Gasta Tech Update: Hotwise Europe

Hitwise News On Gasta.com




Feature Article
The brands topping the World Cup sponsorship league
Peroni, sponsors of the Italian team and England sponsors, Carlsberg saw the greatest number of UK Internet searches of all World Cup sponsors during the week ending 26/06/2010. Searches for Peroni, increased by 50% between the week ending June 19 and the week ending June 26, although the Italian team were on their way home from South Africa by June 24. Peroni's Experian Hitwise World Cup Index score increased from 100 to 150 based upon the volume of searches for the brand.

The promise of a last-16 tie against Germany saw UK Internet searches for Carlsberg increase by a third, while searches for Pepsi, sponsors of the USA, increased by the same amount. Telecoms businesses T-Mobile and Vodafone (down from fourth place in week two's index) completed the top five, but with a much lower increase in the volume of searches.

The results highlight the relative dominance of drinks brands in generating online buzz in the 2010 World Cup. Budweiser topped the brand index for the week ending 26/06/2010 with a 25% increase in online searches, while in the first week of the tournament, beer companies made up four of the top five performers.

Overall the best performing sector was food and drink, with a 4.8% increase in searches, followed by technology and telecoms with a 2.8% increase.

View the full article and past Brand Indexes.
Brand Index Week 3 - top five performers
Rank Brand Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index, w/e 19th June Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index w/e 26th June Week on week change (%)
1. Peroni 100 150 50.0%
2. Carlsberg 60 80 33.3%
3. Pepsi 49 65 33.3%
4. T-Mobile 110 118 7.2%
5. Vodafone 127 136 7.0%


Fast Movers
LoveFilm - www.lovefilm.com

Position for April 2010 - #134
Position for May 2010 - #89
Positions jumped - 45

Ranking 89th during May 2010, LoveFilm is now one of the top 100 websites in the UK, and the 11th most popular online retailer (putting it ahead of a number of big names including: B&Q, ASOS, Apple, Top Shop, Currys, and HMV). LoveFilm is also the second most visited movie website in the UK after IMDB.

Since taking over Amazon's DVD rental business in early 2008, UK internet traffic to LoveFilm has increased by 150%. Unlike most other retailers, the DVD rental subscription service isn't particularly reliant on search engines for traffic (they account for just one-fifth of visits vs. two-fifths for the typical retailer). Instead, other key sources of traffic are social networks (it is the 8th most popular retailer visited after Facebook), email and entertainment websites - with much of the former traffic coming via advertising, affiliates and refer a friend schemes.


News In Brief
Budget 2010: the online response
Given the wide range of changes introduced in the recent budget announcement, it was no surprise that many people went online to research both the key points and finer details. On 22/06/2010 1 in every 179 UK searches was budget related, including 21 of the top 1000 terms. 'budget 2010' was the 25th most searched for term in the UK on the day of the budget announcement, making it the top generic term ('budget' was 29th overall and 'world cup 2010' was 32nd).

After a number of the variations on the word 'budget', the next most popular term was 'capital gains tax', with tax credits, child benefit, VAT and the disability living allowance also picking up references in the top 1,000. 'bbc budget' was the top branded term ('sky news live' fell slightly outside of the top 1,000) and George Osbourne was the most searched for politician, followed by Harriet Harman (also falling outside the top 1,000).

As expected, both BBC News and Sky News experienced spikes in traffic following the budget announcement. Taking into account some of the smaller sites that benefited from traffic, Telegraph Blogs experienced the biggest increase (87% increase in UK Internet visits between 21/06/10 and 22/06/10), followed by Telegraph Shares (85%), Yahoo! Finance (74%) and MSN Money (60%).

View the 21 budget-related terms and read the full article.


Promotions
Hitwise 101 Training Webinar
Whether you are new to Hitwise or simply in need of a refresher, this 45 minute pre-recorded webinar will help you get the most out of your Hitwise subscription.

View the recording.

Hot Consumer Electronics List

The Hot Consumer Electronics List is a dynamic Excel-based report which leverages Hitwise's weekly search term data to produce an on-the-pulse view of the Consumer Electronics sector in the UK. Email marketing.uk@hitwise.com to find out how the Hot Consumer Electronics List helps marketers maximise PPC investment, assess and adjust search strategy to increase profits, maximise content appeal, effectively manage supply chains and improve campaign scheduling.


Media queries at Hitwise
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Additionally, if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact our marketing team at newsletter.uk@hitwise.com.

Gasta News:Mobile internet is growing eight times faster than PC-based web

Mobile internet is growing eight times faster than PC-based web
The mobile internet is growing eight times faster than traffic to the PC-based web, according to the first set of mobile data from Nielsen Online.
The research company has released its first Mobile Media findings which show traffic on the mobile internet increased by 25% to 7.3m during 3Q 2008. The survey found 25% of mobile internet users are aged 16-24 compared with just 12% who are older than 55.
BBC News is the most popular mobile internet site, attracting 1.7m
Kent Ferguson, senior analyst for Nielsen, said the mobile web was a great opportunity for advertisers and publishers to reach important demographic groups. "People often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this, wherever they are," he said.

Sale Of Search Engine Network

Sale Of Search Engine Network Generates Traffic

We've been getting a lot of emails looking for more information about the European Search Engine Network that I posted about the other day. To eliminate some of the questions, I am posting some more information about this 12 year old network of sites that is built upon their search technology. The more I learn about what they have, the more potential I see for someone with additional skills, capital, and other resources to tie into what they already have and expand on or into the European market.

Here is some more information:

- Monthly traffic of 3,000,000+ per month across the network.

- 3,500 current /past advertisers

- Registered as a European distribution partner for Microsoft Adwords.

- A partner with Google Doubleclick and Adsense.

- Has the ability to deploy new local search engines quickly.

- Currently targeting markets in Europe, US, and several other countries as well as several topics, such as travel.

- Owns at least 4 trademarks

- Currently has 450+ Domains launched on their servers.

Domains:
· International
· US
· UK
· Ireland
· Europe
· Austria
· France
· Germany
· Italy
· Spain
· India
· China
· Japan
· South Africa
· Money
· Travel
· and several others

If you are interested or require more information please let me know and I will put you in touch with the company. I've been friends with the owner for some time now and agreed to help them find a buyer if I can.

I would have thought the current economic situation would have made it difficult to generate interest in a search network such as this, but I was clearly wrong. There are many that would like to expand their current holdings and sites like social networks, consumer shopping sites, auction sites, and sites that are based on UGC (User Generated Content) seem to be super interested in adding mature search to the current offerings. Building is always an option, but why build and re-invent the wheel when you can buy.

And I just learned today that one of my old favorite UK search engines, www.Burf.com was sold and now has a new owner.
If you need to reach me, just Google "NielsenTech" and you should be able to contact me.

posted by (hris @ 9:59 PM

Gasta Advetising set to grow

Find the online opportunities in your own backyard: Gasta.com

Billions of local ad dollars will be moving online in coming years. Find out which outlets offer the best potential returns.

These days, the advertising community is focusing its attention on how to create ads for online media -- including video, rich media, Flash, etc. -- and the revenue potential associated with these channels. However, a less-often-asked but vitally important question in terms of industry shift, as well as dollars and cents, is this: Where will these ads be placed?

Industry estimates suggest that mobile advertising will reach nearly $10 billion in the next few years, with online video reaching nearly $3 billion. However, advertising at the local market level -- although not as frequently discussed -- has the potential for even bigger numbers and greater growth. What's more, local advertising isn't at odds with mobile and online video, as many assume. Rather, rich media and geotargeted place-based mobile advertising are likely to be big components of that local online ad spend. Within the context of the changing media landscape, local online advertising represents a massive opportunity that is coming into its own -- and bears more attention from the advertising community.

Tip O'Neill once said, "All politics is local." And while that's not quite true of advertising, it does resonate when assessing this new shift into hyper-local marketing and advertising. According to eMarketer, $97 billion of the $157 billion -- more than 60 percent -- of the advertising market in the U.S. is focused on local. The online portion of that has thus far lagged behind the other advertising channels, with only about $2.1 billion -- 2 percent -- of local advertising being online at the end of 2007. However, that number is expected to more than triple over the next four years to more than $7.8 billion. That's a huge movement of dollars shifting toward reaching local audiences online.

But where are these dollars going to end up?

Although traditional local media -- Yellow Pages, newspapers, radio and broadcast television -- all have an online presence, none of them enjoys the dominance on the web that they do in their "home markets." Yet their audiences are moving online at faster and faster rates, resulting in major drop-offs in print subscriptions to newspapers, broadcast TV audiences, terrestrial radio listenership and Yellow Pages customers.

For example, the Kelsey Group recently found the erosion of print Yellow Pages is going to increase from 2-3 percent to more than 10 percent this year. That's a pretty massive decrease year over year. And even the Yellow Pages Marketing Association concedes that although online usage of Yellow Pages is growing, a 10 percent drop in print usage dwarfs the increase in online searches. Newspapers are in a similar boat with their advertising; online ad sales are climbing, but offline usage declines are taking a larger chunk of ad sales away from the industry as a whole.

And yet, projections show online ad sales more than tripling -- and there has to be a place for all that advertising to land, outside of the traditional media's online presences mentioned above.

With Google, Yahoo and online Yellow Pages growing their audiences, there is certainly going to be growth in local business searches. But what about brand advertising and trying to reach people who are migrating away from traditional television, radio and newspaper outlets for their news?

The numbers are a little grim. There are about 1,400 daily newspapers and 7,000 television and radio stations in the U.S., and back-of-the-envelope math shows that they each produce about three to six stories per day, or about 22,000 local stories for the entire U.S. This for an audience of roughly 20,000 individual cities and towns. All these players used to be able to back up their locally produced content with national stories, thereby providing a full news experience for their viewers or readers. But, the internet has changed all that; people get their national news from national sources. Instead of competing with other local newspapers, papers are competing with every news site that has a web page. Given this fragmentation, local news sites are not maintaining their market share.

So what's going to take up the slack?

Well, nature abhors a vacuum. Thus, amateur, user-generated content and commentaries are taking off in local markets. The internet's solution to the dearth of local news coverage is the same as it has been with other problems of scale: let the people build it themselves. Similar to Wikipedia, the Open Directory and Usenet, truly local content is going to be provided by the people who live there.

In looking at sites like MetroBlogs, Gothamist publications, Outside.in, NowPublic, Baristanet and Topix (the site that I run), it becomes apparent that a massive amount of attention and investment has been paid to giving people a platform for engagement with the places they live. And while social networks (based on who you know) like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace have generated a lot of usage, and even more buzz, none of them has really provided a locally contextual venue. You are unlikely to meet the neighbors who live two blocks away via Facebook or LinkedIn. However, when that same family starts blogging about your neighborhood or commenting on something another neighbor wrote, it's a compelling discussion -- one that you're likely to read and possibly even join.

Given the aforementioned advertising growth and the decline of the traditional places for it to go, user-generated content is where the action is going to be. The local online outlets that make the most sense for a given campaign will vary greatly depending on where you live and who you're trying to reach with your advertising. But the potential audience size available through these channels is impressive. Speaking for Topix, we've seen comment rates go from around 30,000 comments a day in the middle of 2007 to more than 140,000 comments a day -- or more than 3.5 million comments a month -- across more than 20,000 cities and towns within the U.S.

Media consumption and local audiences' preferences are shifting. Advertising is going to shift as well. So along with that cool viral video and mobile campaign, consider how you can make the most of region-specific opportunities as the $97 billion gorilla of locally targeted ad dollars spent in the U.S. starts to move online.

Chris Tolles is CEO of Topix

Gasta News: Orange Makeover

Orange will kick off a £30m makeover this week?

The operator has worked with creative agency Fallon to produce a global integrated campaign which it said is its biggest yet.

The campaign involves advertising around its new "I am..." positioning, along with changes to 120 consumer touch points including its call centres and stores.

The Orange portal will be updated to reflect the changes with more inclusion of user-generated

Gasta search convergence

The Register reports that Microsoft is to acquire Norwegian business search engine company Fast Search and Transfer for 6.6bn kroner ($1.23bn)

The software giant said it would pay 19 Norwegian kroner a share for the Oslo-based firm, which represents a 42 per cent premium to the closing share price on 4 January, the day before Microsoft stepped in with its bid.

Fast's board of directors and nearly half of its shareholders have already voted in favour of the buy-out and urged its remaining shareholders to accept Redmond's hefty offer.

In recent months Microsoft has beefed up its Web 2.0 intentions by investing in a number of data centres inside and outside the US as it clambers for a larger chunk of the search engine pie.

The Fast deal, which should be completed in the second quarter of 2008 subject to the usual regulatory approvals, will give the firm tailored internet search functions for corporate customers that include the likes of United Parcel Services and Deutsche Telekom AG.

Publicly-listed Fast said it welcomed the arrival of the Bill Gates jamboree, perhaps unsurprising given that in its last set of results the firm reported a third-quarter loss of $100m.