Black Friday: The Brightest Day In The US Last Week

Black Friday, American’s starting point for Christmas shopping following the Thanksgiving holiday; witness a significant figure in online sales this year, $648 million (£417 million).

ComScore reported this Black Friday sale to be a 9% increase in comparison to last year Black Friday. The report further indicates several increases in online spending in comparison to last year within the US.

For instance, during the recent seasonal holiday in November, an expenditure of approximately $11.64 billion (£7.49 billion) has been reached, which is a 13% increase from the previous year.
Additionally, a further increase in online sales was reported on Thanksgiving Day; at $407 million (£262 million), 28% more than last year.

Gian Fulgon, chairman of comScore, explained this year’s increase in online spending by stating: “Although Black Friday is known for the flurry of activity occurring in brick-and-mortar retail stores, online shopping is increasingly becoming the refuge of those preferring to avoid the crowds and long lines”.

He further points out that the online sales figures is the largest spending this year to date in the US, and that the Thanksgiving figures has never reached such amount in the past, due to “low buying activity” historically on this day.

The reason behind this surge has been explicated as deriving from the influence “online channel” affect offline shopping activities. Consumers were utilising online resources on Black Friday to plan in advance for the day’s events.

Numerous retailers utilise this Black Friday as an internet marketing strategy to boost their sales. Therefore, whilst consumers researched on offline deals; they would have exposed to more lucrative online deals.

ComScore reports also illustrated that the number of visitors in coupon sites was 3.6 million, a 4% increase from the previous year. Furthermore, increases of 16% to 7.4 million visitors were especially visiting the Black Friday category on the sites.

Top Site Visited On Black Friday for Black Friday:

BlackFriday.info        630,000 visitors
CouponCabin.com     543,000 visitors
RetailMeNot.com      332,000 visitors 
Groupon.com           332,000 visitors

Pipon Search Solutions continue to advise our clients to utilise seasonal events as paid search marketing approaches, to drive their sales and increase their ROI.

However, Black Friday is not the only online seasonal event expected to successful gain this year, Cyber Monday is another event, which should also be interesting to utilises as an approach.

Check-ins, The New Loyalty Programs for Businesses

Mobile marketing has witnessed a rise in apps providing local check-ins deals for businesses. Speculations are surrounding the use of mobile in affiliation with shopping online and offline, or both to increase during this holiday. These apps have been designed to facilitate the shopping experience.

These apps work by establishing platforms where both users and businesses can engage. Users are offered deals for the amount time they trade within a business establishment.

The apps also feature social networking platforms, allowing users to find and interact with friends. They also allow users to search and locate business establishments utilising the same apps. They additionally inform users of business establishments located near their location, utilising the mobile device’s GPS. 
Currently, the most popular app providing these services within the industry is ‘Foursquare’.

The growth in Check-ins application is constant; however they are still nowhere near mainstream activities. Facebook’s decision to update their mobile application with the inclusion of a check-in feature illustrates the innovative significance of these applications within the industry.

Small businesses owners have been reported to have shown interest to these latest applications, but find the process a little too overwhelming.
Recently a new application has been reported to be able to find a solution of those small business owners. Named ‘PlacePop’, the application provides the similar feature to other check-ins apps like ‘Foursquare’ but in a different approach.

PlacePop, created Kent Lindstrom former CEO of Friendster, is still relatively new in the market but growing steadily. It has been reported to hold a huge difference to other check-ins application such as Foursquare, which is simplicity.

The originally concept for the application was similar to the other check-ins apps, to allow users to share their favourite retail outlets with friends. However the concept eventually changed and developed to a loyalty program for small businesses.

The new concept is aiming to eliminate “punch card” hand-outs for customers and allow business owners to create them virtually instead on PlacePop.com.

Loyalty programs works once a business owner signs up on the website, and create deals such as, offering freebies to returning customers. PlacePop will assist on keeping tracks of the returning customers as they check-ins on every visit. 
Once loyal customers are eligible for deals, PlacePop automatically contact the customers through messaging services letting them know how to redeem their reward.

One of PlacePop representative expresses their confidence in the application in stating that: “Place Pop isn’t about collecting badges, it’s not a game, it’s about loyalty rewards. Local deals, that’s what’s going to drive the space.”

At Pipon Search Solutions, we concur with their statement and find these apps to be revolutionary. They could be one of the innovative ventures to force both the real and virtual world together.

Tell us what you think of these apps?

Google Wants To Take YouTube to the Movies

YouTube has had its share of blows with the industry this month in reference to their advertising performance. Hulu, an alternative video platform to YouTube, reported a 1 billion ad impressions this month; however both Google & YouTube have only reported 170 million ad impressions.

Some explanations surrounding the differences suggest that Hulu is leading because of its longer contents, which YouTube do not hold and is recognised for its shorter content.

This could be the reason for Google’s latest acquisition inquest for its video platform. As it turns out, Google is trying to acquire Miramax, the film studio behind some of the greatest films in cinema history; such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Trainspotting (1996), City of God (2002) and many more. The movie company has been reported to hold more than 700 films in its archives.

Google plans to utilise this acquisition as strategic plans to reform their YouTube platform with longer form contents. These plans could potentially produce lucrative results; it would attract more users to their platform and could even revolutionise the way we pay for movie, depending on Google’s plan that is.

However, Google is not the only ones after Miramax and its 700 films; Netflix is also interested in the movie company’s library for the same intention as Google’s. 
Although it could be argued that this strategic plans is originally Netflix, as Google hired Robert Kyncl, a former Netflix employer, as its VP of Content Partnerships in September to establish TV & movie rights deals similar to this.

Google refused to comment on the acquisition rumour by stating: "We're always talking to the studios about different things and Disney remains a valuable YouTube partner…Outside of that, we don't comment on rumour or speculation” says a spokesman.

Here at Pipon Search Solutions, we think this could cause a severe potential change in the way users and the industry utilises Google’s YouTube platform. 
Although it is too early to speculate, it can be said that this approach could surely alter a lot of things in both the internet and movie industry.

Twitter Finds Its Melody With Ping

Social network being the most lucrative and beneficial channel of communication currently has attracted a lot of attention and innovative platform from big such as Microsoft, Google and recently…Apple.

Although it is not a surprising move from the multi-billion organization, Apple has successfully established a social network for music called Ping. Like other social network, user can interact with friends, ‘Stay up to date on who, what, when, and where’. However, Ping differs from other social network by focusing heavily on music. User can follow their favourite artists, on ‘what their favourite artists are playing — and when and where they’re playing it’ Apple explains further on the site by stating that you can ‘set your inner groupie free by following your favourite artists on Ping’

Following the trends of social networks platforms, Ping also joined with Twitter to launch a cross-platform integration. This allows users to access their twitter accounts and directly share their activities on Ping as ‘tweets’.
This makes Apple the new additional company to enter the growing list of brands’ alliance within the internet marketing industry. The list consists of Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, & Twitter.

The latest Twitter alliance with Apple means that the Twitter will now be able to place iTunes song previews on their site, inclusive of supporting song purchases and downloads via tweets. The features are accessible to only users residing in countries where iTunes is available.

The Ping features will be set on by defaults; however, users have the options to disable the twitter features from Apple’s social network platform. Once Ping users are connected to their Twitter accounts, they will automatically share Ping posts, likes and reviews on Twitter.

Twitter’s communication team explains the reason behind this collaboration as an approach in making twitterer’s experience richer, following Twitter’s new version that gives users the ability to access photos and videos on the platform.

 “Last month, we launched a new version of Twitter that gives users the ability to see embedded photos and videos directly through the details pane. Adding the ability to listen to music previews makes that experience even richer,” says Carolyn Penner of Twitter’s communication team.

This benefits both platforms by increasing their user’s interaction more intensely. Ping users can connect and find their followers, which amplifies the social network status. Twitter uses are rendered significant in the growth on the Apple’s social network.

Interestingly, Ping could potentially expand its growth with the social media industry once affiliated with other social network such as Facebook; however, these two companies are intertwined over a dispute which has not yet been resolved. Therefore, Ping users are only limited to twitter until matters are resolved.

Some of us at Pipon Search Solutions think that this collaboration, including all similar others, are a very good to establish strong platform interaction and better user engagement. In the social marketing sense, this alliance would be beneficial to those in the music industry, such as artists, producers and music labels etc.

However, this could also be potentially valuable to companies dealing in music trading, HMV, Amazon, and other retail store such as Asda, Tesco, and Sainsbury in the UK. 
In utilizing this cross-platform as a social marketing tool to they can engage with users to create a presence in the industry and additionally acquire data and information on the latest musical trends.

Google Preview Through The Looking Glass

Google’s last search feature, Google Instant, created a big commotion in its introduction within the search marketing industry, with numerous internet marketers dubbing it the SEO killer. However, Google recently has taken a further step in developing its search engine by creating a new search feature, ‘Google Instant Preview’.

This new feature works within the same conceptual approach as their previous search feature, which is to produce a search query’s result faster and easier.
Google Instant works by producing results as a user key in their search query, on the other hand, Google Instant Preview works by illustrating a preview of the website to the user whilst they skim through the search results.

The new feature is activated, once a user clicks the magnifying glass icon placed beside any organic results. Once activated the user would only have to scroll through all results and each will produce a preview of the site. Additionally, the preview also features a passage from the website, such as a quote. However it is unclear whether this feature is limited to only certain site.

Google mentioned on the blog the three beneficial points this new feature will provides to users;

• Quickly compare results - A visual comparison of search results helps you pick the one that’s right for you. Quickly flip through previews to see which page looks best.
• Pinpoint relevant content - Text call outs, in orange, will sometimes highlight where your search terms appear on the webpage so you can evaluate if it’s what you're looking for.
• Interact with the results page - Page previews let you see the layout of a webpage before clicking the search result. Looking for a chart, picture, map or list? See if you can spot one in the preview.

Google also mentioned that they are aware of the new features limitation and issues, which they made a statement declaring that it just temporary and would be resolved soon; “ Currently, some videos or Flash content in previews appear as a “puzzle piece” icon or a black square. We’re working on rendering these rich content types accurately. So we hope webmasters aren’t rushing to get rid of Flash – this is temporary!”

Here Pipon, we like the new feature, it gives the search engine a little bit more flare and personality. As user this tool is fascinating, it helps find specific sites faster, and avoid certain sites.The feature de-masked those sites hiding behind clever URL to attract traffic, as an SEO marketer, this feature just enhance the importance of well-designed landing pages as this would certainly affect those seeking traffics with a core keyword focus.

We notice that although its effect on the natural results is beneficial, it is the complete opposite to paid search as it hides ad text. A comment made by SEL (Search Engine Land) suggest that it doesn't affect paid results because if a user " decides they want to focus on editorial results, they're already ignoring the ads". Here at Pipon we disagree with that notion, the reason being is the instant preview clearly appears in front of ad text, which should clearly affect the CTR, and therefore the paid results.

'Topics' Makes YouTube Search Smarter

Last week, the industry witnessed YouTube trialling a new search feature on TestTube, a YouTube platform used as a testing ground for all their “recipes and concoctions that aren't quite fully baked”.
The latest trial feature, Topics, produces search results through an algorithm descriptively similar to video tags, comments, viewing patterns and shares.

The new feature works by using generic keywords inserted by a user, which then follows on to search videos related to the topics of the keyword with potential interest to the users. It is also capable of retrieving the exact video a user is searching or possibly a video of interest to a user that he/she didn't know they were seeking.

The concept behind this new feature was to keep YouTube users on the site longer, as the current time a user spends on the site has been reported at 15 minutes a day by the BBC; watching content and videos inclusive of ads on the platform.

Regardless, YouTube continues to witness growth within its platform. It just recently announced a significance increase in its uploads, which is more than 35 hours of video per minute on the site.

Here at Pipon, this new feature raises the importance of the social media marketing. Utilising video as a social media marketing tool can produce significant results to a well strategized and this new feature could potentially expand a campaign’s audience. However this would require is severe and specific video optimisation. 

We recommend trying the new feature, as it produces very interesting results.

Clash of The 'Project Titan', Gmail Vs Facemail?

A lot of people within the industry have witness the bickering battle between the dominant brands within the industry; Google and Facebook.

The dispute was over email exports and imports, which started with Facebook refusing users the ability to export their contact and friends data using Gmail. Google retaliated by banning Facebook from importing its users’ email contacts. 
However Facebook responded by establishing and letting their users know of a method to add their Gmail contact, which consist of by saving the email addresses on user’s hard drives first

This fight between the two rivals have apparently cross over from online to offline. Facebook apparently has been reported offering deals to Google’s Engineers to leave the organisation. Additionally, other reports surrounding Google 10% pay rise to its employee has been implying that in fact this was due to hold on to its engineers affected by Facebook’s offer.

Currently rumours surround the industry on Facebook’s response to Google’s latter action. Facebook has since then sent out an invitation about a special event in San Francisco which it will host. 
The rumours, originating from this announcement, suggest that Facebook is planning to unveil a new messaging system to challenge Gmail in retaliation.

This new venture, which apparently is codenamed ‘Project Titan’ and referred to a ‘Gmail killer’, is suspected to capably over take the email market, surpassing not only Gmail, but also AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo. This is believed to be possible due to Facebook’s 500 million-strong user base.

Currently the most powerful brand in the email market is Microsoft’s Hotmail/Windows Live with 361.7 million users, followed by Yahoo’s 273.1 million users and then Gmail with 193.3 million.

Although this is buzz is still referred to as a rumour, and Facebook has not made any comment surrounding this, some believe that Facebook’s wealth of information on its users would be their irresistible proposition in offering their email services.
However, it is still unbeknownst to the availability and limitation of this service, if introduced that is. For instance, it is unsure if the email service would available to only Facebook Users.

Here at Pipon, we believe in love not war, however if this rumour surrounding a new email service by Facebook shade any truth, then the industry should witness a major shifts from Google, Yahoo & Microsoft’s Hotmail.

The reason being, Facebook already holds a strong fan based and user based, and introducing a new mail service would be easily transit their success over to the new market.

Would you still use your Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail, if you could have an email address integrated with your Facebook profile?