It's not news to say that smartphone and feature phone owners use their devices as an active part of in-store shopping. Previous surveys have revealed that more than 80 and even 90 percent of smartphone owners do this. Now a new Pew survey (n=1,003) finds that 58 percent of all mobile phone owners use their handsets as part of shopping in stores this past holiday season: 46 percent of cell owners used their phone while inside a store to call a friend or family member for advice about a purchase they were considering. 28 percent of cell owners used their phone while inside a store to l [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

Online retail sales are expected to grow between 9-12 percent in 2013, substantially outpacing overall retail industry sales, which are seen growing 3.4 percent this year. That's according to a new forecast from the National Retail Federation and its digital division, Shop.org. The estimates cover most traditional retail categories, but don't include auto dealers, gas stations and restaurants. This year's estimate for online sales is in line with what happened during the just-completed holiday season. The NRF says online retail grew 11.1 percent during November and December 2012. The [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Statistics: General | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

Call-based ad network Marchex has released an interesting travel study that captures data about the differences between PC and mobile users. Overall the study found that mobile users convert in much higher numbers than PC users in travel. (Marchex makes money by selling call-based advertising.) Marchex's report found that call-based conversions were "consistently over 25 percent for rental cars and over 20 percent for hotels." The company presumably relied on industry data regarding online conversions for comparison. The total number of calls analyzed by Marchex for this study was 15, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

Facebook continues to be the dominant platform for websites that offer social logins, but Google is gaining ground in the latest report from Janrain. The company says that Facebook's overall share of social logins fell to 49 percent as of Q4 2012, down from its all-time high of 54 percent in Q3. Google was the main reason or benefactor of that decline, with its share of social logins growing from 25 percent to 31 percent at the end of 2012. Twitter's share of social logins also dropped a bit, down to seven percent from it's previous high of 10 percent. Here's the current social login [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Though most retailers, advertisers and brands have not yet caught up, we are firmly in the multi-platform era. Newspaper-backed local shopping platform Wanderful Media released findings from a shopping survey of just over 1,000 US adults yesterday. The findings both confirm what we already know about changing consumer behavior and provide more color. Reflecting the direct way in which the internet now influences in-store shopping the survey found that 91 percent of respondents "have gone into a store as a result of an online experience." Multiple online experiences have driven consumers int [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Statistics: Email Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

Next year looks to be a strong one for email marketing according to a StrongMail survey of more than a thousand marketers released today. The survey found that marketers plan to deploy more budget to email, social and mobile next year -- which makes sense given a second study by ReturnPath found mobile open share has increased 300 percent globally since 2010. StrongMail found that 89 percent of those surveyed plan to increase or maintain the same level of marketing spend in 2013, with 56% intending to grow their email marketing budget, 52% investing more in social media, 43% planning to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Features & Analysis | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Email Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Spend Projections | Top News

The  Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report on the mobile news consumption habits of US young adults. If you're interested in the future of news there are some very interesting findings that have practical implications for news publishers. One of the those findings has to do with the fact that although younger consumers have largely abandoned print newspapers they still want a "print-like" experience of news on their tablets. According to the study the tablet-news audience is somewhat more likely to be male than female, although that will like [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iPad | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

According to some new survey data released over the weekend by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 56 percent of all mobile phone owners in the US access the internet. In addition, Pew says that 85 percent of all US adults now own a mobile phone. There are approximately 250 million US adults today. If 85 percent own a mobile phone that would make 212 million mobile phone-owning adults in the US. There are roughly 26 million teens in the US and 75 percent of them own mobile phones according to Pew. That would make an addressable mobile population of roughly 230 million (not cou [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

This weekend comScore reported that for the first time Black Friday online sales topped $1 billion. The expectation is that today, the awkwardly named "Cyber Monday," will see potential online sales exceeding Friday's totals, perhaps reaching $1.5 billion as Americans throw off the shackles of austerity that have limited holiday spending over the past few years. Black Friday originally was a reference to aggressively discounted in-store sales, while Cyber Monday was so named for the day when people returned to work and could shop online with a high speed connection. The reality today is [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: General | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Spend Projections | Top News

Ad network Chitika provided us with some interesting data comparing click through rates (CTRs) and query lengths on the various desktop and mobile browsers based on millions of impressions on its network. It found that Opera (PC) browser users clicked-through more often than other browser users. Opera users are generally regarded as less mainstream and more tech-savvy than other browser users (e.g., Explorer) so it's curious that Opera's CTR would be highest. Next in line after Opera but ahead of all other browsers, PC or mobile, is mobile Safari with a 1.54 percent CTR. Chitika told me [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iPhone | Apple: Safari | Channel: Content Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Mobile | Microsoft: Internet Explorer | Microsoft: Mobile | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

This should come as no surprise to anyone that's done more than just take a quick glance at Pinterest: Consumers rely heavily on the site when they're looking for product- and shopping-related inspiration. It's also, as I'll explain below, good news for Pinterest's future business plans. A recent BizRate Insights study compared why online shoppers in the US and Canada use Pinterest and Facebook. Both sites scored highly as a source of entertainment, but Pinterest users are there for commerce-related reasons more so than Facebook users. Seventy percent of Pinterest users say they use the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Pinterest | Pinterest: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

In addition to the spikes in search activity, Thursday's U.S. Vice-Presidential Debate also heated up across popular social networks. You won't be surprised to know that both Twitter and Facebook saw plenty of debate-related discussion, and I'll share some of that in a moment. But I want to start with a fascinating map from a different source. AddThis & The VP Debate AddThis, provider of social sharing buttons used by 14 million domains, shared debate-related data today, including this map showing which candidate had the most social mentions across the U.S. (Click for larger ve [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Statistics | Features & Analysis | Social Media Marketing | Statistics | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Statistics

Mobile travel behavior and usage are getting a lot of attention lately. Both Nielsen and comScore released mobile-travel data in the past week. In addition, Millennial Media recently published data showing that the travel category has moved from ninth to third position in terms of mobile ad spending in the past year. Now, in a follow up to an initial release of their "Mobile Path to Purchase" study in August, call-tracking provider Telmetrics and mobile ad network xAd offer a new travel-specific tranche of data, which was collected earlier this year by Nielsen (n=1,500 tablet and smartphone [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

When it comes to political activity online, Democrats are more likely than Republicans and Independents to say that social networking sites are important. And they're also more likely to say that they've become more active politically because of their interactions on social media sites. Those are some of the findings in Politics on Social Networking Sites, a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Overall, 74 percent of those who call themselves liberal are using social networking sites, compared to 70 percent of moderates and only 60 percent of conservatives. And thos [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Politics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Just as many are beginning to bulk up their wardrobes for fall and back-to-school, a new study shows the surprising, and growing, influence of mobile and video for apparel purchases. The research, put together by Compete on behalf of Google, found that more than 1 in 5 apparel consumers use their tablets or mobile devices daily for shopping, and 4 in 10 visited a store or retailer website as a result of watching apparel videos. [caption id="attachment_18931" align="aligncenter" width="591" caption="Percentage of people who used devices every day for shopping."][/caption] The study was ba [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Advertising | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media

Facebook continues to be web users' preferred option when it comes to social login, and has now seen two consecutive years of quarterly growth in that area. According to Janrain's latest quarterly report, Facebook now accounts for 48 percent of all social logins as of Q2 2012. That's up from 45 percent in Q1 of this year, and represents eight straight quarters that Facebook's share has risen -- dating back to Q1 of 2010. Google remains second at 30 percent in Q2, which is consistent with where it's been over the last six quarters. Twitter has moved into third place with nine percent, th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

For the second consecutive month, U.S. internet users watched a record number of video ads in May. According to the latest comScore Video Metrix report, Americans watched 10.1 billion video ads in May, up from about 9.5 billion in April. May marks the first time that video ads passed 10 billion views. Hulu and Google combined to deliver about three billion of those video ads and were the top two ad properties for the month in terms of count. Hulu users, though, watched far more minutes of video advertising than Google/YouTube users did. As far as video in general is concerned, com [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: YouTube | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Video

According to a new study released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, mobile advertising is an important driver of smartphone shopping activity and the majority of respondents (70%) found mobile ads as a welcome personal invitation from brands, rather than an invasion. Additionally, when asked why they performed a particular mobile commerce activity, 22% credited mobile advertising for spurring them on -- it was the second highest driver of activity. Half (51%) of respondents said they want the mobile ads they click on to let them browse the brand's broader product offerings. IAB [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Popularity & Usage

A new poll from AP and CNBC on the eve of the Facebook IPO shows that Americans are ambivalent about the company and that it faces numerous challenges as it seeks to generate more revenue growth from its already massive user base. The AP-CNBC poll was conducted May 3 through May 7. The  survey sample was 1,004 US adults. Among survey respondents 56 percent had a Facebook profile, 40 percent did not and 4 percent didn't know. Google, Apple and Microsoft are viewed more favorably than Facebook. Of the comparison group Twitter was viewed less favorably. The results shift by demographic [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Statistics | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

A new study by Chitika finds that, among users of Internet Explorer (IE), people with the most updated browser version (IE 10) were most likely to click on ads. The findings seem to jibe somewhat with the idea the less-sophisticated users are more likely to click, in that the savviest users are more likely to be using alternative browsers like Firefox or Chrome. But keeping a web browser updated is a sign of a more sophisticated user. There's the possibility, however, that many users of the latest version of IE have just bought new computers lately -- new Windows machines ship with the late [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Statistics: Online Advertising | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Web Browsers