search marketing blog: ambergreen

Consumer Generated Media (CGM) is set to further advance the commercial growth of the internet, new research has predicted.

According to Nielsen Online, which conducted a global survey of online shopping habits, one in four buyers relied on personal recommendations before making a purchase.

“The explosion in CGM over the last year means that this reliance on word of mouth, over other forms of referral, looks set to increase,” said president, Jonathan Carson.

Social networking sites and blog posts are examples of how Web 2.0 has evolved. This interactive element relies on consumer feedback and gives established brands opportunities to better understand their markets.

The survey revealed an explosion in internet shopping and estimated that more than 85 per cent of the world’s population has shopped online.

Bruce Paul, vice president of customised research, said most shoppers remain loyal to familiar sites: “If shopping sites can capture them early, and create a positive shopping experience, they will likely capture their loyalty and their money.”

Research company Nielsen will launch the world’s largest focus group during the US Superbowl on Sunday. It expects thousands of online viewers to rate the TV commercials that are shown during the game. The company is using its own social network, Hey! Nielsen, to gather the data which it will compare with comments and discussion points posted by other members. Karen Watson, senior vice president of communications is hoping it can “shine extra light on important emerging questions for advertisers”. She wants to know: “What do highly engaged consumers think? How do they react to advertising? To what extent do they tell others?” The scheme will rate commercials from one to four and then its data will be shared with the company’s clients. Internet TV could bridge online and traditional TV advertising - both media are using video clips and the internet could bring a more interactive element to marketers’ messages.

At Ambergreen international projects are a common thing - just look at some of our clients! And if you are looking for a strong partner we are the ones to hook up with. Our Integration Management Programme (IMP) is specifically designed for long-term cooperations.

Christmas saw a marked increase in internet shopping for several of the UK’s retailers, new data has shown. Figures from Nielsen Online showed Swarovski attracted 355,000 unique users, a growth of over 200 per cent and revealed big gains for Superdrug, Matalan, Morrisons and Ernest Jones. Auction site eBay attracted an average 15 million unique visitors per month while Amazon brought in 14 million and Argos attracted half this number. Alex Burmaster, internet analyst, noted that eBay and Amazon remained “by some distance, the most dominant retailers online,” however, he said it was a good retail performance all round. “The top ten retailers, on average, were visited by 33 per cent more people than they were during the same period in 2006. This is particularly impressive, considering that the internet population itself ‘only’ grew by ten per cent in this time.” Very few retailers are without an online presence. Marks and Spencer, which saw poor sales from the high street, reported online sales were up 78 per cent in the three months to Christmas.

Make sure you don’t miss the boom. Whether you are looking to re-brand or increase your link popularity, we are the first address to turn to.

Internet analyst, comScore, has released data that confirmed the penetration of ‘Widgets’ into social networking sites. It has revealed that in November 2007 they were viewed by nearly 148 million internet users. Widgets from MySpace.com were most popular (57 million) followed by those created by Slide.com (39.2 million). Executive vice president, Linda Boland Abraham, said “the widget space is rapidly evolving” and she would follow their development closely. Widgets are independent tools that can be downloaded or applied in separate sites - Google calls its version, “Gadgets” and Facebook refers to them as “applications”. Social networking sites, which use open platform software, have allowed independent developers to design custom widgets. The report found widgets have reached 61 per cent of the Facebook audience and the most popular are Top Friends, Movies and SuperPoke!. Advertisers can have their messages displayed within a Widget, rather than as a sidebar and companies as large as Twentieth Century Fox have invested in their potential.

Yahoo has one of the most popular Widget platforms and with Ambergreen’s accreditation for the Yahoo Search Submit (YSS) programme you can be sure to harness the popularity of these clever little helpers.

Internet search provider Google is introducing a new feature which allows advertisers to monitor their ads by set age groups. The addition to the company’s AdWords is called Demographic Bidding, which it claims can give advertisers greater control over their audience. A post on the official AdWords blogsite has said there are two ways of applying the facility. It allows advertisers to “modify your bids for a particular audience segment” or “ask that your ads not be shown to certain demographic groups”. The system works by taking data from publishers, which ask their users to sign in with their date of birth when creating their own pages – such as social networking sites. The post reassured potential adopters that all data was ‘anonymised’ before Google receives it and only available from site users who have agreed to their networks’ conditions. The development of online video advertising and click-to-view video could be restricted if broadband speeds are not quick enough to handle the additional files.

Ambergreen and Google are a good match as our expertise stretches from pay per click advertising to marketing research and can help you understand who your customers are and how you can reach them effectively.

Chief information security officers (CISOs) are strongly against company employees using social networking sites and would prefer them banned, a new report has revealed. Research by Global Secure Systems (GSS) found that UK businesses lost £6.5 billion in productivity last year because of workers using sites like Facebook. In a recent meeting held by Infosecurity Europe 2008 with 20 CISOs, the executives estimated they were losing between 15 and 20 per cent of bandwidth to social networking sites. GSS reviewed its own traffic problems and was forced to act. The company avoided having to upgrade its bandwidth and saved itself thousands of pounds. David Hobson, managing director, explained that “after locking down this traffic and just allowing staff to view these sites during their lunch hour or after work, we found we didn’t actually need to upgrade our bandwidth after all”. GSS have advised applying a “reasonable use policy” rather than an outright ban. Companies can implement this by using in-built filters that deny access to certain sites. Advertising sponsored communication within networks has been called ‘Word-of-Mice’ marketing and has yet to prove its full value to marketers.

Marketers have achieved success in social networks thanks to ‘word-of-mice’ advertising, Online Media Daily has reported. John Donovan, chief operations officer of social lenders, Lending Club, told the website he integrated his application into Facebook and attracted $1 million (£500,000) within two weeks. He explained: “Facebook extends an assumed or inferred endorsement across groups of people.” Max Lenderman, executive creative director of GMR Marketing, said more marketers were now involved. “The key to any social network campaign, the most paramount thing, is authenticity. Be upfront - be true to the brand,” he advised. However, Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys consultancy urged advertisers to be cautious: “A flick of the mouse is not loyalty; it’s not engagement.” He explained that advertisers were dealing with the “bionic consumer of the 21st century” and recommended they get “some sort of predictive engagement metrics in place”.

Microsoft is developing a digital advertising solution for grocery carts that helps shoppers find products, the Associated Press has reported. MediaCart will be trialled in the US later this year. It will allow shoppers to log in at home, create a customised shopping list and swipe items as they shop. It is hoped the process will make shopping easier, provide essential information for food makers and allow advertisements to be viewed by people as they buy. Microsoft hopes to improve customer experience and has denied the new technology is primarily for promoting new products. “This is not all necessarily about bombarding consumers, about targeting advertising,” said Scott Ferris, general manager. Supermarket planners have often incorporated advertising in their designs - products that achieve greater profits are commonly placed at eye-level and essential goods are often situated furthest from the entrance.

Companies have remained loyal to internet advertising while traditional marketing has struggled, a new report has revealed. The Bellwether Report found that budget cuts had affected media marketing funds but nearly four in ten companies revised up their internet marketing accounts. The report’s author, Chris Williamson, explained that 2007 finished weakly amid worries about the economy and consumer confidence. “The Bellwether survey reveals a marked deterioration in business conditions in the fourth quarter of last year, which companies responded to by trimming their marketing budgets,” he said. Retailers who have ignored the internet could lose up to half of their profits, online retail analyst IMRG has warned - it calculated that internet shopping in the UK will be 50 per cent of the retail market by 2018. Positive results from JJB Sports and Ted Baker have offered some consolation to the retail sector, which had a disappointing Christmas.

Online advertising companies had a large presence at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and according to one executive, they went to listen not to talk. The huge US gadget show featured a myriad of new technologies and marketers used it to find out what consumers might want in the future, the CNN Techland blog has reported. David Karnstedt, senior vice president for Yahoo sales said his executives “spend a good portion of their time at CES in learning mode”. “There are always new ad formats and platforms emerging, like mobile and rich media ads, and our customers are always asking us about how they can better use those technologies.” Search giant Google has almost 70 per cent of the US search market, new figures have revealed. Research by compete found its nearest rival in search figures was Yahoo! which recorded 17 per cent followed by MSN/Live with 9.1 per cent.