ClearSaleing media attribution research: The return of display and its reemergence as key revenue driver

ClearSaleing, one of the key media attribution providers, just released an interesting new research study hinting at the return of display advertising and its reemergence as a key revenue driver (as long as companies can accurately track display impact). 

Granted, this is probably old news for advertisers that have already reached a point of diminishing returns in channels such as paid search a while ago and are now heavily relying on display ads to continue to grow. However, what might still be news is exactly how much revenue they might have been missing out on by only optimising for the last campaign touch point or the 'last click' before a sale which misses 9 out of 10 ad engagements and is unlikely to be a display ad.

The ‘last-click gets all the credit’ attribution model introduced by Google and favoured by so many others over the years is just not representative of how consumers interact with advertising, which is especially true for display ads that are hardly ever clicked on but nevertheless significantly influence consumer's purchase decisions over time.

To shed some more light on this issue, ClearSaleing analysed over 1.1 billion impressions, 81.5 million clicks and 3 million conversions between January and April 2011 and found that multi-step purchase paths (as opposed to last click only) are responsible for a full third or 36% of total revenue - and exactly that revenue is threatened (or unrealised) if your company only relies on last click attribution. In addition to the above, it also seems that multi-step purchase paths are likely to increase average revenue per order by 41% which is another great reason to invest in display advertising.

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Revolution in targeted outdoor ads: Interactive billboards in Japan now using face recognition

Ok, we're not turning into a video channel (this is the 3rd video post in a row) but this is just too cool (or scary) to only share on Twitter as a link. The Nestle speaker at the ADMA Data Day in Brisbane just talked about a revolutionary new outdoor targeting technology in Japan similar to what some of you might remember from the film 'Minority Report'. 

Check out the video below for a glimpse into the future: Targeted billboard ads based on facial recognition! You can say what you want but the Japanese do innovate.

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StatCounter Australian benchmark data on browsers and mobile OS market share: iOS 74%, Android 13%

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Not sure if you've heard about StatCounter but if you are an Australian online marketer looking for local benchmarking data on any of the below metrics, I think you will like this post. StatCounter publishes local Australia data on: 

+ Browsers
+ Browser versions
+ Mobile browsers
+ Operating systems
+ Mobile operating systems
+ Search engines
+ Mobile search engines
+ Mobile vs. desktop
+ Social media

According to Wikipedia "StatCounter statistics are directly derived from hits (not unique visitors) from 3 million sites using StatCounter totalling more than 15 billion hits per month". Now, the Australian sample is not the biggest, but it's not the smallest either so good enough I think. And best of all, you cannot just export the graphs but also download the raw data!

Below are a few of the more interesting graphs on browsers and mobile operating systems in Australia compared to the global average. Australia is largely following the global browser trend with one key exception, Safari seems to be much stronger here than the global average, almost as strong as Chrome.

In terms of mobile operating systems the iOS that powers the iPhone is the clear leader in Australia with over 74% market share followed by Android with 13% which is much more balanced globally. Android has a lot more catching-up to do here and it looks like the iOS has stolen much more market share from Blackberry in Australia over the last few months than overseas.

How does the below data compare to your own website stats?

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Google Books Ngram viewer visualises word trends from over 5.2 million books over the last 200 years

In case you haven't heard about the new Google Books Ngram viewer yet you better check it out now, it is without a doubt the coolest public data application Google has launched since Google Trends.

As you might know, Google has been busy scanning books for the past few years and its database now contains over two billion words from 5.2 million books published over the last 200 years. That's pretty cool in itself, however the Google Books Ngram viewer lets you search that database for the appearance of certain words and then graph them over time to reveal trends. 

Check out the trends below, the Ngram viewer is basically a combined archaeology and anthropology research tool on steroids.

Mentions for the word 'violence' pretty much flatline until the event of the Television and then receive another boost with the arrival of video and online.
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Looks like there has been a steady increase in 'flooding', 'landslide' and 'tsunami' mentions over the past few hundred years but we only recently started talking about climate change.
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You have to wonder what all these problems are people are writing about but there definitely seems to be less and less solutions.
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The below chart nicely shows the growth and decline in popularity of different media channels over time.
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Oh well, the days of the horse are definitely over but the car is experiencing a bit of a revival, exceeding second world ware level.
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ACMA Communications Report 2010 including data on Australian advertising expenditure by channel

ACMA just released another amazing report called the The Communications Report which is basically a collection of interesting telecommunication statistics from various sources. It includes some really interesting gems on Australian advertising expenditure by channel and the growing importance of online among less thrilling numbers on carrier licenses and emergency calls.

Download the full Communications Report form the ACMA website or check out some of the key advertising related charts below. As you can see online advertising expenditure has steadily increased over the past few years following a general usage trend and was actually the only channel with growth in 2009, however it still only reflects an average of 15% of overall advertising spend. Within online, search and directories are the key channels as one would expect but interestingly mobile reveals itself as somewhat hyped up given the the overall data download growth is still driven by fixed lines (mobile data download actually stagnated).

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