Hitwise Intelligence - Asia Pacific

Bebo out from downunder?

2009-11-20T05:31:36Z

This morning’s online news reported that Bebo is about to close its Australian operations. But what does that really mean?

To Australian Bebo users it means very little, there will be no change to their interaction with their social networks, but to AOL, who purchased Bebo in March 2008, it means a whole lot more, it is a response to not being able to substantially commercialise their audience in Australia against the growing behemoth of Facebook.

Bebo is currently the number 6 ranked website in the Social Networking and Forums industry, behind Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and Yahoo! Answers. By way of comparison the following chart highlights the growth of Bebo versus Facebook, MySpace and the Social Networking and Forums industry.

• Social Networking and Forums industry growth October 2009 vs. October 2008 = +25.0%
• Facebook growth October 2009 vs. October 2008 = +100.9%
• MySpace growth October 2009 vs. October 2008 =-52.1%
• Bebo growth October 2009 vs. October 2008 = -53.8%

Average visit time comparisons also highlight the Facebook growth and the difficulty the other Social Network are facing in competing effectively. Facebook’s average visit time climbed 23.1% between October 2009 and October 2008 to 25 minutes 57 seconds, while Bebo suffered a 9.6% drop to 22 minutes 34 seconds and MySpace users decreased 7.5% to 24 minutes 30 seconds.

When websites gain momentum such as Facebook is currently experiencing, there is always going to be current competitors pushed aside and reduced to minor roles in the market, just look at the number of Search Engines that couldn’t compete effectively with Google once it hit its stride.

East Asian Games generating interest

2009-11-20T00:39:59Z

The 5th East Asian Games on 5 December is for the first time being staged in Hong Kong. This is the first time Hong Kong plays host to a large-scale multi-sport international event.

The East Asian Games brings together 2,300 athletes from 8 countries and territories competing in 22 sports including Badminton, Basketball, Football, Judo, Rowing, Tennis and Wushu

The last major sporting event staged in Hong Kong was the Equestrian event as part of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. To provide an indication of the interest in the East Asian Games, the chart below tracks the share of visits by all Hong Kong Internet users to the official website (http://www.2009eastasiangames.hk) compared with the Beijing Olympics website at the same time leading up to the respective official opening days.

Click to view larger chart

· 60 days prior to the opening day of the East Asian Games interest was relatively low compared to the hype and build up that surrounded the Beijing Olympics, receiving only 42% of the share of visits that Olympics website received.

· The interest in the East Asian Games has started to climb and reached parity in terms of share of visits with the Olympics Games website 27 days preceding the opening.

· Share of visits peaked 19 days prior to the east Asian Games commencing;the share of visits was 34.5% higher than the Olympics on the corresponding day.

The growth in share of visits is a positive indicator that Hong Kong Internet users are increasingly interested in the East Asian Games as it nears the opening date.

The key drivers of visits to the East Asian Games website were Search Engines, Social Networking and Forums, Government (HK SAR) and Portal Frontpages industries. During the week ending 7 November 2009, Search Engines were responsible for 21.1% of upstream visits, followed by Social Networking and Forums with 16.1%.

Government websites (8.6%) and Portal Frontpages (8.2%) were also important sources of traffic. As the opening of the Games draws closer News and Media – Print should become more prominent as a driver of visits to the official website, currently responsible for only 1.5% of upstream traffic.

Social Networking and Forums websites, primarily Facebook will play an important role over the coming weeks in driving traffic., Facebook was the number one website in Hong Kong accounting for 13.0% share of all visits during the week ending 7 November 2009 by Hong Kong Internet users.

Blog Shops popular in Singapore

2009-11-19T05:57:47Z

Christmas online shopping in Singapore and Hong Kong has gained strength over the past few years, with visits to the Shopping and Classifieds industry reaching a 3-year high during the week ending 28 November 2008 in Singapore, and week ending 13 December 2008 in Hong Kong.

Earlier this week I provided an update on the leading product categories in the retail sector in Australia. There were some regional similarities in Singapore and Hong Kong, with Apparel and Accessories, Computers and Appliances and Electronics dominant verticals in all three markets.

· Apparel and Accessories was the largest retail category in Singapore, accounting for more than 1 in 5 visits to Shopping and Classifieds during the week ending 7 November 2009. Visits to the sector also grew by 34.7% year on year to week ending 7 November 2009.

· An interesting phenomenon in the Singapore Apparel and Accessories industry is the prevalence of blogging websites that offer retail. Examples of blogs amongst the top 10 Apparel and Accessories websites included, BonitoChico, Agneselle, Hollyhoque, Agnes's Deepest Thoughts and So She Say. This could be an indication that Singapore users increasingly prefer to do retail transactions through a blogging vehicle and if this is the case, presents a real challenge to Auctions and Classifieds players in Singapore. Slow year on year visit rates to Auctions and Classifieds websites supports this hypothesis. I’d be interested to hear from Singapore readers if this is backed up anecdotally.

· The Computers industry attracted the highest share amongst Shopping and Classifieds websites in Hong Kong, accounting for 1 in 10 visits during the week ending 7 November 2009. Apple Store accounted for 40% share of visits in the Computers category; behind Singapore in local penetration rate (45%) but ahead of Australia (15%) and New Zealand (4.93%).

· Video and Games attracted 136% growth in visits year on year in Hong Kong, primarily due to the dominance of SensAsian.com, a Malaysian entertainment retail portal. Fast moving categories also included Music and House and Garden. In Singapore, Apparel and Accessories, Computers and Sports and Fitness attracted the fastest year on year growth (34.7%, 21.8%, 5.25% and respectively).

The changing face of Social Networks

2009-11-18T05:40:10Z

This is the first in a blog series reviewing the lifestyle and demographic changes seen in the online audience profiles of the Social Networking and Forums industry in Australia.

The series acts as a sequel to the upcoming Experian Hitwise report ’The Rise and Rise of the Social Network’ and webinar on November 10.

Today, I am going to look at the industry level changes and in the following weeks review the four major players in the social media space – Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter.

Since the start of 2009 (the week ending 3 January 2009) the Social Networking and Forums industry share of all Australian Internet visits has increased 14.34 % and command 11.78% of all visits by Australian Internet users, second only to Search Engine’s 12.71%.

I am going to examine the profile of visitors to the Social Networking and Forums by Age, Gender, Geographic and Mosaic Lifestyle profiles to provide a top level understanding of the industry.

Age:

In coming posts we will see the nuances between four of the major social networks, but from an overall industry perspective it is no surprise that the 18-24 age group are highly over represented when compared against the online population.

The 25-34, 35-44 and 45-54 age groups all represent a similar percentage of the Social Networking and Forums share of visits and each are over represented against the online population.

Only the 55 years and over age group are under represented in comparison to the online. However, when compared to the start of 2009 they have grown in line with the overall industry maintaining their share of visits.

The fastest growing age group are 25-54 and 35-44, while the 45-54 and 18-24 age groups have experienced a decline in share of visits to the Social Networking and Forums industry this year.

Gender

There has been very little change in the gender profile of the industry since the start of this year (4 weeks ending 31 January 2009). Females are over-represented, and males under represented.

Geographic

Northern Territory and South Australia have the highest representation of users of Social Networking and Forums, while other states are very close to the profile of the Australian online population.

The east coast states dominate with 78.6% of all visits, whilst the other states are experiencing the fastest growth rates in usage. South Australia has seen the most growth in share of users to Social Networking and Forums in 2009 closely followed by Queensland, suggesting that the population was initially a little slower in its acceptance of social media.

Lifestyle Mosaic

The five over represented Lifestyle Mosaic Groups when compared to the Australian online population are:

E: Family Challenge – Mixed family forms with stretched budgets in outer suburbs
K: Community Disconnect – Older blue-collar workers and retires in country and coastal locations.
D: Pushing the Boundaries – Young families living in recent developments on the fringe of major cities.
F: Metro Multiculture – Medium to high density areas with much cultural diversity.

This highlights the breadth of diversity of the audiences of Social Networking and Forums, and through specific targeting within different Social Networks marketers have the ability to finely target their desired audience.

C: Young Ambition (educated high-earning young singles and sharers in the inner suburbs) is under represented against the online population but it was the fastest growing segment in 2009. Other Groups to experience strong growth this year are:

K: Community Disconnect,
J: Suburban Subsistence (low income, low-spending households in major regional and outer metro areas),
G: Learner and Earners (students and professionals living in high density lower cost suburbs).

Summary:

· 59.1% audience under 45

· Slight skew to female.

· East Coast represent 78.6% of visits.

· South Australia and Queensland are growing fastest.

· Northern Territory and South Australia had the highest representation against online population.

· Broad and diverse audience.

· Outer suburban/regional areas over represented.

· Young Ambition fastest growing Lifestyle Mosaic Group.

Next I’ll look at Facebook’s audience profile

Download our recent report ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social Network’

Apparel websites competing strongly in retail sector

2009-11-17T04:19:04Z

Expectations for consumer spending this Christmas in Australia are moderate, despite consumer confidence sitting at 38.3 percent above its level a year ago (Westpac Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment Index). Given that retailers will be vying for consumer spend not just against immediate competitors, but against retailers in other verticals, I thought I would take a look at the types of products that are attracting consumer interest. Below is a breakdown of visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites by product category.

While Computers attracted the largest share of visits amongst product-related websites, visits dropped by 13.7% comparing week ending 14 November 2009 to the same week last year.

Apparel and Accessories visits attracted the highest year on year growth of 18.2%, and closely trailed Computers in overall volume. Strong performance in the Apparel and Accessories industry has been underscored by significant investment in the online channel by key vendors. Apparel retailers have increasingly recognised the need to maintain a strong web presence to strengthen their brand awareness and increase revenue both online and offline. Examples of fast moving local brands included, Sportsgirl Online, Pumpkin Patch, Kathmandu, Oroton and Witchery.

Other product categories to attract year on year growth included (in order of percentage increase): Music, Video and Games, Grocery and Alcohol, Appliances and Electronics, House and Garden, Automotive, and Sport and Fitness.

Retailers heavily reliant on search traffic

Boosting lead generation from key traffic sources is another important consideration for retailers as they compete for limited consumer spend this year. Shopping and Classifieds websites received one third of their traffic from Search Engines during the week ending 14 November 2009, demonstrating the importance of search engine referrals.

Social Networking and Forums, Email Services. Portal Frontpages and News and Media were all under-indexed traffic sources for Shopping and Classifieds websites, highlighting opportunities for retailers to attract customers from more diverse sources. Retailers should continue to monitor the industry benchmark for traffic leads, as well the sources of 'new' vs. 'returning' visitors to their competitors.

Breaking News?

2009-11-11T07:36:58Z

In his most recent post, our General Manager of Global Research, Bill Tancer looked at the importance of Google to the Wall Street Journal following Rupert Murdoch’s recent comments in a Sky News interview (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/09/news-corp-considers-a-google-ban/?mod=rss_WSJBlog) saying he would consider blocking Google from indexing the News Ltd news websites.

To follow Bill’s analysis of the WSJ, here’s a local review of Google’s importance to the News Ltd News titles in Australia. I have aggregated Google Australia (google.com.au), Google (google.com) and Google News Australia (news.google.com.au) to provide a comparative view.

Below is the same chart highlighting upstream traffic to Google (Custom Category) from News Ltd News Titles (Custom Category).

During October 2009, the three websites made up 23.5% of the News Ltd News Titles (Custom category) upstream traffic and sat in positions 1 (Google Australia), 6 (Google)and 10 (Google News Australia).

While newspapers around the globe are facing a similar dilemma experiencing declining revenues - will a micro payment / subscription model turn their fortunes around? Or is Mark Scott, the Managing Director of the ABC correct in suggesting that the plan is a classic play of an old empire in decline?

I’d be interested in your thoughts.

The Rise and Rise of the Social Network Q&A

2009-11-11T07:12:52Z

Sandra Hanchard and I presented a webinar titled ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social network’ earlier this week, and due to time constraints we could not answer all the questions posed to us, so the following are our responses. We are interested in your comments on any or all of the questions to add a variety of perspective and thought.

Q: Has the total amount of visits to Search Engines dropped as a result of visits to Social Networks growing?

A: The Search Engines industry is continuing to see growth in share of visits by Australian users, but is increasing at a slower rate than Social Networking and Forums.

In a year-on-year comparison the Search Engines industry has grown its share of visits by 4.6% compared to Social Networking and Forums 27.8% (the week ending 17 October 2009 compared to the week ending 18 October 2008).

Q: Leading Social Networks in Australia?

A: The top 10 Social Networks visited by Australians are highlighted in the table below (click for larger image).

Q: Where does real estate sit in this graph?

A: below is the upstream traffic from the top 5 referrers of visits to the Business and Finance – property industry. The Top 100 Social Networks has grown 24.8% in the past 12 months to sit third behind Search Engines and Email Services.

Q: How can a company control content if it were to have a Facebook page?

A: You can have control where no-one but your company posts to the Facebook page, there is a great Mashable article you can reference to find out more With this method of control though you do miss out on having conversations and having customers providing testimonials.

Q: How much can the drop in Twitter usage be attributed to Tweetdeck and Seesmic etc? Would people using Twitter via these 3rd party applications be counted?

A: The data presented referenced the Twitter website only, and that the decrease could be due to users favouring 3rd party applications and mobile to access Twitter.

There are two reports that provide an indication to the amount of usage web based and otherwise. Sysomos in Canada suggests 60% of Twitter usage is web based and Rapleaf in the US found 65% of all ‘tweet’ are posted through the web interface.

Q: Tell us more about Google's social search product and also if the social networking websites are going to become more 'searchified' like Google? what do you think the future is?

A: Google’s social search will bring results from your social network that relate to the search term you have used. It is currently in Google Experimental Labs and if you have a Google profile you can join the experiment.

In essence is take your immediate network from various social networks that you participate in, plus their network as well and returns relevant results, so you are adding relevant public content from your broader social circle.
The results from your social circle appear at the base of normal organic results, clearly identified.
To find out more head over to Google’s Blog to watch a video explanation.

This is a further step towards improving the search experience in refining the relevance and timeliness of results, aiding discovery of new information from a trusted resource, i.e. your social circle. Bill Tancer, Head of Global Research, Experian Hitwise has been talking about the next move being towards curated content, and to a degree this is a form of that, leveraging your connections combined intellect and knowledge on a specified subject. The future is a hard question and we’ll leave that for the pundits.

In news just released starting tonight (US time), LinkedIn let users sync their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts to broadcast LinkedIn status updates on Twitter and vice versa in real-time (http://bit.ly/LRLSY)

Q: What type of time commitment is required to manage a social network presence?

A: It really depends on objectives and your establish success metrics. There are clients who dedicated staff such as a Community Manager and other who have absorbed it into the marketing or customer service functions. The ideal level of commitment will differ from business to business based on their needs and success metrics.

The Social Media space is very supportive and it would be an opportunity to ask this question through Twitter or a Social Media group on LinkedIn.

Q: Can Hitwise measure upstream and downstream data from a company official Facebook fan page?

A: It can be done via a custom report to the database but depends upon the size of sample being substantial enough to access useable data. If you are interested in this, please contact your account manager or email csm.ap@hitwise.com.

Q: Can you explain the Internal search of Social Networks - does this mean people accessing search engines from Social Networks?

A: We have the ability to provide search results that users enter within websites, including social networks. This differs from our search data that is based on search engine usage; primarily on terms that send users to third-party websites.

Q: Is there any international standard for Social Network measurement?

A: There are a number of metrics that provide guidance on the effectiveness of Social Networks; including visits, average session time, page views and audience segmentation.

Q: Are there any other new technologies emerging that may potentially pose a threat to Facebook?

A: It is always risky to answer either in a positive or negative manner. There is a huge amount innovation underway around the world looking for the next big thing. The strength of Facebook is in its utility and ubiquity, with applications and the ability to interact with third-party websites through Facebook Connect maintains their strong position, but it is a game of continued innovation and improvement to maintain leadership. We have seen before some of the largest sites suffer declines for a variety of reason, so while Facebook is a dominant Social Network at the moment that does not provide a guarantee for the future.

Q: Do you happen to know the impact of Ning on the social networking industry?

A: From an overall sense Ning (www.ning.com) has not has a great deal of success with Australian users, currently ranked at 567 in the Social Networking and Forums industry.

Thanks everyone for participating in the webinar and we look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Make sure you are following us on Twitter.

Sandra and Alan

What retail categories are Gen Ys searching for online?

2009-10-30T00:45:06Z

In my last post I looked at search terms by 18-24 year old Australian users, and indicated how they were more likely to search for bricks and mortar brands than online players; with an overall tendency to search by brands compared to products.

As expected, some of the retail categories that these brand and product search terms fell into conformed to some gender stereotypes. For example, ‘Apparel’ related terms attracted the highest percentage of search traffic by 18-24 year old female users (25%), while ‘Electronics’ terms were heavily represented by 18-24 year old male users (28%).

· 18-24 year old females, compared to males, were more likely to search in these retail categories: Apparel, Grocery, House and Garden, Ticketing, Sports (e.g. ‘Nike’), Rewards, Books, Health and Beauty, Mall (e.g. ‘Chadstone shopping centre’), Comparison Shopping (e.g. ‘Shopbot’), Toys, Video and Discount (e.g. ‘Best and Less’).

· 18-24 year old males, compared to females, were more likely to search for brands and products in Electronics, Department Stores, Music, Classifieds, Auctions, Automotive, Mobile, Games, Computers, Hardware, Household, Stationery and Notebooks.

·Apparel brands searched on by 18-24 year old females included, ‘forever new’, ‘supre’, ‘valley girl’, ‘dotti’ and ‘sportsgirl’. Product terms included, ‘engagement rings’, ‘sunglasses’ and ‘dresses’.

· Electronics brands searched on by 18-24 year old males included, ‘apple’, ‘jb hifi’, ‘hp’ and ‘dell’. Product terms included, ‘iphone’, ‘nokia n97’, ‘laptops’, ‘mac’ and ‘tomtom’. Brand names on notebooks included, ‘dell laptops’, ‘toshiba laptops’, ‘hp laptops’ and ‘sony vaio’.

Greater price-sensitivity by female shoppers

It was also interesting to observe that 18-24 year old females had a stronger tendency than males to search on terms related to Comparison Shopping, Rewards and Discount categories. This means that retailers should ensure they are well-represented on comparison shopping websites and reward schemes for products targeted at females.

Retailers can use search behaviour on retail categories to help prioritise which products they market to different age and gender groups across all of their marketing activities. Keyword lists can also be fine-tuned by delving further into the search tail by each segment.

This post and the previous one are based on Experian Hitwise Custom data. To find out more, email csm@hitwise.com.

How do Gen Ys search online when they do shopping research?

2009-10-27T04:19:47Z

Now that we’re into the lead up to Christmas shopping, there has been some commentary on what tactics retailers will apply to make the most of online shopping, including social media. Given this could potentially become a crowded space, retailers have an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by using search data to deepen their understanding of target customers.

Recently we looked at the search traffic of 18-24 year old users in Australia to get a preview of their shopping preferences (based on head of household demographics data, 4 weeks ending 26/9/09). We also broke down searches by gender to see which brands and products resounded with each group.

Some general behaviour we noted:

·Bricks and mortar searches much more dominant than online brands. 18-24 year old females and males were both more likely to search for bricks and mortar brands, accounting for 73% and 70% of searches respectively.

·18-24 year old females are more brand-conscious than males. 85% of top shopping searches by females were for brand names only, compared to 82% for males.

·18-24 year old males are more product-oriented in their searches than females. Product terms accounted for 16% of searches by males compared to 12% for females.

So what does this mean for retailers?

Given the high volume of searches for bricks and mortar brands, traditional retailers need a strong online presence to ensure they’re capturing pre-qualified consumer interest. On the flip-slide, online brands need to do a better job of increasing their brand awareness amongst Gen Ys.

Retailers should also prioritise branding campaigns (above-the-line and display etc.) for attracting 18-24 year old female customers, while Pay-Per-Click budgets should be ramped up for products targeted at 18-24 year old males.

(These principles may well apply across older age groups, but are outside of this study for the meantime.)

Later this week I will publish the top searches by retail categories for 18-24 year old users. Stay tuned.

Kindle searches spike 300% in Australia

2009-10-19T03:29:07Z

The recent announcement that the Kindle will be available to Australian consumers resulted in a 300% lift in searches during the week ending 10 October 2009, with searches maintaining their momentum the following week. Australian interest in the Kindle has long been apparent this year, outstripping searches for other ebook readers including the ‘sony reader’, ‘cybook’ and ‘iliad’.

Opportunity to attract more search traffic from ‘ebooks’

Searches for ‘ebooks’ similarly surged off the back of the Kindle announcement with ebook specialist retailers benefiting from most of the traffic. eBooks.com was the leading website to receive traffic from ‘ebooks’, accounting for 47.76% of clicks, followed by e-book.com.au with 11.08% (4 weeks ending 17 October 2009). Dymocks was the leading traditional retailer receiving search traffic on ‘ebooks’ (13th position overall), while Amazon.com ranked ahead at 8th position. Given the substantial and consistent volume of searches on ‘ebooks’, there is an opportunity for more book retailers to optimise their websites for this term.

Consumers are searching for free ebooks

One of the interesting developments in the publishing industry we’ll see next year is the launch of Google Editions, an online book store. As you can see below, searches for ‘free ebooks’ were top of mind amongst Australian users, signaling that one of the challenges for Google and Amazon will be getting consumers used to paying for their ebooks - in a similar fashion to the online music industry before the itunes era. Also of interest were searches for 'free pdf ebooks' and ‘ebooks for iphone’, suggesting that users won’t necessarily get locked into a specific platform when browsing for ebooks.

Personally, as someone who (shamefully) spends more time these days buying books than actually reading them cover to cover, I’m hoping I’ll spend a lot less money when I can gleam over the latest ebook titles instead.

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!

Early-adopters in NZ looking to shop on funky T-shirt websites

2009-10-12T01:23:08Z

Last week we launched Hitwise Lifestyle, our online segmentation and targeting tool, in the New Zealand market. Hitwise Lifestyle is built on Mosaic, a geodemographic classification system developed by Pacific Micromarketing and Experian. Each of New Zealand's 1.4 million residential households is allocated into 42 Types within 11 Groups based on a wide range of statistical and independently-researched sources.

One of the key Mosaic Lifestyle Groups is ‘Urban Intelligence'. Accounting for 4.8% of New Zealand households, Urban Intelligence is comprised of tech-savvy young professionals, with high household incomes and strong spending habits (Download our full report on Urban Intelligence).

The retail behaviour of this group is of particular interest leading up to Christmas. While Shopping & Classifieds - Auctions is a significant online industry in NZ, it is under-indexed in visits by Urban Intelligence. Retail verticals that did perform strongly in attracting visits from Urban Intelligence included Apparel and Accessories, Grocery and Alcohol, Health and Beauty, Flowers and Gifts and Department Stores. Below is a table with the leading Apparel and Accessories websites visited by Urban Intelligence:

· Designer t-shirt online shop, 1-Daytee was the leading Apparel and Accessories website visited by Urban Intelligence, 12 weeks ending 3 October 2009. US t-shirt company, Threadless.com also ranked amongst the top sites, and attracted 1 in 10 visits from Urban Intelligence.

· Given that the Apparel and Accessories industry is usually dominated by female Internet users, it was interesting to see that visits to 1-Daytee and Threadless.com were comprised of 59.1% and 56.6% male users respectively.

Urban Intelligence highly engaged with overseas News and Media sites

An important application of Hitwise Lifestyle is understanding the content preferences of a particular segment to inform media spending decisions. Urban Intelligence, for example, has the highest engagement with News and Media websites compared to all Mosaic Groups; 16% above the online average for the 12 weeks ending 3 October 2009.

Of further interest is the strong percentage of visits that overseas News and Media websites attract from Urban Intelligence, reflecting this segment's high education levels. As the below table demonstrates, visits to Guardian.co.uk were comprised of 12.53% by Urban Intelligence households, while Sohu.com News attracted 9.91%, The New York Times 9.37%, CNN.com International – US Edition 9.37%, BBC Homepage 8.1% and BBC News 7.89%.

Click here to learn more about Hitwise Lifestyle.

Government sites receive more traffic from Social Nets than News and Media

2009-09-21T00:58:00Z

During a recent presentation at the AMI Government Marketing and Communications Conference, I noted that Government websites received more traffic from Social Networking and Forums than the online News and Media industry for the first time during August 2009 in Australia. While this is partly the result of the rapid growth in visits to Social Networking websites overall, I believe this reflects a much wider engagement by Government agencies in the Social Networking space in the past couple of years. Indeed, there were many local examples of Government initiatives on Facebook and Twitter at the conference, ranging from the Country Fire Authority to the Victorian Police.

Social Nets increasingly becoming an ‘authority’ traffic source

This brought my attention to wider changes we’re seeing in online traffic distribution – with many ‘traditional’ categories, such as Banks & Financial Institutions, Shopping and Travel much more reliant on Social Networking traffic than they were two years ago. Banking websites in particular received an increase of 110.5% in traffic referrals from Social Nets, comparing August 2007 and August 2009. In contrast, content-driven industries such as Entertainment have always been heavily reliant on Social Networking traffic, with referrals outstripping News and Media traffic from before September 2006.

The increase in referrals from Social Networking websites has been largely at the expense of other traffic drivers, including Email Services, Portals and News and Media websites. The implication here is that Social Networks will increasingly become the preferred online channel for organisations to distribute their PR; and in particular, traditional News and Media websites face an uphill battle with Social Networks in providing the most immediate, if not relevant, third-party source of information on organisations.

One last important aside, visits to Social Networking websites are fast catching up to Search Engines, accounting for 11.38% and 12.55% share of visits respectively in August 2009 (Hat tip to our Senior Account Manager, Kimberleigh Stowe for pointing this out). Watch for the announcement on when visits to Social Nets overtake Search Engines in Australia :)

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