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The Way Of Making Money

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Internet Marketing

Sree Kamireddy, Bing Program Manager and self-proclaimed “Privacy Champ” has written a post on the Bing blog discussing how Microsoft handles your Bing search history information. More specifically, Kamireddy explains how this is actually in users’ hands. Kamireddy explains that Bing Offers the following: – Off/On switch:

Most holiday shipping offers are set to expire on or before December 18, according to a new study by Shop.org and BIGresearch. Nearly two thirds (62.3%) of retailers’ shipping deadlines for Christmas delivery will fall on or before December 18, with 34 percent of shipping deadlines occurring on December 18 itself. Many of the busiest online shopping days of the year are set to take place this week as shoppers go online to make holiday purchases in order to meet impending shipping deadlines. “Online shoppers don’t need to deal with long lines, store hours or winter weather, but they do need to plan ahead,” said Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org . “To entice online shoppers on a budget, many retailers will offer special sales and promotions as shipping deadlines near.” Shoppers looking to save on shipping should also be aware of December 18, as 17.9 percent of retailers said that would be the last day they would offer a free shipping promotion for holiday gifts. According to shop.org’s eHoliday survey, released in October, the majority (79.4%) of online retailers will offer free shipping with conditions at some point during the holiday season, while more than half (57.4%) also plan to offer free shipping without conditions. The popular promotion is one element driving shoppers online, with 33.1 percent of holiday shoppers planning to spend more on the Internet this holiday season because of free shipping. “In this economy, shoppers are taking a look at the entire purchase price – including shipping – before deciding where to shop,” said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch. “Though free shipping isn’t “free” for retailers, companies know these promotions can set themselves apart from their competition and are relying on them more heavily to bring in shoppers.” For shoppers who miss standard shipping deadlines they may be still able to use expedited shipping from some retailers. More than half (54.2%) of online retailers will offer overnight shipping options for Christmas delivery through December 23.

No wonder I have had this feeling lately that I am always full and the waistline is expanding a bit. It’s all this information and data that I am ingesting on a daily basis. Boy, if only limiting my data intake time would make the waistline go away I’d be there in a heartbeat but I digress. We all know that the average person is taking in more information on a daily basis than ever before but just how much is too much? According to the New York Times : The average American consumes about 34 gigabytes of data and information each day — an increase of about 350 percent over nearly three decades according to a report published Wednesday by researchers at the University of California, San Diego . According to calculations in the report, that daily information diet includes about 100,000 words, both those read in print and on the Web as well as those heard on television and the radio. By comparison, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” contains about 460,000 words. Phew! Sounds like a lot of stuff to stuff in. Now to be fair, this amount of information is not exclusively confined to the online space. The study looks at television, radio, the Web, text messages and video games. Now, I am not an online gamer so that last one has me a little bit confused since that activity often appears to serve the opposite effect of draining someone’s brain so feel free to yell at me and tell me I am wrong. Television (another fine brain extraction tool which has done its damage on me over the years) takes up the first place in time committed daily that creates information overload clocking in at 5 hours a day. Second is radio, which the average American listens to for about 2.2 hours a day. The computer comes in third, at just under two hours a day. Video games take up about an hour, and reading takes up 36 minutes. While the report says that the printed word gets less attention the reality is that people are reading more than ever because of their online habits. Also, there is the phenomenon of much of this activity happening simultaneously as in texting while watching TV. It’s exhausting just thinking about it. As Internet marketers these studies are important because there is just a ridiculous amount of competition for peoples’ attention. The resulting din of data and noise makes it even more important to find a way to get people at a time when THEY are ready to hear your message. The old intrusive selling model is growing less and less effective because people actually control their time more than ever as it relates to media. They engage when they want to engage where they want to engage. It used to be that you take what you get. Those days are gone. So what is your technique to cut through the noise? Is the level of noise going to continue to increase thus making it more daunting to cut through or will there come a time when a person says “I can’t eat another gig!” What’s your take? Comments

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Americans Overloaded On The Internet

The number of seniors actively using the Internet has increased by 55 percent to 17.5 million over the last five years, according to a new report from Nielsen. Among people 65+, the growth of women in the last five years has outpaced the growth of men by 6 percent. More seniors are also spending more time online. Time spent on the Internet by seniors increased 11 percent in the last five years, from 52 hours per month in November 2004 to just over 58 hours in 2009. “The over 65 crowd represents about 13% of the total population and with this increase in online usage, they are beginning to catch up with their offline numbers,” said Chuck Schilling, research director, agency & media, Nielsen’s online division. “Looking at what they’re doing online, it makes sense they’re engaged in many of the same activities that dominate other age segments – e-mail, sharing photos, social networking, checking out the latest news and weather – and it’s worth noting that a good percentage of them are spending time with age-appropriate pursuits such as leisure travel, personal health care and financial concerns.” Online seniors participate in a variety of activities, from email to bill paying. Checking personal email was the top online activity for the majority (88.6%) of seniors in the last 30 days. Viewing or printing online maps and checking the weather were the second and third most popular activities, with 68.6 and 60.1 percent, respectively. The most popular online destination for people over 65 in November 2009 was Google Search, with 10.3 million unique visitors. Windows Media Player and Facebook ranked in the second and third position with 8.2 million and 7.9 million visitors, respectively. Overall, the number of unique visitors who are 65 or older on social networking and blogs has jumped 53 percent in the last two years. 8.2% of all social network and blog visitors are over 65, just 0.1 percentage points less than the number of teenagers who visit these sites.

Google recently partnered with BabyCenter on a joint research study looking at how moms use search. Google says they arrived at four truths about moms and search: 1. The stork delivers search 2. Moms become black belts in search 3. Search is Mom’s GPS to Store 4. Search is Mom’s back up brain. “These truths reveal to marketers that motherhood creates a unique search window during which a valuable connection can be made,” says Jenny Liu on the Google CPG blog. “To make sure that messaging is getting through to Moms, marketers need to make sure they appear prominently on the first page of results when Moms enter both broad and specific queries into a Search Engine.” So how did Google and BabyCenter arrive at the “four truths”? Let’s look at some of the stats from the report. For one, mothers conduct nearly twice as many searches as non-mothers. According to the findings, before becoming a Mother, participants averaged 11 searches per week, and mothers averaged 21 searches per week. Searching is actually the number one activity conducted by Moms online (even more than email). According to the study, 3 out of 4 Moms believe that they have become better at searching compared to a year ago. Over a third of moms don’t make it past the top section of the first page of search results. Over half use full sentence queries to get more specific results. The study also found that moms typically use search engines throughout their purchase decision making process. Half of those surveyed use search during the awareness, familiarity and consideration stage. Expecting moms and moms with teens are more likely than the average mom to use search engines during the loyalty stage to stay in touch with a brand and keep up to date with new offers and products, the study suggests. 53% of moms say they have every expectation of seeing well-known brands highlighted within a sponsored link, and 59% of moms say they would click on a coupon noted in a sponsored search result. Another 55% of moms can link a purchase in a physical store back to a search conducted via a search engine. Moms use search engines to find recipes, reviews of products and services and finding coupons and deals. According to Google, 56% of moms say they would give up high heeled shoes for search, and 53% would give up lipstick.

DVR and online video continue to show considerable growth in the U.S., up 21.1% and 34.9 percent respectively, in time spent in the third quarter of 2009, according Nielsen’s latest Three Screen Report. In Q3, the average American watched 31 hours of TV per week, with 31 minutes spending playback mode with their DVR. In addition, each week the average consumer spent 4 hours on the Internet and 22 minutes watching online video. The average consumer spent 3 minutes watching mobile video each week. “Americans today have an insatiable appetite for not only content, but also choice,” says Nic Covey, director of cross-platform insights at Nielsen . “Across all age groups, we see consumers adding the Internet and mobile devices to their media diet – consuming media anytime and anywhere possible.” Online video viewing is also on the rise, with Internet users watching 53 more minutes of video online in Q3 compared to the previous year. Time spent among overall mobile video viewers remains consistent, with teens reporting the most time spent on average watching mobile, at just over 7 hours per month. Older mobile video users age 45-54 reported viewing 3 hours on their mobile phones each month. Social networks are becoming a popular source for online video. Time spent viewing video on social networking sites increased 98 percent from October 2008 to October 2009. Older demographics are also helping to drive the growth in video consumption with in social media. The 35 to 49 year old segment increased their viewership time by 37 percent and those over 65 increased their viewership 47 percent year-over-year. Mobile video viewing continues to grow, with 15.7 million Americans viewing video on their mobile phone in Q3, an increase of 53 percent over last year.