According to Nielsen Online’s April 2009 report, online users in the U.S. averaged “61 internet sessions, visited 108 domains, surfed 2,443 web pages and stayed on each page approximately 57 seconds.” Items of note:
Online video usage shows year-over-year growth of 24% for total streams. Streams per viewer were up 27% and time per viewer was up 58%.
The average online user spent just over one hour on Google sites.
The top five web brands for April 2009 were Google, Yahoo, MSN, Microsoft and YouTube.
The average time spent per page has increased from 55 seconds in January to 57 seconds in April.
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Want to know what marketing executives from some of the the nation’s biggest brands expect from social media? Steve Marshall and The New Group put together this 3 minute video which features a variety of executives answering the question, “If social media could do one thing for your brand, what would that be?” As Marshall writes in his introduction to the video, the executives’ responses are varied but the underlying theme is that social media allows more direct and “authentic” interaction with certain audiences.
As e-commerce grows, many marketers are looking online to gain market share in a tough economy. According to “Retailing Online 2009″ (from Forrester Research and Shop.org), 46% are spending less on their online budgets while nearly 25% are spending more. 80% of those spending more are amplifying their search engine marketing (SEM) efforts while 65% are increasing email and 60% are boosting social marketing. In short, marketers are turning to SEM to find customers and to email to keep them. 89% said that email is the most successful tactic overall with 71% of retailers planning to target their emails using customer demographics and purchase habits.
According to a recent poll, nearly 50% of Americans use some form of social media. The data from Harris Interactive suggests that Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are the most popular sites. Seventy-five percent of those aged 18-24 and 25% of those 55+ have a Facebook or MySpace account. Nearly 20% of all users update their pages daily. Twitter is less popular with only 5% of the U.S. population identifying themselves as current users.
Many marketers have had a difficult time reconciling email efforts with social media marketing. In fact, only 13% used online networks last year to increase email subscriber rates according to a recent collaborative study (Ball State University, Email Marketer’s Club and ExactTarget). However, over 46% plan to integrate email and social media during 2009, a 400% increase. 88% who combined the two last year will do the same this year.
Why is integrating a challenge? ExactTarget says that consumers are reluctant to allow marketers access to online social networks. In short, they want to avoid unnecessary messages. ExactTarget’s Morgan Stewart says successful integration most likely lies with marketers who create targeted messages within quality social networks.
88% of surveyed marketers indicate they are using some form of social media marketing and 72% admit they are still new to it. According to Michael Stelzner’s “How Marketers are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses,” marketers most prefer Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook. Marketers say the top benefit of social media marketing is “gaining attention for the business,” while “improving traffic” and “growing marketing lists” are close behind. More than 50% said that social media efforts prompt a welcome “rise in search engine rankings.” In addition, a large percentage said their marketing costs decreased with the advent of social media marketing.
Contrary to popularadoption models and in keeping with recent social networking site trends, it’s those aged 35 and over who are flocking to Twitter. In fact, the “young early adopters,” those ages 18-24 make up less than 11% of the US Twitter population. Furthermore, those age 35-44 spend about 20 minutes per visit while those 18-24 spend about 5 minutes. According to comScore blogger Sarah Radwanick, “With those age 25 and older representing a much bigger segment of the population than the under 25 crowd, it might help explain why Twitter has expanded its reach so broadly so quickly over the past few months.”
Social networking among broadband users has jumped 93% since 2006. According to Netpop Research, from 2006 to 2008 the amount of time people spent “communicating online” jumped 18% while time spent with traditional online entertainment dropped 29%. Communication accounted for 32% of total time spent online while entertainment represented 19%. Social networking is clearly becoming a new form of entertainment.
During the recent NCAA tournament on CBS, VitaminWater led viewers to its
Facebook public profile instead of its website. According to industry
insider Nick O’Neill, this is perhaps the first time a company has promoted
its Facebook presence outside of the popular social media site. O’Neill
added, “. . .this is only the beginning of an increase in consumer brands
taking advantage of the reach that Facebook provides.”
From February 2008 to 2009, Twitter experienced a “meteoric” year-over-year growth of 1,382%! According to Nielsen Online, Twitter went from 475,000 unique users to seven million and was the fastest growing member community site in February 2009. Also worth nothing, while many think Twitter is exclusive to teens and college students, recent data from Nielsen Online shows that 42% of its users are ages 35-49 with most “tweets” taking place from work. Nielsen says the consumer and corporate realms are viewing Twitter as an increasingly important branding tool and that a primary reason for the site’s success is that it can be accessed through mobile devices. Tweets aren’t just for baby birds.
