Category: Online Marketing

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According to a study conducted by the Content Marketing Institute, an increasing number of B2B companies now rely on digital marketing; especially content marketing to reach out to customers. Here are some interesting statistics from the study

Distribution of Content marketing Usage

So as you can see, besides a few offline strategies, a majority of them are online. This is despite the fact that a good percentage of B2B leads still come from offline means. One of the primary reasons for marketers to still deploy digital marketing is to create better buzz for their offline events like trade shows. Trade show exhibitors are now regularly known to create greater buzz for their trade show booths through social media for increased leads and conversions.

Popularity of Social Media Among B2B Marketers

The study of the B2B marketers showed the following distribution in interest among the various social media channels.

Classification of B2B Industries Using Social Media

It would be interesting to study the industries that these B2B industries that use social media fall in. According to the CMI study, this is how the classification stands:

According to Comscore, 174 million American internet users watched more than 28.1 billion videos in February. This presents a huge opportunity for video ad networks to reach their audience. A study published by TBI research last month concluded that the average CPM rates on video networks are noted between $5 to $15 depending on the type of ad network. The improving targeting measures has helped sites like YouTube finally turn profitable.

Here are the largest video networks that have benefitted from advertising on videos (in terms of potential unique viewers per month)

1. Tremor Media
2. YuMe Video Network
3. Advertising.com Video Network
4. BBE
5. Break Media Network
6. ScanScout Network
7. BrightRoll Video Network
8. SpotXChange Video Ad Network
9. TidalTV
10. Adconian Video Network

How much money do websites like Google, Yahoo and AOL make on an average against a unique visitor? A recent study published by Experian Hitwise has revealed that Google is the leader in not just the overall advertising revenues and number of unique visitors, but is also the top when it comes to the revenues/visitor number. The study concludes that Google makes nearly double per unique visitor as made by the next biggest in line, Yahoo.

Here are the numbers published in the study (based on revenues and uniques so far in 2010)

Google : $52.50
Yahoo : $22.16
AOL : $10.60
Microsoft : $8.33

The study of the internet advertising market in the United States conducted by IAB and PWC has concluded that revenues for 2009 have been marginally lower than the numbers recorded for 2008. The internet ad revenues for 2008 was $23.4 billion and it fell 3.4% to $22.7 billion last year.

The biggest contribution is still from search advertising. The search engine market contributed 47% of all revenues in 2009. Here are the break-up of revenues contributed from the different ad formats

Search : $10.698 billion
Display : $7.965 billion
– Banner ads : $5.061 billion
– Rich Media : $1.505 billion
– Digital Video : $1.017 billion
– Sponsorship : $383 million
Classifieds : $2.254 billion
Referrals/Lead : $1.451 billion
Email : $292 million

What are the most important marketing objectives and strategies that marketers resort to while running a digital marketing campaign? A recent survey by Datran Media looked into the several aspects to draw conclusions.

One of the most striking revelations is that more than three fourths of marketers are looking at targeting as part of their marketing strategies while audience analytics measurement is a critical parameter to ensure that the right audience is being targeted. Here is a ranking of the various strategies that marketers pointed out in the survey

1. Targeting
2. Audience analytics measurement
3. Retention and loyalty campaigns
4. Email list growth
5. Content creation
6. Awareness building campaign
7. Win back former customers
8. Affiliate marketing
9. New target market discovery
10. Building apps for web 2.0

It is a well known fact that promotional messages hidden inside actual content actually pay off better than explicit banner or pop-up ads. Without looking into issues relating to ethics over the various forms of advertising, a study from AdFusion looked into the likelihood of consumers to act upon these various advertisements. Interestingly, the ad formats have been increasing in effectiveness over the past year.

Here are the percentages of consumers who have acted upon the promotional messages this year. The corresponding number for 2009 is given within brackets.

Articles including brand info : 53% (51%)
Email Offers : 51% (47%)
Sponsored Search results : 40% (39%)
Banner ads : 28% (25%)
Pop-up ads : 19% (13%)

The Network Advertising Initiative, in its recent research on conversion rates looked into the conversion rates among the different kinds of ad segments has reported a decent 6.8% conversion rate among behaviorally targeted advertisements. However, these ad units come at a cost. The study also reported on the increased cost of behavioral targeting compared to other online advertising segments like Run of Network or Retargeting.

The study published the CPM rates for the different quarters of 2009 noting the following numbers for the full year.

Run of Network : $1.98
Behavioral Targeting : $4.12
Retargeting : $3.07

While text based advertising has been one with high returns on investment for a long time, image advertising too has remained popular, especially among website publishers with generic content. However, websites on topics like Finance too are interested because of the brand awareness that image based advertising is able to create.

Here is a ranking of the website publishers (by category) based on the number of image ad impressions served during the month of February 2010.

1. General Community : 45.6 billion
2. Email : 30.9 billion
3. Portals & Search Engines : 24.2 billion
4. Finance : 10.5 billion
5. General/ National News : 5.9 billion
6. Sports & Recreation : 4.5 billion
7. Entertainment : 4.2 billion
8. Weather : 3.3 billion
9. Local/Regional : 3.3 billion
10. Home & Garden : 2.8 billion

The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization – SEMPO, has released its latest report on the state of SEO among organizations. One of the striking revelations from the study is that a number of companies have been moving their marketing budget away from spending on print advertising, conferences and direct mail into SEO.

The reasons are not difficult to understand. Thanks to the downturn, there has been a renewed focus on the ROI from marketing spends and SEO is undoubtedly one of the marketing areas that is sure to garner the highest ROI.

So how much is being spent on search engine optimization? The SEMPO study on American and Canadian companies reveals the following numbers for 2009. Please do note that this spend includes expenditure on agency, staff and technology costs.

Zero : 9%
$1 – $25K : 39%
$25K – $75K : 22%
$75K – $150K : 14%
$150K – $250K : 6%
$250K – $500K : 4%
$500K – $1 Million : 4%
$1 Million – $3 Million : 2%
> $3 Million : 1%