enhance its existing inventory auditing systems with "additional visibility" into site traffic quality.

Through Burst’s partnership with Anchor Intelligence, web sites and ad networks utilizing adConductor™, Burst’s ad management and optimization platform, will receive insight into their own and affiliates’ traffic quality. “Our partnership with Anchor Intelligence will contribute to Burst’s ad inventory optimization and traffic filtering programs and allow us to deliver even more value to our advertiser and publisher partners by enhancing our commitment to provide the highest quality traffic sources,” said Harry Klein, COO Burst Media.

Burst joins the ranks of Ask.com, Technorati, LookSmart, Vivaki (Publicis Groupe), and several other industry leaders in partnering with Anchor Intelligence to protect advertisers and improve advertising performance.