Online video is now a very important part of people’s life and it’s especially true in Singapore. Singapore internet users are more addicted to online video than social networking sites.

comScore today released its April 2010 rankings of the top video properties in Singapore based on data from its comScore Video Metrix service. The report found that 87% of Singapore’s Internet population viewed video online in April, with an average viewer consuming 10.5 hours of 130 videos for a period of 4.9 minutes per video on average.

comScore study also found that that users between 25-44 represented the highest percentage of unique video viewers, who spend less time viewing video and watch fewer videos per viewer than the younger and older age segments.

Top Video Properties in Singapore Based on Total Videos Viewed April 2010

Online video marketing is not a popular tactic in Singapore; many marketers are no doubt interested, though. “Cost of video production” is a pretty good excuse to stop most companies.

From comScore study, it’s clear that online video is definitely an important channel for marketers to reach consumers. How to create viral video is the real obstacle than money. Check out this viral video from Tic Tac.

Also read:Are social networking sites good for video marketing?

Big Opportunities in Mobile

Cisco forecasts mobile data traffic globally will double every year through 2013, increasing 66 times between 2008 and 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131% between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013.

In the 7 years from 2005 to 2012, mobile data traffic will have increased a thousand-fold. Almost 64 percent of the world’s mobile traffic will be video by 2013.

Coda Research Consultancy forecasts mobile broadband search and display ad revenues in the US to grow to $4.2 billion in 2015, up from $1 billion in 2010 (70%: search advertising). eMarketer’s conclusions estimates that mobile ad spending, including messaging-based formats, will reach $416 million in 2009 and $1.56 billion by 2013.

Mobile User Behaviors

According to Flurry, consumers are more loyal to mobile applications that provide news or reference services over the longest periods of time and they are most suited for subscription-based and ad-supported models.

Categories such as Books and Games are the two largest categories in both the Apple App Store and Android Market. Social Networking apps remain on a consumer’s handset for a long period of time, but get used only occasionally. Applications in the news, weather, reference and books categories have the highest frequency of use per week, the study found.

Yankee Group’s report early this year evaluated 27 mobile sites and reveals:

• For news, Google and Yahoo show how it’s done. Both companies earn passing grades of 73, striking an impressive balance in delivering enough information to mobile users without overwhelming them. Other news sites, however, still struggle with leveraging mobile context and site discoverability.
• For sports, MLB.com hits it out of the park. Major League Baseball’s site scores an impressive 71 for its device detection and ability to tailor content to fit mobile screens. Competitors Rivals.com (58) and ESPN.com (57) score a close second and third.
• For search, Google is tops, but Yahoo’s a close second. Google’s mobile search site, with its minimalist interface, format-specific device detection and location- awareness, earns an 81, the highest mark given to any mobile Web site so far. Yahoo also earns a passing grade of 76, hindered only by small factors like extraneous content and HTML validation errors.
• For mobile carriers, all need improvement.

And, comScore finding shows that light PC Internet users are 30% more likely than heavy PC Internet users to use their mobile devices to access Internet content.

Publishers Pushing Mobile

Audit Bureau of Circulations recently surveyed its U.S. and Canadian newspaper, magazine and business membership to learn more about publishers’ current mobile initiatives:

• 42% of consumer magazines are being formatted for mobile
• 44% of business publications are mobile-formatted
• 57% of newspapers are being formatted for mobile readers
• 44% of those already in the mobile marketplace report a 10% increase in website traffic

iPhone, BlackBerry, Android

A key finding of the “Smartphone Satisfaction Study 2009” is that the most satisfying smartphones are the ones that offer the best consumer functionality.

The iPhone continues to top all other smartphones in measures of consumer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and content usage (source: Crowd Science).

The Android was closest to the iPhone in several measures of satisfaction, but trailed when it came to hardware issues. 77% of Android users downloaded apps at least weekly, compared with 71% of iPhone owners.

Surprisingly, BlackBerry is leading the mobile market ahead of Apple’s iPhone in Indonesia, one of the world’s fastest growing mobile consumer markets, according to InMobi‘s released data last month.

Mobile Marketing Opportunities

The rise of mobile marketing impacts almost all online marketers.

Mobile display advertising needs its own formats; several fit all  situation on the Internet is no longer the case. Different formats are required for different devices.

Search marketers need to better understand mobile searchers’ behavior, which won’t be the same on the Internet.

1 in 10 consumers access their primary personal email accounts on mobile devices, according to Forrester Research. For that reason, optimizing emails for cross-platform performance is the challenge email marketers have to face.

When it comes to integrated digital marketing strategies, mobile is definitely one of the most important channels you should consider.

Also read:4 Mobile Marketing Initiatives for 2010

Feel free to share the whitepaper and e-books with your friends or colleagues if you find them helpful.

• Marketers’ Guide on Search Engine Marketing 2009 [54 pages]
  • Download (PDF)
• How to Get More Facebook Fans [11 pages]

China Internet Related Whitepapers:

• China Internet Statistics Whitepaper 2009
• China Search Engine Report 2008 Advertisers and Users Behavior Study
• Brief Guide to China Search Marketing with Baidu (Download PDF)

Also read:Consulting

• 12 Trends for the Next 3 Years for Internet Marketing
  The 12 trends below represent what Larry Chase thinks you need to keep an eye on in the foreseeable future.
  (tags: trends internet marketing)
• comScore Media Metrix Ranks Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for April
  April saw Google Sites attain the number one spot in the Top 50 U.S. Properties ranking for the first time in its history with a total audience of more than 141 million visitors.
  (tags: comscore media us google)
• China Search Marketing With Baidu Whitepaper
  It definitely gives you some idea how Baidu makes money in China from online advertising and how you can make use of it. Here is the list of contents.
  (tags: china search marketing baidu whitepaper)

Also read:China Search Marketing With Baidu Whitepaper

• AdWords: How does Load Time Affect Your Landing Page Quality
  “Beginning in April 2008, you’ll be able to see a grade for your landing page’s load time in your AdWords account. ‘Load time’ refers to the amount of time it takes for a user to view your landing page after clicking your ad.”
  (tags: AdWords Google ppc)
• Average Search CPC Data by Category for April 2008 – ClickZ
  “A look at the average cost-per-click in search by vertical in the U.S. for April 2008, compared to the prior month.”
  (tags: CPC search statistics)
• Key figures on European business, 2008 Edition
  The pocketbook Key figures on European business1, published by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, summarises the main features of European business in a concise and simple manner.
  (tags: europe business)
• Matt Cutts: What Google Knows About Spam
  “If you didn’t attend Web 2.0, you can watch my ten-minute keynote about ‘What Google Knows About Spam’ (and several other keynotes) on blip.tv.
  (tags: google spam SEO)

Also read:links for 2008-05-10

Yahoo!’s Search Marketing’s latest iteration, code named Panama, was released early in 2007. It’s now launching in SEA (South East Asia).

Had a meeting last Friday with MJ from Yahoo Search (he was Google Korea’s first employees), who briefed us about the launching of Yahoo Panama in South East Asia. Here are the key takeaways:

• Yahoo Panama search marketing system is going to launch on 29th April (tomorrow), after which there won’t be CPM based search marketing in SEA.
• There are three levels of Yahoo search sales representatives avaialble:
  1. Reseller, who can’t touch big advertisers
  2. Online sales
  3. Direct sales
• Panama system language: English only.
• Minimum spending: US$1,000
• Currency: US dollar only.
• Turn around time for proposal: within 3 days
• During the first week of launch, there won’t be estimates (e.g. search volume) available.
• Content match would be available at the end of May
• For big advertisers, there would be monthly statistics provided.

I’ll be in Hong Kong for business meetings for the next two days. When I return, I would finish my piece of introducing you some excellent online trend tools. Happy Labor’s Day, btw. =)

Also read:Asia-Pacific Search Country Breakdown By Country Sep 2008

You can now access United Nation’s database and do some research. Click on the image on the left to find out what I did.

The new UN data access system (UNdata) will improve the dissemination of statistics by UNSD to the widest possible audience. An easy to use data access system was developed that meets UNSD’s vision of providing an integrated information resource with current, relevant and reliable statistics free of charge to the global community.

Also read:Is it a powerful brand?

Sandra, research analyst of Hitwise Apac, gave a snapshot of the leading industries that Australian Internet users visit. The update includes comparisons with major overseas markets, the United States and United Kingdom.

Also read:Top Search Terms In Singapore Travel Industry

My experiences tell me that people in online business are more open to Internet with their advertising, marketing, PR, and more. Sadly, many people think Internet couldn’t help them in their off line business, which is VERY wrong!

Let me show you 3 tips which could help ALL COMPANIES on marketing, weather or not they have online business.

1. Research Competition. The least thing you can do online to find out the competition is to (1) find out your competitors’ offerings and build your competitive advantage; (2) keep an eye on your competitors. What’s news about them? What do people say about them? You can do this with Google alerts or Buzz Monitor.
2. Watch your business. What does people say about your products or services? With Internet, you don’t need to pay for user group study to find out. You can monitor the buzz easily.
3. Do market research to get product ideas. Go to a discussion board or forum to see what most people are talking about, browse Yahoo Answers to find out what many people are easy to find out. Besides, go to Google to find some up to date industry statistics.

There are much, much more about how Internet can help your marketing department. I don’t want to flood you with Internet marketing 101; you probably don’t have the time or patience to know them all yet. Keep reading Rocky Fu’s Blog on marketing!

Also read:26+2 Tools To Monitor Buzz

• Total finance 2.70
• Credit 2.95
• Mortgage 2.61
• Auto finance 1.68
• Travel 0.65
• Automotive 0.57
• Retail 0.36
• Dating 0.40

Total finance” includes auto finance, banking, credit, financial information, insurance, lending, and mortgage. Each vertical contains data from multiple advertisers.

The data is from US search market. So, if you are from Asia, you should expect something lower than the one above.

via ClickZ

Also read:Avoid Duplicate Cost With Integrated Approach

17.5% of the total world’s population, 1.15 billion people, were regular Internet users last year. In Asia Pacific region, the number was 476.6 million, which would top 500 million Internet users this year.

According to eMarketer, nearly half of the world’s Internet population will live in the Asia-Pacific region within 4 years. The share of the world’s Internet users in Europe and North America will fall, though absolute numbers will continue to rise in both regions, as the share of users in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region both grow. Take a look at the break down by region:

I started my Internet experience from instant messenger in 2000. It’s been almost 8 years. You?

Also read:Asia-Pacific Search Country Breakdown By Country Sep 2008

According to the statistic data from State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the total volume of China advertising market in 2005 was RMB 141.63 billion, 12% higher than RMB 126.46 billion in 2004.

Here is the breakdown of China Advertising Market by Media Type between 1987 and 2005:
(unit: RMB 100 million)

We can see the advertising spending on TV and newspaper in China is still far ahead of the other media types. However, Internet is growing dramatically to catch up. Finding a way to measure the efficiency of different channels is important. Internet aren’t necessarily always taken as being competing with TV and newspaper. It can also be taken as a tool to measure and track the TV and newspaper campaigns.

Also read:China’s Internet Advertising Market In Q2: 200 Million

According to the latest report from CNNIC, total number of Internet users in China has achieved 210 million by December 2007, among which there are 163 million broadband users and 50.4 million accessing from mobile devices.

Also read:Peep into Chinese Youth Internet Users Behaviors

Market Research

• Women more likely to impulse buy online [BizReport]
  Not surprisingly, women between the ages of 45 – 54, are more likely (55 percent) to make an impulse purchase online fuelled by a limited time offer, sale or free-delivery than men (38 percent). Such are the findings of a recent survey from GSI Commerce.
• Price Most Important Factor for Online Shoppers [MarketingCharts]
  Price and free shipping stand out as clear favorites – with special promotions or coupons a distant third, according to a national survey conducted in late November.
• Global News Intrigues Online Users [BizReport]
  Why should online marketers care what consumers are reading online? Because by knowing what users are reading now, marketers can better determine which types of news stories or online news clips will be viewed in the future, thereby increasing the chances of a higher campaign ROI.
• Gift Recommendations Dominate Online Holiday Discussions [Nielsen]
  These recommendations range from one-off reviews to comprehensive shopping guides. Moreover, a new type of holiday shopping resource is emerging as consumers turn to “social shopping” communities (e.g. ThisNext, Yahoo! Shoposphere, stylehive.com and Crowdstorm.com), sites that allow for interactive, peer-driven product reviews.
  

Search Engine Marketing

• Link Value Factors [Wiep]
  The idea behind this research was to determine which factors professionals from the field of SEO consider to be of influence on the value of a link and/ or on the potential amount of link juice that a link can pass.
• The Brand Lift of Search [Enquiro]
  In a first-of-its-kind online study commissioned by Google , researchers discovered a significant correlation between companies in the top organic and sponsored ad placements and consumer brand affinity, brand recall and purchase intent.
• Review: Ask.com Unveils Search Privacy Tool [Read/WriteWeb]
  Fourth-ranked US search engine Ask.com is tonight releasing a new feature, AskEraser, that will let users control the destiny of their search data.
• Some statistics about Pagerank & SERP [html4seo]
• Content Networks See Largest Increase In Click Fraud [BizReport]
  Overall, click fraud was shown to have increased only about 1% during Q3. The average click fraud rate was just over 16% during the quarter, up from 15.8% in Q2. For Q3 2006 the click fraud rate was reported as 13.8%.
• New Microsoft adCenter Report Center Tutorial [AdExcellence]
• Practical Tips To Lift Your Conversion Rate [Bruce Clay]
• Google’s Webmaster Tools: Content analysis and Sitemap details, plus more languages [Webmaster Central Blog]
  We’re always striving to help webmasters build outstanding websites, and in our latest release we have two new features: Content analysis and Sitemap details. We hope these features help you to build a site you could compare to a fine wine — getting better and better over time.

Social / Viral / Word-of-Mouth Marketing

• How to Launch a Lead-Gen Campaign on a Tiny Budget: 7 Steps for Using Blogs & Social Media [MarketingSherpa]
  (1) Give bloggers advance peek (2) Launch with blog mentions; (3) Promote tool through social networking (4) Post messages on discussion forums (5) Test paid promotions (6) Issue press releases highlighting data (7) Follow up with prospects who ran site reports
• Social Marketing: How Companies Are Generating Value from Customer Input [Knowledge@Wharton]
• Going Social [Yahoo Search Marketing Blog]
• How companies can fix a Wikipedia entry [Damn!]
• Safeguard Your Brand Reputation Online [Inc]
  (1) Know what’s being said (2) Have a communication strategy in place (3) Bring in outside help (4) Get promoted
• Newspaper Site Readers Spread the Word [eMarketer]
  Readers of newspaper Web sites are 52% more likely to share their opinions than those who do not visit newspaper sites

Web Analytics

• Google Analytics New Feature: compare data [Marketing Pilgrim]
  Indeed, as social marketing loses some of its novelty, it will simply become another aspect of marketing, says Peters of Pandemic Labs. “If Nike has a new shoe it wants to market, it will have a TV commercial, radio spots, ads in magazines and interactive destination websites about running. There is no reason those channels should be thought of as separate.”
• Default Page vs. Home Page [Google Analytics Blog]
  if you set the default page to index.html, it will not only change any future / entries into /index.html, but if you have another page ending in /, say /blog/, it will change that to /blog/index.html too. But what if your blog’s default page is actually /blog/index.php? Well, then you have a problem.
  

Other Marketing Resources

• 7 Customer Service Tips From Unilever [MarketingSherpa]
  A ‘Contact Us’ page with a well-designed email submission form can be a vital component of that mix. See how one CPG marketer designed pages that speed up responses to make customers happier. Includes what data to require from customers and what’s nice to ask for but not demand.

Also read:Weekly Online Marketing Resources Dec-02-07

• Plugin: HP Blog Printing [tabblo]
  Blog plugin for WordPress and Movable Type letting readers create customized “wow” prints direct from your blog
• Statistics: Black Friday Weekend Traffic up 4.8 Percent as Consumers Shop for Smaller Ticket Items [National Retail Federation]
• Online US retail sales exceed expectations [FT.com]
  Raul Vazquez, chief executive of Walmart.com, said the retailer had seen sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving holiday “exceed our expectations” of 40-60 per cent annual growth.
• Do Customers Come for Price or Convenience? [eMarketer]
  81% indicated that the ability to shop anytime during the day was why they chose to shop online during the holiday season.
• Impact of running the PPC ads alongside the natural results for brand keyword queries [Jonathan Mendez]
  Part 1, 2, 3
  Running the PPC ads alongside the natural results for brand keyword queries provides a huge lift in orders and revenue for our client. The paid search ads clearly have a tremendous influence on user behavior. The ads did not drive more traffic but they drove more traffic that purchased.
• Social site rankings for october 2007 [Tech Crunch]
  LinkedIn, Digg, Flickr, Facebook, Imeem, and AIM Pages are all growing more than 100 percent year-over-year.
• Finding Government Information Online [USA.gov]
• Online Consumer-Generated Reviews Have Significant Impact on Offline Purchase Behavior [comScore]
  The study examined the offline sales impact of online reviews for restaurants, hotels, travel, legal, medical, automotive and home services. Nearly one out of every four Internet users (24 percent) reported using online reviews prior to paying for a service delivered offline. Of those who consulted an online review, 41 percent of restaurant reviewers subsequently visited a restaurant, while 40 percent of hotel reviewers subsequently stayed at a hotel.
• Consumers Would Partner with Brands for Social Change, Environment [MarketingVox]
  88 percent of consumers said it is their duty to contribute to a better society and environment. Among all respondents, “helping others and contributing to the community” was cited as the second-most important source of personal contentment, after “spending time with family and friends.”
• Top Marketing Trends, Concepts in 2008 [Marketing Charts]
  The survey focused on top marketing concepts, buzzwords, global areas of opportunity, targeted customer demographics, as well as the books that marketers look to for inspiration and growth opportunity.
• Yahoo, Adobe team on PDF ads [CNet]
• Press Release SEO Tips [Online Marketing Blog]
• Webinar Slides: Marketing to a B2B Technical Buyers [Enquiro & Kellysearch]
• The State of Typo-Squatting 2007 [McAfee]
  Product development and brand building is at the heart of our economic system. Companies invest time and money into building their products and brands. By contrast, typo-squatters use automated tools to siphon potential customers and profit off the brands built by others. In our view, typo-squatting generates clear-cut winners and losers.
• Google Content Network Tips, part 1 & 2 [Inside AdWords]
• Matt Cutts Discusses Snippets
  

Also read:Weekly Online Marketing Resources Dec-09-07

Google organized its first Singapore marketing briefing in Singapore M Hotel. Sandra Hanchard from Hitwise showed some interesting online statistics. And, Sukhinder, VP of Google APAC & Latin America, gave a speech, “A New Approach to Media”. Besides, the Q&A session and networking session are really helpful to me.

Who attended the briefing? Media companies, marketing companies, and some advertisers as well.

The gifts are useful (to both attendees and Google):

The Google Earth Google notepad is cool!

From learning point of view, not much in this briefing except that I start realizing Google is starting to do more than paid search advertising. For example, YouTube starts to show its value by becoming another valuable and powerful video marketing platform. If you haven’t heard of “TurboTax Rap Competition” (TurboTax is a software for people in US to manage their personal tax), you may want to watch this (the second place winner of this competition):

Also read:3 Simple Tips To Help Your Company On Marketing

A global study by Nielsen comes to the same conclusion as many recent similar studies when it comes to evaluating the most trusted advertising method among Internet users.

78%: recommendations from consumers
63%: newspapers
61%: consumer opinions posted online
60%: brand websites
56%: television
56%: magazines
54%: radio
49%: brand sponsorships
49%: email I signed up for
38%: ads before movies
34%: search engine ads
26%: Online banner ads
18%: text ads on cell phones

However, the above percentages do differ substantially between countries. For instance, in Europe, respondents were around 62 percent (Denmark) or 63 percent (Italy) to trust consumer recommendations. In Asian countries, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, the trust levels for this channel were much higher with 93 percent and 91 percent respectively.

Source: Which marketing methods do consumers trust the most [BizReport]

Also read:Deep Insights Into Behavior of Chinese Online Consumers

eMarketer estimates that online travel bookings in China were worth $1.5 billion in 2006, and it projects that average annual increases of 60% will push the Chinese market to $15.4 billion in 2011. Expansion in China will be underpinned by meteoric economic growth, relaxation of overseas travel restrictions and a fast-growing Internet user population.

Source: High-Flying Tigers of Online Travel

Also read:Google China Zeitgeist For Travel

Maryam Kamvar and Shumeet Baluja from Google published a paper on trends in mobile search. These are the key findings:

• The average mobile query was 2.56 words and 16.8 characters.
• The average length of spoken queries to Google was 2.1 terms.
• It takes users a significant amount of time—an estimated 39.8 seconds—to enter these queries.
• The time to query was proportional to the query length and ease of input.
• The most popular was the adult category, which typically consists of pornographic queries.
  
• 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.
• Only 10.4 percent of queries had requests to display more than the initial set of 10 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.
• The average number of queries per mobile session is 2.

They also compared the mobile search this year with 18 months ago in 2005 and find out that now:

• Users type faster
• More users are clicking
• More exploration within a session
• Less homogeneous queries
• More high-end devices
• More adult queries

Also read:An Introduction to Mobile Marketing

Avinash writes a very good post on understanding the bounce rate. Here’s a summary:

1. Measure the website bounce rate to understand  what percent of your website traffic is actually engaging with your site,
2. Filter the bounce rate by traffic source to find out the effective and poor traffic sources.
3. Check the bounce rate to track your SEO efforts.
4. Measure the bounce rate for paid search campaign efficiency.
5. Use the “bounce rate” statistics to optimize pages.

Link: Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate

Also read:5 Tips to Track And Integrate Offline Marketing Campaigns