Tips for Interviewing

I just created a five minute video and posted it on my YouTube channel on how to impress a potential employer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfBp80UU2KA&context=C3804694ADOEgsToPDskL5Hlz4LUwX_VRd1WcLFEWj

In this live video I stress eight things to investigate prior your interview:

1. Where do they rank organically for keywords versus the competition? (Google it)
2. Are they involved in paid search and what about their competitors? (use spyfu.com)
3. Do they have more engagement and reach versus their competitor? (use Alexa.com)
4. What are they using to track visitors and what is their competitor using? Are they using Google Analytics, Omniture, Coremetrics? (consider the Vendor Discovery Tool: http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/vendor_discovery_tool.asp )
5. If they are tracking visitors, ask how they create their dashboards or flash reports and how often they update them. Ask if they bring social metrics and other campaign data (like email campaigns) into the reports. Probe on their KPI’s.
6. If they are an e-commerce site and you abandon the shopping cart, do they reach back with an email communication and if so what is the timing and is it optimal. Consider the following study we examined in my web analytics class (http://www.listrak.com/News/slow-cart-remarketing-adoption/)
7. Check out their social presence on Facebook and their Facebook fan base. What about Twitter and their followers. Then assess their competitors. Are there opportunities?
8. If they are involved in social media, ask if they are using a social monitoring tool like Radian6 or Lithium.

For this and other videos on other topics check out my YouTube channel at: www.YouTube.com/user/profpddrake

Good luck on that interview and let me know how you did.

Perry

How Did 2009 Fair Regarding Ad Spend?

Sorry it took so long but not all the ad budget numbers for 2009 were out or easily within reach. But none the less, I have finally pieced the "ad spend" puzzle together with the use of a little math and multiple sources including Nielsen, Forrester and the IAB.

So how did 2009 fair regarding ad spend and which channels were hit the most you ask? Well let's take a look. Below are charts showing ad spend for TV, Digital and Other Traditional for 2008 vs 2009.



In summary we notice that in 2009 TV advertising fell 6%, other traditional advertising dropped 16% (which includes magazines and publications), and digital advertising dipped just 3% as shown more clearly below.



Examining just the digital ad budgets more closely we see that search is the fair share of spend and growing.




In particular we see that search, banner and video ad spend are all up 2008 vs 2009 while email, classifieds, affiliates and lead gen are down.




So what is the forecast for 2011?

According to ZenithOptimedia, overall US ad spend will grow 2.2% in 2010 and 2.4% on 2011. Keep an eye out as they are continually upping their estimates. A good sign.

http://www.dmnews.com/zenithoptimedia-ups-global-ad-spending-forecast/article/181197/

According to Forrester, TV ad spend in particular will be up 1% in 2010 to a level of $69.5 billion.

http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/us_tv_ad_spending_forecast,_2009_to/q/id/54092/t/2


And, digital ad spend in particular is forecast to hit $25.1 billion in 2010. An increase over 2009 of 11%

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=128759

Be careful when looking at those numbers from ComScore, Nielsen and others.

Last semester I began having my students at NYU do month to month comparisons in search share for the big three (Google, Yahoo and Bing). I was particularly interested in doing this when I began noticing that some sources were stating Google as losing share to Bing while others were not.

I thought how can this be? Each of the major players in this online audience measurement space (ComScore, Nielsen and Experian) all have gigantic panels. So I decided to dig a bit further.

Until I began having my students conduct this exercise I did not even realize how far off Experian was versus the others. I thought, once again, how can this be?

Take a look at the below charts one of my students created for my summer Web Analytics class.

Upon examination of these charts we note two things.

First, we note that one of the three sources (Experian) is far off from the others in terms of Google share of search by almost 7 percentage points. Wow! That is definitely a significant difference even with panels in the millions. I wonder who is right.

Secondly, we note that two of the sources (Nielsen and Experian) each states Google search share being down June vs. May while the other source (ComScore) states Google search share is up. Again, I wonder who is right.

Thinking about this more and contemplating writing a blog entry on this topic, one of my summer students flipped me an article dealing with this exact issue. It was a story she had just read in the Los Angeles Times titled:

Hulu's sharp decline in viewership underscores inconsistency in measuring size of online audiences.

In this article it is revealed that when ComScore changed its measurement methodology Hulu's viewership numbers plunged from 43.5 million in May to 24 million in June. The article goes on to talk about these wildly divergent audience numbers and how all the players have been working hard to make improvements in their methodology.

Let me ask you a question.

Do you think it might be a bit harder to create a representative panel to measure what content we are consuming on the web versus doing the same to measure the content consumed on cable or in print?

Probably.

I have always told my students that the variation in measurements on the web is most likely subject to other errors not typical seen in more stable “environments.” After all, there are very long and dark tails on the web that we might or might not trail off to on any given day given what comes up in search or paid search or where the links our friends tell us to visit via a facebook post. It is pretty vast and dynamic out there on the Internet. So, in a way we should not be surprised to see this variation.

So until such a time comes that measurement is more stable and we can account for this hard to quantify variation, what can you do?

Plan accordingly and use results from various sources and not just one source.

Additionally, remember these variations will in all likelihood be even more severe for those smaller and free web traffic tools offered by Compete, Quantcast, and Alexa. They are all great and I use them regularly for research but definitely with caution.

Never jump to conclusions based on research data from one source alone.

Perry

An AOL Update

Did you notice that AOL has been in the news again lately? It appears they are gearing up to forcefully push forward with their new agenda of original content sites and a performance based advertising model as discussed in my prior blog entry on April 5, 2009 titled "I was thinking about AOL the other day."

In that blog entry, AOL was just beginning to lay the foundation for this new strategy. Well, it appears they are now moving forward and quite aggressively. What were they waiting for? Were they waiting for the advertising business to come back a bit from the recession of last summer and fall?

Let's take a look at some of the new moves made by AOL and Tim Armstrong.

• Armstrong has hired a few more Google executives including David Eun who served as the vice president of strategic partnerships at Google. David will be responsible for AOL's 80+ content sites.
  
  
• Armstrong also hired Sashi Seth who was in charge of the monetization of YouTube while at Google. At AOL he will be the SVP of global advertising products -- their new performance based advertising model I assume.
  
  
• They are pushing hard for original rather than repurposed content on their various sites within the MediaGlow network. Currently 80% of content on their various sites is new and unique -- I would say they are succeeding.
  
  
• Armstrong recently launched Seed.com, a new venture that aims to make it easy and cheap for freelancers to create and publish stories and articles -- what a great way to support their goal of obtaining original content right?
  
  
• AOL also bought StudioNow, a platform for creating and distributing online video -- again making it easier for others to create that original content they so desire.
  

A lot happening at AOL. I cannot wait to see how it all plays out. Being one that grew up with AOL, I wish them luck.

Perry

Sources:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121917

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/aol_dials_up_results_mrGEcJ4zxcO6khtGXKbWgM

Facebook Nearing the Finish Line

The October Compete.com and unemployment data are now in and guess what? Many of the findings in our previous blog entries regarding Facebook trends have been solidified even further.

The relationship previously identified between Facebook traffic and the unemployment rate has been only strengthened with the inclusion of the October data. As Figure 1 below shows, this month’s increase in the unemployment rate to 10.2% coincides with a similar increase in Facebook unique visitor counts. In fact, the correlation between these two metrics now stands at a whopping 98.2%. The relationship simply cannot be denied during this time. It is quite amazing.

Figure 1

By viewing Figure 2 below we can easily see that with the incorporation of the new October data, Facebook will, without question, actually surpass Google in term of visits by the end of the year (as predicted in our previous blog entry). And, shockingly they may even surpass Google regarding unique visitors even sooner than we could imagine (see Figure 3).

Figure 2

Figure 3

However, one may ask did this major increase in Facebook traffic for the month of October negatively impact some of the other engagement metrics like pages viewed and time spent on site? The answer is an astounding NO. See Figures 4 & 5 below. In fact, October represents some of the most significant jumps in these engagement metrics seen in some time.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Versus YouTube, we see Facebook pulling away at an even more dramatic rate in terms of engagement (Figure 6). They appear to be leaving YouTube in the dust.

Figure 6

There is no question that Facebook is on a roll. Please look for our next blog entry titled “And the Winner is…Facebook.”

Perry & Rhonda

First Google, Now YouTube

In case you did not read all of my last blog entry titled "Has Facebook Been Lucky" you probably missed the fact that Facebook has now overtaken YouTube on a key engagement metric -- average time spent per visit.

I realize both sites are different in terms of content and purpose but it is still an important event -- showing us that that Facebook has the ability to draw us into its grip for longer and longer periods of time per visit. YouTube, on the other hand, has been actually slipping regarding this metric over the past 12 months (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 - Average Stay per Visit, Facebook (blue) vs YouTube (green)

In addition, YouTube has also been losing the battle to Facebook in terms of attracting / growing its customer base. Note the unique visitor trend shown below in Figure 2. Facebook has surpassed YouTube as of February of this year.

Figure 2 - Unique Visitor Counts, Facebook (blue) vs YouTube (green)

And, in terms of raw number of visits by month, forget it. Facebook is leaving YouTube in its dust as we can clearly see in Figure 3.

Figure 3 - Visit Counts, Facebook (blue) vs YouTube (green)

Could it be that Facebook is rendering YouTube to be less valuable than it once was? After all, not only can we post our own videos and share with others on Facebook, we can do so much more!

Perry

Has Facebook Been Lucky?

After having written my latest blog entry on Google versus Facebook and my appearance on the CNBC show Street Signs I got to thinking. The question posed by observers at this stage should not be so much is Facebook doing all that they can to capitalize on the significant increase in traffic and engagement but rather why is it happening and, if more can be done to increase the traffic further or,…could the party all end tomorrow?

We all have to admit the trends I revealed in my previous blog (see Figures 1 & 2 below) are quite amazing showing that Facebook has already surpassed Google in terms of page views and is fast approaching Google in terms of unique visitors. But it begs the question why.

Figure 1

Figure 2

After careful investigation, Rhonda Drake, my business partner and wife, kept staring at the latter curve and thinking it looked familiar. A light bulb went off and she realized it looked the same as the unemployment curve. Upon further examination we determined that the correlation of Facebook unique visitors and the unemployment rate is close to 98%. You can’t get much higher than that. Take a look at the graph below (Figure 3).

Figure 3

You will also notice on Figure 3 that the steep increase in engagement begins to take place last year at the same time the bottom fell out of the mortgage lending industry in August and September of 2008.

So now the question is, does this make sense?

Remember, we must be careful at jumping to conclusions of cause and effect. As a reminder, see my previous blog entry title How is this Economy Impacting us Emotionally which was posted on March 11, 2009.

But in this case I think the connection makes perfect sense. As more and more people were being laid off last year and this year, they began to flock to social media sites, connecting with others and discussing issues and concerns.

What is also interesting regarding the Figure 3 data, is that as the unemployment rate has begun to flatten over the past few months (July – September 2009) so has Facebook’s unique visitor count. Coincidence? I am not sure.

When trying to assess Facebook’s engagement metrics such as page views per visit (or unique visitor) and average time on site per visit we notice a couple of things. First, the number of pages viewed per visit is going down. This alone might indicate to some that the engagement of those visitors is waning. However, when we go a bit deeper in our analysis and examine the average time spent on site per visit we notice a slight upward trend. So what does this mean? It means more time is being spent on fewer pages being viewed. One explanation might be the various games and other engagement tools that Facebook has been promoting. These games might be increasing our time at the detriment of going deeper on the site per visit. Is this a good thing? I am not sure. Does this yield opportunities with sponsors? That is for Facebook to decide. See figures 4 and 5 below for these data.

Figure 4

Figure 5

To help better understand our increasing engagement findings, I decided to make a comparison to YouTube. And, the results are astounding. Facebook has actually overtaken YouTube as of June of 2009 in terms of time spent per visit. Facebook is now more engaging than YouTube. Wow! This is a major accomplishment. See the graph below (Figure 6). This makes sense is light of the fact that Facebook is designed to allow you to share content (including video) easily with your circle. No need to leave Facebook.

Figure 6

So will Facebook soon overtake Google in terms of unique visitors as the graph in Figure 2 might suggest? Or will it still be some time coming?

Based on our analysis it is not possible at this time to predict when, if at all, Facebook will overpower Google in terms of unique visitors. The relatively recent past is revealing a completely different pattern than the more distant past. As such it is hard to forecast the future. Is the economy behind this pattern as previously suggested? Very soon we will know the answer to this question. Hang on.

However, we do feel confident that we can predict Facebook will overtake Google in the number of visits by the end of 2009. See Figure 7 below.

Figure 7

Of course this assumes no major or unforeseen changes in our economic climate. :-)

Perry & Rhonda

Please note that all traffic data for this analysis was sourced using compete.com