A recent study released by eMarketer shows that US adults now spend more time on mobile devices than they do with print media. Time spent on mobile devices increased 30% from 2010 to 2011, while time with print media was down 12%. (Print media includes both newspapers and magazines.) The total time spent each day on mobile devices increased to 65 minutes, while combined print media time spent was just 44 minutes each day.

Time on the internet continues to increase as well with 2011 usage at 2 hours and 47 minutes per day, up 7.7% from 2010. Television and video leads the time spent pack with 4 hours and 34 minutes spent viewing live or recorded on DVR or DVD programming. Data in this report includes all time spent with the medium regardless of multitasking, so an hour spent watching TV while using your mobile device counts as an hour of each activity.

Currently shifts in ad spending are lagging behind consumer habits. At Qiigo, we expect that to change. With mobile devices enjoying more than 10% share of adults’ media time each day, now is the time to shift your marketing budget to meet the viewing habits of today’s consumers. 2012 will be the year for mobile advertising. Position your company for success in 2012 with Qiigo Mobile.

Contact Qiigo today to learn more and be ahead of the curve in reaching consumers in the New Year.

Overall retail sales were also up 8.2% over 2010 to $1.1 trillion. 2010 third quarter e-commerce sales accounted for 4.6% of total retail sales. This represented a slight increase over the 4.4% increase seen in the third quarter of 2010. However, according to Andrew Lipsman, senior director of industry analysis at comScore, a digital business analytics company, the 4.6% increase is a soft number as it includes food, gas and automotive purchases. “If you take out food, gas and auto from the calculation, the increase is in the 8% to 9% range now,” he said.

“There was a little bit of relative softness in this quarter given the market volatility,” Lipsman said. “As of now, there seems to be only minor pullback and Q4 is looking pretty strong.”

The Census Bureau e-commerce sales estimates for the third quarter of 2011 are based on approximately 12,500 retail firms whose sales are weighted and benchmarked to represent the complete universe of more than 2 million retail firms, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Are you maximizing your e-commerce efforts? Contact Qiigo today to discuss engagement strategies for e-commerce, Pay Per Click advertising and other Internet Marketing strategies.

In the first nine months of 2011, Yelp generated a whopping 80% increase in year-over-year revenue totaling $58.4 million. Advertising sales accounted for 91% of the company’s revenue during this period. Local advertising revenues grew by 67% year-over-year to $40.3 million, while branded advertising also grew by 67% to $12.7 million.

During the past year, Yelp has been increasing its spending on sales and marketing. Year-over-year expenditures have risen 60% to $38.5 million.

Yelp is currently concentrating on local and brand advertising on its website including graphic and text display ads. While not currently featuring local or brand advertising on its mobile apps, Yelp does “see the mobile market as an attractive monetization opportunity.”

Yelp saw an average of 61 million unique visitors in the third quarter, up 63% from the prior year. As of September 30, 2011, the site was maintaining more than 22 million reviews with approximately 529,000 free business pages claimed. As of the same date, Yelp also recognized revenue from approximately 19,000 local business accounts.

Yelp user demographics are as follows:

• 42% age 18-34
• 45% college graduates
• 36% annual income of $100,000+

Mark Fratrik, VP and chief economist at BIA/Kelsey was surprised to see an increase in digital ad spending. “I thought it would hold steady, especially in the midst of an economic slowdown,” he said.

Overall local media market advertising is showing a slight decrease for full year 2011. Earlier projections in March 2011 called for spending to reach $136.2 billion, revised projections now call for a slightly lower total of just $135.9 billion.

The largest downward projects come for yellow pages and newspapers. Yellow pages are expected to see only $9 billion in revenue and newspapers will reach just $23.7 billion. These figures represent decreases of $600 million compared to March 2011 forecasts.

Over the next five years, projections for yellow pages are for decreases of 7.7% in spending. While newspaper revenue is expected to decrease from 19% to 12.9% of total market share.

Fratrik says he believes digital advertising will continue to see its share of market increase as yellow pages and newspapers share declines. “In terms of Yellow Pages, online search is so much quicker and more attractive to people,” he added.

If your company wants to stay ahead of the trends, contact Qiigo today about Pay Per Click and online local area marketing opportunities.

Here’s a look at highlights from this report:

• Total online advertising revenues in the U.S. were up 23% to $14.9 billion over the first half of 2010.
• 2Q2011 ad revenues were also up 24% to $7.68 billion compared with the same period last year.
• Search marketing generated $7.3 billion in revenue in the first half of the year. This represents a 27% increase over 2010 and 49% of the period’s overall revenue.
• Display advertising accounted for 37% of the period’s overall revenue at $5.5 billion. This represents a 27% increase over the previous year.
  • Display revenue was broken down into four segments
    • Display/Banner Ads
    • Digital Video
    • Rich Media
    • Sponsorship
• Display/Banner ads brought in the bulk of the revenue at $3.4 billion.
• Email revenue accounted for only 1% of all revenue and dropped 34% year over year to $79 million.
• The most spending on online advertising is coming from the retail segment with retailers spending $3.4 billion, an increase of 20% over 2010.
  • Telecommunications, financial services and automotive marketers come in behind retailers in spending.

Is your business competing in the online advertising market? Have you made room in your marketing budget for online advertising? If you are considering advertising online, now is the time to call the experts at Qiigo. Put our knowledge of PPC and SEO behind you and experience the Qiigo difference!

The 70% that will be allocated to digital channels will breakdown as follows:

• Online/Digital: Includes mobile, social, online directories, display, and digital outdoor
• Performance-based Commerce: Includes pay-per-click, deals, and couponing
• Customer Retention Solutions: Includes email reputation and presence management, websites, social marketing, and calendar/appointment-setting

During this forecast period, spending in traditional advertising outlets is expected to be flat with $10.8 billion spent in 2010 and $12.1 billion to be spent in 2015. However, overall spending on media, marketing and business solutions will grow dramatically from $22.4 billion in 2010 to $40.2 billion in 2015.

BIA/Kelsey also expects spending on performance-based commerce and transaction platforms to increase to $4.6 billion in 2015 up from $1.7 billion in 2010. Customer retention spending is also expected to increase. 2010 saw customer retention spending of $3.5 billion; this number should rise to $6.9 in 2015.

With so much spending expecting to shift to online marketing outlets, where does your company project their marketing plans for the future? If you are considering online marketing and don’t know where to turn or how to get started, talk to the experts at Qiigo. Let us show you how easy it can be to achieve internet marketing success.

35% of this total will be made up by search, display, mobile, email, and social media advertising. This represents an increase from the current 19% these areas of ad spending currently make up. This forecast also anticipates a decrease in group buying offers as more exposure and increase competition in this market makes group buying more challenging.

Forrester analyst and report author Shar VanBoskirk said, “We expect this [interactive] growth to help firms become adaptive, kill off daily deals, re-emphasize marketing’s four Ps, (product, price, place, and promotion), and turn consumer electronics into audience-targeting tools.”

This interactive spending report also projected that search spending will continue to grow to $33.3 billion in 2016, up from $18.8 billion in 2011. However, the overall share will decline from 55% in 2011 to 44% in 2016, as marketers focus their energy on getting the consumer’s attention via any medium not just via search engines.

Other projections from this report included that display advertising including contextual listings, static image ads and rich media ads would grow to $27.6 billion by 2016 and encompass 36% of interactive spending.  Additionally, mobile ad spending is projected to surpass email and social spending to reach $8.2 billion in 2016.

Is your company positioned to grow with the trends in interactive advertising? Contact Qiigo today to learn how we can impact your bottom line with proven internet marketing strategies.

Google recently reported $9 billion in Q2 2011 revenues, a 32% increase over Q2 2010. 97% of this revenue is attributed to the company’s advertising revenue which grew 33% compared to 2010 to $8.7 billion in the second quarter.

Revenues from ads on Google sites in Q2 were $6.2 billion, which accounted for 69% of all revenue.

Net income in Q2 was also up. The $2.5 billion in net income represented a 36% increase compared to Q2 2010. Google also spent $1.1 billion on sales and marketing, up 73% compared with Q2 2010.

Consumers are responding to Google ads

Consumers are clicking on more Google ads than ever before. In Q2 2011, consumers clicked on 18% more Google-served ads than in Q2 2010. The average cost per click also rose 12% for advertisers in year over year analysis and 6% versus the previous quarter.

Google paid 20% more, or $1.8 billion, to advertisers that used its AdSense product to run search and display ads on the company’s network of third-party sites.

Google continues to grow, adding 2,452 employees in the second quarter. This brings it total full time staff count to 28,768.

Did your business grow 32% over the last year in this economy?  If you would like to experience that kind of growth, it is time to consider how online advertising can get you closer to that number. Contact the Qiigo team today and let us show you how internet marketing and online advertising can have a positive impact on your bottom line.

With the merger, AdGrok employees will join Twitter’s revenue engineering team. Twitter plans to discontinue AdGrok’s Google AdWords management product on June 30.  Twitter has already announced plans to roll out Promoted Tweets in the 4Q 2011.  Promoted Tweets match up advertisers with Twitter account holders who have a larger follower base.

Ryan Sarver, Director of Platform for Twitter, has said that he believes Promoted Tweets will act as the equivalent of Google AdWords.  The acquisition of AdGrok positions Twitter well to target advertisements to consumers.  It definitely appears as if Twitter is laying the ground work to compete in the pay per click market.

When the consumer clicks on the Directions link it automatically maps the quickest route to the store from the consumer’s location. Consumers can use the Directions link from their desktop, mobile search ads, and Google Maps for Mobile on Android or iPhone.

Google has recently announced that they will be adding new performance metrics for the Directions link. These metrics will appear alongside those for clicks and phone calls.  Clicks on the Directions link will also be charged as a click on all Pay Per Click campaigns moving forward.

So how will this impact your Pay Per Click campaign?

We already know from experience that any customer who is ready to click on the Directions link and immediately head to your location is an actively engaged customer. This is a customer who is ready to spend and has passed the research stage of the buying cycle. So clicks on the Directions link should generate a sale.

Additionally, clicks on the Directions link will filter out those people who are investigating how far away your location is from them.  It eliminates the need for your staff to spend time on the phone qualifying the customer as they have already pre-qualified themselves.

Clicks on the Directions link will be counted the same as a click on the headline of the ad, so you still get the benefit of seeing the results of your clicks without having to spend valuable time on the phone. Instead those customers who are motivated can get their directions automatically and then head to your store to engage your services.