RapLeap, a research company, conducted an interesting study of email analysis. They looked at social network memberships of 120,000 AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo users to gauge where they spend time online.

RapLeaf found that AOL and Gmail users tend to favor Facebook, while Hotmail and Yahoo users tend to use Facebook and MySpace equally. Twitter is the third-most popular social network, followed by LinkedIn.

According to the study results, Gmail users are more connected and have more friends on a social network, other webmail users however maintain more social networking profiles. Even if this is true, is it true in APAC market? If it is true, an email campaign to gain Twitter followers would be more efficient if targeting Gmail users (you can do so via Google content network).

You can only test to find out; integrate social media with your email marketing campaigns and sample the same amount of users for each email provider (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo).

Also read:How the Number of Twitter Follows Impact Leads Generation

The core of digital marketing is to map out the right strategies for different businesses right at the beginning; and, deploy the right tactics and ALWAYS track the performance to measure the campaign results (ROI, or Return on Investment). Keep improving! Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you find any service below helpful to you.

From a charity organization? I do free digital marketing consultancy for charities. Please contact me and I’ll do the best I can according to my schedule. Contact me here.

Digital Marketing Consultancy. Maximize your digital marketing efforts by deploying the right strategy for the right online channel and integrating different digital marketing media. Contact me here.

Site Audit. Site audit on websites is like having a health check on human beings. It helps you understand what problems your sites currently have so that you can improve it for better attracting search engine traffic and improving usability. Contact me here.

1. Domain information
2. Search Engine Friendly (SEO) Site Audit
3. Broken Links
4. Website Loading Time
5. Browser Compatibility
6. Accessibility
7. Usability
8. Competitive Analysis
9. Social Popularity & Social Presence Check

Paid Search (PPC) Management. Companies who truly understand the power of search have already taken advantage of search as one very important marketing media. Some SMEs get scared of this “Pay Per Click” advertising; well, you won’t if you track the whole campaign and have a clear understanding about the ROI. A performance based PPC management could be provided so that you only pay for what you get. Contact me here. Or, find out more about PPC management.

• Google
• Yahoo
• Bing
• Baidu
• Sogou (Sohu.com)
• Taobao.com

SEO Consultancy. Optimize your website for natural search engine traffic, the kind of traffic you don’t need to pay. Free? Yes. You only need to pay for optimization. Again, performance based. SEO takes longer than PPC; it’s more beneficial if you combine them together. Contact me here.

Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime. –Chinese Proverb

Digital Marketing Training / Consultancy. If you do have people dedicated to digital (on which you are doing the right thing), training can be provided to your team. A kick-off meeting will be arranged to better understand the business to suggest the best fit training modules, which is free.

• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Search Management (PPC)
• Social Media Marketing
• Web Analytics
• Advanced Google Analytics
• China Internet Briefing
• Integrate Search Marketing with Other Digital Channels
• Integrate Digital with Traditional Media
• Online Offline Marketing Integration Recommendations

If you have a little question regarding digital marketing, feel free to ask me. I won’t charge you anything for that. =) All you need to do is to contact me.

Contact me here; be specific about your business, the goal you expect to achieve, and the kind of services you are interested in. Contact me here.

Also read:SEO Consultancy Service

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. —Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)

The states and Europe are too far from me; my limited understanding warms me of “pretending” to be an expert in those markets. I just want to share some thoughts on digital marketing (especially search) in Asia.

Marketers

I’ve worked with many marketers, few of which truly understand what digital marketing is. Some immediately shut down their mind from understanding it better once they hear terms like “html tags”. In their mind, digital marketing is mostly about “digital”, or “information technology”; ignore part of important total marketing strategies and think “digital marketing” is not their cup of tea.

Many marketers work with digital agencies; more often than not, communication and understanding each other are a problem. I saw marketers set up rules and formats of digital marketing campaigns who actually have little knowledge in digital marketing. A recommended way is to identify the right digital marketing company, set the KPI, and let them do the job without interfering too much.

Some companies (especially those to whom branding is critical) somehow realize the importance but find it hard to find the right person. They usually start to look for people with marketing background but few really have the capability for digital space. While, those with technical skills often have little understanding about marketing.

The right person. Who do you think is ideal for digital marketing role? I reckon, he or she should be a quick learner from marketing background (at least have a passion in marketing) who is willing to learn new things very quickly. Digital space is much more dynamic than traditional advertising and marketing, which requires constant learning from evolving channels.

Agencies

Big advertising agencies. Big advertising agencies don’t want to ignore the increasing popularity of digital media, but are not dedicated to this emerging media. I came across several big players who set up digital department, put one guy in charge who’s from traditional media, and try to cash in whenever they can.

They do have a nice and charming “face” which can give their clients confidence that THEY are the one who can help them do better in digital media. Can they? Who cares about the fact?

Digital agencies. Many digital agencies have realized the fact that, Asia, a big emerging market, is the new big place where they can possibly share a bigger piece of cake. Many digital marketing agencies have been born with very different level of capabilities.

The problem is, one person can set up a company, which is particularly true in China. Many Chinese SEM companies would call whoever they can (even a hair salon) to promote the service and get as much money as possible out of their pocket without caring at all who they can bring to the clients.

“Better” SEM companies in Asia (especially those came from western markets) know what is important to the clients: ROI focused. But, once you sign up, what do you think they really care about?

There are only few companies who truly care about their clients’ benefit and strives toward win/win situation. But the bad news is, few have the ability to make the right judgment about who is the best for them.

Relationship with the clients is essential to a digital agency; but in the long term, how you can continuously strive to add value can ultimately help stand out and make a real difference.

Search Engines

Google. Google is really good. They never stop innovation or improving their existing products. It’s really easy to advertise on Google. The biggest challenge they really face is themselves, growing too big makes people fear and become joulous.

Yahoo. If you are behind your competitor and run at a slower pace, it is even not theoretically possible to catch up. Without a tool like Google AdWords Editor, different accounts for different markets, different currency invoicing, … There are so much Yahoo can do to make their services better; it seems the No. 1 real competitor Yahoo is facing is themselves.

Baidu. Baidu seems to see the difficulties it has brought to itself by too much concentrating on profit gaining. It’s still a market leader (about two thirds of SEM market) in China; but, its technology is behind Google. The good thing is, Baidu is making progress. According to a friend in Baidu, they would probably launch the updated bidding system (what they call “Phoenix Nest”) at the end of Oct.

Experts

The current situation is, the smartest digital companies get the most money, not the best. I see too many individuals and companies who start to laugh at others and blame their limited understanding about search or digital; as a matter of fact, neither do they. It really reminds me of the frog-in-a-well story when I was in primary school. A frog sits at the bottom of a well and think the sky is as big as what they see.

It’s an education process which would take some time before people have the ability to make the right judgement about what “good” truly means. What you truly believe, I’m afraid, is the only thing that help you succeed.

Also read:Asia Digital Marketing Yearbook

comScore today released its ranking of the top search properties in the Asia-Pacific region based on data from the comScore qSearch 2.0 service, revealing that Google Sites continued to lead the region with 33.5% of the more than 27 billion searches conducted in July. Baidu ranked second with 27.4% search share, followed by Yahoo! Sites in third with 19.7% share.

Surprised to see TENCENT and Sohu in the top 10 list. If you are a stranger to them, you should know: Tencent’s search engine is SoSo (“So” in Chinese means “search”) whose paid search is powered by Google; and, Sogou is Sohu’s search engine. Read my previous post about China search engine market survey here.

It may surprise you to see that there is actually a difference between the top countries by searches and the top countries by searches per user.

Top Countries by Searches

Top Countries by Searches per User

To me, the number of searches per user gives a general idea about the maturity of the searchers in the market. The most important lesson is, don’t simply apply your experience to all the markets without enough testing and analysis.

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

Finally I’m back blogging! Came across this interesting survey done by CIC, below is a summary of the key findings. In general, Baidu market share slightly slips; surprised to see Sogou’s market share has rised.

China Search Engine Market Share Based on Daily Usage

China IntelliConsulting Corporation (CIC) has published its semi-annual survey report on China search engine market.

Market Share based on Daily Usage

The report shows Baidu has managed its market share increased over the last six months in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the three major cities surveyed. Google saw its market share bounced up slightly, whereas both Yahoo and Sogou have been further marginalized.

I’m surprised to see Sogou has actually managed to rise to 3.1% from 2.2% a year ago. I would definitely test out Sogou when I have a chance. Data from Google Trends seems to verify the finding:

Website Traffic from Google Trends

CIC survey covers 18 cities which are categorized as four major groups:

• National Hub Cities: The three major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou
• The Coastal Cities: Dalian, Tianjin, Qingdao, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xiamen, and Shenzhen
• The Central Provincial Capital Cities: Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, and Changsha
• The Western Regional Hub Cities: Chongqing, Chengdu and Xi’an

Search Engine Regional Market Share in China

CIC found, Google has lower brand awareness and accounts for less market share in Central provincial capital cities and Western hub cities than in the three major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Google’s market share in China’s rural areas is even less than 10%. However, the good news for Google is that, 34.6% believe Google is better than Baidu in terms of search result relevancy, 29.0% believe the opposite.

Also read:China Search Engine Survey Report 2007 Released

Now you have made your video ready for video marketing campaigns. Now what? If this is your first time, you probably would go to register at video sharing websites like YouTube one by one and upload your videos. If you are really aggressive and YouTube alone can’t make you satisfied, it’s really a tedious process as there are a lot of video sharing websites.

• Big Think
• Blinkx
• Blip.tv
• Break.com
• Buzznet
• Dailymotion
• GameVideos.com
• GoFish
• Google Video
• iFilm
• imeem
• JibJab
• Kewego
• Liveleak
• Metacafe
• MSN Soapbox
• Myspace
• MyVideo
• OneWorldTV
• Ourmedia
• pandora tv
• Peekvid.com
• Photobucket
• Phpmotion
• Rambler Vision
• Sapo Videos (only portuguese)
• Sevenload
• Twango
• Vbox7
• Veoh
• Vimeo
• Vuze
• Yahoo! Video
• YouAreTV
• YouTube

I’ve highlighted some of the most popular ones in bold. It definitely takes a lot of time and man power to do that. I recommend you use Hey!Spread to help distribute videos for you.

You can check your upload process in real-time and know instantly when your video is available on the video portals Hey!Spread support: Sclipo, Sumo, Sevenload, Youtube, Google, Dailymotion, Blip, Metacafe, Yahoo, Facebook, Myspace, Vimeo, Revver, Veoh, Vsocial, Photobucket, Putfile. Its pricing model is quite flexible:

Pay only for what you use or get. 1 link sent or received from us simply costs USD $0.05 or 0.03€. 1 link means 1 video sent to 1 site. Sharply fit your needs or budget now.

In addition, TubeMogul‘s Load & Track is another similar handy tool you can check out too.

TubeMogul is the first online video analytics and distribution company serving publishers large and small who need independent information about video performance on the Internet and automated upload to the Web’s top video sharing sites.

TubeMogul supports the following sites: AOL Video, Blip.tv, Brightcove, Crackle, Daily Motion, Google , ideo, Howcast, Metacafe, Myspace, Revver, Sclipo, StupidVideos, Veoh, Yahoo Video, YouTube, Viddler, 5min. Watch the video below for a better understanding:

Also read:Create Integrated Video Campaigns with YouTube Direct

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

The more specific market you want to target, the more difficult you can drive quality traffic online. Thinking of targeting senior management in Asia? Start with the online places they often visit. This piece of news from Brand Republic would give you some hints:

The Wall Street Journal is the most widely read daily news publication among senior business executives in Asia, followed by the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune, according to the BE:ASIA 2008 survey by media research organisation Ipsos.
Time emerged as the region’s most popular newsweekly, while Business Week was shown to be the region’s top business magazine. The survey also indicated that the publication rivaled The Economist as publication of choice among chief executives.

Forbes was found to have the highest fortnightly readership, followed by Fortune. National Geographic led Readers’ Digest as the monthly publication of choice.

CNN led the field in cable TV news programming, while Yahoo and Google attracted the highest number of visitors among online news sites.

Also read:Asia Digital Marketing Yearbook

Page not found. But, some colleagues can access at the same time. Weired, isn’t it? Bad user experience; indeed!

Also read:Yahoo Search Launching Panama In South East Asia

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

Small Business SEM Blog has a series of posts about Yahoo Answers, why and how you use Yahoo Answers to market your products or services; I suggest you read them if you are new to this social tool.

In my own words, Yahoo Answers is a place you can show your extensive knowledge and expertise in a certain area by answering related questions. Of course, depending on the market you try to target, you may find similar sites more popular than Yahoo Answers. For example, Baidu Zhidao is more popular than Yahoo Answers.

Bonus Tip: Among Chinese Internet users in Asia, discussion boards (or BBS, forum) are very popular and many people chat there, ask questions there, and buy stuff there.

Also read:Google Answers To Launch Again Tomorrow In China

If you have installed Yahoo Widget or Google Desktop, you can have Hitwise’s widget (for Yahoo Widget; for Google Desktop) on your desktop for the latest online trends.

Also read:Introducing Widget Marketing

In this post, I would introduce most Google Analytics features and so you know what you can do with this free tool.

1. Understand your website visitors.
   For a specified period of time, how many visitors have visited your website? How many page views? What is the number of average page views every visitor has generated? What is the average time each visitor spend on your website? What percentage of visitors are new visitors? What web browsers and Internet connection speed are your visitors using?
2. Find out the traffic sources.
   What are the top traffic sources? What is the percentage of direct traffic (by typing the URL directly, from bookmark), referring traffic (from other websites), and search engine traffics (natural search listings and paid search)?

   You need to understand how people land on your website and where they are from. Direct visitors are some of your best visitors; they have visited your site and are interested in what you have to offer. It also indicates the level of loyalty and recognitions. Here is an article explaining why you should care direct traffic.

   From referring traffic data, you can understand more about linking building efforts and sponsored links if any so that you can also measure the return on investment. Similar for search engine traffic, either via natural listing or pay-per-click (PPC) traffic.

3. Find out about your website contents.
   What are the top pages with the most page views? It tells you what are the most popular pages you visitors like. What are the top landing pages? It indicates the top pages most visitor journey are initiated from. What are the top pages most people exit from?
4. Dig out the keywords. 
   What are the keywords used  by the searchers in Google, Yahoo, or MSN that land them on your website? Internal search. If you website has a search box implemented and allows your visitors to search for the contents, why don’t you find out what are the keywords used?
5. Track the clicks.
   How many times have your visitors clicked on an external link or a form submission button? How many times has a document or white paper been downloaded?
6. Understand your site navigation.
   Take my personal website top navigation for example:
   
   With Google Analytics’ site overlay feature, you can view the relative clicks on each menu item like this:
   

If you are new to web analytics, you don’t really need to start with more advanced software. I saw some clients using paid ones like Web Trends, but they aren’t able to get anything helpful out of the data. For more technical guide, you can refer here for more information.

Also read:Marketers’ SEM Guide 3: Measurement with Web Analytics

Yahoo search and Microsoft’s Live Search have been trying very hard to catch with more market share; however, Google is still leading the search market. According to Hitwise, Google accounted for 65.98 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending December 29, 2007. I don’t see they are likely to catch up in the near future. Why? Google does do a better job in search. I just noticed that my previous “blog update” post was indexed shortly after it was published:

If you have the ambition of being the market leader, make sure you do provide the best product which delivers the best customer experience.

Also read:China Search Engine Market Report, Sep 2008

Guy Kawasaki introduced Merrill Lynch report from his broker friend at his blog, “Top Internet Themes for 1H’08″, here is a summary:

1. Intensifying 3rd party seller competition (negative)
   As the industry giant ($57bn in TTM GMV) eBay’s anticipated listing fee changes could impact the 3rd party market. We think Amazon ($5bn in TTM GMV) might incorporate some of this uncertainty (and consumer uncertainty), into its ’08 outlook, potentially creating a buying opportunity as we expect little actual impact.
2. A bump Online media spending (positive)
   We see two events that could build enthusiasm on the Internet advertising market into the summer: elections and the TV writers strike. Direct dollars won’t be that material ($150mn possible direct benefit to Online adverting in ‘08), but extensive political spend could crowd non-political spending to Online display markets, which could be a catalyst for Yahoo or Google (YouTube).
3. Increasing focus on mobile market initiatives (both)
   CES and the spectrum auction will provide greater clarity on Google’s and Yahoo’s mobile strategies, we expect each company to be aggressive in 2008. Difficult to handicap the risk of Google winning the spectrum auction, but losing could be a stock catalyst. Also, we expect Yahoo’s to renegotiate its AT&T contract with a mobile partnership component, potentially clearing an overhang.
4. Improving display ad targeting technology (positive)
   Google/DCLK merger may highlight possibility for improved targeting technology to drive up the value of Online ad inventory. We think Online CPMs at around $2.50, which trail newspapers by 5-10x has room to grow, and targeting will make social networking sites more competitive, but also benefit Yahoo! in ’08.
5. Asset value unlock speculation (positive)
   The InterActive split into five entities expected in mid-2008 will be the catalyst and, in addition to potentially creating value for Interactive, the split could be an industry catalyst highlighting the underlying asset value for Yahoo ($10-11/share) and potentially even eBay (we value PayPal ~$10bn) or Expedia (TripAdvisor).
6. Social networking revenue model emergence (negative)
   Audiences are moving to social networking sites and the “interest targeting” ad sales initiative by MySpace is just a first step in competitive audience monetization. We expect more display/sponsorship/ad network initiatives, followed by peer-to-peer eCommerce and possibly personalized search in a few years. All large cap. Internet stocks (eBay, Google, Yahoo) have some degree of risk, although AOL, MSN and Yahoo! could have most in ’08.

You can find the report here (PDF).

Also read:Best Internet Brands In America

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

Version one of Live Search Maps for China is launched. The application was built in China with a focus on getting the features most relevant to Chinese customers out first. Business search, Collections, and public transit features were emphasized, covering over 100 cities with 7 million business listings. I tested; it is pretty impressive. I searched for restaurans in my hometown Baoji (a small city in Shaanxi Province). Guess what? It shows much more restaurants than I expected!

A Chinese company has taken Google’s China operations to court over what it says is an infringement of the Chinese translation of its name, “Guge,” a court document said. More at Smart Money…

Alibaba wtih China Yahoo Auto channel recently showed up in Guangzhou automotive exhibition.

Also read:China Internet Conference 2007 Day 1

The 2007 China Massively Multiplayer Online [MMO] game market size is about four (4) times as big as the China online search market.The 2007 China online search market is about $0.4 billion in size, of which Baidu ( BIDU) has about 61% market share, Google (GOOG) has about 24%, and Yahoo! (YHOO) has about 10%. The 2007 China MMO game market is about $1.6 billion, of which Shanda Interactive Entertainment (SNDA), Netease (NTES), Giant Interactive Group (GA) and The9 Limited (NCTY) collectively have about 61% of market share.

China has huge number of Internet users; however, many of them don’t know the basics of computer operation. What most (probably all) Chinese Internet users know is (1) QQ (China’s online instant messenger) (2) playing online games. Still, Internet is more for entertainment in China than information.

Source: China Online Search vs. MMO Game Market [Seeking Alpha]

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

• The9, an online game operator, announced partnership with a beverage company “tianwo” on dynamic marketing.
  Under the partnership, tiaowo would produce soft drinks with the characters of the online games printed on its bottles.
• Sina and Google announced strategic partnership on Monday.
  Sina would benefit from Google’s search technologies for its search and shared profit of adsense ads. Besides, Sina would also expect increased traffic from Google news.
• China Yahoo partners with China online game operators to promote its email service.
  China Yahoo’s email service faces fierce competition from NetEase/163 whose mainly profit from online games and email services. As Yahoo doesn’t do online games and is not going to, the partnership with China’s main online game operators would definitely complement it to gain more email market shares.

Also read:China Multiplayer Online Game Market

• 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