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Ideas and Trends

Apple Surpasses Walmart in Online Shoppers

Walmart might be one of the biggest retailers in the world, but Apple is the company with the most online shoppers as of November 2011 according to comScore (as reported by Ad Age).

There is one thing that’s pushing Apple ahead of Walmart — iTunes. Of the 79 million unique visitors to the Apple website from the United States in November, 30% of them came for the iTunes digital content store.

Digital content sales are exploding everywhere, and it’s a trend that’s going to continue to grow. Consumers are purchasing more digital content, including music, television shows, movies, and books than ever. With the skyrocketing sales of the iPad and similar tablet devices, more and more consumers are shifting their media consumption habits to digital content every day.

comScore reports that ecommerce sales are up by approximately 15% over a year ago, but digital content sales are up twice as much. In fact, Ad Age reports that December 25th has been dubbed “Download Day” because so many people are looking for content for the devices they received as Christmas gifts that day. Between December 25th through January 1st is the period each year when the most most digital downloads occur.

The rise of Apple’s iTunes traffic and download sales shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. What’s surprising is that so few competitors are making headway against Apple and the iTunes store. It will be interesting to look at these statistics again next year at this time to see how Apple and competitors are doing in the download market.

Another interesting point to consider is the overall trend toward digital content consumption and how that shift will affect download sales throughout the year. There’s no going back now. Digital is here to stay. Can another company compete with Apple in the short-term? Now is the time for someone to make a move.

What do you think? Who can give Apple a run for the money? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Flickr

Brand Messages Must Connect with College Students Faster Than Ever

A study conducted by CourseSmart of U.S. college students who own mobile devices reveals some important insights to brands who are trying to market to this fast-moving audience.

According to the study, 93% of the survey respondents own a laptop and 47% own a smartphone. Just 7% own and ereader and another 7% own an iPad. Of course, iPad sales are expected to double in 2012, so these numbers are likely to look completely different a year from now. However, the data in the study will be no less valuable to brands.

The study included 18-25 year olds, and 84% of the audience claimed that they use two or more mobile devices at the same time while simultaneously watching television. For example, a student might be doing homework on a laptop, texting with a friend on her mobile phone, and watching television — all at the same time. Specifically, the breakdown of responses follows (via eMarketer):

  • 36% use a mobile phone and laptop while watching television.
  • 25% use a mobile phone, laptop, and iPad while watching television.
  • 19% use a mobile phone, laptop, iPad, and more while watching television.
  • 17% use a mobile phone while watching television.
  • 3% use no devices while watching television.

Clearly, these students will make excellent multi-taskers when they enter the workforce! All joking aside, there is an important takeaway for brand marketers that can be gleaned from this data. It is extremely difficult to cut through the existing noise and clutter surrounding U.S. college students who own mobile devices. They choose the majority of this noise and clutter, so brands have a challenge in front of them. Stealing a snippet of time from this audience away from the many messages they are bombarded with continually by choice is a monumental task. And it’s very likely that these study results are the same for college students in other countries as well.

Therefore, brands have to create marketing campaigns that capture the attention and cut through the noise instantly. Furthermore, this is an audience that knows brands are trying to sell something to them, and they have no patience for the slow-build up or veiled messages. Get to the point and deliver your best message first! The audience will decide if they like what your best message is, but they won’t stick around to listen to you talk about how great your brand is with the hope that your ultimate message will be worth the wait. By the time you get your message out, they’ve already moved on to a third, fourth, or fifth device, activity, and conversation.

Image: Flickr

Brands Find Success with Mobile Coupons

Mobile marketing is it these days, and brands are aggressively experimenting with the available mobile technology to connect with consumers when they’re on the go — particularly just before they make a purchase and while they’re making a purchase.

Currently, a widespread, easy, and convenient mobile coupon distribution system is lacking. In other words, brands can make coupons available through mobile applications, mobile websites, text messaging, and so on, but it can still be challenging for consumers to redeem those coupons.

While it seems to consumers that it should be easy to use a mobile coupon, Tiffany Tan of Clorox Co. explained to eMarketer, “the reality is that most retailers where consumer products are sold don’t have a universal coupon reader system at the point of sale.” Tan is confident that technology advances will catch up to consumer demands related to mobile couponing. She gave eMarketer her list of what her team would love to see in the future of mobile couponing:

  • The ability to target based on prior purchases
  • A mobile coupon experience that happens at the shelf

Chris Duncan of OfficeMax offered another perspective on mobile couponing to eMarketer. Currently, OfficeMax uses mobile couponing as part of its loyalty program that ties into its mobile app. Duncan’s views on mobile couponing challenges differ from Tan’s. Looking at mobile coupons as a loyalty driver and reward system, he views the challenge not as technology but in “getting engagement from a critical mass.”

Duncan sees the advantage to mobile marketing as its speed, but OfficeMax views mobile as a complementary part of its broader couponing and marketing strategies where mobile often becomes a component of a larger marketing effort that includes all channels.

Regardless of which view point you support related to mobile marketing and couponing (or if you have a different view on mobile marketing entirely), there is no denying that mobile is where consumers are and brands need to be there, too. There is no recipe for success yet, and technology is continually changing. As Tan told eMarketer when discussing the Clorox target audience of mothers, “With over half of the population on smartphones by the end of this year, we want to make sure that we are everywhere she is.”

The question for brand managers is this — is your brand everywhere that your target audience is?

Image: bydwiel

Social Network Ad Revenues Triple in 4 Years

In 2009, brands in the United States spent $1.43 billion to advertise on social networking sites. In 2012, that number is expected to jump to $3.93 billion, which equates to an increase of 175%.

This year, brands will invest 10.8% of their total online marketing budgets to social media advertising. That’s quite impressive given the fact that the most popular social networking sites where ad dollars are spent, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, haven’t even been around for a full decade yet.

As social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter refine their advertising programs, more and more advertisers will get on board. Just last month, Twitter surpassed LinkedIn and Facebook in terms of traffic growth. In July 2011, Twitter’s U.S.-based traffic increased by 32%. That’s nearly three times higher than Facebook’s 11% growth in July and far better than LinkedIn’s 0.5% decline in traffic.

July 2011 marked the first time that U.S.-based traffic to Twitter surpassed LinkedIn with 32.8 million visitors (Twitter’s highest traffic month to date) compared to LinkedIn’s 32.5 million visitors. Facebook still remains the leader with 162 million visitors in July, marking the site’s most-trafficked month since it debuted in 2004.

Twitter is focusing more heavily on its own advertising offerings, so there is no doubt that spending on Twitter advertising will increase in the near future. At the same time, LinkedIn is facing a stagnation that, as a public company now, won’t be allowed to continue. Advertising is the second biggest revenue generator for LinkedIn, so it’s safe to assume that is an area that the company will focus on in order to attract more brands.

In other words, social network advertising isn’t going anywhere. The question is whether your brand will get involved soon (if you’re not already) to begin testing, analyzing results, and fine-tuning your social network advertising strategies and tactics or if you’ll keep waiting to get on board and lose big opportunities?

What do you think? Is your brand already advertising on social networks? Share your experience with the Corporate Eye audience by leaving a comment.

Accounting for Sustainability | A Lost Jewel?

What does December 6th 2006 mean to you?  Is it that it’s the anniversary of the independence of Finland from Russia, or Eire from the UK? Or is it some event which happened on that specific date: NASA declaring that it had evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars, or the election of Joseph Kabila as president of the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Or is it just the day for giving presents to children: St Nicholas’ Day or Christkindl, depending upon your Christian denomination?

Or maybe, just maybe, you were one of 200 lucky people who were at St James’ Palace, attending the launch of The Prince of Wales’ “Accounting for Sustainability” (A4S).

You have to feel a little sorry for the Prince of Wales.  His heart is obviously passionate about so many things yet because of his constitutional position he can’t really follow through fully on some of his projects.

I’m not going to knife and fork the organisation’s output but the diagram above and the key elements from A4S’s 2007 report (PDF) are worth highlighting.

[Read more…] about Accounting for Sustainability | A Lost Jewel?

Automated web reporting | Changing the nature of CSR

So GRI 3.1 has been released.  I’ve been so excited by this development it’s taken me a couple of weeks to get around to actually looking at what the changes are.  Yep, that excited.

Actually, it’s a bit more than that.  a) I was busy on other things, and b) there are other far more qualified people who will have far more interesting things to say about GRI 3.1.

However, while reading through the changes I was struck once again by how simple it should be for large corporates to gather these statistics, and how easy it should be to publish these statistics in real time on the web.

Why this doesn’t happen yet remains a mystery to me, but then again I’ve always looked at how technically feasible something is rather than the politics which is required to get it to happen. [Read more…] about Automated web reporting | Changing the nature of CSR