Travel Trends – Just The Facts, Examiner.com

Just the facts – A great post from our often quoted friends at the Center for Media Research, facts you can use during your reports, speeches and water-cooler arguments during 2010.  Ah, we love stats.

Mobile Phones

• U.S. mobile phone users 13+: 223M
• Number of mobile Web users: 60.7M (up 33% from 2008)
• Percentage of mobile devices that are smartphones: 18% (up from 13% in 2008)
• Percentage of mobile device owners that streamed audio: 8%
• Percentage of mobile device owners that viewed video via their mobile phone: 7%
• Percentage of mobile devices sold in Q3 2009 that were smartphones: 25% (estimated 40%-50 in 2010)

Source: The Nielsen Company, November 2009

Looking Ahead To Mid-2011

• Estimated smartphone user base: 150M
• Estimated mobile subscribers: 300M+
• Estimated users of mobile web: 120M
• Estimated users watching mobile video: 90M

Source: The Nielsen Company, November 2009

Growth of cellphone only homes in the U.S.

• 2009… 21%
• 2008… 18%
• 2007… 15%

Top 5 Smartphones (% Ownership)

• Blackberry 8300 Curve: 17%
• Apple iPhone 3G: 15%
• Apple iPhone 3G S: 12%
• Blackberry 9530 Storm: 6%
• Blackberry 8100 Pearl: 5%

Source: The Nielsen Company, November 2009

Top 5 Mobile Web Sites

• Google Search
• Yahoo! Mail
• Gmail
• Weather Channel
• Facebook

Top Social Networks on Mobile Phones

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter

Top 5 Mobile Video Channels

• YouTube
• Fox Interactive Media
• Weather Channel
• Comedy Central
• CBS

Internet

• 195M Active U.S. Internet users
• 160.3M People who accessed the Internet via a broadband connection: (93.3%… up 16% from 2008)
• 138.4M Unique viewers of video (up 11.4% from 2008)
• 11.2B Total online video streams viewed monthly (up 17% from 2008)
• 200.1 minutes Average time spent viewing online video per viewer monthly (up 12.5% from 2008)

Social Networking

• Facebook reaches 56% of the active U.S. Internet universe with an average usage of 6 hrs a month per user
• Facebook is the #3 site visited by users 65 and older
• Twitter grew 500% year-over-year
• Time spent on social networking sites in the U.S. increased 277%
• The average U.S. worker spends 5 hrs a month visiting social networks at the office
• 32% of all mobile web users visited a social network

http://www.mediapost.com/

Why Does Google Search Love Examiner.com? – While catching up on our holiday reading and writing, we came across an interesting post from Time.com on Examiner.com.  If you are not familiar with Examiner, the story does an adequate job of describing the quasi-organized blogger mash-up.  While the story about the Examiner is interesting enough, we wanted to highlight three points from the article.

1. Content is still King, at least to Google.  I cannot remember a more simplistic, yet true statement about how good SEO is focused around good…not original…content:

   “…by stocking the lake with so many fish every day, Examiner.com increases the chances that Google trawlers will haul one of theirs up.”

2. Pro-Am content is a good middle ground.  We have talked at length about the swing from professional content (Frommer’s) to amateur content (TripAdvisor)…is Examiner.com a look at the content future?  Too soon to tell, but we like this direction and not either extreme.
3. Don’t overlook the little guys.  If you have never heard of Examiner.com prior to this article, you might want to broaden your SEO strategy.  Sure, TripAdvisor is still the biggest fish in this sea of nameless reviews and links, but sites such as Examiner.com can offer an equally powerful SEO boost with a lot less editorial pitching.

http://www.time.com/

Travel Trends – Tweeting While Crashing, Web Video Use, Social Network Ads, A Mobile Future

Roger, Roger.

Tweeting While Crashing – Airline crashes are near the top of the ‘things we don’t really like to talk about in the travel industry’ list, luckily, in the case of the recent Continental accident at Denver International Airport, few passengers were seriously injured.  And out of those 100 or so passengers, at least one was a tweeter.

Boulder software engineer Mike Wilson…needing to share his experience, he began twittering under the name 2DrinksBehind, broadcasting more than 30 short text messages about the crash and its aftermath and gaining national attention.

Mike’s tweets give the public instant insight into an experience that few of us will ever encounter.  Not to mention provides a perfect example of how interactive and social tools such as Twitter are increasing the role of citizen journalism and allowing real-time updates on major news stories.  A scary accident, but a fascinating perspective.
http://www.denverpost.com/

Web Video Users Are Day Clickers – A small, but still relevant report on web video usage by daypart or time of day from Nielsen Online.  While online video use is continuing to grow rapidly, the lack of saturated broadband internet access at home is creating different viewing patterns for consumers.

During the traditional nine-to-five work week, 65 percent of online video viewers streamed at least one piece of content in October.
http://www.mediaweek.com/

Social Networks: Millions of Users, Not So Many Marketers – Oy, another post about the difficulty of cracking the mythical social networking site advertising code.  How do we get these xx million people to pay attention to our ad on social networking site blank?

Anyone still questioning the efficacy of social network marketing needs to look only as far as the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama rode a wave of social media support to the White House—using both established social networks and homegrown networking site My.BarackObama.com to build a database of millions of supporters.

But despite these and other success stories, the social network ad market is suffering. In fact, eMarketer significantly lowered its forecast for US social network ad spending.

How did Obama do it? Okay, I am going to give away the Barack Obama social media marketing secret…

People actually cared for and were passionate about his campaign!

There you go, that is it.  With that little bit of passion from the consumer, the Obama campaign could leverage any social network with their message.  Now, does the same formula apply to your brand or product?  Probably not.  Unless your organization has brand fans that are actively collecting everything with your logo on it…Coca Cola, Harley-Davidson or Apple…your social media marketing campaign on Facebook or MySpace is not going to be as easy as the Obama campaign made it look.
http://www.emarketer.com/

The Future of Mobile – Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast from Elon University/Pew Internet Project is a great look into the future of technology from some of the best and brightest minds in the world.  You could spend a lot of your pre- and post-Christmas ‘work’ day on this site…at least you can say you did some work this week.  For this post, just a couple of highlights from the question about the future of mobile:

The mobile phone is just beginning to touch our digital lives. As these relatively inexpensive devices continue to improve in performance and connectivity, they will serve more as a “remote control” to many of our electronic touch points, such as: purchasing retail items through scanning, serving as an electronic passport, turning on our cars/GPS systems, translating text to talk, and video conferencing with our friends through our online accounts. As we improve visual projection and “plugging-in” to larger display systems- mobile phones can serve as the old laptop we once new and lugged.
–Drew Diskin, director of e-strategy, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Mobile phones also replace our wallets, doubling as identification devices, credit cards, and car keys using RFID tags or a similar technology.
–DJ Strouse, international relations and computer science student, University of Southern California

Mobile phones are affordable, portable, and a virtual appendage for several generations. It is only logical that it will become the primary Internet connection.
–Hinda Feige Greenberg, Ph.D., director of the information center for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, dedicated to improving healthcare for Americans

By 2020 the phone will be melting away into the environment, its functions provided by distributed, intelligent components. People will talk to—and through—their cars, desks, etc.
–Greg Laudeman, utilization catalyst and facilitator, community technology specialist, Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute

As screens get bigger everyone will use a mobile device to access the Internet. Everyone!
–Dan Lynch, founder of CyberCash Inc. and Interop Company and an Internet pioneer; board member of Santa Fe Institute; director of computing for SRI International in the late 1970s

Fantastic stuff…and that was only a fraction of the responses.  Happy reading over the next few days.
http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/

Travel Trends – Statistics Overload! Email Open Rate, Young People, MySpace v. Facebook, Punk Kids!

Consumers Opening Fewer E-Mails – Fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing e-mails, according to a November 2008 study by MailerMailer.

The company found that the average marketing e-mail open rate fell to 13.20% in the first half of 2008, compared with 16.11% in the first half of 2007. Click rates also fell, from 3.18% in the first half of 2007 to 2.73% in the first half of this year.

http://www.emarketer.com/

Are Young Adults Really Brand-Resistant? – The 18-to-24-year-old set is famously media-drenched, with high Internet and mobile phone usage. However, these young adults are not solidly opposed to brands themselves, and are willing to spread the word about the ones they like. That is one of the findings Synovate made in June and July of 2008 in its “Young Adults Revealed” study, released this month.

When asked about their online brand engagement in the past month, 28% of respondents had talked about a brand on a discussion forum, 23% had put brand-related content on their instant messaging (IM) profile, and 19% had added branded content to their homepage or social networking site.

Nearly one-half said they had clicked on online ads, and 18% had accessed brand and product information through a portal. Nearly one-quarter had uploaded ads to social networks and online video sites in the past month.

“They are more than just ‘comfortable’ with brands,” said Julian Rolfe, global manager at Synovate, in a statement. “They want to associate themselves with brands they see as ‘cool’ and this is why we see them uploading clips to their social networking sites and IM services.”

http://www.emarketer.com/

Behind the Numbers: MySpace and Facebook – Many of the ad formats that social media sites are experimenting with are too new to be tracked via existing measurement techniques.

Take display ad views. Facebook’s share of display ad views was 1.1% in June 2008, compared with 15.9% for Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, according to comScore Media Metrix.

http://www.emarketer.com/

College Student and Teen Web Tastes – Teens and college students seem to have remarkably similar tastes in Websites, based on a first glance at a September 2008 Youth Trends study.

Facebook, Google and Yahoo! rated highly among teen and college student males and females. YouTube was also generally among the top five listed, except among females in college.

http://www.emarketer.com/

Travel Trends – TripIt and LinkedIn ‘Connect’, Racy Sites, NASCAR Blindness, Gen X

TripIt and LinkedIn launch new social travel service – Travel planning service TripIt, reviewed on the Travel 2.0 blog about a year ago, has announced a partnership (along with several other companies) with LinkedIn, the business connection social network.  For those of you who missed the original post, TripIt allows you to email confirmation plans to the site and then will build a custom planning page / guide for you.  A great idea.  Now, with the LinkedIn partnership, you can add a TripIt widget or app to your LinkedIn profile and keep track of your upcoming travel plans.  Better yet, because the app is ‘talking’ with LinkedIn, it can find out which of your connections (assuming they also are using TripIt) are traveling…and, if they are close or in the same airport, let you know so you can connect in real life!  Ah, one giant circle, go online to find connections offline.

This is a logical step for both companies and a great example of future collaboration between ‘web 2.0’ sites that will not only present these sites in a relevant way (finally answering the question of ‘why?’), but also begin to highlight the value of each offering.

For additional reading on the trends in business travel social networking space, including the site TripLife which follows a similar idea (use social to connect with business travelers on the road), check out our post Business Traveler Advice From Strangers.
http://blog.tripit.com/whatsnew/

Ads for Respected Brands Hit Racy Sites – Good article from Mediaweek on how some brands are advertising on ‘racy’ sites.  We have covered this subject in the past, when buying spots on a network, news site or blog, there is a chance that your ad will show up next to or be associated with less than desirable content.  For the most part, I would say media buyers and organizations know what they are buying at this point and the surprise factor has been reduced.  However, this article is making the argument that some brands are willing and are advertising on sites that ‘know how to border the gray area and not turn into full-fledged porn sites.‘  If the audience is there, advertisers will follow.
http://www.mediaweek.com/

The Pitfalls of Nascar Blindness – Another good article today, this one on NASCAR blindness.  The idea that if no one else in your group, division, organization is using, belongs to or blogs about ‘X,’ than no one else, especially your demo, does.  Or:

This reaction is a common symptom of something that greatly afflicts people in the advertising community: Nascar blindness. This disease is the strongly held belief that if no one in your little bubble of upscale, artsy Bobo friends is into something, then clearly no one else is, either.

Why ‘NASCAR Blindness’?

It’s what led advertisers to completely ignore Nascar for so many years, dismissing it as some bizarre redneck affectation akin to eating squirrel meat, thereby missing the opportunity to bond with the millions of middle-class fans who enjoy auto racing.

I would argue that NASCAR Blindness was cured a few years ago, but for some sponsors and members of the ad world, they still don’t understand why people would watch cars drive in a circle.

But, let’s take that idea and apply it to the interactive world:

We can find Nascar blindness in our own industry in the complete dismissal of MySpace as yesterday’s news. Which is yet more blindness to the actual size and passion of the audience that uses the social-networking Web site. Listen to digital (and other) agency types, and you’d think that the only reason people are still on MySpace is that they’ve just been too busy to migrate over to Facebook.

But as cultural anthropologist Danah Boyd has pointed out, the split between MySpace and Facebook is often a class-based one, and those on the lower end of the class divide tend to favor MySpace. Which doesn’t make it worthless or on its way out. It just makes it different. And those MySpace users (whose numbers still far outweigh those of Facebook users) are every bit as passionate about MySpace as Nascar fans are about Nascar. Caveat emptor.

We touched upon this exact idea a couple of weeks ago with our post ‘Travel Trends – Bloggers, Moms.’  Don’t simply dismiss or minimize a group, site or opportunity due to a lack of understanding and knowledge on your part.
http://www.adweek.com/

Where Is Generation X? – Finally, from eMarkerter, where is Gen X online?

http://www.emarketer.com/

Travel Trends – Social Networking

Kevin Bacon was in Footloose with...

Social Networking – Two articles on the power and (still) lack of knowledge about social networking.  First, TechCrunch discusses a new study from European Mobile carrier O2, that the old six degrees of separation thought has been reduced to three thanks to the social networking capabilities of the internet.  Only 3, finally I can win that damn 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon game!  Anyway, the article says:

According to the study, the average person is now connected by just three degrees within a shared “interest” or social group instead of six. In fact, it found that people are usually a part of three main networks: family, friendship, and work.

It should be noted that the research is not the epitome of a real scientific study—O2 paid for it, after all. And anyone who has a LinkedIn account knows that it is still easy to find plenty of people who are more than three degrees away from you. But the study does underscore something we all know:more so than ever before, everyone is connected (even if it is only tangentially).
http://www.techcrunch.com/

On the other hand, another study from Synovate via eMarketer (as you are reading these, I am sure you know that most of these studies are produced to highlight the research company, right?  Okay, good.) claims that only 42% of consumers know what social networking is.

That stat will bring you back down to earth.  The next time you are in a meeting and someone says ‘everyone is on MySpace’…ah, not so fast my friend…check the chart.

Plus, it appears that some people just don’t like you or your friends:

Synovate also asked adult consumers if they were losing interest in online social networking. Overall, 36% of social network users said yes, led by those in Japan (55%), Slovakia (48%), Canada (47%), Poland and the US (45% each). Social networkers in Indonesia and France were the least likely to be losing interest, at only 18% and 21%, respectively.

And you thought you had social networking all figured out.
http://www.emarketer.com/