Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

Climate Change – An Online Perspective

2009-10-15T07:14:59Z

Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. I join over 7,000 bloggers worldwide who are all sharing their thoughts and insights into this year’s theme ‘Climate Change'.

The recent release of the fifth annual Lowy Institute poll surveyed public opinion around a broad range of foreign policy issues, including climate change.

Key attitudinal changes towards Climate Change in the poll between findings in 2009 compared to 2006 include;

· ‘People unsure if global warming is really a problem and no action should be taken’ increased 85.7% to 13% of respondents.

· ‘People seeing that it is a serious and pressing problem and requires immediate action' decreased 29.4% to 48% of respondents

Other findings indicated that 76% of people see Climate Change as a problem and 60% see that finding a solution is becoming more urgent.

There seems to be a lowering of concern in these responses and so I have turned to search data to see if general interest around the issues of Climate Change has also cooled.

Searches for terms relevant to Climate Change have increased 6.5% over the past 12 months, (w/e 10 October compared to w/e 11 October 2008) and while there have been troughs and peaks over the past three years the overall level of search around Climate Change has declined 23.3% (w/e 10 October 2009 compare to w/e 14 October 2006)..

As an indicator of interest in a given topic the search results provide a similar view to the results from the Lowy Institute poll.

The chart below represents the downstream websites from a portfolio of search terms relating to Climate Change and Global Warming. I have analysed the top 100 websites and categorised them to provide a view of where Australians go when specifically searching for information around the subject. The top 100 websites represent 76.8% of visits from the search portfolio in the 12 weeks ending 10 October 2009.

While News and Media websites provide coverage and discussion of issues surrounding Climate Change and corresponding Government initiatives, when it comes to the Australian’s looking for specific information they turn to the Government websites, both National and State. Government websites represent 38.2% of traffic from the portfolio, with commercial websites receiving 12.0%, relying on a heavy emphasis towards Government Rebates for greener energy in their marketing efforts.

Organisations such as Greenpeace and the United Nations along with Reference websites like Wikipedia also receive a strong level of visits from the search portfolio, while News and Media websites and Social Media websites do not garner substantial levels of visits around Climate Change.

News and Media websites play an important part in the discussion and dissemination of information and news as it happens, but Government cannot rely on this coverage as a strategic driver for further discovery of policy and legislative direction.

The following table indicates where the 14 State and Federal Government Climate Change websites receive their traffic. Search Engines are the most important driver of visits generating 45.3% of all visits in September 2009, followed by a range of Government and Environmental websites.

News and Media websites generate only 1.52% of traffic to these key Government websites, highlighting the opportunity for the Governments to market their websites to deliver comprehension around complex and often confusing subjects.

Although search levels around Climate Change have decreased in the past year, the level of paid search activity is a low 2.5% (4 weeks ending 10 October 2009) compared to the all websites visited by Australian Internet users paid search rate of 4.9%.

In search marketing it is important to work with the language of the users. Within the portfolio the top search term for the 12 weeks ending 10 October is ‘global warming’ with 11.4% of search volume, well ahead of ‘climate change’ the third ranked search term accounting for 6.3% of the portfolio’s volume.

The opportunities for Governments to maximise interest and generate increased understanding include;

· Internal marketing efforts across Government Departments and between State and Federal Governments.

· Search marketing, both paid and search engine optimisation.

· Domain name strategy, www.globalwarming.gov.au is not being utilised, yet ‘global warming’ search term is almost twice the volume of ‘climate change’.

· Social Media – a resource for continually measuring the heat of the subject as well as being a part of the community conversations.

· Display /affiliate advertising across Portals, Email Services, News and Media, and Weather websites.

Visit www.blogactionday.org for further information and posts relating to Climate Change.

NB: Portfolio comprises of 156 of search terms that drive traffic to the Climate Change specific sites and variations of the term ‘climate’.

eBay 10 Years On

2009-10-13T01:17:17Z

Last week eBay Australia’s website celebrated its 10th anniversary, so I thought it timely to have a look at the website’s performance over the past few years.

Over the past 10 years eBay Australia has had many local competitors come and go, amongst them GoFish and Stuff, only to see them fold under the continued success of the eBay brand. In other sectors, established brands have risen and fallen and through all of this eBay has continued to prosper.

eBay Australia has the second highest online penetration rate amongst local Internet users, only behind eBay UK, when compared to the markets measured by Experian Hitwise. This highlights the strength and dominance of the eBay brand in the Australian market.

The chart below aggregates the top 10 eBay sites visited by local users, highlights the comparative strength of the brand across Australia, UK, US, Canada and Singapore.

In the past three years Australian Internet users’ visits to the online Auction industry has declined 7.8%, impacted by increased competition from Classifieds brands such as Gumtree and Craigslist and the rising share of visits attributed to Social Media brands such as Facebook.

The Classified industry has increased 41.7% over the past three years (September 2009 compared to October 2006) on the back of large increases by the local Gumtree websites (200 to 900%+). Auctions websites maintain a commanding share of visits enjoying 7 times as many visits by comparison to Classifieds websites and one in every 49 visits by Australian Internet Users.

eBay is the dominant brand in Australia, with 39 of its branded websites accounting for 88.3% of Auction visits. eBay Australia accounts for 81.9% of eBay websites, and 72.3% of all Auction visits.

Ranked as the leading Auctions and Shopping Classifieds website for the past three years, eBay is currently the number 7 most visited website by Australian Internet users behind Google (.com.au and .com), Facebook, Live Mail, NineMSN and YouTube.

The term ‘ebay’ was the fourth most searched for term during the 4 weeks ending 3 October 2009 also featuring the in the 6th and 54th highest volume search terms, consolidating these terms places the eBay brand as the third most search for brand online behind Facebook and YouTube, with almost 1 in every 100 search terms containing the eBay brand, (0.98%).

eBay’s audience could be described as spanning all elements of Australian society with an emphasis on blue collar workers in new and outer suburbs plus country and coastal centres. For the 4 weeks ending 3 October 2009 the four most over represented Mosaic Lifestyle Groups also reflect the largest share of visits to eBay. Over the past 12 months there has been minimal change to audience profile of eBay offering opportunities to develop strategies and tactics to increase share of the more affluent and metropolitan Mosaic Groups.

Other key statistics include:

* Average visit time increased 55% since October 2006 to 29 minutes 54 seconds.
* Gender split 53.3% Female, 46.7% Male (index of 101 and 99 against the Australian Online Population)
* 25-34 (108) and 35-44 (119) age-groups are over-represented on eBay Australia compared to the online population and make up a combined 46.3% of visits.
* 81.8% of audience on east coast states (QLD, NSW, VIC and TAS), with Tasmania (112), SA (112) and VIC (106) having the highest over representation against the online population.

Happy Birthday eBay!

Experian Hitwise

2009-09-10T06:56:02Z

Hi All,

You may notice a new identity to Hitwise today that reflects the integration of our brand with that of our parent, Experian. While the look and feel of our brand may change – the values, commitment and quality that have made Hitwise a market leader will not. Learn More

Cheers

Alan

Twitter’s Growing Influence

2009-09-08T05:14:11Z

We have all been aware of Twitter’s amazing growth over the past 6 months, including the impact that global celebrities (such as Oprah, Britney Spears, Ellen de Generes and Ashton Kutcher) have had on the uptake and membership of Twitter in March 2009.

Twitter’s phenomenal growth has also seen it become an increasingly influential part of the web landscape, driving discovery and sharing of a multitude of other websites as it grows. To measure the growing influence of Twitter I have reviewed the number of sites in the Upstream (websites visited before Twitter) and Downstream (websites visited after Twitter) clickstream to see if the growth is in line with the overall trends and if the number of upstream websites has been key to the market share growth of Twitter.

Last week Twitter hit an all time high in terms of All Categories ranking and market share, according to Hitwise Australia.. Twitter is now the 26th ranked website visited by Australian Internet users (week ending 5 September 2009) with a market share of 0.29%, now capturing more Australian visits than news.com.au (0.28%), RealEstate.com.au (0.28%), The Age (0.21%), AFL.com.au (0.18%) and Amazon.com (0.11%). Twitter’s share of visits and ranking maybe considerably higher when taking into account usage through the various desktop and mobile applications.

The chart below shows the increase in the number of websites, both before and after visiting Twitter, growing rapidly around the time of the Ashton Kutcher challenge to CNN to reach 1 million users (he now has over 3.4 million followers), overlaid with Twitter’s market share growth (on the secondary axis).

Click chart to view larger image.

Over the past 6 months the number of sites driving traffic to Twitter has increased 479% (comparing the weeks ending 5 September and 14 March 2009)while Twitter’s market share in visits has increased a similar amount, +460%. In the past month the growth continues with Twitter’s market share increasing 42% and the number of sites in the upstream clickstream also up 42% (week ending 5 September compared to week ending 15 August 2009).

Twitter drives downstream visits to over 17,000 downstream websites (17,166 in week ending 5 September 2009) with other Social Networking sites being the major recipient of visitors from Twitter (18.42% of downstream visits during week ending 5 September 2009).

As my colleague Heather Hopkins noted in May of this year in reference to the US market, “Twitter is being used as a social network and a means of distributing content. This is by no means the only way it is being used – just one standout trend.”

Photography sites (such as Twitpic), garnered 11.1% and Search Engines 6.8%, while Multimedia sites (4.9%), Blogs and Personal websites (4.6%) and Email Services (4.2%) all receive more of Twitter’s Clickstream than News and Media (Print), who receive 3.4%.

The following chart shows downstream visits by industry. The dark blue bars represent the parent industry, while the red bars represent sub-categories. For example, Photography is a sub-category of Entertainment.

The leading sites receiving traffic from Twitter in the table below are dominated by the other Social Networking sites and led by the photo sharing site Twitpic (www.twitpic.com), which itself has had a meteoric ride up the rankings on the back of Twitter’s success. In the past 12 months Twitpic’s share of visits has increased 248%%.It is currently the number three Photography site and ranked 208 across All Categories , according to Hitwise rankings (week ending 5 September 2009).

In the future there will be many websites that ride the coat-tails of another to success by providing a complimentary meaningful utility and service. What utility or service can you provide within Social Networking?

The King, the Angel and the Hoax.

2009-06-30T02:24:44Z

Pop culture is a substantial driver of online behaviour, and the untimely death of the King of Pop Michael Jackson and the passing of Charlie’s Angels Farah Fawcett last week provided celebrity websites with large single day gains of Australian Internet visits. While actor Jeff Goldblum’s death on set in New Zealand was prematurely reported it also added to media frenzy and online activity.

The King
Michael Jackson’s death has seen sales of his music dominate the Amazon best seller list (25 of the top 50 CDs on 29 June) and six of the top 10 albums on iTunes, it has also propelled celebrity websites up the rankings locally.

As news of Michael Jackson’s death hit Australia on Friday 26 June 2009, the Hitwise Lifestyle - Personalities category experienced an increase in daily traffic share of 61%, while Music - Bands and Artists increased 89% and News and Media – Print increased 13% . TMZ.com credited with breaking the news first jumped 750 rankings to 84, while perezhilton.com improved its ranking to 133, increases of 848.4% and 49.2% respectively in market share of visits by Australian Internet users on the same day. Michael Jackson's site www.michaeljackson.com, rocketed from a ranking of 73,911 to become the 134th most visited website in Australia on 26 June 2009.

Searches terms / phrases containing ‘michael jackson’ jumped from 296 during week ending 20 June 2009 to 8,569 during week ending 27 June 2009, indicating the breadth of information Australians wanted. Search queries included information about his songs, how he died, his children, his planned tour, pictures, his biography, video and lyrics (no doubt almost every cover band in the world played a Michael Jackson song over the weekend in tribute).

A total of 1,407 sites received traffic from the search term ‘michael jackson’ during week ending 27 June 2009, up from 33 the week prior, notably Google News received a higher share of visits from these searches than the key News and Media – Print websites combined, providing it with the largest single day share of Internet Visits by Australian in the past three years.

The leading websites receiving traffic from the search term ‘michael jackson’ during week ending 27 June 2009 were;

The Angel
Leading to her death, Farah Fawcett one of the original Charlie’s Angels in the 70’s TV series of the same name and former Playboy Bunny was also the subject to media attention offline and online over the past weeks and months. This included the recent announcement of the intended marriage of Fawcett to long time beau Ryan O’Neal.

Search activity for the term ‘farah fawcett’ increased 30x during the week ending 27 June, 2009 compared to the week prior and featured at number 4 in the fastest moving search terms last week. There were 76 search term variations relating to her name including playboy, movies, latest news, her son and cancer.

Google News and Wikipedia again became the focus of searchers over more traditional news sources such as the Australian newspapers websites, with some international websites also taking share away from local publishers.

The Hoax
While Jackson and Fawcett have been in the news for various reasons – Jackson for his anticipated London shows and Fawcett for her brave battle against cancer, Jeff Goldblum had no reason to be featuring prominently while reportedly on a film shoot in New Zealand.

Goldblum’s death reportedly originated from the website FakeAWish.com. When a celebrity name is entered into the website, a news story is produced under a false news agency name ‘Global Associated News’.

The story caused search activity on Jeff Goldblum to increase 572 times in week ending 27 June 2009, 91% higher than searches on Farah Fawcett, but 75% less than Michael Jackson searches. Again Wikipedia and Google news were the prominent recipients of searches for ‘jeff goldblum’.

The three events last week had an interesting flow on effect, highlighting the online behaviour of Australian Internet users. Twitter and Google News had their largest single day share of visits propelled by the day’s news events.

Google News experienced a single day increase on 26 June 2009 of 93% and Twitter increased 13% as the news and tributes for Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett spread through the web and the hoax was uncovered.

Digging Ads

2009-06-22T07:47:24Z

On June 3 Digg.com has announced an upcoming pilot of an advertising platform, Digg Ads, which allows users to ‘digg’ an advertisement. This will move the ad up the page and lower the cost per click price paid by the advertiser. The alternative is that irrelevant ads will be buried and priced out of the system.

It’s an interesting take and could be regarded as behavioral based or socially influenced advertising. Digg should be be given credit for making a concerted effort to develop an advertising platform specific to their users and at the same time has the potential to increase the engagement opportunity for advertisers.

The success or otherwise of the program will be the willingness of Digg’s audience to interact with advertising in a similar way as they do with content. To get some perspective of whom the Digg audience are the following table reviews the Mosaic profiles indexed against the Australian Online Population for the 4 weeks ending June 13 2009.

The most over indexed group is ‘Suburban Subsistence’ which contains a strong skew in some subsets of 20-34 years olds and this borne out when reviewing age demographic results that highlight the 18-24 age groups as being the prominent audience and highest indexing age group.

Key attributes within ‘Suburban Subsistence’ include their confidence with technology and a social outlook, living in outer metropolitan and major regional suburbs, with an orientation towards coastal areas.

After ‘Suburban Subsistence’ the other Mosaic groups that over-index against the online population are the more predictable inner suburban and tech savvy “Young Ambition” and the “Metro Multiculture” groups.

It will be interesting to watch for any noticeable impacts on Digg’s audience as the program is piloted and introduced later in the year.

You can read more about the program on Digg’s Blog.

Australia goes Bing

2009-06-18T06:38:57Z

Last week I posted some initial stats around the launch of search engine challengers Wolfram Alpha and Bing. Today I am going to dig a little deeper into Bing’s launch in the Australian market. .

The chart below illustrates the movements in share of visits for key search engines excluding Google on a daily basis over the past month. Google continues to be the dominant search engine in Australia with the five Google search properties featuring in the top 10 being responsible for 87.1% of all visits to the category.

Since peaking on 3 June 2009 with 5.13% share of all visits to the Search Engine category, the share of visits to Bing declined - an expected trend after the initial spikes driven by curiosity and media coverage. Considering the ‘soft launch’ of Bing in Australia with no discernable marketing activity, the future still holds opportunity to access new audiences as features are added locally and marketing activity is implemented.

So what are people searching for on Bing?

The branded search term trends that we have seen over past years are also highlighted in Bing’s early results. Of the top 100 search terms for the four weeks ending 13 June 2009 (containing the first two weeks of search activity) 94% are brand related, comparatively Google Australia has 7 generic search terms in the top 100 search terms (93% brand related).

The table below illustrates the similarity between the top 10 search terms on Bing and Google Australia for the four weeks ending 13 June 2009.. The top 100 search terms account for 12.2% share of all search volume on Bing and 6.6% of Google Australia.

Bing’s top generic search term is ‘swine flu’ at number 38 with 0.8% share of searches, however the top generic term on Google Australia is ‘tv guide’ ranked at 28 with a 0.6% share of searches. The term ‘swine flu’ ranks at 71 on Google Australia with a share of 0.3% of searches.

The table below lists the top industries receiving traffic from Bing in Australia during the week ending 13 June 2009. The pattern between Bing’s downstream traffic and Google Australia’s is very similar.

Computers and Internet; Business and Finance; Entertainment; Shopping and Classifieds; and News and Media websites are receiving similar percentages of downstream traffic from both search engines. The largest difference is the volume of traffic from Bing to other search engines indicates that visitors have been sampling Bing and then returning to their default search engine. Google Australia was the top search engine to receive downstream traffic from Bing in week ending 13 June 2009 and the most searched for term since Bing was commissioned on 28 May 2009.

ninemsn properties (including Windows Live Mail, ninemsn News and ninemsn) appear in the Top 10 downstream traffic from Bing. However it seems the soft launch approach has put more dependence upon the ninemsn properties to generate discovery of Bing with ninemsn sites in the top 10 sites upstream delivering 53.7% of Bing’s visitors during week ending 13 June 2009.

We’ll continue to follow the search market, so follow us on Twitter to stay up to date. Over the coming days we’ll post similar analysis for New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore

Wolfram Alpha and Bing initial Asia Pacific stats

2009-06-11T05:55:54Z

Over recent weeks two new entrants have appeared on the search landscape globally. The uniquely named Wolframaplha (www.wolframalpha.com) and Microsoft’s new entry Bing (www.bing.com).

WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) made its public debut on 15 May, 2009 and Bing (www.bing.com) launched last week to much fanfare on 28 May. With a full week of data now available for Bing and 3 weeks of data for WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) it’s timely to look at the initial impact of these two important launches.

The chart below highlights the period since the WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com) launch. Australian Internet users were the slowest to respond to the launch of the ‘computational knowledge engine’, but also represented the largest peak in visits amongst Asia Pacific markets on 19 May 2009, with 0.313% share of Australian visits to the Hitwise Search Engine category. New Zealand Internet users investigated WolframAlpha earlier on but did not reach the high peak in visits of Australian users, New Zealand visits to WolframAlpha accounted for 0.1622% of visits to the Search Engines category on 17 May 2009.

Singapore and Hong Kong peaked in tandem on 18 May with 0.1375% and 0.1326% share respectively of all Internet visits to Search Engines. In all Asia Pacific markets the initial interest in WolframAlpha declined and in now represents visits lower that 0.05% share.

Click on image to view larger chart.

At the peak of interest Wolfram Alpha (www.wolframalpha.com) ranked in the top 1,000 of all sites in each market;

• 163 in Australia (No.12 Search Engine),
• 360 (No. 25 Search Engine) in New Zealand,
• 624 (No. 31 Search Engine) in Singapore
• 833 (No.38 Search Engine) in Hong Kong

After Internet users initial curiosity satiated the rankings have slid in each market, most substantially in Hong Kong where on 7 June is ranked at 15,878 amongst all sites and 147 among Search Engines.

WolframAlpha by its very nature it will be a niche player, providing strong value to sectors of the online audience, particularly educational, technical and research- oriented industries.

Bing is Live

Bing (www.bing.com) is a different Search Engine all together. Launched on 28 May 2009 the replacement for Microsoft’s Live.com search engine has had an immediate impact. Positive media coverage and the seemingly endless desire for a strong search competitor to Google’s dominant position provided a strong base for the launch.

Click on image to view larger chart.

Australia has reacted most positively of the Asia Pacific nations to the launch of Bing, peaking on 3 June 2009 with 5.13% share of all visits to the Search Engine category The combined total of Microsoft search properties accounted for 5.4% share of visits in the Search Engine category on 3 June 2009, representing a 23.4% increase on the same day in 2008.

Google properties dominated the Australian search landscape with 88.38% of visits during week ending 6 June 2009. The launch of Bing did not hurt Google’s share substantially with the monolith’s share decreasing 0.12% and Yahoo!7 Search declining 0.99% from the week prior to launch, week ending 23 May 2009.
New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong’s curiosity peaked on 2 June, a full week after launch, and saw the combined share of Live.com and Bing.com deliver increased share of the Search Engine category. Hong Kong increased 26%, Singapore 40% and New Zealand 29% when compared with the same day a year earlier (2 June 2008).
As of 6 June 2009 Bing is the fourth ranked search engine in Australia, after replacing Google Image Search for four days (2 June - 4 June, 2009) at number three, replacing Live.com in the rankings.

In New Zealand Bing has taken over the fourth ranking position, formerly held by the very Search Engine it replaced, Live.com. A similar story is found in Hong Kong and Singapore where Bing is now the eight and fifth ranked search engine respectively replacing Live.com in the same positions.

The launch of Bing has created a greater opportunity for Microsoft to grow their share and develop a more substantial competitor to the dominant Google;, only time will tell whether the strategy and development of Bing will be a success.

Oprah may be America’s Tweet-heart, but she doesn’t make the earth move Downunder!

2009-04-24T08:22:00Z

My colleague in the US, Heather Hopkins recently covered the blaze of publicity around Oprah Winfrey starting to tweet and its immediate impact on Twitter’s US share of visits. In Australia the influences seem to be broader than America’s new 'tweetheart'.

In Australia the growth of Twitter has been nothing short of phenomenal;
• 49.9% growth in the past month (comparing 21/04/2009 vs. 22/03/2009)
• 1067.3% since the start of the 2009 (comparing 21/04/2009 vs. 01/01/2009)
• 3,220.7% annual growth (comparing 21/04/2009 vs. 22/04/2008).

On Sunday 19 April 2009, Twitter became the 37th most visited website by Australian Internet users, breaking into the top 40 Australian websites for the first time on the back of a 3.9% rise in share, coinciding with Oprah’s first tweet.

The largest single day of growth experienced by Twitter this year was 22 March 2009, when share of visits grew by 89.3% over the previous day. It was a day after the Queensland Election and four days after the second of the Melbourne earth tremors.

In Australia a number of celebrities were included in searches for ‘twitter’, representing 38% of the top 50 ‘twitter’ search variations for week ending 18 April 2009.

Ashton Kutcher and his challenge to be the first Twitterer to have one million followers received considerable news coverage. In the days leading up Kutcher passing the million follower mark, Twitter’s share of daily visits increased by 10.6% (16/4/2009) and 6.22% (17/4/2009). Oprah could only move Twitter’s Australian share by 2.46% (18/4/2009).

Lindsay Lohan however, with her much publicised relationship split, had the strongest association with Twitter compared to other celebrities, with 0.65% of Twitter-related search terms (week ending 18/04/2009), followed by Kutcher (0.51%), Miley Cyrus (0.35%) and Australia’s Hugh Jackman (0.22%).

Twitter a truly global phenomenon

In other markets, Twitter has a growth pattern similar to the US and UK, highlighting that Twitter is a truly global phenomenon.

Twitter increased its share in New Zealand 305.5% since the start of the year (1/01/2009), and on 21 April 2009 ranked at 49 amongst all websites (up from 206).

In Singapore, Twitter moved up 239 positions to a rank of 65 amongst all websites with an increase in share of visits of 333.3% since the 1/01/2009.

Hong Kong is lagging by comparison to the other Asia Pacific markets the US and UK, as can be seen from the chart below, but has moved up 373 places since 1/01/2009 to currently stand at the 198th most visited website in Hong Kong on 21/04/2009 with a share of visits increase of 198.1%.

Click chart for larger version

It is interesting to note that large jumps in share of visits have been sparked by a variety of events and news items at different times over the past three months. However, Ashton Kutcher and Oprah seem to have had an impact in all countries in mid April.

For statistical comparison the Twitters share of visits in the US and UK, as at 21/4/2009, have grown 570.03% and 621.3% respectively since 1/01/2009 improving its ranking position by 324 spots in the US and 305 spots in the UK.

It is interesting to note that Entertainment / Celebrity brands have embraced Twitter as a communication and connection tool, yet many consumer facing brands have yet to understand the opportunity and accept the challenge of direct interaction with consumers. Props to those businesses that are active and learning.

Online Boxing Day Retail Peaks

2009-01-12T05:06:06Z

Boxing Day again delivered the highest volume of traffic to the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category in 2008. Compared to the previous year (Boxing Day 2007), market share of Australian Internet visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category increased by 6.19% on Boxing Day 2008.

Two sub-categories within Shopping and Classifieds saw Boxing Day become their number one online retail day for 2008.

On Boxing Day 2007 the Computers category experienced its 10th highest retail day, however on Boxing Day 2008 the category received its highest share of traffic for the year and increased its market share by 14.32%, compared to the previous year.

The Sport and Fitness category increased its market share on Boxing Day by an impressive 44.59% compared to the previous year.

On the flip side the Shopping and Classifieds – Automotive category experienced a decline of 6.99% on Boxing Day 2008 (68th highest day of traffic for 2008) compared to Boxing Day 2007 when it received its greatest share of traffic for the year. This is indicative of the general market slowdown facing the automotive industry.

The table below highlights further sub-categories of Shopping and Classifieds that shared Boxing Day as their number one retail day in 2008.

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Toys R Easy

2008-12-24T01:27:41Z

Only a few days to Christmas, so I thought I'd share some last minute tips for the last few gift purchases for the kids.

The list below is the fastest moving terms driving visits to the Shopping & Classifieds – Toys & Hobbies category over the past week, (comparing week ending 20 December to week ending 13 December, 2008).

The amazing thing is the strength of the tried and true kids gifts, the toys that were around when I was young and even when my parents were young, for example the View master has been around for 65 years, amazing.

Other notable inclusions are the eternally reinvented Lego, Barbie although now challenged by Bratz and My Scene Dolls as well. And an all time favourite, Nerf that can still break things if thrown hard enough!

All of a sudden the last minute gift is easy.

Boxing Day Retail Test

2008-12-23T04:58:49Z

One of the biggest sporting events of the calendar kicks off on Boxing Day, and it's not the annual Boxing Day Test Match at the MCG, but the now traditional Boxing Day sales at retailers around the country.

The heavily promoted sales have turned Boxing Day into the largest online retail day in Australia, our own equivalent of Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving) in the US.

Online visitation to the Shopping & Classifieds industry continues to track comparatively with 2007. The chart below highlights the Boxing Day peak and the current December trend against the previous year.

Share of visits on Boxing Day 2007 increased 24.93% when compared to the share of visits received on Christmas Eve, this was fuelled by a number of industries where Boxing Day is also the top online retail day of the year.

Shopping & Classified Industry	Boxing Day 2007 Increase % compared to Christmas Eve 2007
House and Garden	92.96%
Appliances and Electronics	75.86%
Department Stores	66.09%
Apparel and Accessories	52.06%
Video and Games	46.69%
Rewards and Directories	32.42%
Automotive	15.22%

Other noticeable industries include Shopping & Classifieds – Music with 66.44% increase when compared to the share of visits received on Christmas Eve but sits behind Christmas Day as the largest online retail day, impacted by the iTunes phenomenon.

Boxing Day online activity for Shopping & Classifieds – Sport and Fitness sits behind a mid-December peak, but still generates a substantial jump from Christmas Eve with the share of visits increasing 31.04%.

So what does this all mean?

Are there any last minute affiliate or advertising opportunities that you can implement to take advantage of these retail peaks to generate leads and create sales?

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Savings flight to quality

2008-12-08T05:52:50Z

The ongoing economic conditions have the potential to shape and change many industries. We just need to read the newspapers each day to see the substantial changes the global banking and automotive industries are undergoing.

With each dark cloud though there is a silver lining, opportunities for businesses to either enhance their current positioning or to take share from more established and conservative competitors.

The most recent retail sales figures are not as disastrous as the newspapers would have us believe and in Sandra's recent post she highlights that people are still carrying on with relatively normal lives. But maybe the traditional Christmas retail period is hiding underlying fears and concern about 2009 and beyond.

At a consumer level the Australian banking landscape is stable. The Federal Government's savings guarantee no doubt eased the minds of many. But did the uncertainty leading up to that decision and ongoing bad news stories spook consumers and cause change in the profile or our Financial Institutions? Potentially causing a perceived "flight to quality", with the tier one banks benefiting.

Since the final week of last financial year (28 June, 2008) the tier one banks (ANZ, Westpac, NAB, Commonwealth Bank) have enjoyed an increase of 17.08% in share of visits as at week ending November 15, 2008, while over the same time period Credit Unions (including Credit Union Australia and Savings & Loan Credit Union) have increased by 12.95%.

The jump in traffic to Tier One Banks in weeks ending October 11 and October 18 coincided with the Australian Reserve Bank's decision to cut the official interest rate by 100 basis points (October 7) and the Australian Governments announcements of the savings guarantee and the $10.4 billion stimulus package (October 13 and 14).

Credit Unions did not receive similar increases in visits suggesting users looking at a "flight to quality" within the perceived safety of the large Australian Banks.

The economic conditions will impact people differently at various life stages and we can expect changed online behaviour from each of these groups.

To help us understand these changes, the screenshots below (from our new Demographic and Lifestyle product upgrade), index the profile change of each custom category by Mosaic Lifestyle Group. Tier One Banks has experienced an increase from two of the larger groups – Family Challenge and Community Disconnect. These groups are distinguished by average to low incomes and are regarded as high credit risks. They live in outer suburban areas and small town Australia.

With exposure to manufacturing and construction industries, Family Challenge sees the changing landscape as a considerable threat. The Community Disconnect group has a considerable over 65 profile, greatly concerned with their retirement funds being depleted through the global economic malaise.

Credit Unions now see a higher representation of Suburban Subsistence, Pushing the Boundaries and Community Disconnect groups. Living in regional and outer suburban areas, with low incomes, the Suburban Subsistence group already finds money tight and with low qualifications any downturn in the manufacturing and construction industries will impact them harshly.

Young families living in new growth areas on the fringe suburbs and regional areas with exposure to the mining, infrastructure and manufacturing industries comprise the Pushing the Boundaries group. While earning above average incomes, the potential for impact in a slow down in the resources, building and manufacturing sectors will bring about hardship swiftly.

The previous two charts clearly point out that the groups most exposed to financial hardship have increased engagement with financial institutions.

The chart below compares the two custom categories (as of 4 weeks ending November 8) and highlights the exposure Credit Unions have with lower income and regional groups and the strength of the banks with middle Australia and wealthier segments of our community suggesting that this replicates their customer base.

The potential for hurt is not confined to any group, but the Credit Unions seem to have a higher risk profile based on online usage.

It is not middle Australia that is showing the most concern with their online financial behaviour but the young families, the retirees and the battlers. The economic downturn while affecting most Australians will be particularly harsh on these groups and they are looking for re-assurance, security and solutions from our financial system.

Can our financial system meet the changing needs of the community sectors?

I'd be interested to hear your views on the "flight to quality" and any anecdotal evidence.

As always stay up to date by following us on Twitter.

In tough times, in brands we trust!

2008-11-06T06:06:07Z

In a previous blog – Online Gathering Retail Muscle – I compared the top 100 Bricks and Mortar retailers with the top 100 pure online retailers to establish a picture of the online retail landscape.

With the credit crunch taking effect and the amount of financial uncertainty surrounding us, it's a good time to review that post as we enter the crucial retail period this Christmas.

As the chart above clearly highlights, the traditional brands – Bricks & Mortar retailers, are receiving a substantial increase in visits and now lead over their online counterparts. Bricks & Mortar retailers currently hold a 21.88% share lead over Online Retailers as of week ending November 1, 2008, reversing the reported 28.7% lead by Online Retailers in week ending June 21, 2008. This separation between the two custom categories has not been seen since late 2005.

Bricks & Mortar Retailers have seen a year on year growth in visits of 29.87%, and the majority of this growth has been seen in the past four weeks, increasing 23.17%. This past week's growth of 13.79% is strong compared to the corresponding week in 2007 of 3.71%.

Click chart to enlarge.

Online Retailers are enjoying accelerated growth over the past 4 weeks up 4.19%, compared to year-on-year growth of just 1.94%. This past week's growth (w/e November 1, 2008) is higher than the corresponding weeks in 2007 with an increase of 1.75% versus 0.74%.

Click chart to enlarge.

So what has caused this change in the landscape, is it the credit crisis, is it the larger brands starting to have some greater marketing impact online or are other factors at play?

In previous years Online Retailers growth has outpaced Bricks & Mortar brands online leading into Christmas so this is potentially a substantial change in the online retailing landscape.

"In tough times people revert to brands they know and trust" is an old adage and an underlying reason why the development and management of your brand is so important.

Opportunities abound in a tough market to enhance and develop brands and market share to capture not only the short-term benefit but also the longer-term revenue advantage in a rising market.

I'd be interested to hear any alternate perspectives on this trend and philosophy.

And, as always, we urge you to follow Hitwise Asia Pacific on Twitter to keep up with the latest Internet data and trends.

A Crucial Six Weeks for Retail

2008-11-05T13:44:03Z

The current financial uncertainty / credit crisis is throwing up all sorts of hypotheses relating to online behaviour for us to investigate. Last week I presented at the AIMIA - Present Trends in Advertising forum and as part of that I discussed what is happening currently in the Retail industry.

Retail is now coming into the crucial four to six weeks of the year and predicting the likely outcome of the current trends is difficult and constantly changing. I opted out of making predications only to say that the next few weeks will provide us with the indicators of whether it will be a festive season for retailers.

The chart below highlights the visitation to the Shopping & Classified Industry and the trend since July 2007.

The downward trend since the end of the financial year was returning the online share of visits to 2007 levels which ocurred in w/e 18/10/08, as can be seen in the following chart that captures the trends of the first 18 weeks of each FY08 and FY09.

The past two weeks show promising signs that the retail industries in Australia may not be hurt as much as the perception, with an increase of 3.14% in share of vists (w/e Nov 1 vs. w/e October 18) turning around the trend and placing this year 1.64 percentage points ahead of the corresponding week in 2007 (w/e November 3, 2007).

While the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the National Retail Trade at current prices rising 0.2 per cent in September, forecasters have a sombre outlook for the coming months.

Over the coming weeks we will add more analysis to the Retail sector, looking at those categories that are recession proof and those that are losing appeal.

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