Healthy Growth for Ecommerce as Retail Continues Shift to Web

A new eMarketer forecast projects another two years of double-digit growth in US retail ecommerce sales as mobile commerce and other trends encourage consumers to spend even more money online.

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Facebook Reaches Majority of US Web Users

A new eMarketer forecast estimates more than 52.2% of internet users in the US were active Facebook users by the end of 2010. Twitter penetration remains much lower, at less than 10% of online adults.

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How Tweens, Teens and Parents Decide What to Buy

When making decisions about electronics purchases, teens and tweens have very different approaches. And for parents, the internet is the most important factor—after price.

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Younger and Younger, More Kids Are Online

Moms on the go are handing over their mobiles to kids, exposing ever-younger children to the internet.

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Mobile Users Prefer Browsers over Apps

For a variety of functions, users would rather browse

Although about a third of US mobile phone subscribers used a downloaded application in August, according to comScore, and app downloads have shown impressive growth, many mobile device users appear to think browsers offer the better user experience.

Mobile users polled by Keynote Systems for Adobe reported a preference for mobile browsers to access virtually all mobile content. Games, music and social media were the only categories in which users would rather use a downloaded app than browse the mobile web.

Their preference for mobile browsers extended to the retail category, with users showing a strong bias toward mobile browsers for accomplishing every mobile shopping task mentioned. Whether it was researching product and price info or sharing that information socially, mobile users would rather fire up a browser than a dedicated app.

These preferences may surprise mobile experts who consider apps to offer the best content and shopping experiences. And marketers may be frustrated as well; getting an app on a user’s home screen is a constant reminder of the brand, but it doesn’t make sense to offer an app users don’t want.

Consumers may simply be unimpressed by the mobile-optimized efforts they have seen so far. When the Adobe survey asked about a preference for using regular or mobile-optimized websites on their mobile device, they preferred regular sites in both the consumer products-shopping and media-entertainment categories. According to the report, this preference suggests “a low awareness of optimized experiences for the mobile web,” but users could also be frustrated with the limited functionality many mobile-optimized sites provide.

Copyright ©2010 eMarketer Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008010

Radio’s Loss Is Pandora’s Gain

Time spent listening to the radio is half what it was a decade ago among teens and young adults, but internet listening has tripled.

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How Effective Is Sharing via Email vs. Social Media?

High click rates for social media don’t tell the full story

According to Chadwick Martin Bailey, three-quarters of web users say they are likely to share pieces of content with their friends and family, an activity brands are watching closely in their attempts to leverage the influence of brand advocates.

In a statistic that has been backed up by other studies, including the August one by CMB, SocialTwist reported email was the most common channel used to share content via the company’s Tell-a-Friend widget, accounting for more than half of all referrals. Social networks made up fewer than a quarter of shares.

But shares on social networks had outsize importance in terms of clicks: 60% of clicks generated on shared items came from social networks, compared with just 31% from email.

One reason for the imbalance is the undeniably high clickthrough rates for shared content on social sites. Links posted to Facebook via the Tell-a-Friend widget generated an average of 2.87 clicks each. Twitter shares did even better, with an average of 19.04 users clicking each referral link.

But email may be performing better than it seems at first glance. Emails sent through the Tell-a-Friend widget include the full piece of content in the message, so users don’t need to click through to the original site to read the item that a friend thought was interesting enough to send. Facebook and Twitter users, by contrast, must click through to read more than a blurb.

For many sources of content, the clickthrough is key: When visitors click through to the originating site it opens up the possibility of ad revenues as well as the ability to build awareness and purchase intent while the user is on an owned-media property. But email recipients who read the content shared without clicking through will still get the benefit of an earned-media recommendation. Brands should ensure that shareable content carries a message on its own that will remain effective when read through an email client, since such messages remain the primary sharing vehicle for consumers.

Earlier research similarly showed that email shares had a lower click rate than items sent through Twitter or Facebook, but email shares led to more engagement, including more pages viewed and, most important, more conversions.

Copyright ©2010 eMarketer Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007998

Email Still Tops Facebook for Keeping in Touch

Only 18- to 24-year-olds use the social networking site more than email for passing items on

Content-sharing has become a staple of internet usage for most online adults. Research from Chadwick Martin Bailey found that three-quarters of web users are likely to share content with friends and family, and nearly half do so at least once a week. But while much social networking content is built around such shared items, most people still prefer to use email to pass along items of interest.

Overall, 86% of survey respondents said they used email to share content, while just 49% said they used Facebook. Broken down by age, the preference for email is more pronounced as users get older. And only the youngest group polled, those ages 18 to 24, reverses the trend, with 76% sharing via Facebook, compared with 70% via email.

Earlier research from StrongMail and ShareThis also found email was still on top for content-sharing. Other studies have shown that, when limited to sharing on social sites, Facebook is No. 1.

Asked what gets them to share content online, web users polled by Chadwick Martin Bailey revealed selfish motivations. Rather than focusing on sharing content they thought the recipients would find helpful or relevant (58%), most respondents cared more about what they thought was interesting or amusing (72%). Asked to select the single biggest reason they shared content, the greatest percentage of respondents (45%) again said it was because they enjoyed it. Men and women reported similar reasons for sharing, but motivations varied by age. The oldest respondents cared more about the value of content to recipients: 67% of those ages 55 and older said they shared items because they would be useful to recipients, compared with just 45% of 18- to 24-year-olds.

This difference in sharing motivation could have a relationship to the method of sharing. Email is a more targeted form of sending content; while content-sharers may shoot off mass emails to large distribution lists, most email shares are likely sent to a person or small group selected based on the specific content being shared.

Sharing via social networks like Facebook, by contrast, typically involves feeding items to an entire friends list. The youngest users, who care the least about whether the recipients of their content actually want to see it, are also most likely to disseminate the information to the widest group. And the seniors and older boomers who find the recipients’ needs more important dramatically favor email for sharing, suggesting they are sending relevant items to only those who will want them.

Copyright ©2010 eMarketer Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007982

The Continued Rise of Blogging

More than half of web users will read blogs this year

Social networks and microblogs have in recent years nudged blogging off the social media pedestal. For some consumers, who have more communication tools at their fingertips than they did a few years ago, Facebook and Twitter have supplanted blogging as life-streaming outlets.

But blogs continue to be important. eMarketer estimates that this year more than half of internet users will read blogs at least monthly. By 2014, readership will rise to more than 150 million Americans, or 60% of the internet population in the US. One reason for the rise in readership is that blogs have become an accepted part of the online media landscape.

“Trends in blog reading are expected to maintain an upward course as blogs continue to gain influence in the mainstream media,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “The Blogosphere: Colliding with Social and Mainstream Media.” “But there is a caveat to this forecast: Over time, blogs will continue to become indistinguishable from other media channels.”

Blog writing, by contrast, is a more niche activity. Just under 12% of the online population will update a blog at least monthly this year, eMarketer estimates. By 2014 that proportion will inch upward to 13.3%.

There are several factors driving the growth of blogging, including the ease of use of personal blogging platforms and the growing comfort level with blogs as a form of media. At the same time, social media like Twitter and Facebook are giving consumers an alternative, less-intensive way to communicate their thoughts to the world. Blogging is no longer a primary way for people to express themselves online.

Copyright ©2010 eMarketer Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007941

Mobile Content Soars Thanks to Device and Network Advances

A third screen that publishers and marketers cannot ignore

Mobile phones have become a staple of daily life, so much so that most consumers can hardly imagine going through the day without one by their side. The reliance on mobile devices for just about everything makes mobile a platform that content publishers and marketers cannot afford to ignore.

eMarketer predicts mobile content revenues will rise from less than $1.15 billion in 2009 to more than $3.53 billion in 2014, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 20% over the period.

“The continuing advance of smart devices—including tablet-style computers, led by Apple’s iPad—and the growing ubiquity of mobile broadband networks mean that consumers have to make fewer compromises when it comes to the consumption of games, music and video,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Mobile Content: Games, Music and Video Take to the Cloud.” “An improved user experience, and the ability to access an ever-expanding variety of content from the cloud, will attract many new mobile content consumers in the next five years.”

The fastest growth will come from mobile music, which starts from the smallest base and will move from a market focused on ringtones to one where mobile-broadband-enabled users pay to access full-length songs from the cloud.

Games are the most popular mobile activity in number of users, and there is a growing emphasis on monetizing such content through downloads and advertising, rather than shipping phones with games preinstalled.

The mobile video audience will increase threefold between 2009 and 2014, with the steady improvement of devices, the increase in mobile broadband availability and the emergence of viewing options outside the carrier networks. These factors will help boost revenue growth to a CAGR of more than 25% from 2009 to 2014.

“Platform integration is vital for the growth of mobile content,” said Elkin. “The decade ahead heralds a wholesale shift in the content consumption experience. Consumers will expect games, music and video to be available on demand or via subscription on TVs, mobile and PC. The content owners that will thrive in this digital ecosystem are the ones that understand the need to deliver seamlessly across every possible platform.”

Copyright ©2010 eMarketer Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007899