The Internet is hogging more of our time than ever, but advertisers aren't spending an equally proportional amount of their budgets on the web, notes JP Morgan's Imran Khan in a report he put out this week.

As you can see, adults are spending 29% of their time on the web, but advertisers are only putting 8% of their ad spend on the web. Meanwhile, newspapers only get 8% of our attention but 20% of the ad dollars.

These numbers are from 2008, so the ad spend on newspapers is lower today. However, it's not low enough, considering how little time we spend with them.

As advertisers wise up to where the eyeballs are, this will change. Writes Khan, "the rectification of this will help drive internet ad spend in 2010."



[chartoftheday]

Carvertising has been around for years—both the kind focused on rental cars, which we've covered several times, and the kind that lets sellsumers earn a little extra cash wrapping their own cars in ads. Setting its sights on the latter, cashURwheels is an Australian firm that serves as an online marketplace connecting drivers directly with companies interested in vehicle-based ads.

Whereas carvertising agencies ask drivers to register their vehicles in the hopes of eventually being one of the few selected to be part of a large campaign, cashURwheels connects drivers directly with potential advertisers. Drivers begin by creating an online account and then browsing the available opportunities. They can create a profile including photos along with information about their driving habits and commute patterns, and then bid on ad campaigns or request contact with advertisers directly. Auctions for advertisers include a deadline, the number of vehicles required, and a reserve price, if any. Upon winning a bid, drivers and advertisers communicate to work out the details. Ad campaigns are conducted via car wraps—large vinyl ads applied to cars on a temporary basis, similar in many ways to the sticky car art we've covered before—that transform them, temporarily, into four-wheeled promotions. Currently, participation for both drivers and advertisers on cashURwheels is free.

Now serving Australia, cashURwheels aims to expand globally soon. One to emulate or partner with regionally? And since the system will likely appeal to small and medium businesses with small and medium advertising budgets, it can't hurt to throw some crowd-sourced graphic design into the mix ;-)

[springwise]

The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption 

A study announced today by GroupM Search, comScore and M80, exploring the interplay of search marketing and social media, reveals the dramatic correlation influenced discovery of brands through social media has with search behavior, including more lower-funnel searches and increased paid search click-through-rates (CTR).

The study,“The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption,” explored the correlation between social media exposure and search behavior across different verticals, including automotive, consumer packaged goods and telecommunications.






Key findings include:

- Consumers exposed to a brand’s influenced social media and paid search are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand’s products

- There was a 50% CTR increase in paid search when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search

- There was a 42-point lift in searcher penetration around brand product terms when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search compared to paid alone

What the study tells us is bigger than correlation, making the topic at large, Discovery. We’ve learned how internet users discover and engage with brands in social media and how that discovery influences search behavior. The findings help us to better understand how the intent expressed by consumers via search is established through social media exposure and the interplay between the two channels.

Of note, it further validates our view that generating upper-funnel awareness and influencing consideration through influenced social media (social media leveraged by a brand advertiser) can produce better down-the-funnel performance with paid media, such as paid search. In our white paper, we expand on the findings and address the value of the synergy between paid, owned and earned media. Additionally, we address the state of media today, challenges advertisers face, and introduce the discussion of Media Delivery and Media Discovery and the new thinking we must consider in making maximizing engagement that drives lower-funnel activity.

Download PDF Report : http://www.scribd.com/doc/20703026/The-Influenced-Social-Media-Search-and-the-Interplay-of-Consideration-and-Consumption?autodown=pdf

[searchfuel]

Online ad spending has been fortunate in the economic downturn—recession-resistant due to its high level of accountability, Internet ad revenue growth has remained positive as spending in all other media dropped.

In the UK, the effect has been so dramatic that online took the biggest slice of advertising revenues in the first half of 2009. Research from the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB UK), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) put online revenues at 23.5% of the total from January to June, 1.6 percentage points ahead of TV.

This makes the UK the first major economy to see online spending overtake television.

“Internet advertising has beaten all expectations to achieve growth in the most challenging market conditions,” said Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB UK, in a statement. “Online display has performed notably well against its peers in TV, print and radio despite more than £1.5 billion being wiped off the advertising industry.”

Paid search led online growth, while spending on display ads and classifieds fell.

Interestingly, the UK TV lobby is fighting back. Lindsey Clay, marketing director of industry body Thinkbox, told The Guardian that it is “meaningless to sweep all the money spent on every aspect of online marketing into one big figure and celebrate it. Online marketing spend is made up of many things, including e-mail, classified ads, display ads (including online TV advertising) and, overwhelmingly, search marketing. They should be judged individually."

“Of course online encompasses a wide range of formats and approaches,” commented Karin von Abrams, eMarketer senior analyst. “And the UK is a unique market, where—thanks to the BBC—a large portion of TV broadcasting is not ad-supported.

“But few interactive marketers will want to forgo the celebrations,” Ms. von Abrams continued. “The UK has been especially hard-hit by the global recession, and the pace of recovery is still uncertain. Online advertising is rightly credited with saving the UK ad industry from meltdown in this difficult period. These Internet spending figures will also give advertisers renewed confidence, and encourage further investment in online strategies.”


[emarketer]