European Online Marketing Spend 2008

We all need figures to back up our assumptions and budget proposals. Here’s a handy prediction from IAB Europe which shows that Europe is fast catching up with our North American counterparts when it comes to advertising spend online:

[O]nline advertising spend within the IAB network in Europe during 2007 will reach 11.5 billion euro, up from 8 billion euro in 2006. This is a like for like increase of 38% on last year’s market value. The spend includes values for display advertising, search marketing, classifieds and directories and email marketing.

The release goes on to mention that in emerging markets the increase is likely closer to 70% YoY, and predicts 30-40% increases in the UK, Denmark, France and Germany.

I like the hypothesised drivers of this growth:

The growth is driven by higher levels broadband penetration across the regions and increased advertiser confidence in the medium.

Of course here in Ireland we don’t actually have demand for broadband… Oh, actually, that was the old eircom…

2008 predictions

Every market identified the same trends to watch in 2008: web TV, mobile internet, behavioural targeting and social media.

I would imagine they were most of the trends we were all watching carefully in 2007. Although, in line with my recent post about Multivariate and A/B Testing, I reckon that BT will take off more and more.

I wonder if their are equivalent Irish figures available? If anyone knows if these stats exist I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: European Internet Marketing Statistics

Follow RedCardinal on Twitter!

But this little tidbit is worthy of breaking the hiatus – Local Business Center is now available for Ireland:

Google Local Business Center Ireland

Earlier this year I wrote wondering when Google Local Listings might finally arrive in Ireland. Well yesterday I noticed Ireland in the drop-down, so went through the registration process. 2 minutes work and an SMS validation gateway at the end for real simplicity:

Google Local Business Center Ireland SMS Validation

This along with the recent updates to geo-targeting abilities in Google Webmaster Console for non cTLD domains, it looks strongly like we’ll be getting much more blended results in Google.ie results pages.

If you have a business which serves a set geographic area (e.g. restaurants) you should go over and create your local business profile ASAP.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Google Local Business Center Now Includes Ireland

Follow RedCardinal on Twitter!

The top mobile query accounted for about 0.8 percent of all wireless queries, and the top 1,000 mobile queries accounted for about 17 percent of all cell-phone-based queries.

Other gems:

After issuing a query, the user receives 10 search results. Most users either found what they were looking for on the first page of results or chose not to look further; only 10.4 percent of queries had requests to display more than the initial set of search results.

More than 50 percent of queries led to a click on a search result. It took the average user 30 seconds to scan the search results before selecting one. Of those queries that didn’t lead to a click, it’s possible that the user found the answer in one of the Web-page summaries returned with each search result, gave up on the search entirely,
or refined the search in a subsequent query.

And what do you think people might be searching for on their mobile phones?

Mobile Search Queries

The paper is written by Maryam Kamvar and Shumeet Baluja, both Google engineers, and took a sample of data from a large US carrier over a 1 month period.

The full text can be downloaded here.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Mobile Search Statistics

Follow RedCardinal on Twitter!

Very clever.

[Do you think I can find the link to the site I found this on? Grrr]

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: The Future Is Mobile

Follow RedCardinal on Twitter!

An extract of the story:

Isabel Aguilera, Chief of a main directorate of Google in Spain and Portugal, have confirmed to Noticias.com that the company is working, “among others”, in the development of a movable telephone. “A part of the time of our engineers we have dedicated it to the investigation of a movable telephone to accede to information”, has made specific Eyrie to this vestibule.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Google Acknowledge The Widely Rumoured Google Phone?

Follow RedCardinal on Twitter!

Online Publishers Association – Going Mobile Report (.pdf)

Some very interesting conclusions drawn. The comparisons between US and European users contains some very useful info. Of most interest to me is the breakdown of what content mobile users consume, personalise, and pay for.

A few extracts:

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Mobile Internet Usage and Advertising – Case Studies & Research Findings

Follow RedCardinal on Twitter!

The Tale Of The Link Whore Revisited

Back in January, in response to this call, I wrote a review of Pat Phelan’s Roam4Free.ie website. I didn’t expect the hour or so of work would warrant much more than a ‘thank you’, and I was very pleasantly surprised when Pat commented that he and his colleagues had decided that my post deserved the prize. (As an aside, the post I wrote has brought in a considerable amount of traffic – some of which turns out to be a little off topic.)

The Pocket PC, The Impatient Owner, and Blaming it all on Lego

So I am now the proud owner of a shiny silver Acer n50 Pocket PC. Now when this arrived first my younger years were rekindled by the challenge of removing the packaging. I blame it on the Lego, but whenever something like this is put in front of me I always ignore all instructions and simply try to construct something that resembles the picture on the box.

Well Pocket PCs seem to be a little more complex than your average Lego toy. Turning it on was a breeze. Enabling wireless, oh, took about 55 minutes. A short time into this endeavour I relented and sought the instruction manual, which was no where to be found. Apparently Acer don’t ship instruction manuals.

Oh well, it all ended well, and I’m now acquainting myself with my new toy which should help me keep my schedule more under control. And I have to say that surfing with Minimo is a very interesting and eye opening experience – since viewing my own site on a small screen device I’ve decided it’s not very mobile friendly, and installed a very nice WordPress Mobile plug-in.

A big Thank You

Well all that’s left to say is a very big thanks to Pat and colleagues for their incredibly kind gift. I hope we have the opportunity to meet up when I head down to Cork later this month.

(I wonder if I’ll meet the nice Cork web design guy?)

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: I Blame It On The Lego

Follow RedCardinal on Twitter!

So what’s the big deal?

Well apparently mobile search is going to be big, very big. And the top cellular operators want to make sure that they get their slice of the cake. This to me sounds like more of the ‘walled garden’ school of thinking, which in my view is absolutely the wrong direction. I don’t think consumers want to be limited when it comes to Internet use. I think they want technology that enables them to access all the cool services they use daily on their PCs and laptops.

Unfortunately the mobile operators have never been overly interested in what the consumer wants. They care about one thing and one thing only – revenue. And consumers, by their nature, tend to act in ways that are not always compatible with the revenue generating desires of the operators.

At best this is short-termism

Obviously I’m into search. And I do think that mobile is the next frontier that will catapult search, and the Internet in general, forward. But to be frank, the mobile operators are always going to be fighting from a defensive position. They don’t want us to access data on our own terms because they think they could make more money by accessing it on theirs. And therein lies the Achilles heal. Sooner or later the operators wont be able to defend their position and the flood gates will open.

But could they replicate Google?

I think you only have to read through Bill Slawski’s blog to see that the major search engines have been patenting their IP like no one’s business these last few years. The operators will likely pour a couple of hundred million into something which will fail after a year or two. The Telegraph article speculates that this might be posturing, and the operators may negotiate a deal for a larger revenue share with the major search engines.

Part of me hopes this is the case, that we wont have higher walls in the garden, but a bigger part of me hopes they try to build their own search engine and fail miserably.

As an aside, I’ve always wondered does anyone actually like the mobile operators?

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Mobile Opperators To Launch Search Engine – Sounds Like More Walled Gardens To Me

Follow RedCardinal on Twitter!