The annual American Customer Satisfaction Index is out for social media sites, measuring satisfaction with Google+ for the first time against other social networks. What a debut! Google's year-old social network had the best satisfaction while the world's most popular social network, Facebook, came in last. Top Marks For Google+ The scores look like this: On the scale, 100 would be perfect satisfaction. Google+ came in at 78, or what I'd call a B- or C+ letter grade, far from perfect. But it was much better than Twitter (64 points, rated for the first time), LinkedIn (63 points, also rate [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Facebook | Facebook: Statistics | Features & Analysis | Google: Google+ | LinkedIn | Pinterest | Statistics: General | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Twitter | Wikipedia

More than one-fifth of the web links to Facebook in some way, and almost eight percent use Facebook's Open Graph tags -- two numbers that offer a glimpse of Facebook's deep grip on the web. The numbers come from a Zyxt Labs study of about 1.3 billion URLs earlier this year. The study found that more than 242 million pages, about 21.7 percent of the total studied, referenced at least one Facebook URL -- usually things such as the Like and Share buttons and other social widgets, but also traditional links to Facebook profiles or Facebook Group pages. Here's a look at the breakdown of the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Features & Analysis | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: General | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Do you know the online population you're marketing to? They email, search, read online news, shop and are increasingly doing social networking. And more will be coming -- only about 1/3 of the world is online. These stats and more were compiled into an infographic by the people at Customer Magnetism. Check it out, below: You'll find the original infographic here: The Online Population Boom. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Infographics | Statistics: General

Although phishing attacks were down worldwide in the second half of 2011, they were up significantly inside China and, as a result, a Chinese domain name replaced Paypal.com as the most commonly phished domain name. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) recently published its 2011 Global Phishing Survey (PDF download), which says that phishing attacks "exploded" in China last year. In the process, the Chinese e-commerce site Taobao.com became the world's most frequent phishing target in the second half of the year -- a "title" that Paypal had held for several years. From the report: In [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Domaining | Legal: General | Statistics: General

[caption id="attachment_10198" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Sanaz Ahari, the Senior Product Manager for Brand Activate"][/caption] Citing the conventional wisdom that a lack of branding impact metrics is hindering ad dollars from moving online, Google today unveiled an initiative it's calling "Brand Activate," which involves the adoption of branding-oriented metrics and the roll-out of tools to measure them across its product portfolio. The initiative gives a strong push to industry-wide standards proposed by the Making Measurement Make Sense coalition, which includes the Inte [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Google: Display Advertising | Statistics: General | Top News

Word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews, either from someone they know or a stranger's opinions online, are the most trusted sources of information for buying decisions, according to the latest Nielsen's latest Global Trust in Advertising report, The findings speak highly for information gathered through social media or other forms of user-generated content. Meanwhile, though traditional paid media still are trusted by a great number of consumers, their influence is on the decline. Nearly half of consumers around the world say the trust ads on TV (47%), in magazines (47%) and in newspaper [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Email Marketing | Facebook: Advertising | Mobile Marketing | Search Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Statistics: General

Google has come under fire over the past year from anti-trust issues to privacy questions. But has this questioning by the mainstream media, bloggers and politicians had an impact on people in general? A new survey finds that 63.4% in the US who use the internet trust Google as much as a year ago, climbing to an overall trust factor 78.4%, when those who said they trust it more are added in. The survey? My own, using Google's new Google Consumer Surveys service. While I have some issues with the service (see Is Google Letting Anyone Do "Scientific" Surveys A Good Thing?), it seemed perfect [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Consumer Surveys | Google: Privacy | Statistics: General | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

Though Apple is known for its engaging TV advertisements, last quarter an Android OS device -- the Samsung Galaxy Note -- won the ad effectiveness battle on television. According to ad analytics firm Ace Metrix, the Samsung Galaxy Note spot that appeared on the Academy Awards was the top ad of the first quarter of 2011 in all categories. The Samsung Galaxy Note spot earned an Ace Score of 686. The company debuted nine ads total in Q1, three of which were the three most effective technology ads for the quarter, with Ace Scores from 686 to 636. Not all of the ads were for the Galaxy Note [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Statistics: General

IT consulting firm IDC has just released its latest hardware forecast. According to the firm, 2011 saw "shipments" of nearly 1 billion "smart connected devices." By 2016 the number will grow to just under 2 billion. IDC uses the term "smart connected devices" very loosely; it includes everything: PCs, smartphones and tablets. Usually the term "connected devices" refers to tablets and other internet-capable devices that are not PCs and not smartphones. Source: IDC Another gripe: the industry must banish "shipments" as a metric. Shipments don't equal sales to consumers and enterpris [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Google: Android | Statistics: General | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Popularity & Usage

It's difficult to define the typical blogger, but new research from Nielsen/McKinsey says that more than two million of them are moms. In a blog post yesterday, Nielsen says that about 6.7 million people are currently using blogging websites -- which I take to mean sites like Blogger, Wordpress.com, Tumblr and services like those. Of that number, When other blog-related sites are included, Nielsen says about one-third are moms and 52 percent of bloggers are parents with kids under 18 years old. Nielsen doesn't specifically use the phrase "mommy bloggers," though, which indicates a specific [...]

Related Topics: Blogging | Channel: Content Marketing | Statistics: General | Statistics: Social Media

As part of its far reaching report, "The State of the Media, US Digital Consumer Report," Nielsen polled US consumers about their trust in advertising by media channel. The responses yield a kind of hierarchy of advertising trust, which varies slightly by gender. Most trusted by both males and females were ads that appear on "branded websites." The term is not defined in the report. However I assume this includes sites such as NY Times.com, ESPN.com, People.com and so on. In that case, one could infer that the sites' brands conferred some halo of credibility on the ads that appear on them. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook: Advertising | Legal: Privacy | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: General | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Popularity & Usage

For the past 13 years polling firm Harris has been asking US consumers about companies they admire and those they don't. The firm packages that information up into a corporate reputation score for the "60 most visible companies in the country." A cousin of the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, the scoring is based on consumer perception and asks about consumer views of several categories, such as emotional appeal, financial performance, products & services and corporate responsibility. This year's poll of 17,000 US consumers found that despite the recent Foxconn labor scandal Ap [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Business Issues | Statistics: General | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

Are you testing different things on your web site? Changing up your landing page copy, your navigation and other elements can lead to better conversion. The people at Monetate have assembled an infographic looking at the frequency of testing and types of testing that are conducted. The second part was especially interesting to us. Call-to-action buttons are tested the most, by 72% of online retailers, apparently. Page layout is just behind, at 71%. Near the end of the list, only 43% test images. More in the graphic: Want the infographic for yourself? You'll find it here: Are You Run [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Strategy | Infographics | Statistics: General

This may come as a surprise to a lot of Chrome users: A new study about page speed and website performance says that Google's Chrome web browser performed slower than both IE9 and Firefox in a recent analysis of retail website home pages. The findings come from Strangeloop Networks' annual e-commerce page speed and website performance report, just released today. The company tested the home pages of the top 2,000 Alexa-ranked retail websites and found that both IE9 and Firefox 7 were about five percent faster than Chrome. In its report, Strangeloop doesn't claim that its study "d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Firefox | Google: Chrome | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Statistics: General | Statistics: Web Browsers

This morning Google is releasing research, conducted by Ipsos in September-October of 2011, that shows mobile device adoption and usage trends in five countries. According to the survey findings, 38 percent of US mobile subscribers own smartphones. However these numbers do not reflect Q4 holiday sales. Indeed, Nielsen has said that 46 percent of US mobile users now have smartphones. Verizon also reported this week that 44 percent of its mobile customers have smartphones. The Google-Ipsos data compare the US with the UK, France, Germany and Japan. The research documents the shift from featur [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: General | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

Consumers around the world are gaining trust in social media as a source of business information, but it still lags behind other sources such as corporate websites and traditional media. The findings come from the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, a global survey that's now in its 12th year. The survey includes feedback from more than 30,000 people in 25 countries, with an emphasis on what's called "Informed Publics" -- these are college-educated people between 25-64 years old that are among the top earners in their countries and describe themselves as heavy consumers of media information. I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: General