Google sites are visited by more Australians than any other online brand including Facebook, with an average of 12.7 million unique users visiting its sites each month.

The report found that an average of 11.4 million unique online users visited Microsoft-owned sites, making it the second most visited online brand, according to a third-quarter Nielsen report.

In descending order, the top ten parent companies were Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Telstra, Yahoo!, News Corp Online, eBay, Australian Federal Government, Wikimedia Foundation and Fairfax Digital Australia and New Zealand.

In comparison to the second quarter of 2010, the biggest movement comes from Yahoo!, which moved ahead of eBay and News Corp Online to become the fifth most visited online parent company.

The top ten individual online brands were Google, NineMSN/MSN, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!7, YouTube, News Digital Media, Wikipedia, Fairfax Digital Media Network and Apple.

Apple was a new entrant to the top ten brands, moving up from twelfth position in the second quarter to the number ten spot. The report measured Australia’s top ten online parent companies and web brands for the third quarter of 2010.

Source – AdNews

Australia can lay claim to the third highest per capita Twitter useage in the world, according to co-creator of the micro-blogging service Dom Sagolla.

Sagolla was speaking at today’s Australia Radio Conference in Melbourne, where he revealed that Australian’s generate 1.8 tweets per month. New Zealand is ranked fourth, with 1.7 tweets per month on the same like-for-like measure.

“This region of the world has seen massive growth,” Sagolla said. “People here are big adapters and adopters.” Sagolla

The highest generator of tweets per capita is Singapore, with 4.5 tweets per month, followed by the Netherlands, with 2.1 tweets per months.

Daily usage of Twitter in Australia has grown by 341% between 2009 and 2010, according to Sagolla. He cited a average day in May of this year in terms of news events when Australians created 1,286,871 tweets. On the same day in May of 2009, Australians tweeted 377,808 times.

Sagolla rejected the idea that Twitter has harmed traditional media by reducing the amount of time consumers spend watching television and taking in other mediums and said the service complimented more established platforms. “Social networks and traditional media can live together,” he said.

Source – AdNews

Social media still dominates headlines as the new direction for business marketing, but it seems many businesses are resisting the call. A recent survey by Optus found that only 28% of small businesses used social media to promote their business, while 56% had no near-term plans to start.

It’s an understandable response. Just as they begin to understand the concepts of social media marketing, something new comes along and changes everything. Businesses that have barely come to grips with blogging and Facebook must also now contend with Twitter, Foursquare and a host of other new technologies and services.

According to Optus’ marketing director for small and medium business, Phil Offer, the main reason small business owners gave for not getting into social media was that it was a fad. Second was that it would somehow negatively hurt their brand by giving a voice to detractors, while the third reason was that they were simply too busy.

“The business case is probably still developing, so there isn’t the same compelling reason, as if everyone was doing it and making money out of it,” Offer says.

“It is a digital Wild West, and you have to find your own path to success.”

Fortunately, we are here to help you get ahead of the pack. Here are 10 of the latest trends to hit the social media landscape.

Read More – Smart Company

Australian year-on-year ad spend rose 8% in the second quarter of this year giving rise to growing confidence that the worst of the advertising downturn is over, according to the Nielsen Global AdView Pulse report.

The increase is a measurement of ad spend across the main media channels measured in the report; television, radio, newspapers and magazines. In New Zealand, second quarter year-on-year ad spend was boosted 9%.

Nilesen said Australian ad spend increased 11% during the first half of this year if all 10 media channels are factored in.

On a global basis, year-on-year ad spend was up 12.8% in the first six months of 2010, with double digit increases in the automotive, financial services, durables and telecommunications sectors.

The Indian ad economy put in an exceptional performance, with second quarter year-on-year ad spend up 32%, driven by the durables and FMCG sector. Other strong performers on the same measure included Hong Kong which was up 23% and Indonesia and Malaysia, up 22%.

In terms of mediums, television accounted for a 62% share of total global ad spends, marking a year-on-year rise of 1%.

Radio also enjoyed healthy growth, up 11% on a global basis, although the channel reported a 1% decline in North America.

Newspapers enjoyed a global increase of 9.5%, while magazines were up 3.7%, and down 2% in North America.

Source – AdNews

With Social Media become more and more popular, and important to business, there are number of marketing benefits that will come with being in the Social Media space.  What a lot of people don’t know, is that Facebook, Twitter etc, can also make a significant difference to your overall SEO campaign.

Yahoo!7 has taken the Australian search engine war into new territory, partnering with product price comparison site Getprice.com.au.

The dedicated shopping page is synced with Yahoo Answers, which will track ‘buzz’ on personal searches.

For instance, if a consumer searches ‘bicycles’ to compare prices, discussions about bicycles that have developed on Yahoo Answers are listed on a board below the product results.

Price comparison search engines, which show a variety of both online and offline retailer prices for the same item, have proven popular both with consumers, researching for purchases, and businesses, for promoting their prices. Getprice lists over two million products from 900 retailers.

Google does not currently have a price comparison search engine and declined to comment on Yahoo!7’s statement.

Source – MarketingMag

Australia’s online advertising market was worth $586 million for the 2009/10 financial year, representing year-on-year growth of 11%.

The increase marked a fifth consecutive year of growth for the online market with major publishers accounting for 61% of total revenues.

Over half of the advertisers surveyed in the study said they planned to increase their 2011 online budgets, with 38% set to increase their search budgets.

The Australian Online General and Mobile Advertising Market 2010 reported, by Frost & Sullivan, looked at online advertising trends for the past fiscal year, including online video, mobile and social media advertising.

It predicts that the value of the online general advertising market in Australia will rise to $877 million by 2015, with growth in online video advertising particularly strong.

Improved technology, graphics, broadband speeds and bandwidth contributed towards the increased uptake in online video advertising in 2010. The report revealed that 53% of Australian companies have integrated social media into their online advertising.

Mobile advertising increased 18%, with total revenues for the sector at $9.1 million. Frost & Sullivan predicts the Australian mobile market will reach $76 million by 2015, with a compound annual growth rate from 2010 to 2015 of 46%.

The report surveyed representatives of publishing organisations, advertising networks, media agencies and senior management level marketers.

Source – AdNews

The annual Urban Market Research report, compiled by youth marketing agency Lifelounge and Sweeney Research, found that just 10% of 16 to 30-year-olds spend five hours or more a week on email.

The report cites increasing use of social networking website and texting from mobile phones as impacting upon the use of email among young people.

Dion Appel, CEO of Lifelounge, says: “The young adult market is relying of email less as social networking and community groups allow them to communicate directly.”

“Look at the likes of Facebook or LinkedIn – they all have a direct messaging methodology built into them. Young people aren’t relying on Outlook or Gmail or Hotmail for that direct messaging.”

“Brands need to keep a close eye on email marketing to make sure it’s providing the right messaging. Some may have to look at partnering with trusted publishers to send emails.”

Other insights into Australia’s $68.56 billion youth market include the revelation that 80% of young people frantically multitask while surfing the web, although 56% spend at least one hour a week ‘pausing’ by reading a book.

The biggest average weekly outlay is on household expenses, at $403.86, followed by socialising and entertainment, $122.42, and clothing and accessories, $99.71.

Nearly half of the 16 to 30-year-olds polled still live with their parents, although the proportion with their own mortgages has risen from 11.5% last year to 14% this year. Nike, Smirnoff and Nokia are among the most admired brands, with Facebook, Google, eBay, Hotmail and YouTube named as the five top websites.

Happily for start-up businesses, young people are welcoming of new brands, provided that they offer something of value, according to Appel.

“Young adults are really open to brands that enhance their quality of life,” he says. “They are very open-minded and will try new things provided that they give an experience that is credible and relevant. They favour brands that have an active engagement with them, not a one-off interaction.”

Source – SmartCompany

The latest Nielsen ‘Online Retail Monitor’ study has shown travel sector purchases account for 47% of all spending in a flourishing online retail market.

The study, which analysed spending across 16 major retail product categories, showed that around one third of online shoppers bought travel product or services, from flights to hotels to travel products, with an average purchase of $1168 over the 30 day study period.

A travel retailer’s website was also found to be the biggest influence on a consumer’s brand choice, followed by search engines and comparison websites.

QANTAS led the way in website popularity, with a unique audience of nearly 1.9 million, with 12.76% of all Australian internet users visiting the site at least once in September. Virgin Travel followed with 1247 million visitors, then wotif.com with 1224 million.

Travel purchases that were ultimately made offline were also often influenced by online research. 68% of those purchasing accommodation offline and 62% of offline flight purchases were supported by online research.

Nielsen’s quarterly ‘online retail monitor’ uses an online survey of 1131 Australian Internet users aged 18 and over. It looks at online spending and purchase behaviour and intention, the degree to which online is supporting offline sales and conversions, and more online and mobile shopping behaviour patterns.

Source – MarketingMag

Online lags behind TV as the most used media among Australians, while dominating globally, according to a new global study.

Research agency TNS’ global Digital Life survey, which it claims is the largest ever online research project covering 46 countries and 90% of the world’s online population, online lags behind TV as Australians media of choice with 63% of Australian online users accessing the internet daily, compared to 68% who watch TV on a daily basis. Almost half (48%) of internet users listened to radio daily and 22% read newspapers.

Meanwhile globally, online consumption dominates with 61% of online users accessing the internet daily compared to just 54% for TV, 36% for radio and 32% for newspapers.

What’s more, Australian’s online engagement falls behind the global average and other mature markets including the US and UK. While 35% of Australian online users were said to be “highly engagement”, 51% had low engagement. In the US and UK, 43% of online users were said to be highly engaged.

Social networking is outpacing other online activities globally, with mobile handsets increasingly being used to access sites including Facebook and Twitter. In Australia, 2.6 hours are spent looking at social networking sites on mobile, compared to 4.1 hours per week from a PC. However 44% of respondents indicated they would increase their use of mobile in the next 12 months, compared to 26% increasing their use of computers.

The study, which involved 50,000 interviews, revealed those in emerging markets were more active online and more engaged than mature markets.

Jonathan Sinton, executive director of digital research at TNS, said: “Marketers looking to connect with consumers online need to remember people are not just clicks or page views; they have attitudes, needs and emotions that drive their behaviour. In order to build deeper connections with consumers and optimise digital strategies, marketers need to understand what motivated people online.”

“Many are launching smarter websites, experimenting with advertising, blogging, tweeting and Facebooking in an effort to tick their online strategy boxes, but most don’t know enough about how their consumers are using digital channels.”

Source – B&T