The Amazon of the Web

Women have always been known to be mysterious and complex. "What women want" has been the topic of endless talk shows, relationship books and politics since the dawn of time. It's no different in the marketing world. According to a new interactive Ad Age article, women ruled over 50% of online users in 2007. What were the highest traffic spots? No surprise, they were women's communities (35% unique visits increase) and political categories. Not to mention, there's a larger pool of women bloggers and readers out there in the social web space.

YouTube women visitors comprised of more than 43% last year. The research shows that women are most drawn to news, music and movie clips.

Don't forget shopping! An interesting statistic shows that 68% of women from household incomes of $100,000 or more purchased online versus 49% of those from $35,000 or less household incomes. That's not a tremendous difference.

Another fact that might surprise some is that the casual gaming audience is equally split between men and women. In fact, women are more likely to pay for their casual games.

Healthcare is always a significant source of search and women come out on top as the primary investigators. 90% of women ages between 25 and 34 comprise of the 84% who sought healthcare information via the web. Interestingly, 75% of women ages 65 and up use the internet for their healtcare source as well.

The last two subjects make up "the birds and the bees" factor. Romance and parenthood finish up the online activity of women according to the article. As long as there's these type of informational sources around, women will always be actively looking for subjects on love and family.

Upcoming Ad Fads

A new eMarketer article was published today focusing on the 3 hidden media advertising trends in 2008. In fact, CEO and co-founder Geoff Ramsey quoted eMarketer's prediction of U.S's total online spending share to be 9.3% for 2008 compared to last year's 7.4%.



So what does 9.3% translate into? How about $27.5 billion just for internet advertising. Most of the spend will be contributed to social network and online video advertising which are projected to be in the double-digit rates this year. Thanks to eMarketer, they've demonstrated this in easy-to-see charts.





Even though these two arenas are hot spots right now, they will probably only generate about 10% of total online advertising spend ($2.9 billion).

Geoff Ramsey thinks the three main trends for this year will relate to media fragmentation, the continual growth of the internet's reach and the emphasis on the consumer's content.

Media Fragmentation: On our way to closing the gap
Ad networks such as Google and Yahoo are still growing strong and becoming more mature and sophisticated in their ability to target specific consumer groups. We've been learning how to harness media fragmentation to cater to the needs of advertisers and consumers. In this way, advertisers have a bigger reach to audiences who share similar interests across endless, different websites.

Continual Growth of the Internet's Reach: Web is King
According to the article, "the Internet is becoming the central hub of most media and marketing campaigns-and for good reason. Not only is the Internet now used extensively by every major demographic group, and for a variety of purposes including information, communication and entertainment, but it also allows for a two-way interaction between consumers and marketers that is not found in any other medium". Along with the evolution comes various tools and measurement metrics that will help marketers optimize and support their media strategies.

Emphasis on the Consumer's Content: The Consumer is in Control
Media power is shifting from the interruption-disruption model towards the trend where consumers are more in control of their media content and ad intake. The internet audience is creating content on their own in the form of blogs, on social networks, wikis and other digital-communication platforms. Advertisers will have to follow suit in these formats if they want to keep up with the Joneses. The most successful and top-performing ad campaigns integrate entertainment, relevance and enough wow-factor that they will cause a buzz among consumers who will seek it out and share it. Create it and they will come.

The Eyes Have It

One interesting element to keep in mind this year for all digital marketers is making eye contact with your consumer. With the growth of visual marketing stimuli at every turn, it is getting harder to catch the general audience's attention with online and print campaigns.
Researchers have been reporting the science of tracking eye movements for years now and this little nugget is not a new discovery to the marketer's strategies in ad placements and targeting. However, with the technological winds of change comes the evolution of how people view and take in this material. Understanding the data from eye tracking trends is a valuable tool to customer behavior insight and measuring your marketing effectiveness.
Here is an exerpt from a report from Corbis on Eye Tracking Trends in Media Advertising:

“For many years the most consistent way users viewed pages, according to eye tracking tests, was in an “F” pattern (also known as the “golden triangle”). This means that viewers first looked at the upper left corner, then scanned down and over in a consistent pattern. But there’s evidence that this model is changing as more advertising is shifted online.
Gord Hotchkiss, president of Enquiro and a columnist for MediaPost.com’s Search Insider*, conducted some research recently on eye tracking and made some interesting and unexpected discoveries that run counter to the classic “F” conclusion. Hotchkiss’ research revealed that more people are viewing online content in an “E” pattern. They start by looking at graphics in the middle of the page first and then follow the copy up and down from there. And though bigger images were better at grabbing attention, this rule was still true even when small thumbprint images were used”.

So how can a marketer apply this knowledge? Here a few tips released from the Corbis corporation:

Headline or images? Yes! There is conflicting data on whether viewers spot headlines or graphics first, so best to hedge your bets and integrate the two smoothly by merging the headline and image. And keep in mind the “E” pattern when doing so.

Keep it simple. Online images that are too conceptual or vague are often passed over because they’re confusing. Make sure the image is directly relevant to the copy, especially in the headline, as noted above.

Keep it real. Viewers are instinctively drawn to human faces in ads and there’s growing evidence that “real people” rather than professional models are more likely to keep their attention.

More is not necessarily better. Though people gravitate towards imagery, too many pictures in one ad can confuse and clutter the message.

Don’t get too colorful. Eye tracking research has shown that black, white, red, yellow, blue and green are the most likely to get noticed online. This doesn’t mean you should ignore the rest of the rainbow, but it’s best to highlight your key message with one of these six shades.

Ad Growth Goes to TV & Web in 2008

2008 is certainly a happy new year for advertising and marketing agencies.
U.S. media advertising spending is estimated to go up 4% (about $479 billion) in '08 compared with 2007's 3%. Spending worldwide is expected to be 7%.












According to the report and GroupM's Futures Director Adam Smith, the global ad growth will primarily go to televison (50%) and internet (30%) marketing. Smith says spending on sponsorships and public relations is growing faster than for traditional advertising. He also predicts that "5% of global ad investment will shift from developed to emerging economies in 2008, the largest such shift ever recorded". China will lead with 21% of all new money and the U.S. next in line with 20%. What is bringing this shift? The forecasted spendings are influenced by the 2008 Olympics being held in China and the U.S. presidential election.

Some other highlights to look forward to in the new year:

~ Internet ad spending is expected to exceed 10% of global ad investment in 2008 for the first time ever
~Search will comprise 65-70% of measured online advertising in 2008, up from 50% in 2005
~Online advertising is expected to be the largest single medium for Sweden for the first time ever
~Advertising spending in newspapers and classified advertising in traditional sources is expected to continue to suffer