'Net Features : research

Ad Research with RedBooks And WhatRunsWhere

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:00:00 GMT

Can I pick 'em or what? Several months ago, Website Magazine gave some coverage to WhatRunsWhere, an innovative online service that enables online media buyers to see exactly where certain advertisers were appearing with their display campaigns. Well, it seems I wasn't the only one that saw some value in the service.

WhatRunsWhere has apparently partnered with RedBooks, a provider of information on advertiser and agency relationships, key personnel and billing information. Through the arrangement, RedBooks and WhatRunsWhere will share data - and it could turn out to be a very valuable relationship for users of both services.

Users of the WhatRunsWhere platform researching an advertiser will receive a description of the brand from from Red Books, along with contact information, revenue and names of marketing or sales executives. When Red Books users look up an advertiser, they will see the brand’s current online display and text ads via WhatRunsWhere.

Consumer Reviews in the Engagement Era

Administrator — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:30:00 GMT

How much influence do reviews from consumers have on the purchasing decisions of other consumers? Turns out, quite a bit, according to the recently released “Buy It, Try It, Rate It” study from Weber Shandwick.

The majority of potential consumer electronics purchases (65 percent) for example are inspired by a consumer review to select a brand that “had not been in their original consideration set” according to the report. “The increasing impact of consumer reviews on sales means that marketers must learn how to effectively manage the flood of online opinion engulfing shoppers,” said Williams. “Online user reviews are transforming buying decisions. Our study sheds new light on why, how and when shoppers use both user reviews as well as traditional editorial reviews in the purchase process.”

Other interesting findings from the study include:

- Consumer electronics buyers pay more attention to other consumer reviews than to editorial reviews by a margin of three-to-one.
- Nearly nine in 10 consumers (88 percent) say they are somewhat or very knowledgeable about consumer electronics, yet still consult reviews, consumer and/or professional (60 percent and 52 percent, respectively), when looking to make a purchase.
- 80 percent of consumers are concerned about the authenticity of consumer reviews.
- Consumer electronics buyers read an average of 11 consumer reviews.
- The most influential reviews are those that seem fair and reasonable (32 percent), are well written (27 percent) and contain statistics, specifications and technical data (25 percent).

The full report is available here (PDF).

Google Study: Search Ads Prompt Traffic

Michael Garrity — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:45:00 GMT

Online advertising has always been blessing for marketers because of how much easier it is to track and actually retrieve data on how their ads are performing. And yes, we have all heard about the supposedly questionable accuracy of analyzing online metrics, but in the end it's better to have data than to not. However, one pretty substantial issue for marketers comes from the existence of search ads, as many advertisers have concerns that these adds are cutting into their site's organic traffic.

The question many ask is that if search ads were suspended, would site's see enough of an increase in clicks on organic search results that would then make up for the loss in paid traffic? Well, Google statisticians sought out to answer that question and recently conducted over 400 studies on paused accounts to find it.

The collection, aptly titled Search Ads Pause Studies, saw a group of the company's researchers observing organic click volume in the absence of search ads. From there, they created a statistical model that would predict click volume for given levels of ad spend. This model works by generating estimates for the incremental clicks that can be attributed to search ads. This allowed them to discover the percentage of paid clicks that are not compensated for by organic clicks in lieu of search ads.

What they found was a little one-sided. Apparently, the incremental ad clicks (IAC) percentage across verticals, on average, is 89 percent, which means that almost 90 percent of the traffic that comes from search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when the search ads are paused. The study also claims that this number was consistently high across all verticals.

For marketers looking to ensure optimum presence online, this study helps to put to rest concerns about pay-per-click (PPC) ads cannibalizing organic click results. Of course, there is always overlap and the study does show that having a high-ranking organic listing does tend to make it less likely that users will click your ad, but that is not always a given. Likewise, while PPC can occasionally infringe on organic clicks, it still appears to be a worthwhile investment, as it will help increase your visibility and boost your click volume.

Find Link Targets, Prospects with Similar Site

Mike Phillips — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:30:00 GMT

One of the best ways to grow an audience is to find other audiences in your industry. Similar Site Search (Similar-Site.com) does just that, and more. Simply enter a website into the search bar at the top and you'll get a list of similar websites as results. Furthermore, you can click the "tool" button at top right and adjust settings - such as search depth, tags (deselect tags you don't want to include) and the ability to add tags to your search.

Websites are a good start. But you can also narrow your similar search to specific URLs. So, if you find an article interesting, copy the specific URL into the Similar Site Search search bar and you will get similar results based on that specific URL's content. Should a search turn up empty or with lackluster results, users are prompted to add tags to refine the search and help future searchers.

We have experimented with the tool and so far the results are very positive. For publishers this is an excellent way to find targets for new audiences, places to leave blog comments, resources for new links and to keep an eye on the competition. For advertisers, Similar Site Search is a nice (no-cost) way to find potential channels to advertise with or future partners. Another thing we like - no registration is required.

Similar Site is relatively new and they are working to make the service better and more in-depth. But this is definitely one to keep bookmarked - there is always tremendous value in researching what's happening in your industry.

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Compete's SEO/SEM Breakouts

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:28:00 GMT

I don't say this very often about a company, but Compete.com has really impressed me with their latest announcement that paid versus natural search breakouts are available in their search analytics solution. The data shows the percentage of search referrals that a website gets from paid search trended over the last six months. This will allow Web professionals to find out if their competitors are relying on search engine optimization or search marketing, identify spikes in paid search activity with six months of trended data and even enable you to benchmark paid search activity to your competitors.

What Are Users Searching For?

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:30:00 GMT

A research study from Penn State revealed that roughly 80 percent of searches are "informational" (looking for a specific fact or topic), 10 percent are "navigational" (looking to locate a specific website) and the remainder of searches are "transactional" (looking for information related to purchasing a particular product or service).

The researchers analyzed more than 1.5 million queries from hundreds of thousands of search engine users. "This research has broad implications for search engines and e-commerce if they can classify the user intent of queries in real time. This is why we wanted a computational undemanding algorithm," said Jim Jansen.

So what's the takeaway for Web professionals?
I've long been a proponent of a four step "communication" process that focuses on raising awareness, educating consumers, building trust and making the sale. The paper (Determining the informational, navigational and transactional intent of Web queries" presented by Jansen and Penn State work well with this approach and it lasers in on how we as business owners should be focusing our promotional efforts - fostering consumer reviews, engaging in SEO and SEM for branding and producing content which informs and educates prospects.

Searching For Brand Information

Administrator — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:20:00 GMT

For business owners who want to name a new product, find out what products their competitors are selling or license their brand to a larger company, there is a pretty good, free database in FindOwnerSearch.com, a resource that enables users to access brand and category information.

When you type a brand into FindOwnerSearch.com, that brand and its owner information will be retrieved from over 1 million database entries. Users can also search for thousands of categories with results featuring brands associated with that specific category. For example, the category "magazine" results in thousands of entries. These can be sorted by owner and brand name (i.e. we can see the brand name owner, the address, website and phone - if available - for all of these publications). If you don't mind the liberal use of Adsense and simplistic presentation it's a resource to check out in your spare time.

Free, Easy, Ongoing Competitive Research

Administrator — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:08:00 GMT

If you are obsessed with what your competitors are doing, then check out Competitio.us - an excellent resource for making the process of competitive research much easier.

The service enables anyone a simple way to track who competitors are, what they are doing and most importantly how their activities affect your company and your bottom line. "Competitors" can either be a company, a service, even a product. Competitio.us also enables users to find, save and share news about the competition you've identified through a rather elegant "clipping" system. There are quite a few other noteworthy features including the ability to create a comparison matrix, RSS news feed subscriptions, and traffic data comparisons from Alexa. Users can track multiple projects and collaborate with members of your team.

I first came across Competitio.us about one year ago. While it fell of my radar after initial testing, one of our readers sent in a request for free, easy, ongoing competitive research tool. Competitio.us is a good one - so enjoy - setting up an account would be a great weekend project.

Forum Research With Dipiti

Administrator — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:08:00 GMT

If you are researching a topic or want to keep track of what is being said about a certain product or brand, there is often no better place than an active Internet forum. While search engines are wonderful resources to help us locate information, where they often fail is in the immediacy of the content provided. Today's darling could be tomorrow's outcast, so keeping tabs on what's being said is imperative. The challenge of forums is that there are so many and engaging in those communities for the sake of research takes a great deal of time and effort.

Enter Dipiti (beta): from the Dipiti.com site: "Dipiti currently connects online users to 2,322 communities and 28,979,436 conversations. Dipiti does this by discovering, qualifying, and organizing thousands sites of all sizes across the web so online users can quickly and easily find the most relevant information, connect with others on communities and expert sites, and gain answers and support."

Dipiti only focuses on a few categories of interest (Health, Legal, Money, Pet Care). I conducted a search for "IRS audit" in the legal category and found only two site results. Another search however for "Flu" in the health category found a respectable 41 results from some good sites with seemingly active conversations happening.

While there is room for improvement in the depth of forum coverage, Dipiti could end up an essential part of online research for marketers.