The end of search is a theme that’s been talked about a lot in the past – as long ago as in Feb 2008, Ben Kunz of Media Associates produced a series of graphs from Google Trends showing that search volumes were significantly down for a range of what you might call staple terms – music, furniture, office supplies etc.

Some of it is wishful thinking as many of us wish for the age of Google to start drawing to a close (whether the age of Facebook is any better is of course a different matter altogether).

And the latest Nielsen search stats from the US show that Google is as dominant as ever, controlling almost 2/3 (64.2%) of the search market – a share that’s hardly changed since last year, despite all the new bells and whistles that Microsoft’s Bing (on 13.6%) has been rolling out.

It’s the second table from the Nielsen post however that makes for more interesting reading. Over the past year, search activity is down 16% – 17% in the case of Google. Yahoo! (-30%) performed particularly badly, though despite it’s still small share Bing (+28%) has done well. So all those extra features are paying off after all.

OK, so with almost nine million searches being conducted in the US in July, search is certainly not dead. But a drop of close to a fifth year on year is still significant, and one explanation has to be that people get more and more of what they need and want via social media. There is that research from earlier in the year after all about Facebook now driving more traffic to major news and entertainment portals than Google.

At the very least it reinforces what Comscore found last year – that search and social media campaigns now need to work very much in tandem, with a paid search campaign supported by social activity being 2.23x more effective than if conducted on its own.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Search Market Isn’t Always What it Seems to Be (webpronews.com)
• Google starts its own Rocketboom (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
• Google starts video series showcasing hot searches (news.cnet.com)
• Numbers Game: Bing goes up as Google’s search share drops (econsultancy.com)

A quarter (25.9%) of consumers in the big five European Union countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) now browse the Internet via their mobile phones.   This is according to comscore’s MobileLens survey (via Marketing Charts), which shows that the rates of mobile Internet use range from 36.7% in the UK to 20.4% in Germany.

The UK also leads in the % that accessed news (36.5% compared to the European average of 29.7%) and accessed a social network while on their mobiles (23.8% vs 14.9%).   It’s Italy however that has the highest rate of Smartphone users (33.6%), while Spain (56.1%) has the highest number of 3G subscribers.

It should be said that the UK figures are a little different to Ofcom’s recent Communications Market Report (summary here), which showed that only 18% of Brits access the Internet via their mobiles – however comscore’s figures come from June, while Ofcom’s report is a comprehensive year in review and so draws data from Q1.

Comscore says that the number of mobile music users has grown by 10% over the past year, meaning that there are now 54 million consumers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain who listen to music via their mobiles – or 23.8% of the total.

Related articles by Zemanta

• UK citizens flocking to the mobile web (v3.co.uk)
• Britons spend half their waking hours ‘plugged in’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Why Smartphone Adoption May Not Be as Big as You Think (mashable.com)

While there are questions about the ability of Facebook to grow in future, Comscore has found that Twitter use has more than doubled over the past year.   Comscore’s stats (via Marketing Charts) also confirm the on-going trend of Twitter becoming less of an a US dominated, or even anglophone network.

While Twitter growth in North America was a respectable 22% from June 2009 to June 2010, in Europe it was 106%, in Asia Pacific 243% and Latin America 305%.  Overall, North American unique visitors counted for 27% of the 92.8 million unique visitors.

Though we’re not exactly comparing like with like, it is still useful to look at the Sysomos research from January, which showed the US accounting for 50% of Twitter’s user base.

Surprisingly, the countries with the highest % of Twitter penetration as a proportion of each country’s Internet population are Indonesia (20.8%), Brazil (20.5%) and Venezuela (19%).    Comscore says that Venezuela’s Twitter enthusiasm can directly be traced to Hugo Chavez setting up an account.  By comparison, Twitter penetration in the US was 11.9%, while in the UK  it was 10.9%
Mobiles drive Twitter use
Comscore says that Twitter’s growth in the US, UK, France, Spain and Italy is driven by Smartphone users.

This chimes in with an article posted up on GigaOm on Friday, showing that at weekends in particular, Twitter use from mobiles jumps – showing that people are still using the network when away from their desks and integrating into their online lives.

In his article Om Malilk talks about a study done by New York based SocialFlow, which looked at one (client) Twitter account with 500k followers.  On Saturdays, the % of clicks from mobile devices hits a peak at 41%.

Of course, 93 million global unique users, does not mean the same as 93 million regular users.  There is still the research from RJ Metrics showing that 83% of Twitter accounts are dormant every month, and that a base of committed users (often active in other social media / media channels) make up for the majority of activity.

Though the growth rates are certainly impressive, there’s as yet no new evidence that Twitter’s churn rates have significantly improved, with the service hitting real mainstream web adoption.

Related articles by Zemanta

• comScore Twitter Worldwide Report: Indonesia, Brazil and Venezuela Score Top Growth (pamil-visions.net)
• Twitter Use Taking Off In Many Foreign Markets (webpronews.com)
• June Twitter visitors nearly 93 million (newstatesman.com)

There’s been a lot of research out about how social media recommendations can increase the chances of people buying products or services.

For instance, the other week Harris in the US found that 50% of under 35s followed the recommendations of social media friends, compared to 17% who acted on celebrity endorsements.   And last year Comscore released a study showing that ‘social search’ (social media activity and paid search together) was 233% more effective than search advertising alone.

However,  a recent study featured in Marketing Magazine in particular is worth noting.   It shows that people accessing an online retailer via social media are 10x more likely to buy something than a visitor that comes to the site cold.

According to Sage Pay, on average 7% of visitors to an online store will make a purchase.   However, if directed to the retailer via social media, the % of visitors who will go to the transaction section goes up to 71%.

Especially when compared with a click-through rate that can be as low as 0.02% for display ads, those figures are fairly compelling.   Yet, in the same Sage Pay survey, only 5% of marketers with responsibility for online marketing said that social media was the most effective communications channel.

This is one of the items that we featured this week at Rabbit on our regular ‘Rabbit Feed’ – more details here

Image – Daniel Weir, Via Flickr

Related articles by Zemanta

• Social networks drive online commerce, says study (newstatesman.com)

Perhaps not the most surprising result when you think about it: Comscore has found that on Facebook the visitors who spent the most time on the site also spent the most money online, with the top 20% of users shelling out $67 in Q1.

A few more results from the study (via emarketer): Unlike on Facebook, the most prolific users of Twitter are not the biggest spenders, perhaps a consequence of Twitter’s power users seeing the network as more of an information and news exchange.   However at the same time, Twitter users did spend more online overall than Facebook users.

Also, users of Facebook and Twitter spent more on the Web than Internet consumers in general.   People who spent no time on Facebook spent $27 online in Q1, $40 less than those heavy users Comscore talked about.

So in summary, yet another study that shows that people spending time talking about your brand on social media translates into extra £, $ or € when they start spending.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Facebook and Twitter Visitors Shop – and Spend – More Online (gigaom.com)
• Spending habits of Twitter and Facebook users revealed (socialmedia.globalthoughtz.com)
• Social Media Only Part of Sales Solution (quickprinting.com)

After showing a slight drop in US (Compete and Comscore) and Worldwide (Comscore) Facebook visitor numbers in February, both metrics firms now confirm that it’s business as usual with the social network growing in popularity again.

Comscore says that Facebook had 472 million uniques in Jan, 463 million in March and 484 million in Feb.   However, Comscore seems to suggest that the February blip was to do with social media as a whole as both MySpace and Twitter also saw drops in February and a rise again in March.

And the stats from Facebook itself?   At the beginning of February Facebook had itself down as having 400 million active monthly users. Inside Facebook then estimated it at 436 million for March using the Facebook advertiser tool.

Inside Facebook mentions Facebook staffers in saying that it’s now passed the 450 million active user mark.   To put that into perspective, there are now more Facebook users than there are people in South America (382 million).

Related articles by Zemanta

• Facebook Closing In On 500 Million Visitors A Month (ComScore) (techcrunch.com)

Marketing directors with money to spend take note.  Forget the measly 0.2% click through rates, online advertising really does work!

…or so says .Fox Networks which unveiled a ‘ground breaking‘ piece of research with Comscore to show that consumers exposed to video advertising (as opposed to online display advertising) were 28% more likely to visit a site and 2x as likely to conduct a brand search.

In addition, Comscore and .Fox found that video and display advertising saw “site visitation increase by more than a factor of seven over a four week period following exposure to an ad.”

A note of scepticism to start off with: Does an online ad really have a residual effect of four weeks? (the allotted time for people to take action).  And what about other brand messages that a consumer may have seen during that period to drive site visits as advertising rarely works in isolation.

However, Comscore’s findings that online video advertising is mildly less annoying for consumers and more effective than display is supported by other research.

Last month TubeMogul found that 16% of viewers click away on seeing a video pre-roll ad, which leaves 80%+ of the audience still intact…though for newspaper and magazine sites, exactly the ones who need to sell ads online, the news is worse.   There a quarter (25%) leave when the pre-roll starts.

Meanwhile as long as three years ago, Doubleclick found that click through rates for video advertising ranged from 0.4 to 0.74% as opposed to the 0.1 to 0.2% for normal display or banner ads.

Another finding from Comscore is also worth noting.   Only 38% watch TV online to avoid ads.   By comparison 71% do so because they missed an episode while 57% cite convenience.   Apparently people who watch online TV would also be willing to tolerate six or seven mins of ads per hour, compared to the four mins they are currently served up.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Video Ads Uplifting (to Visitor Numbers and Search Queries) (myventurepad.com)
• ComScore: European Display Advertising More Effective? (adbean.net)
• Online Display Ads: Are They Targeted? (offlinemoney.com)

The other day I posted about Nielsen’s stats showing that the over 25s (and over 35s in particular) are the most active on mobile social networks, as opposed to teens.   The other giant metrics firm, Comscore (via Marketing Charts), has now produced figures about the growth of mobile social networking in general.

Looking at the US, Comscore worked out that access to Facebook via mobiles grew by 112% over the past year, while mobile Twitter access went up 347%.

At the same time, MySpace continues to decline on mobiles as well as on the Web, with 7% less users accessing it via their mobile devices.

Unsurprisingly, the growth in mobile social networking comes from smartphone users – hence the over 35s that Nielsen talked about who are both more likely to be able to afford one and also get one via their jobs.    30.8% of smartphone users accessed mobile social networks, compared to just 6.8% of more run of the mill ‘feature phone’ users.

A study that shows the limits of social media in helping people discover new content – but also shows the importance of online editorial endorsement  – comes from Knowledge Networks in the US (via Digital Media) .

Viewers were asked how they discover new content and how they decide what to watch, both for TV and online video.   For online video, social media from strangers ranked seventh in terms of recommendations, with verbal word of mouth (41%) and search (32%) coming top.

In other words, even on the Internet people are most likely to be directed to stuff that someone’s told them about face to face.

For regular TV, TV advertising is actually the prime source of content discovery at 46% – who said commercials were dead!  However, social media from strangers only scored 6%.   Meanwhile, just as they are for online videos, verbal recommendations are key in helping people find out about offline TV shows (38%)

Conclusions: Concentrate on online PR, and a search + social media strategy
So is the conclusion that a social media and online engagement strategy is largely a waste of time, and you might as well put your cash into both TV and search ads?  Hardly.

First of all, it’s obvious that even if someone tells you about a great new viral face to face they must have heard or read about it somewhere else.   As always off and online word of mouth have to very much work in tandem.

Secondly, stories or reviews on the Internet ranked highly (27%) in terms of helping people find out about new online videos.   In other words just as you would offline, editorial endorsement online from major blogs and news sources (the lines between the two are blurred anyway) works.

Finally, the Knowledge Networks study shows the effectiveness of search when it comes to helping people discover online video.

However if your social media and search strategy works together then search ends up being even more effective.   That’s shown by an earlier Comscore study that said that people exposed to both what they called “influenced social” and paid search had 233% heavier search behaviour.

Related articles by Zemanta

• comScore and VideoEgg to Measure How Online Ads Impact Offline Purchases (mashable.com)
• Zenith Forecast: In ’09, Only Online Grows (paidcontent.org)
• HuffPo’s tweets and comments to be sponsored (guardian.co.uk)

Quite a long post this, it forms the basis of this week’s Cow Digital Digest (subscribe here), the summary of stats and trends that Louise and myself send out every week.

28% of Americans say that social media has influenced their holiday purchases

Metrics firm Comscore (source Marketing Charts) carried out a study to show that during the first 36 days of the Christmas shopping season in the US, during which consumers spent $16 billion, 28% were influenced by social media when buying. The biggest source of influence we reading a consumer generated review of a product (including blog posts) at 13%.

At the same time, the effectiveness of using Twitter feeds to blast out special offers and promotions could be called into question from the stat that only 5% bought after following a company’s Twitter feed to find out about special deals.

“Cyber Monday” (UK) moves closer to Christmas
According to Hitwise, ‘Cyber Monday’, the day when online retailers are at their busiest, moved a week closer to Christmas this year. In 2008 it was on 30 November / 1 December, this year it shifted to 7 / 8 December.

Hitwise says that larger online retailers and department stores were the main beneficiaries of later Christmas shopping. Amazon in particular saw its market share of visits increase from 6.1 to 8.2%. M&S and John Lewis similarly featured in the top ten.

According to Hitwise analyst Robin Goad, the trend towards established brands and also ones with a high street presence “clearly illustrates a preference for multiple delivery and dispatch options.” In other words, we’re tending towards retailers that offer a mixture of trust and convenience.

Last week it was rumoured that Amazon is eyeing up High Street locations around the UK, at a time when Borders books has gone into administration.

Latest Facebook stats for Europe
Inside Facebook has the latest Facebook figures for November, showing that in Europe it now reaches 112 million monthly active users. As before, the UK is by far Facebook’s biggest market with 23,009.220 users, which gives it 37.6% penetration.

Inside Facebook points out the social network’s growth rate is however slowing. This comes as Facebook announced 350 million users globally, which raises the question of whether it’s reaching saturation levels.

4/5 video viewers leave a stream if it “buffers”
Better make sure your site and stream has the right bandwidth as if there is any kind of glitch, the vast majority of users will leave.

Tubemogul looked at 192 million video streams (source New Tee Vee) across 14 days and found that more than 81% of viewers will leave if it “rebutters.” In other words, most viewers won’t hang around for a video to reload but will go and find something else to do with their time.

According to Tubemogul, that’s particularly significant for advertisers who’ve invested in ‘post rolls’, ads that run at an end of a clip. Chances are most people will never see them.

A day in the life of the Internet
This killer graphic was featured on NextWeb, visualising a day in the life of the Internet. Apparently we send 210 billion emails a day, post five million tweets and post 900,000 new blog articles.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google commands 71% (robbiz1978.blogspot.com)
• Online Holiday Spending Reaches $16 Billion; Social Media Continues To Influence Purchases (techcrunch.com)
• Facebook U.S. Visits Increase 194% Over Past Year; Tagged is Beating Twitter? (readwriteweb.com)
• Compete: Facebook Added 2.4 Million US Uniques in September (insidefacebook.com)