Internet Marketing News

US advertisers to spend more on digital than print: study

Mar 8 02:44 PM US/Eastern

US companies will spend more this year on digital and online advertising and marketing than on print for the first time ever, according to a study released on Monday.

Companies will spend 119.6 billion dollars on online and digital strategies and 111.5 billion dollars on newspaper and magazine advertisements and other print campaigns, according to the study by California-based Outsell.

Outsell, which provides research and advisory services to the publishing and information industries, described the spending shift as "an industry milestone crossover event."

It said overall US spending on advertising and marketing will increase by 1.2 percent in 2010 to 368 billion dollars.

Outsell said 63 billion dollars, or 52.8 percent of total online advertising spending by companies, would be on their own websites, which it said constitutes a "powerful form of direct to customer marketing."

"Advertisers are directing dollars toward the channels which generate the most qualified leads and most effective branding," Outsell vice president and lead analyst Chuck Richard said.

"As they emerge from the recession, they need more accountability, and they're spreading their spending over a widening set of options," he said.

By category, Outsell said spending on print newspaper advertising was expected to drop 8.2 percent to 27 billion dollars while print magazine advertising will rise 1.9 percent this year to 9.4 billion dollars.

US newspapers and magazines have been facing declining print advertising revenue, falling circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.

Outsell said that spending on direct mail marketing campaigns would rise 2.7 percent to 24.4 billion dollars and spending on custom print publications would be 3.0 percent higher at 19.3 billion dollars.

Spending on print directories would fall 8.3 percent to 11.6 billion dollars while spending on print newsletters would be flat at 11.4 billion dollars.

"2010 will not suddenly erase the painful memory of crumbling ad spending in 2009, but it will provide much closer to a flat year for several of the traditional media types," Outsell said.

"This means that publishers with significant shares of traditional media in the mix and who pounded their expenses and debt into shape sufficient to survive the brutal 2009 should be able to carry on at those levels in 2010."

Spending on television advertising was forecast to drop 6.5 percent to 59.6 billion dollars.

Outsell surveyed more than 1,000 US advertisers in December 2009 for its annual "Marketing and Advertising Study 2010."

Google Analytics Launches Individual Qualification Program: Online Course and Test Promote Increased Understanding of Web Analytics

March 3, 2009

Google announced today the launch of a new skills qualification program, Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ), which allows individuals to demonstrate proficiency in Google Analytics. Google provides a free online course that covers web analytics techniques and Google Analytics implementation, administration, and analysis tools. Agencies and other organizations can have staff take the course as part of professional development.

While Google Analytics is easy to use for beginners, it's most powerful in the hands of knowledgeable users. Qualified users will be effective at leveraging Google Analytics within their organizations and at helping others to do the same. The Google Analytics IQ program is tailored for agencies who want to retain and develop employees who are knowledgeable about Web analytics, and for individuals who seek ways to improve their job prospects or further their own personal development. Individuals do not have to be associated with an agency or organization to take the online course or test.

"Google is an important partner to both Groups and its clients," said Rob Norman, Director of Interactive at WPP agency GroupM Worldwide. "Google Analytics is an important resource in helping us to understand the opportunity that Google presents, and our participation demonstrates our continued commitment to gaining insight in all our key channels."

There is also recognition among industry analysts of the need for more individual analytics certification. For example, in a September 8, 2008 report from Forrester Research titled, Sourcing Analytics Help, successful businesses "View Web analytics as a greenfield opportunity to propel their organizations forward. Although external consultants can feed new ideas and facilitate growth, ongoing improvement is only possible if internal staff members lead the charge and champion efforts from within."

Google Analytics Unveils Enterprise Class Feature Set, Updated Interface, and Integration with Google AdSense

October 22, 2008

Today at the eMetrics Summit in Washington, D.C., Google Analytics' web service announced new enterprise-class features including custom reports, advanced segmentation, an API, as well as an updated interface, richer data visualizations, and an integration with Google AdSense. These new features combine the sophistication and versatility of a full-service web analytics tool with Google Analytics' ease of use and accessibility, so that businesses large and small, around the world, can even better serve their visitors.

Custom reports enable customers to create their own reports with the metrics they want to compare—organized in the way they want to see it.

Advanced segmentation enables customers to isolate and analyze subsets of their traffic. They can select from predefined custom segments such as "Paid Traffic" and "Visits with Conversions," or create their own segments with a flexible, easy-to-use segment builder.

With Google Analytics' new custom reporting and advanced segmentation, we have been able to use enterprise-class analytics to gain insight into site activity and take action on behalf of our clients to improve campaign ROI," said Jeff Campbell, Co-founder and VP of Product Development for search marketing agency Resolution Media. "It's a full-service tool that is still easy to use, and it's free, which, given the current economic situation, is a huge benefit."

The application programming interface (API), currently in private beta, enables developers to access all of their Google Analytics data and export it for any type of use. Possible uses include integrating information into other data sources, building custom visualizations or interfaces, and conducting offline analysis.

The updated interface includes several new features in the administrative interface and a cleaner reporting screen that highlights tools for changing the way reports display data. A new navigation, administrators’ ability to rename accounts and profiles, and account and profile locator functionality are designed to help increase customers' efficiency and ease of account management.

Motion Charts provide advanced but easy-to-use multi-dimensional analysis. Customers can select their own metrics to compare and then view how those metrics interact over time. By animating data, Motion Charts make discovering insights much easier and more obvious than when viewing data in traditional graphs and columns.

The integration with Google AdSense gives new and existing AdSense publishers access to granular reports that break down AdSense performance by both page and referring site. Armed with this new data about user activity, they can now make more informed decisions on how to improve user experience on their sites and optimize their AdSense units to increase revenue potential.

The aim of this new feature set is to offer customers the flexibility to choose how their data is presented to them and the extensibility to integrate Google Analytics data with their other data sources. These capabilities will help further unlock the potential of both large and smaller website owners to improve visitor interaction with their websites and improve the value of their marketing investments.

More details on the entire new feature set are available on the Google Analytics blog. Video demonstrations of the new features are also available.

Google Analytics Unveils New Features, Urchin Software

October 16, 2007

Today at the eMetrics Summit in Washington, D.C., Google announced new features to its Google Analyticsâ„¢ web service such as site search reporting and event tracking, and an updated version of Urchinâ„¢ software. This enhanced feature set makes essential Web 2.0 information more accessible and comprehensible, and enables Google Analytics users to better understand their users and to act on reporting information in more sophisticated ways.

Users can enable site search to identify keywords, categories, products, and trends across time and user segments, thereby helping them measure the effectiveness of their websites and their marketing dollars. Site search aggregates data about how searches affect site usage, e-commerce activity, and conversion rates, by tracking internal search patterns. This best-of-breed feature will soon be available worldwide, and it works with Google Custom Search, GSA, Google Miniâ„¢ and many other non-Google site search products.

With Web 2.0 features also spreading on the Internet, measuring their success is increasingly valuable. Event tracking, which launches in a limited beta at the eMetrics Summit, enables Google Analytics users to measure visitor engagement with a site’s interactive elements, such as Ajax, Javascript, Flash movies, page gadgets, downloads, and other multimedia Web 2.0 experiences. Google Analytics users who are attending the eMetrics Summit can sign up for event tracking at the Google Analytics booth, and users should note that when they add event tracking, they must update their page tags from "urchin.js" to "ga.js".

For those who prefer a software version of web analytics, Google Analytics is introducing Urchin Software in limited beta worldwide. Urchin Software is an update to Urchin 5 software, and a free 90-day trial of the beta version of Urchin Software can be requested from an authorized reseller: http://www.google.com/analytics/support_partner_provided.html.

Urchin Software will be available for a discounted price to users of Urchin 5, and will include many improvements including tools to assist in migrating configurations and data from previous versions of Urchin. Once the new software is out of beta, it can be purchased through an authorized reseller, who often offers comprehensive support and consultation services as well.

Users all over the world rely on Google Analytics to optimize their businesses and understand their customers’ needs. To better serve them, Google Analytics has added six new languages, bringing the total number of supported languages to 25. The new languages are Czech, Hungarian, Portuguese (Portugal), Thai, Filipino, and Indonesian.