Alliance Blog Reviews

Shocked aren’t ya? It really is two days before Christmas because there is just not much happening. The folks at Harris Interactive are still working though and reporting that we are spending more time online than ever before. This will surprise no one but the report digs into some of the specifics of age groups which is always of interest. Honestly though, no surprises there either. TechCrunch tells a little about the study and what possible effects on the results could be: Harris concludes that the average hours spent online have increased from 7 hours from 1999 to 2002, to between 8 and 9 hours in 2003 to 2006, and surged after that. There was a sudden spike in time spent online in 2007 when the average hours spent on the Web increased to 11 hours. Last year, Internet users were online for 14 hours a week, double what it was from 1999 to 2002, although Harris says this could have something to do with the outbreak of the financial crisis and the lead-up to the presidential election in October 2008. The study is about personal time on line and is not inclusive of e-mail time. Based on that, we are talking about just short of 2 hours per day online on average. Here is the data that may be of service to you. There are no real surprises here. I think the shock of the proliferation of the online life is wearing off. There are likely to be other spikes moving forward like the increase of use of the mobile web that will be the new measure of growth online. I suspect that if Harris did some polling around that there would be great interest in the trending. Maybe that will help us identify when the real “Year of Mobile” was or is to be.

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We Are Spending More Time Online According to Harris

According to TechCrunch sources , Google is nearing the final stages of an agreement to acquire DocVerse , real-time Microsoft Office collaboration software company founded in 2007. Sources say the purchase price is $25M. The acquisition seems to make sense as Google and Microsoft square off for battle . The DocVerse website bears the title tag “Make Word, PowerPoint and Excel Work Like Google Docs.” Although Google Docs can already import Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, and already offers the real-time (or pretty close) collaboration, they could certainly improve, especially in the file conversion area. However, we can’t tell yet whether this will be enough as a competitor to Microsoft Office. Microsoft already has a stripped-down, cloud-based version of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote in testing with some Windows Live SkyDrive users, with public rollout to come in the next six months. Although the initial version of Word didn’t have real time collaboration, Excel did, and they hope to add more collaborative features in 2010. (And the online apps integrate with their offline counterparts, updating off- and online versions simultaneously.) On the other hand, as TechCrunch points out, this purchase will give Google Docs a direct connection to Microsoft Office documents. This could also become a feature for Google Wave, although Google recent bought a company (Appjet) with similar software (EtherPad), which they may integrate with Wave. They’ve already opened up the software code. What do you think? If the deal goes through, how will Google use DocVerse? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Google to Acquire DocVerse

Many people mistakenly think that joint ventures are only effective if you are a large player in the market that your business or product falls under.  However, the truth is actually quite far away from that statement even though they are usually most notable when they involve joint ventures.  For example, most people in the online community already are away of the joint venture effort between PayPal and EBay.  The good news is that you can have the same success with a joint venture if you plan properly and take full use of everything that such a deal can offer. The essence of joint ventures is based around the premise of helping a small less known company get a leg up on the competition by using the customer base or popularity of another business.  They are designed to help out small businesses by joining up with another company to share a customer base and promotions in exchange for either equal advertising and promotion efforts, or a small percent of the commission on sales.  This is reasonable given that the sales would not have happened without the aid of the joint venture. For a company that does not have a large budget or the ability to advertise a joint venture is an easy way to gain access to a new wider customer base or potential target market.  Generally they work out best when you explore businesses that are not your direct competitors, but are closely associated such as a company that sells Quickbooks if you provide accounting services.  Of course, the logical question that most people have is how to find a joint venture partner.  It is highly unlikely that they will come to you, so the best way is to get out there and research potential partners online.  LinkedIn is also an excellent business resource online that provides plenty of social networking opportunities and connections to businesses that may be looking for potential partners.  The more time you spend investigating the opportunities the more you will see them fall into your lap.

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Joint ventures are not just for the big guys

No wonder I have had this feeling lately that I am always full and the waistline is expanding a bit. It’s all this information and data that I am ingesting on a daily basis. Boy, if only limiting my data intake time would make the waistline go away I’d be there in a heartbeat but I digress. We all know that the average person is taking in more information on a daily basis than ever before but just how much is too much? According to the New York Times : The average American consumes about 34 gigabytes of data and information each day — an increase of about 350 percent over nearly three decades according to a report published Wednesday by researchers at the University of California, San Diego . According to calculations in the report, that daily information diet includes about 100,000 words, both those read in print and on the Web as well as those heard on television and the radio. By comparison, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” contains about 460,000 words. Phew! Sounds like a lot of stuff to stuff in. Now to be fair, this amount of information is not exclusively confined to the online space. The study looks at television, radio, the Web, text messages and video games. Now, I am not an online gamer so that last one has me a little bit confused since that activity often appears to serve the opposite effect of draining someone’s brain so feel free to yell at me and tell me I am wrong. Television (another fine brain extraction tool which has done its damage on me over the years) takes up the first place in time committed daily that creates information overload clocking in at 5 hours a day. Second is radio, which the average American listens to for about 2.2 hours a day. The computer comes in third, at just under two hours a day. Video games take up about an hour, and reading takes up 36 minutes. While the report says that the printed word gets less attention the reality is that people are reading more than ever because of their online habits. Also, there is the phenomenon of much of this activity happening simultaneously as in texting while watching TV. It’s exhausting just thinking about it. As Internet marketers these studies are important because there is just a ridiculous amount of competition for peoples’ attention. The resulting din of data and noise makes it even more important to find a way to get people at a time when THEY are ready to hear your message. The old intrusive selling model is growing less and less effective because people actually control their time more than ever as it relates to media. They engage when they want to engage where they want to engage. It used to be that you take what you get. Those days are gone. So what is your technique to cut through the noise? Is the level of noise going to continue to increase thus making it more daunting to cut through or will there come a time when a person says “I can’t eat another gig!” What’s your take?

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TMI? Americans Take In 34 Gigs of Data A Day

The move to trying to save more money online should come as no surprise to anyone for all the obvious reasons. With those reasons being so obvious we won’t belabor the point here (btw, for those wondering, the economy still kinda sucks). What is happening though, is the shift from the printed coupon to the online coupon is very real and is creating the same commotion in the heated online v. offline world as the news debate is. After all, many papers are clinging to the fact that their Sunday circulations remain OK because of the perceived savings offered by the coupons. NCH Marketing Services, a subsidiary of Valassis Communications is reporting an increase of 30% use in traditional coupons with an additional $600 million in savings by consumers. Unfortunately, we often measure just how hot an industry is by how many lawsuits it generates. Yahoo Finance reports : This past summer, Valassis won a $300 million verdict against News America Marketing (NAM), a subsidiary of the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp. It accused the coupon powerhouse of trying to monopolize supermarket advertising. In July, following the verdict in Michigan’s Wayne County Circuit Court, NAM president Chris Mixson said the decision “rewards a company that turned to litigation as its business strategy rather than compete.” He said evidence barred by the court would have made a case that Valassis tried “to induce collusion when it announced its new pricing policy in a public investor call.” So as with most things, the offline world is busy navel-gazing in court while the online business is preparing to move in take control. While those two titans of paper coupons duke it out, another battleground is emerging. Although a study by Experian Marketing Services, a global information services company, assessed that 70% of households still clip coupons from newspapers, beleaguered print media companies are starting to lose their once tight grip on the market to online competitors. NCH says online coupon distribution rose 41% during the first 9 months of 2009 and RedPlum.com saw coupon prints from the site jump 51% so far this year. At year-end 2008, online coupons represented 4.8% of all coupons redeemed in the U.S., compared to 6.3% by mid-year 2009. I am still amazed at how slow and plodding the offline world is in most sectors when it comes to seeing the competitive threat that online services is. Hey, all of you folks in the printed coupon business here’s your wake up call. Google purchased AdMob to get into this business. And to prove they are serious Google has begun issuing 100,000 window stickers to businesses in more than 9,000 cities and towns. Each window decal has a unique bar code that can be scanned with the camera feature of most mobile devices. The code will then immediately load the browser with information about the business and allow access to related coupons and offers. You don’t need a printed coupon for that to work.

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Coupons Fast Becoming Online Faves

While it is important to try to see what lies ahead in the advertising industry it is also important to watch exactly who is reading the tea leaves. On Tuesday some of the heavy hitter from the agency world predicted slight increases in spending on advertising in 2010 and did not see returns to 2007 levels until as late as 2012 (an election year, hmmmmm). The New York Times reports on the meeting that these predictions were unveiled. The predictions were made during a panel event at the second day of the 37th Global Media and Communications Conference, sponsored by UBS. The conference, in Midtown Manhattan, typically assembles executives from media agencies to offer forecasts for ad spending in the year — and years — ahead. In ascending order, the forecasts for 2010 compared with 2009 call for an increase of 0.8 percent, from the GroupM unit of WPP; 0.9 percent, from the ZenithOptimedia division of the Publicis Groupe; and 5.9 percent, from the Magna unit of Mediabrands, a division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. (A forecast from UBS, offered during the panel discussion, was for an increase of 3.9 percent.) Not exactly robust growth but at least there may be a halt put on the skid that advertising spending in traditional mediums has seen. Wait, did I just say traditional? Yes, I did and what was said by these ‘experts’ as it relates to the other side of advertising, you know that Internet marketing and social media piece we talk about from time to time? Adam Smith said GroupM was encountering difficulty in measuring the ad spending in new outlets like Facebook, which could eventually affect the accuracy of the forecasts. “We may adjust for it next year,” Mr. Smith said, to acknowledge the increasing role such media are playing. May adjust for it? Could affect the accuracy of the forecasts? So in other words, this kind of ‘advertising’ is almost viewed as a nuisance or afterthought to these traditional agencies, I suppose. They don’t even appear to fully recognize the online space. Nothing was said specifically about search marketing or any other online advertising either. Do you find it curious that the advertising ‘industry’ seems to still be disconnected from where advertising is moving? What are your thoughts about traditional agencies from Madison Avenue to Main Street that still clump online under the interactive tab on their site and say they perform these functions but then don’t even consider them in the grand scheme of advertising?

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Madison Avenue See Slight Uptick in Ad Spend for 2010

Yahoo’s taking ad targeting to a whole new level with its new Ad Interest Manager . Now advertisers aren’t the only ones who can target you—you can target yourself, too! The new AIM system enables users to select their interests and block ads outside of those interest areas. According to the press release , the tool: Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater control over their online experience. Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to deliver interest-based advertising. Shows the visitor both Yahoo!’s educated guesses about their interests and a summary of observations, along with other information they have provided. Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed a user into and lets people turn those categories off. Allows people who don’t want to see interest-based ads to turn them off entirely. As the quote indicates, the system gives you a list of ad categories Yahoo believes you’re interested in, based on your activity on the site, including search history, and properties including Yahoo Answers, Flickr and Yahoo Groups. You can then switch off each individual category. Switch off seven categories, and the system prompts you, asking if you want to switch off all behavioral targeting. Overall, this is a smart move—allowing users to target ads to themselves insures greater value for advertisers. But the system will only work as well as its implementation—both the targeting and the promotion of the system must be good enough for the system to gain widespread use. Yahoo will have to use fairly prominent, probably front-page, promotion to not only show that are they behind this system, but to make their every day users aware of the improvements. What do you think? Will you use the AIM targeting system? As a user or an advertiser, are you excited about this?

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Yahoo Lets Users Customize Ads