Search Engine Marketing

79% of smartphone owners qualify as "smartphone shoppers," says Google in new study results, using their devices to assist with shopping at least once a month. 84% of these smartphone shoppers use their devices to help them while they're in a store, equating to about 2 in 3 smartphone owners overall using their devices in-store. The most common way these consumers go about their research is through search, per the study, with store and brand websites less popular. That pattern also applies when smartphone owners compare prices, discover promotional offers, and find out where products are sold Read more »

75% of ad agencies responding to a BrightRoll survey believe that video is equally or more effective than TV, and that's up from 64% who believed that to be the case in last year's survey, according to a new BrightRoll report [download page]. Even more respondents (91%) believe that digital video measures up well with display, although they're less convinced about its effectiveness compared to social media (68%), search (52%) and direct response (45%). The most important aspect of video advertising to clients is its targeting capabilities, according to 45% of respondents, with reach (27%) also valuable. 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 »

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 »

By 2015, the internet should account for 23.4% of global ad spending, details Zenith Optimedia in a new forecast. That's up more than 5% points from last year's 18%, and comes at the expense of almost all traditional media, none of which are slated to see any growth in share of spending. TV's share will remain flat, at about 40%, as will cinema's (at just 0.6%), but newspapers, magazines, radio, and outdoor will see varying levels of declining share. Print, as expected, will be hardest hit: newspapers and magazines are the only media forecast to see a decline in expenditures. Read more »

Smartphone and tablet owners just can't seem to let go of their devices. Young smartphone owners seem particularly addicted: 3 in 4 check them when they wake up in the morning, while up to 40% check them every 10 minutes. As it turns out, even a vacation won't pry smart devices out of their owners' hands. When they go on vacation, 8 in 10 owners say they take their devices along and use them all the time, compared to slightly more than 1 in 10 who take them but rarely use them. 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 Search Agency has released an analysis of paid search trends in the US in Q1 2013 across devices and verticals. Looking at the B2B vertical, the study finds that impressions rose 27.2% year-over-year, while clicks stayed flat. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, impressions were up 35.5% and clicks up 15.6%. The data also reveals that while click-through rates grew by 16% year-over-year on average for all industries (to 3.15%), B2B companies saw a 21.6% drop (to 2.07%). Read more »