Archive for October, 2007

Revenues collected by web search giant Google from its operations in the UK have outstripped those of the country’s largest commercial channel ITV1 for the first time.

In a move said to be a significant indication of the strength of the trend towards web marketing, Google’s third quarter brought in £327 million through its advertising streams, while ITV1 could only manage £317 million.

This comes despite the TV station enjoying a bumper month of viewing figures thanks to its broadcasts of the Rugby World Cup.

However, a year-long view of the UK advertising market still places ITV1 at the top due to its good start to the year and predictions of good revenues brought in over the upcoming festive season.

Nevertheless, Google’s rapid growth as a major challenger for advertising revenue has prompted calls from ITV executive chairman Michael Grade for a relaxation of regulations for the TV channel.

Commenting after Google overcame Channel 4 in terms of ad revenue, Mr Grade said: "Google, whose advertising revenues have overtaken Channel 4’s and which has 75 per cent of the search advertising market, is wholly unregulated. Yet ITV labours under a host of anachronistic proscriptions about what it can and can’t do."

Social networking phenomenon Facebook is reportedly soon to receive bids for advertising space on its site from a selection of top-name brands.

Despite not having produced a profit yet, Facebook was valued at £7.3 billion -more than British Airways - earlier this week when Microsoft took a stake in the firm.

And now fresh from landing that investment deal, Facebook is being examined as a potential marketing platform by firms such as Apple, Coca-Cola, Conde Nast, General Motors and Nike, according to the Times.

Advertising revenues are the most likely source of profit for Facebook, in a similar way to Google’s dominance of the sector in search.

And according to eMarketer predictions, it is set to provide an excellent source of funds - with the research firm’s estimates for this year already predicting advertising spend on social networks will near £620 million worldwide.

Such large sums are being directed towards sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo due to the detailed information they have stored about each site user - which marketers are hopeful of tapping to target their adverts to an unprecedented degree of accuracy.

Online retailers are showing that they have not forgotten the value of traditional advertising by making use of print catalogues to drive online commerce, according to a new study.

More than two-thirds of web retailers revealed in a survey by e-commerce association Shop.org that they already track the effect of their catalogue releases in terms of a boost to online sales.

On average, these web sellers claimed that 13 per cent of new customers on their online retail pages were driven to the site by the offline print catalogue.

"For online retailers, catalogues are an incredibly important tool for acquiring new customers and providing current customers with their first look at new products," said Shop.org’s executive director Scott Silverman.

Following such strong results for a tried-and-tested marketing tool in the world of virtual shopping, video marketing and search engine optimisation, it may come as no surprise that some 40 per cent of retailers plan to make the best of what they know by placing more importance on their catalogue in future.

But for the best results from a marketing campaign, it may be advisable to merge traditional offline methods with online strategies organised by a professional web marketing firm in order to reach the widest audience possible.

With paper copies of national newspapers seeing readership fall in many cases, it shows the value of spreading operations online that a number of papers are seeing resurgent times on the web.

Figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronics show that in September, the Guardian Unlimited piled on an extra million unique users while the Times Online did even better by upping its user-base by two million.

While this means the Guardian’s web pages remain top of the listings for the most visited UK newspaper website with 16.7 million users, the Times managed to leapfrog the Daily Mail group’s offering due to its exceptional growth over the month to an audience of 12.5 million.

All of these sites have undergone recent upgrades to add greater emphasis on social networking features to allow feedback from its readers and contact with its writers - which has seemingly proved popular among users.

With such high numbers of people heading online to get their news fix, it may come as no surprise that the daily hard-copy versions of these newspapers attract far fewer readers.

Official statistics for the Guardian put its circulation at just over 367,500, while the Times can boast 654,000 readers - far below the reach of the newspapers’ websites.

While the western world may view Google as the dominant force in the search market - ahead of its rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft - in other parts of the world Google is still struggling to make an impact, it has been reported.

In both searches launched and advertising, Google loses out to Naver in South Korea - only snatching up two per cent of all search queries in the country, according to NewsWeek.

And it’s a similar story for the vast internet population of China, with Google only attracting 17 per cent of searches - far behind its share inn western countries, such as the 82 per cent of queries undertaken by Google in Germany.

Competitor search engine sites could feasibly be a threat to the success of Google, according to the NewsWeek article since it has happened before to the likes of AltaVista.

In addition, the report suggests "it wouldn’t take a smash-hit new search engine to steal Google’s thunder; the damage could take the form of a slow leak of searchers to a variety of engines that each have some special appeal".

In a bid to simplify the process for its online marketing users, web giant Google is reported to be planning a one-stop-shop for web advertising.

According to MediaPost, Google’s president of advertising and commerce for North America, Tim Armstrong, said that with so many different types of advert being served by Google it would likely be useful for marketers to have one single platform to keep tabs on all areas.

He advised that the service would provide a "look across all assets, metrics and user-engagement cycles".

In recent months, Google has expanded its ad serving into areas such as video ads on its YouTube website, while it also signed a deal with Nielsen to track the performance of adverts on TV.

At an Analyst Session put on by Google, some other upcoming innovations from the Mountain View firm were also highlighted.

This includes upgrades to Google Trends, which was said by product manager Albery Cheng to be aiming to "make our search data universally accessible and useful" by allowing users to look for search trends among the greater public.

Two European internet advertising bodies have joined forces to establish international audience measurement standards.

The project is being carried out by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) and the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA), and it aims to establish standards for both user-centric and site-centric systems.

It will consider emerging measurement techniques in various other countries and will also identify the prime requirements for online media planning. The initiative has the support of the IAB’s equivalents in Canada, South America, the US and Australia. The US IAB recently started up its own working group for the same purpose.

The European working group will be chaired by Rene Lamsfuss of IAB Germany and it will also include members from IAB Europe, EIAA and local organisations.

"The MIA Project will clearly benefit from the extensive consultations and research that have already taken place in the UK," Laurence Bird, head of research and planning at IAB UK, said in an interview with internet site Research.

He claims that the initiative comes at a good time for the UK’s market - as a joint industry committee is currently working toward a common online planning system.

Google has announced that it will partner with Nielsen so that it can bring demographic data to Google TV ads.

The multiyear strategic partnership will leverage Nielsen’s experience in TV audience measurement and bring it to Google’s advertising network. Google TV ads was launched in May and is an online platform upon which advertisers can buy, sell, measure and deliver television ads.

"As we continue to expand our TV advertising program, it is important that we provide advertisers and agencies with data that will help them reach their target demographic with the right ad," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement.

"Working closely with Nielsen, the industry leader, improves our measurement capabilities by adding a demographic layer on top of existing set-top box data."

David Calhoun, chief executive of Nielsen, added: "The relationship with Google - which we expect will expand significantly in the months ahead - is a prime example of the ways Nielsen is embracing new technologies, platforms, and relationships worldwide to serve clients more completely, to provide companies with its insights, and to help expand the base of potential advertisers everywhere."

Targeted emails, containing information that is relevant to the customer, can help increase responses, it has been claimed.

Richard, chair of Benchmarking Hub at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), claims that email marketing can be an "excellent channel" - both when used alone or as a constituent of an integrated marketing strategy with direct mail and telemarketing.

"One of the frequently touted benefits of email is the low cost," Richard Gibson, chair of Benchmarking Hub, DMA Email Marketing Council, said.

"It could also have a potentially negative connotation in so far as if little investment of resource is put into an email marketing programme then the likely returns will be lower because the recipients are receiving undifferentiated and untargeted messages."

The Direct Marketing Association UK is Europe’s largest trade association in the marketing and communications sector

"Email marketing can be very well used by small businesses and it often is," Mr Gibson continued.

"At the easy to execute level of the spectrum, most companies will be able to send a newsletter updating their customers and prospects of news, new developments in products."

Monster Worldwide has managed to beat analysts forecasts, posting a quarterly net profit of $33.3 million yesterday.

The company last year reported a third quarter loss of $83.8 million, after it came off badly in a unit sale.

Revenues increased by 25 per cent year-on-year, rising from $286 million to $337 million. Adjusted earnings stood at $0.35 per share, beating forecasts by $0.02 per share. Operating margins increased two per cent from the previous quarter, rising to 21 per cent.

"We believe our third quarter results demonstrated the strength of the Monster brand in a difficult domestic market environment," the company’s Monster’s chief executive, Sal Iannuzzi, commented.

"Our ongoing strategy to expand our franchise on a global basis contributed to the significant revenue growth and strong margin expansion we experienced in our International segment. Our ability to provide quality job candidates to our employer customers on a global basis provides a competitive advantage in the marketplace and enhances Monster’s position as the global online recruitment leader."