Holiday shoppers turned Cyber Monday into the biggest spending day ever with online sales growing 30.3 percent over the same period last year, according to analytics findings by IBM.
As part of IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative, the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark revealed the following trends as of 12:00 am PST:
Cyber Monday 2012 Compared to Cyber Monday 2011:
- Consumer Spending Increases: Online sales increased 30.3 percent over 2011.
- Shopping Peaks at 11:25am EST: Consumers flocked online, with shopping momentum hitting its highest peak at 11:25am EST. As in 2011, consumer shopping also maintained strong momentum after commuting hours on both the east and west coast.
more »
Sharing it's up to the minute Cyber Monday shopping metrics, IBM has pegged this year's Cyber Monday sales up 24.1 percent through 12PM EST today. Contributing to that figure are several mobile metrics: 22.4 percent of consumers used a mobile device to shop, 12 percent of purchases where made using a mobile device and the iPhone tops all devices used to shop with an 8.7 percent share.
comScore, today, released findings that predicts 2012 holiday season (November and December) retail e-commerce spending will hit $43.4 billion, up 17 percent from 2011. For the first 18 days of the November, $10.1 billion has been spent online, a 16 percent increase over the same time period last year. Thursday, November 8 has been the heaviest online spending day of the season to date at $829 million.
If you haven't heard of real time bidding, or RTB, you need to. First, let us explain. When a user heads to a webpage and it starts loading, the siite automaticallly sends out a bid request to tens of hundreds of potential advertisers (on an RTB network) saying, "We've got this user who is 30, Indian, male and based in New Jersey, US, and recently searched for return air tickets to Delhi, opening a page on our site. How much are you willing to bid for being the only ad on this page?" Within about 100 milliseconds the publisher gets automated bids from different advertisers which are then analyzed to figure out the highest bidder and the brands being advertised. The winner is automatically alerted by the publisher site and the ad is published. Nifty, huh?
more »
Liveperson has published a whitepaper, part of the Adrants whitepaper series, that offers a brief overview of the online tools marketers can use to better guerrilla marketing programs. Covered tools include web analytics, behavioral targeting, marketing automation, social media and others. It's not an in-depth analysis of each tool category, rather an examination where each tool fits into the online marketing process.
Download the whitepaper now and have a look at which tools might be right for you.
A recent study conducted by content sharing company Tynt found copy and paste comprises 82 percent of all content sharing, 4.5x more than share buttons. Among other findings, the data revealed copy and paste is the most prevalent method by which users share text, images, and URLs across the web.
Of course it should be noted Tynt is a company that "enables premium publishers and content creators to capitalize on the most common sharing method on the web: copy and paste."
Social media monitoring company Sysomos has put together a nice tip sheet with eight ways marketers can build their brands using social media. Much, of course, has been written on this topic but sometimes it's nice to have a few clear, concise tips on hand when you are about to launch a new social media program for your brand or your client.
Download this free whitepaper now and learn this ins and outs of social media brand personas, platforms, communities, crisis management and more.
Smartphones and the social, local, mobile (SoLoMo) ecosystem are said to be the future of retail. Where once there was the yellow pages, today's mobile consumer may be accessing the local web through any number of search engines, local directories, mobile search apps and social networks to find businesses.
This shift in the way people search to buy in-store is a reality that needs to be addressed immediately for retail brands to survive in an increasingly hyper-local marketplace.
more »
So by now all of you have your outward facing social media programs in full swing, right? But what about your own agency or brand? What about internalizing everything you've been preaching? What about becoming a social business?
more »
Content marketing, the strategy du jour and yet another name for blogging, is said to attract customers, build trust and bring visibility to your brand for minimal expense.
But what exactly is content marketing, why would you want to do it and how would you start? Glad you asked. Vocus enlisted four of the biggest content experts out there - Joe Chernov, Scott Stratten, Ann Handley and Adam Singer - to write an expert guide containing 15 great tips to get your content motor started!
more »
|
