Not entirely online related but still interesting data. Looking at the chart below it might be better to keep renting for a while in Australia if the downward trend continues.

Although the current crisis started with the bursting of the US housing bubble, other economies around the world are feeling the effects of their own real-estate booms and busts. From 2000 through 2007, a remarkable run-up in global home prices occurred (see exhibit). But that trend has reversed abruptly. In 2008, the value of US residential real estate fell 10 percent; the global average fared only somewhat better, declining by almost 4 percent. We estimate that falling home prices erased more than $3.4 trillion of household wealth in 2008. And because home prices are slow to correct, the current slide may persist for some time, which could depress global consumption.

Read the original article, "A global view of the housing bubble", here
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/newsletters/chartfocus/2009_10.htm

There's an interesting article published on digitalbuzz contending that the focus on driving customers to a brand site is no longer effective.  We have run the same analysis on the Australian market and the trends appear to be quite consistent: 50% declines in daily unique visits over the past 2 years (while search volumes for key terms in those categories remained the same or even increased).

Why the decline?

The DigitalBuzz article contends that;

1. We are hanging out in social sites where relevant content finds us through our friends rather than searching out brands
2. Content is being pushed off-site through mechanisms such as RSS Feeds, Twitter, YouTube Channels and Facebook Fan pages

It's the second part that I'm interested in exploring but first some pretty graphs ...

Car Makers

Electronics

Computers

Media

Okay - it all looks like we're losing interest in the interwebs - but wait, all that attention is going somewhere ...

Facebook & Twitter

Clearly facebook is the huge winner in terms of daily engagement although we may see twitter has made a good start and my overtake MySpace in the next 12 months!

What's a brand to do?

I think the opportunity is for brands to start thinking of themselves as publishers - of useful information for their customers.  This means going beyond describing the product to telling stories about how it might impact someone's life.  If this content is modular and shareable, it will find its way to social spaces where relevant conversations can happen around it.  These conversations are where trust is built and people move closer to a purchase decision.

Rather than pushing out campaign centric content on your timeline, it's now important to be there (wherever your customers are) when they are in the buying cycle.

Recommendations

• Create customer centred content that is modular and has good metadata (descriptions)
• Give permission (and guidelines) for people to take it to other online spaces
• Attach a way to find you (for purchase or more info)
• Put metrics on the important bits and pay attention to what's working
• Monitor conversations and participate when appropriate

Example

Here's an an entry on Adam Brand's (he's a client) web site ...

And here it is on his Facebook fan page where it gets a lot more interaction and social proof ...

So what do you think?

Bing might be picking up market share in the US according to the latest eMarketer article but in Australia Google is still the dominating force (almost to a point where the additional effort/costs required to manage a 2nd or 3rd search account outweighs the actual benefit).

Take our poll: Do you bother with search marketing on Bing/Yahoo in Australia?
http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2058507/

Australia

USA

eMarketer: Analyzing the Bing effect
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007297

Hitwise: Data Center USA
http://www.hitwise.com/us/resources/data-center

Hitwise: Data Center Australia
http://www.hitwise.com/au/resources/data-centre