Direct

The US advertising market is quite heavily affected by political spending and the Olympics (P&O), with TV particularly influenced by cyclical P&O spending, according to [download page] the latest forecast from MAGNA GLOBAL. The researcher estimates that ad spending on core media will inch forward by 0.4% this year, but that growth is a more robust 2.4% when excluding P&O revenues. That disparity also means that TV revenues will decline by 2.8% this year, but otherwise be up by 1.9% when excluding the P&O impact. Next year, when P&O spending is back in play, the advertising market will rebound, growing by 5.9%, and fueled by an 8.9% expansion in TV revenues. Read more »

Perhaps due to the growing influence of social shares on search rankings, local SEOs are increasingly seeing social media as an effective marketing channel for local businesses, according to results from a BrightLocal industry survey. More than 8 in 10 respondents believe that social either works well for certain business types (57%) or that it is very powerful (25%), up from 76% last year, while fewer than 1 in 10 are of the opinion that it's over-hyped. When it comes to generating leads customers for clients, though, SEOs are biased towards search, with 82% saying that "general search" is one of their top-3 most effective online channels. Read more »

Facebook released its Q1 earnings yesterday, showing mobile's growing influence on the social network, consistent with various recent research reports (such as this one). According to the release, the number of mobile monthly active users (mobile MAUs) grew by more than 10% quarter-over-quarter, to reach more than three-quarters of total monthly active users worldwide. Mobile-only monthly active users also grew by more than 20%, exceeding 10% of the total. Read more »

Talking to people works, according to results from Ifbyphone's "State of Marketing Measurement: Survey Report" [download page]. Asked to rate various marketing tools for their effectiveness in generating sales leads, respondents ranked inbound phone calls highest, with a rating average of 3.4 on an 8-point scale (where 1 represents the highest potential). In-person visits were virtually on par with inbound phone calls, with a rating average of 3.48. Read more »

6 in 10 search marketers believe that it will be either much more (27%) or more (36%) important to rank in global search engines this year compared to last, according to results from BrightEdge's "2013 Search Marketer Survey" [download page]. A key aspect of reaching consumers around the world involves getting to the Chinese customer, and 41% of respondents believe it will be more important to rank in Baidu this year, versus about 1 in 10 who see this being less important. A recent report from Covario found that Baidu accounted for 1 in 4 global paid search clicks in Q1. Read more »

Google has released a customer journey to online purchase benchmark tool, providing insights as to where different marketing channels impact the customer journey. Based on transactional data collected from Google Analytics accounts with e-commerce tracking enabled, the tool reveals that in the US, display, social and email each act more as an assist interaction, while paid search acts almost equally as an assist and last interaction. Read more »

A new report [download page] from the Platt Retail Institute, conducted in association with the American Marketing Association and sponsored by hybris software, compares marketers' rankings of various channels' budget allocations against the channels' perceived importance and ROI. The study reveals that of the 11 channels identified, email marketing ranks 3rd in current importance and 5th in return on investment, but only 8th in budget allocation. A similar pattern emerges for social media. Read more »

HubSpot has released its "2013 State of Inbound Marketing report" [download page], with a host of statistics covering adoption and use of inbound marketing tools. Among the insights from the survey, 27% of marketers report below-average costs per lead (CPLs) for both email marketing and social media, with SEO and blogs close behind (25% and 24%, respectively). When looking at lead conversion rates by channel, 15% of respondents say SEO delivers above-average sales conversions, with social (13%) next on the list. Read more »

The latest report on paid search trends has been released, this one from Kenshoo. As with previous reports from RKG, The Search Agency, and IgnitionOne, the Kenshoo study notes that mobile devices are playing a strong role in the search advertising market. Separately, though, the report illustrates that on a global basis, paid search click volume (+21%) and click-through rates (+62%) each saw strong growth, with spending up 15%.  Read more »

The median email click-through rate (CTR) in the US stood at 2.2% last year, and the mean rate at 3.3%, but the top quartile of performers achieved an average rate of 8.3%, according to [pdf] a new email marketing benchmarks study from Silverpop. The study also reveals that when it came to unique open rates, the top quartile of performers in the US saw an average rate of 34.7%, more than double the median rate of 16.5%. The strongest performers bested the median click-to-open rate by 83% (24% vs. 13.1%). Read more »