Tablets Influence News Consumption

hugues rey, le Journal.

About one in 10 (11%) of US adults now own a tablet computer of some kind, with about half (53%) of tablet owners getting news on their tablet every day, according to survey results released in October 2011 by the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Economist Group. Almost eight in 10 (77%) tablet owners use their tablet every day, spending an average of about 90 minutes on them.

News among Top Tablet Activities

Consuming news (everything from the latest headlines to in-depth articles and commentary) ranks as one of the most popular activities on the tablet, about as popular as sending and receiving email (54% email daily on their tablet), and more popular than social networking (39%), gaming (30%), reading books (17%) or watching movies and videos (13%). The only activity that people said they were more likely to do on their tablet computer daily is browse the web generally (67%).

The survey also finds that three in 10 tablet news users (defined for this study as the 77% of all tablet users who get news at least weekly) say they now spend more time getting news than they did before they had their tablet. Just 4% say they spend less time while two-thirds (65%) spend about the same amount of time.

In addition, one-third (33%) of tablet news users say they are turning to new sources for news on their tablet, sources they had not turned to on other platforms such as television or their desktop computer. And more than four in 10 (42%) say they regularly read in-depth news articles and analysis on their tablet.

Tablet news users also say they now prefer their new devices over traditional computers, print publications or television as a way both to get quick news headlines and to read long-form pieces.

Tablet News Revenue Potential May Be Limited

At this point just 14% of tablet news users have paid directly to access news on their tablet. Another 23% get digital access of some kind through a print newspaper or magazine subscription. Of those who haven’t paid directly, just 21% say they would be willing to spend $5 per month if that were the only way to access their favorite source on the tablet. And of those who have news apps, fully 83% say that being free or low cost was a major factor in their decision about what to download.

Desktop Beats Apps for Tablet News

The study reveals that, so far, while about two-thirds of tablet news users have a news app on their tablet, the browser, carried over from the desktop experience, is still the more popular means of consuming news. A plurality of tablet news users (40%) say they get their news mainly through a web browser. Another 31% use news apps and the browser equally, while fewer, 21%, get their news primarily through apps.

Branding Important for Tablet News

Liking the news organization is a major factor for 84% of those who have apps. In addition, among both app and browser respondents surveyed about their behavior over the last seven days, the most common way by far to get news headlines was by going directly to a news organization’s content. Fully 90% of app users went directly to the app of a specific news organization, compared with 36% that went to some sort of aggregator app like Pulse. And, 81% of those who went through their browser accessed news headlines via a direct news website, compared with 68% who went through a search engine and about a third (35%) that went through a social network.

Starch: Tablet Ads Beat E-reader Ads

Magazine ads viewed on tablet computers are more effective than magazine ads viewed on e-readers in garnering consumer attention and engagement, according to data collected by Starch Advertising Research from May-July 2011. Starch data reveals that, on average, 55% of consumers who read a magazine on a tablet “noted,” meaning they saw or read a magazine ad on their device.

In comparison, 41% of e-reader magazine app users noted an ad. This means tablet readers are 34% more likely to note a magazine ad. To put these findings in perspective, the average noting score for all hard copy magazine ads Starch measured in 2010 was 53%.

About the Data: The study, executed by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, involved a survey of the general public and three separate surveys. The first was a general population survey. The next two surveys were conducted with a Pew Research Center panel of more than a thousand tablet users. The panel was developed through interviews with 40,000 US adults. A telephone survey was conducted with 1,159 tablet users and 894 tablet news users, and a web-based survey was conducted among a select group of those news users about their news habits over the past seven days.

BeCommerce

BeCommerce.

23/09/2011
Prévisions de croissance de 40%, forte demande pour des marketeurs en ligne, des spécialistes IT et des opérateurs de logistique. Bruxelles, 23 septembre 2011 – Patricia Ceysens, nouvelle présidente de BeCommerce, a présenté aujourd’hui les résultats de l’étude sur l’e-commerce en Belgique. Désormais, la vente en ligne est également vue chez nous comme un canal de vente arrivé à maturité. Ceci ressort de la récente étude menée par le bureau d’enquête iVox à la demande des membres de BeCommerce, la fédération des spécialistes belges de la vente à distance. Le secteur est très positif: par rapport à l’année dernière, 70% des répondants prévoient pour 2011 une croissance de leurs ventes en ligne de 40%. Le marché belge de l’E-commerce est encore loin d’être saturé. Le secteur est dès lors en quête de marketeurs en ligne, de spécialistes IT et d’opérateurs de logistique afin de répondre à la croissance annoncée!

Les résultats montrent que de plus en plus d’entreprises belges vendent uniquement par le biais d’Internet. La part de marché des multi-channel players (entreprises exploitant plusieurs canaux de vente aussi bien online que offline) a chuté à 46% contre 65,9% en 2009. Les pure-players, entreprises qui vendent exclusivement via Internet, dominent le marché avec 54% de part de marché (contre 34,1% en 2009). “Cette augmentation signifie que le ‘online’ est de plus en plus vu comme un canal de vente adulte et que nos boutiques en ligne sont désormais suffisamment puissantes pour se concentrer sur la vente par Internet” explique Patricia Ceysens.

L’e-commerce embauche!
Les acteurs belges de la vente à distance envisagent l’avenir de façon très positive. 7 personnes interrogées sur 10 s’attendent pour 2011 à une augmentation de leurs ventes en ligne de 40% par rapport à l’année dernière. Une impressionnante croissance qui démontre que l’e-commerce belge est loin d’une phase de saturation et possède encore un fort potentiel de croissance. Afin d’accompagner celle-ci dans les meilleures conditions, le marché va devoir s’entourer de personnel compétent. Plus de 75% des entreprises d’e-commerce sondées sont d’avis d’engager 10 nouveaux employés en 2011 afin de répondre à la demande. Les entreprises belges d’e-commerce sont principalement à la recherche de marketeurs en ligne (49%), de spécialistes IT (32%) et d’opérateurs de logistique (19%).

L’e-commerce belge cartographié
Sur base des résultats de l’enquête en ligne, iVox a retenu quelques aspects géographiques à propos de l’e-commerce en Belgique. Car contrairement à la plupart des magasins traditionnels (physiques), leur portée ne s’arrête pas aux frontières politiques. 73% des entreprises d’e-commerce basées en Belgique vendent d’abord aux consommateurs et aux entreprises belges. Les autres pays d’Europe occidentale constituent un important marché extérieur (60%), avant le reste de l’Europe (24%). À peine 11% des boutiques en ligne belges vendent leurs produits au-delà de l’Europe.

Quels produits sont les plus vendus? Comme l’an dernier, les articles les plus fréquemment vendus sur Internet sont les objets de décoration intérieure (35,1% en 2009 et 46% en 2010). Le top 3 est complété par les accessoires de mode (43%) et les vêtements (43%).

Les entreprises belges d’e-commerce ont compris que les consommateurs qui achètent en ligne attendent d’une livraison qu’elle intervienne “ici et maintenant”! Les boutiques en ligne offrent différentes possibilités de livraison. La Poste reste toujours le système de distribution le plus populaire. 65% des entreprises interrogées choisissent la Poste pour amener les paquets à leur clientèle. Les coursiers (38%) et les points d’enlèvement (comme Kiala) constituent d’autres manières de livrer les marchandises commandées en ligne. De plus en plus d’entreprises d’e-commerce offrent la possibilité de retirer les colis dans des points d’enlèvement (de 29,5% en 2009 à 38% en 2010). “Ceci peut être expliqué à la fois par l’importante augmentation du nombre de ces points d’enlèvement et leur meilleure répartition géographique. D’autre part, l’avènement du ‘time slot delivery’ en Belgique a donné un coup de pouce à l’utilisation de ces points d’enlèvement. 11% des e-shops de Belgique offrent déjà aux clients la possibilité d’être livrés à la maison ou de pouvoir aller chercher leur colis dans un point d’enlèvement (également 11%) dans un créneau horaire agréé par le consommateur”, souligne Patricia Ceysens.

Pour ce qui concerne les méthodes de paiement offertes par les boutiques en ligne, les cartes de crédit restent toujours très populaires. 95% des magasins en ligne belges permettent le paiement via Visa et Mastercard, 38% via American Express. Payer avec une simple carte bancaire – Bancontact/Mister Cash – est possible auprès de 60% des boutiques en ligne belges. La carte Maestro est acceptée par 49% d’entre elles. Outre les systèmes de paiement en ligne comme PayPal (54%) et Ideal (46%), la banque en ligne est également reconnue comme méthode de paiement.

Nouvelle direction pour BeCommerce
Aujourd’hui, parallèlement aux résultats de l’enquête, BeCommerce annonce la nomination de sa co-fondatrice Carine Moitier au poste de Directrice. Avec cette nomination, BeCommerce s’inscrit dans la même démarche que ses collègues néerlandais de Thuiswinkel.org qui, avec Wijnand Jongen, ont aussi appelé à la barre un représentant de l’e-commerce. L’exemple de thuiswinkel.org a également été suivi pour ce qui concerne le choix d’une personnalité politiquement active en tant que présidente, Patricia Ceysens, pour assurer à l’organisation un développement réussi.

Online Media Business Model: Commerce Is The Future

Online Media Business Model: Commerce Is The Future.

Online Media Is Getting Robbed Of The Dollars It Deserves — Here’s How To Fix It

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/online-media-commerce-2011-3#ixzz1HW44nbGd

 

A tighter integration of commerce and traditional content is coming to the web and it’s a good thing: Right now most online media is getting screwed out of its rightful share of online ad dollars.

A fundamental problem of the online media business is that sites don’t get their fair share of advertising dollars relative to the purchasing intent they generate.

Media gets money from advertising. The reason companies buy advertising is because they get you to buy stuff; in other words they create purchasing intent.

But this comes in many flavors. Marketers use the analogy of a funnel. Marketers try to get us to buy stuff by pitching us through the funnel with messages that start wide, and finish narrow.

You might see a billboard, which might make you visit a website, which might get you to sign up for a newsletter, which might lead you to use a coupon, which might lead you to become a long term customer.

At the top of the funnel, you’re trying to generate purchasing intent. At the bottom, you’re trying to harvest it. As consumers move down the funnel, they get closer to buying whatever they’ve seen advertised.

What does this have to do with online media?

Online content producers like the New York Times, or eHow, are not properly rewarded for the way they generate intent in comparison to other online companies like, say, Google.

On the internet, marketers want to measure everything. But not everything is so easily measured, and ad dollars tend to flow not to the ads that work the best to generate intent, but to those whose effectiveness is most easily measurable. (Chris Dixon explains how this works in more detail.)

Think about it: which contributes more to purchasing intent? A favorable review by Times gadget god David Pogue, or the sponsored link atop a search for said gadget after reading the review? We would argue the former. And yet the latter is much more profitable, because it’s much easier to measure.

This problem sucks for everyone; it makes online media businesses harder to run, but it also means advertisers aren’t spending money as wisely as they could. Integrating media and commerce more tightly is one way to fix that.

New York startup Thrillist is a master at integrating media and commerce. Thrillist started out as an email newsletter for dudes, but it acquired private fashion sales site for dudes JackThreads, and built its own  Groupon clone. Another great online media startup that does this very well is Sugar Inc, which runs a network of women-focused blogs which integrate shopping well.

The Times (which now has its own Groupon clone) looks at Thrillist’s model and frets that it might endanger the wall between the editorial and business sides of media organizations. But JackThreads’ founder Jason Ross says it best about Thrillist, “Their editorial voice is their credibility, so hurting that in any way would be pretty harmful.” There are zillions of gadget sites online. If one dropped its editorial integrity for short-term dollars, its readers would drop it like a hot coal.

A simple way to integrate commerce and content is through affiliate deals, where a post includes links to buy the product it’s talking about, with the site getting a cut. It can also involve a more elaborate linking of media sites and social shopping sites the way Sugar does. Or it can involve building commerce experiences tailored to your audience, like Thrillist does with men’s fashion and daily deals. There’s many ways to play this.

In the end, integrating media and commerce can be a win-win-win for online media, advertisers and consumers.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/online-media-commerce-2011-3#ixzz1HW3kc7GR

Digimedia : News E-Commerce : cap vers les 2 milliards d’euros

via Digimedia : News E-Commerce : cap vers les 2 milliards d’euros.

Numéro un en France toutes catégories confondues, La Redoute occupe la seconde place du cybercommerce en Belgique, juste derrière le site 3Suisses et devant Neckermann. Inside a rencontré Geneviève Vitré-Cahon, Présidente du Conseil d’administration de l’association BeCommerce et directrice du site Laredoute.be qui accueille plus d`1 million de visiteurs uniques par mois et réalise plus de 50% de son chiffre d’affaires sur Internet.

-Inside Digital Media : Quel est le dernier bilan de l’e-commerce en Belgique, et quelles sont les perspectives de croissance pour 2011 ?

Nous prévoyons une croissance du secteur d’environ 20% pour l’année 2010. On estime que le marché belge atteindra les 2 milliards d’euros à l’horizon 2011.
La croissance de l’e-commerce est liée au taux de pénétration de l’Internet dans le pays. Aujourd’hui, 75% des particuliers belges utilisent fréquemment Internet. À titre de comparaison, les pays d’Europe du Nord connaissent un taux supérieur à 80%, voire même à 90%. Cela donne une belle marge de progression pour notre marché. Côté achats online, nous sommes dans un ratio de 38%, alors qu’en Europe du Nord on est dans une proportion des deux tiers (Pays-Bas et Grande Bretagne) et à 58% en France. La Belgique connaît une courbe de progression linéaire, mais décalée d’environ 3 ans par rapport au marché français. On peut donc estimer raisonnablement que nous franchirons le cap des 58% d’ici 2 à 3 ans …

- À quel rythme progresse le nombre de cybermarchands ?

Il y a aujourd`hui quelque 6.200 sites marchands sur la Toile belge. On assiste en moyenne à l’arrivée de 10 nouveaux venus chaque jour. À titre de comparaison, il se crée aux Pays-Bas pas moins de 30 cyberboutiques chaque jour ! Ces chiffres permettent de conclure que nous ne connaissons pas encore la même explosion qui touche en ce moment la France par exemple. Mais elle ne tardera pas à arriver. Ce n’est qu’une question de temps …

-Qui sont les acteurs et les secteurs les plus dynamiques du cybercommerce belge ?

Ce sont avant tout les poids lourds de la vente par correspondance … En particulier, les secteurs de l`habillement et du voyage. Nous voyons toutefois de plus en plus de « retailers » débarquer sur la Toile belge, ainsi que des sociétés de services qui proposent des billets de train, de voyage, cinéma, etc.

- À quoi peut-on imputer le retard de l’e-commerce belge? À notre conservatisme …

Le taux d’équipement et d’accès à Internet à haut débit dépendent de l’environnement et des coûts pratiqués dans chaque pays. En France, ces types d’équipement et de connexion sont extrêmement favorisés, pour ne pas dire subventionnés par les opérateurs. De telles décisions jouent favorablement dans le développement de l’e-commerce d’un pays. D’autres facteurs contribuent au développement de notre secteur, comme l’offre concurrente et la proximité des magasins. En Belgique, le réseau des commerces est particulièrement dense. On peut épingler également des facteurs d’ordre culturels, comme par exemple le fait que les consommateurs sont plus fidèles à leurs fournisseurs habituels … La loyauté des Belges à l’égard de leurs marques habituelles n’est pas un mythe ! Cette caractéristique explique le fait que nous soyons traditionnellement moins volatiles par rapport à nos voisins européens.

- Y a-t-il une réelle corrélation entre les prix des connexions à Internet et la progression des achats online ?

Absolument ! On constate que le niveau des achats online progresse dans les marchés où les tarifs ADSL baissent. Heureusement, nous avons enregistré des signes encourageants au cours de l’année écoulée. Par conséquent, si notre marché est moins mature que d’autres, il reste très prometteur et en plein développement !

-La crise a-t-elle eu un impact sur la progression de l’e-commerce belge ?

Nous n’avons pas constaté d’impact négatif de la crise sur le marché de l’e-commerce. Internet offre une alternative intéressante pour les consommateurs dont la confiance est ébranlée, car le canal online offre des facilités d’achat ainsi que des conditions uniques! Les consommateurs sont attirés par les prix qu’ils trouvent sur le canal Internet, ce qui répond à leurs préoccupations en période de crise.

- La plus grosse tendance de l’e-commerce en 2010 ?

Nous avons connu un véritable explosion de l’audience des femmes sur Facebook durant l’année écoulée. Ce phénomène est assez surprenant étant donné que le réseau n’était pas autant utilisé il y a à peine un an. Cette formidable adhésion est assez révélatrice du potentiel de notre marché. Par ailleurs, cette tendance est très intéressante pour les cybermarchands, car il s’agit d’un support très intéressant pour les marques. Pour La Redoute, la plate-forme sociale nous permet de communiquer directement avec nos clientes et d’avoir un dialogue beaucoup plus personnalisé à travers les recommandations et commentaires des consommateurs. Et surtout de pouvoir répondre directement aux clients mécontents. Autrement dit, Facebook est devenu un véritable vecteur de communication des marques basé sur un nouveau modèle marketing qui ne part plus de la marque, mais qui prend sa source au sein du réseau des consommateurs. Cette transparence implique toutefois d’accepter les critiques sur nos produits. Cela fait partie du jeu …

-Les acteurs de l’e-commerce s’intéressent-ils aux utilisateurs mobiles belges ?

Le niveau d’achat réalisé à partir d’appareils mobiles reste encore faible en Belgique, car il s’agit d’un nouveau mode de communication, y compris en France. Par ailleurs, le coût des appareils et des abonnements data reste plus élevé en Belgique que dans d’autres marchés, ce qui n’arrange rien …
Cela dit, l’e-commerce mobile fait partie des axes importants qui contribueront à développer les achats online dans les années à venir.

-Le « mobile shopping » fait-il partie des axes stratégiques de La Redoute Benelux?

Oui, notre projet mobile vient tout juste de démarrer. Nous venons de mettre à disposition de nos clients belges des versions iPhone et mobiles de notre site e-commerce. Dans les marchés plus matures, la progression de l’e-commerce mobile se développe à toute allure.

- Quelles sont les caractéristiques particulières du marché online belge ? Constatez-vous des points noirs qui compliquent l’implantation de vitrines commerciales sur notre Toile …

Je ne vois pas à proprement parler de points noirs dans notre marché. Bien entendu, il convient toujours de s’adapter aux particularités de chaque marché. Le marché belge est très compétitif et reste, certes, plus compliqué que d’autres marchés étant donné l’usage de différentes langues. Les boutiques online qui souhaitent assurer une présence doivent tenir compte de ces critères. Mais il n’est pas plus difficile de se lancer sur le marché belge qu’ailleurs … Au contraire, l’e-commerce constitue une opportunité évidente pour les marques et grandes enseignes qui souhaitent se lancer sur notre marché. Le consommateur belge est très exigeant dans tous les domaines, ce qui est tout à son honneur.

- Quelles sont les particularités de l’eShopping à la Belge ?

Le paiement par virement bancaire est une spécificité de la Belgique. Il est beaucoup plus apprécié que les paiements par carte de crédit (Visa/American Express) qui sont pourtant devenus les principaux modes de paiement dans la plupart des autres pays. Les consommateurs belges sont très sensibles à la sécurisation des paiements sur Internet. Il est donc primordial d’apporter une garantie sur ce sujet. C’est la raison pour laquelle BeCommerce propose un label de qualité qui est une condition sine qua non d’adhésion à notre association et dont le but est d’apporter suffisamment de garanties aux consommateurs.

- Le label BeCommerce a-t-il suffisamment d’impact auprès des consommateurs ?

Il représente un élément prépondérant pour gagner la confiance des consommateurs, même s’il reste encore beaucoup de travail de communication à faire pour l’imposer davantage auprès des internautes. Toujours est-il que le label permet de montrer qu’un travail important a été réalisé en matière de certification de sécurité sur les sites qui l’arborent.

-Les grandes surfaces et autres chaînes de distribution restent encore très réfractaires au commerce online… Pourquoi ?

Elles ont des stratégies qui leur sont propres. Néanmoins, elles ne devraient plus rester longtemps en marge du cybercommerce. Nous voyons de nombreuses enseignes au sein de l’association BeCommerce s’intéresser de près à Internet, car elles souhaitent en faire un axe de développement. La plupart d’entre elles expriment aujourd’hui la volonté d’afficher une présence online dans les années qui viennent …

-Les cybercommerçants doivent-ils avoir peur de la montée en puissance des plates-formes marchandes comme eBay et autres Amazone ?

Des sites où il est désormais possible d’acheter des produits neufs et d’occasion à des tarifs encore plus compétitifs …
Honnêtement pas du tout. Ce sont avant tout des concurrents comme les autres ! Cette nouvelle concurrence constitue une belle opportunité pour le secteur, car elle permet de dynamiser et généraliser le mode de consommation via le Web. Par ricochet, nous bénéficions (à La Redoute) de cet engouement. C’est un peu comme assurer une présence commerciale dans une galerie marchande où de nombreuses enseignes se côtoient et attirent mutuellement davantage de trafic.

DH.be – E-commerce: première journée aux Etats-Unis à plus d\’un milliard de dollars

via DH.be – E-commerce: première journée aux Etats-Unis à plus d’un milliard de dollars.

Le commerce en ligne a connu lundi sa première journée totalisant plus d’un milliard de dollars de ventes aux Etats-Unis, selon le cabinet spécialisé ComScore, et a représenté le tiers des emplettes des particuliers durant le week-end selon l’association des commerçants.

Le “cyber lundi” est traditionnellement une des plus fortes journées de l’e-commerce au retour du pont de Thanksgiving et à un mois de Noël. Cette année, il a totalisé des ventes de 1,028 milliard de dollars, une progression de 16% sur un an, surtout appuyée sur une augmentation des sommes dépensées par les internautes (+12% à 114,24 dollars).
La Fédération nationale du commerce (NRF, National retail federation) a calculé de son côté que les acheteurs avaient consacré le tiers de leurs dépenses au commerce en ligne durant le week-end, un taux record: près de 122 dollars, pour un panier de dépenses total de quelque 365 dollars.
“En même temps”, relativisait toutefois mercredi le président de ComScore Gian Fulgoni, “il est important de relever qu’une partie de la solidité des dépenses de consommation est presque certainement le résultat des promotions et décotes plus marquées que d’habitude à ce stade précoce de la saison”.

“Donc, même si nous prévoyons qu’il y aura d’autres journées à un milliard de dollars dans les jours qui viennent (…), seul le temps dira si les dépenses en ligne des consommateurs resteront au niveau élevé qu’on a vu jusqu’à présent”.
Traditionnellement, c’est à la mi-décembre que les internautes dépensent le plus, juste à temps pour se faire livrer à des tarifs abordables pour Noël.
Mardi, un autre cabinet, Coremetrics, filiale d’IBM, avait calculé que les ventes en ligne de lundi avaient progressé de 19,4%, mais sans avancer de chiffre total. Il avait noté une hausse de 8,3% des dépenses moyennes des internautes, à 194,89 dollars.

Offline/Online Convergence, Mobile Commerce, and Life After Check-ins

Offline/Online Convergence, Mobile Commerce, and Life After Check-ins

via Offline/Online Convergence, Mobile Commerce, and Life After Check-ins.

For years, offline merchants have been acquiring data about you in attempts to personalize your experience through loyalty and rewards cards, credit card data, and surveys. But the problem is these interactions occur after it’s too late: at the point of sale. You’ve already checked out and are leaving the store, or have ordered dinner. For a merchant to convince you to add an extra item to your shopping cart, or buy an appetizer with your meal, the interaction must happen sooner.

Online check-ins, as a trend and use-case, have created a remarkably compelling opportunity for offline merchants to interact with consumers who are in the store before the sale happens. When you announce you’re at a store or restaurant by checking into Foursquare or Facebook Places, for example, your experience can be shaped and molded in compelling ways.

This is precisely why check-ins are incredibly powerful—they give the offline merchants an opportunity to shape your behavior before you buy or consume. Unfortunately, check-ins alone provide little value to merchants in the absence of contextual data about you. And checking into a place definitely does not equate to liking it. Imagine how many restaurants you visit, then consciously decide to never return to. Without a feedback loop this context will be used erroneously for future offers and recommendations.

The real power in converged online/offline interactions will come from a hybrid of realtime contextual offers, deals, and advertisements which can change a consumer’s behavior long before any transaction occurs. Recommendations and offers that take into account nearly everything about you as an individual.

This is a why Steve Jobs strategically entered mobile advertising with iAd. Contrary to what Carol Bartz thinks, Apple is thinking way beyond serving brand advertisements within mobile apps. The real potential is about blending offline and online data about you as a person, data that can be transferred across services and devices. iAd is absolutely a secret weapon for Apple to ultimately leverage its micro-payments franchise to influence you at the point of sale. But they could work not just while you’re mobile, but at home as well. Imagine watching rich immersive ads on your Apple TV, which are tailored based on your offline behavior while your iPhone simultaneously knows what channel you’re watching and gives you a click-to-act offer or saves a deal which you can unlock later.

And though Google bought Admob for a simpler reason (to own mobile/online display), it’s clear that their success with Android and momentum with Google TV is driving them toward similar ambitions.

There’s simply no doubt that the offline and online worlds are melding in a way where “ads” will incorporate your presence and behavior across the entire web. Obviously the use of apps and web services on your mobile phone will be the source of a lot of this data. But because apps don’t use cookies like traditional websites do, proprietary layers of data are becoming silo’d inside these individual services and applications.

This is one fundamental reason why you see so many mash-ups and “data threesomes”happening between services these days – there is incredible power in blending silo’d data across web services. For example, say Foursquare reaches beyond check-ins with a recommendation service, while also providing curated offers by tapping into the API of a group buying service. Then imagine this combined data mash-up accessing the API of a mobile payments service like Square to provide not only a discount, but also an integrated loyalty or reward at the point of sale. You get a recommended list of restaurants, check-in with your friends, trigger a context-aware offer, then immediately get a discount and reward when you pay.

This is the future. And ultimately, this creates massive opportunities for companies to enter the fray with great ideas and leverage APIs from other services. Many will end up as commodity layers, but it’s likely that those which play the greatest role in shaping purchasing intent will benefit tremendously from this massive online/offline convergence and acceleration of mobile commerce.

And these trends likely form the underlying strategy for why Facebook is building a mobile phone. They want to become a participant, not just a layer or service, in how this offline/online commerce plays out. This week’s announcement that Target will sell Facebook credit gift cards is another telling sign of Facebook’s ambitions.

That’s why it’s funny when people see Facebook’s push into phones as a basic play to make phones more social. Dan Lyons wrote a silly Newsweek article this week about Facebook not innovating. I believe innovation is alive and well right now, and is likely accelerating. And Facebook’s push into mobile is much more profound than making phones more social – Facebook believes owning elements of the mobile stack will help it leverage its vast social graph to influence offline/online commerce.

And though companies like Facebook and Apple are salivating at the opportunities in this offline/online convergence, so are many startups. TechCrunch Disrupt will undoubtedly mark the arrival of some amazing new startups which are poised to take advantage of these trends as well.  We’re on a new frontier of mobile commerce and life after check-ins looks pretty good from where I’m standing.

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Driving Online Sales with Video (Source: E-Marketeer)

Retailers are responding to the growing consumer appetite for online videos by adding them to their Websites both to differentiate themselves from competitors and to keep up with what consumers expect from their online shopping experience.

“Consumers rank other purchase decision-making tools, such as customer reviews, ahead of videos in importance,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Video E-Commerce: Innovative Models Drive Sales. “But that has not discouraged retailers from quickly adding videos to their sites. They find that videos boost sales conversion rates and reduce abandoned shopping cart and product return rates.”

The proportion of the top 50 US online retailers offering videos jumped 378% in 2009 over the year before, according to a Forrester Research study, “Online Retailers’ Adoption of Online Video Content Is Ahead of Consumers’ Preferences,” published in November 2009. Last year over two-thirds of the biggest online retailers hosted videos.

The adoption rate is poised to climb further, as revealed by a February 2010 Multichannel Merchant survey. Among the two-thirds of respondents who indicated they were planning a site redesign in the next 12 months, some 42.3% said they would add video to their site. That makes it the second-highest priority, well behind social media tools but ahead of other popular Website enhancements including customer reviews and personalized recommendations.

“Retailers are making the case that videos boost their sales conversion rate, a measure of the increase in the percentage of shoppers who make a purchase after viewing a product video,” said Mr. Grau. “Retailers also claim videos reduce shopping cart abandonment rates and lower product return rates.”

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007709

La Belgique compte 80 nouveaux commerces en ligne chaque mois (Source: Dhnet.be / Ogone)

L’an dernier, Ogone a enregistré 6,9 millions d’achats sur des sites belges
BRUXELLES Environ 80 nouveaux magasins en ligne sont créés chaque mois en Belgique, indique la plate-forme de paiement Ogone mardi dans De Morgen. Il s’agit principalement de magasins existants qui franchissent le cap de l’internet. Grâce à l’offre croissante et à la possibilité de comparer les magasins entre eux, le secteur de l’e-commerce semble bien réagir face à la crise.
“Il s’agit surtout de petits magasins qui ont petit à petit estimé qu’il était bon d’être présent sur internet”, explique Pierre Willaert, directeur général d’Ogone, dont le système de paiement est utilisé par 85% des magasins belges en ligne. “Mais plusieurs grandes chaînes de magasins franchissent aussi le cap de la vente en ligne.”

L’an dernier, Ogone a enregistré 6,9 millions d’achats sur des sites belges, ce qui représente, malgré la crise économique, une augmentation de 42% par rapport à 2007. Les magasins belges en ligne ont dégagé un chiffre d’affaires total de 590 millions d’euros grâce à leurs activités en ligne.

Kindle Competitor – The Nook (Source: Businessinsider)

It’s a relief to finally lay hands on the Nook. The dual-screen reader was just a prop at its unveiling so I’m happy to report it works (pretty) well. It can’t kill Kindle yet, but it’s an alternative worth considering.

Power through a quick, photo-based review→

A Two-Horse Race

Do this now: Disregard all other ebook readers on the market besides Nook and Kindle. Unless you plan to get all of your books from back-alley torrents, or stick to self-published and out-of-copyright PDFs, you are going to need a reader with a good content-delivery system, one it connects to directly via wide-area network. And as long as you’re set on e-ink as your preferred means of digital reading—and it’s still the choice that’s easiest on the eyes and the battery—you’re going to need a reader that isn’t crapped up with gimmicks that supposedly compensate for the slow display.

Sony messed up by putting a glare-inducing film over its screen to provide questionably beneficial touch controls; iRex avoided that, but made a “touch” interface that requires a stylus. Kindle plays it straight, developing a user interface that works well enough with physical buttons and e-ink (as long as you don’t use the “experimental” browser). Nook preserves the same pleasurable reading experience, but tucks in the capacitive-touch LCD screen for added control. In its 1.0 implementation, Nook is not as fast or as smooth as it should be, but already it’s showing that the second screen is not a gimmick.

Still, I need to get this out of the way: The second screen is not a sudden and miraculous cure for what ails ebook readers. It may prove to be, but B&N’s current implementation is conservative. As yet, there are too few occasions on the Nook when I notice an LCD feature and say “Kindle can’t do that.” In fact, the Kindle development team hasn’t been sitting on their asses—the latest firmware makes Kindle more sprightly than ever, with subtle but awesome user-interface improvements. But Barnes & Noble is itself promising round-the-clock enhancing, optimizing and debugging over the next few months, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were three or four updates pushed through the Nook by March—the first possibly before Christmas.

Does that mean it’s not ready now? Let me put it this way: If you are lucky enough to have pre-ordered one in the first wave for the Dec. 7 shipping, or patient enough to wait until mid-January for the next wave, you are going to get a gadget worth being excited about.

And when Barnes & Noble gets its in-store offers and book-lending operation underway, Amazon will have to step up, or sit down.

Big Screen, Little Screen

The first thing I noticed about the LCD was that it was too bright. E-ink is all about eyeball comfort, and I hadn’t really thought about how the LCD underneath would compromise that. Because you don’t want your eyes to have to adjust every time you look down and back up again, it turns out you want that thing a lot dimmer than you might if it was a standalone device. The automatic brightness adjuster isn’t really up to the job, but I found that by dialing it all the way down when reading in bed, and bumping it up a tad, like to 20%, when reading in sunlight, my eyes could look up and down without any annoyance.

The second thing I noticed about the LCD was how nice its keyboard was. Unlike the Kindle, the Nook’s keyboard is only visible when you need it, and as an iPhone user, I found it natural and accurate. The capacitive touch is a real boon, especially on a screen so small.

Besides the keyboard and assorted lists of settings and files, the little screen can display a directional pad for moving around text when highlighting or looking up words in the dictionary; it can give you a search box and a place to type notations; it can pop up the music player without leaving the page; it flows book covers in your library and in the store. And when the screen goes dark, you can make horizontal swipe gestures to turn the pages of the e-ink screen above.

Between the LCD and the e-ink screens is a little upside-down U, actually an “N” from the Nook’s logo. This is covered with a capacitive-touch layer too, and serves as the “home” button, which wakes up the LCD with a tap, and takes you to the home screen with a double-tap. (There are physical buttons, too: Two page-turn buttons on each side, and a power button on the top, which work as billed and have no hidden features.)

I found the capacitive interface to be handy, but it also revealed the bugginess of the early software. Scrolling could be sticky, tapping the home button or the screen occasionally did nothing, and using the directional pad to navigate text made me yearn for the Kindle’s physical mini-joystick. The biggest disappointment was the page-turning swipe gesture. It failed to work half the time I tried it, and when it did work, I noticed that it responded slower than pressing the physical page-turn buttons.

I raised all of these issues with Barnes & Noble, and fortunately they are on top of this. Fixing bugs and speeding up the UI are the primary goals for the first software revision, and I have no doubt that they will achieve their goals in due time, probably before most people can even buy their Nooks.

While U Read

The Nook won’t beat the Kindle if all that LCD is for is facilitating navigation—the interface isn’t a bad one, but in its current implementation, it’s just an alternative, not an upgrade. The way B&N will beat Amazon is by making that damn screen do crazy stuff. It should start by targeting people who read while doing 12 other things.

Me, I require concentration to get through a page, and even music is a distraction. But for some people, it’s not hard to read a book while jamming to tunes, periodically glancing at news tickers, and responding to email or text messages. This is the promise of Nook’s second screen.

It already does this to some extent. The music player isn’t much yet—and has a few kinks B&N is still working out, like automatically and unpleasantly alphabetizing all your songs—but it’s a real applet, unlike the Kindle’s. On the Kindle, you type Alt-Space to get a song to play, and you click F to advance to the next song. That’s about it. With the Nook, you can load up songs and then scroll through them all, picking one you want to hear, or shuffling the tracks. There’s no physical volume button, but you can pull up a slider to adjust it, and another slider to jump around a song. And you can do all of this without leaving the page of your book.

But when you look up a word in the dictionary, the definition pops up on the e-ink screen, not the LCD. When you get an error message, again, the pop-up is on the e-ink. Barnes & Noble designated the e-ink as the place where all “reading” would be done, and that includes messages and sidebar content. I disagree with this, if only because the second screen seems tailor-made for alerts and other pop-up info.

The second screen is also a place for third-party developers to create fun and unexpected applets. Barnes & Noble loves to remind reviewers and customers alike that this baby is powered by Android: In other words, Nook may not look like a Motorola Droid, but developers could write apps for it just as easily.

Right now, the integrated Wi-Fi doesn’t feel like much of a bonus. (Though it offers certain benefits when abroad, it only works with Wi-Fi networks that don’t require a pop-up webpage. Free or not, those are few and far between.) But Wi-Fi means that developers could write internet apps without fearing a crackdown by AT&T, which provides the no-fee wireless connectivity. Paging Pandora!

Built on Bricks and Mortar

When it comes to shopping for books (and reading them), the Nook is the Kindle’s equal, and may soon leverage Barnes & Noble’s 800 physical locations to knock it out of first place. I was not able to test these features, because they are only starting to roll out this week, but when you take a Nook to a B&N, it will automatically jump on the store’s Wi-Fi network, and offer you free goodies—not just downloads but cookies from the café and other treats. Soon, there will be a way to skim an entire ebook while you’re in the store, too. You might say, “Big deal, if I’m in the store, I’ll just look at the real book.” But that’s just the point: How nice will it be to compare real and ebook editions before you buy? I asked B&N about bundles of real book and digital download, and they said discussions with publishers are underway.

Needless to say, one of the biggest advantages the Nook has over the Kindle is the chance for people to touch it before buying it. B&N will start showing off Nooks this week, and will add a few more ebook readers to its lineup, too. People who were afraid of taking the plunge will see the benefits and buy.

(My pet theory as to why Sony and others have sold any ebook readers at all in the US is that they appear in retail locations, unlike Kindle. Because if anything but the Nook was showcased side-by-side with the Kindle in a showroom, the decision to go with Amazon would be easy.)

Barnes & Noble has adopted a more natural attitude toward the books they sell, too, allowing you to access what you buy via ebook readers on Macs and PCs, iPhones and BlackBerrys (and in a few months, Android phones) as well as the Nook. Amazon has an iPhone app but as yet there’s no way to read your Kindle book purchases on your own computer, and is now (finally) rolling out PC and Mac Kindle clients, as well as a BlackBerry app.

Speaking of Kindle downloads, some noise has been made about Kindle books being cheaper than B&N ebooks, but Barnes & Noble says that they are in the process of correcting their prices, basically evening them all out so that they’re no higher than Amazon’s. In my own experience, I found David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest for $10 and George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones for just $7. I was pretty pleased, though I was a tad annoyed that sales tax wasn’t included in the base price. Be warned there.

Lending is another non-Kindle function rolling out this week that I’ll be following up on. You select a book from your collection, lend it to someone listed in your Nook contacts, and they receive a message via email and on their Nook’s “Daily” screen, where periodicals, offers and other notices show up. When they accept, they can read the book for two weeks. During that time, you can’t read it, and when it reverts back to you, they get a notice to buy. You can’t lend the same book to the same person twice.

You can also lend books to someone who doesn’t have a Nook, to read on their computer or iPhone or BlackBerry, though the notification only comes from email. (Expect a radically redesigned iPhone client in January with lending and other features.) The new readers from iRex and Plastic Logic will include the Barnes & Noble store, and all your purchases will be accessible on those devices. However, at this point, those two devices won’t have the lending capability.

Work in Progress

If I haven’t said much about reading books on the Nook itself, it’s because it feels very much like a Kindle, right down to the page-turn buttons. The screen is the same—there’s no discernible difference whatsoever.

Aesthetically, the Nook is better looking, less busy, with a more proportionate bezel (and a wee bit more girth). I like the gray rubber backing as much as I loved in on the original Kindle—I still don’t know why Amazon abandoned that.

The only hardware bummer was the sound of the integrated speakers—Kindle beats Nook here (soundly?), but since both have a 3.5mm jack for headphones, it’s mostly a moot point.

The hardware is fully baked, but as I have mentioned the software isn’t. Aside from the stickiness of the interface and the flaws in the music player, I found a definite bug in the highlights-and-notes system. I have already listed a what feels like a hundred tiny gripes, but I still have more, like why isn’t there AAC playback? And why do I have to get to the home screen to see the clock? (Kindle now shows the time with a single tap of the Menu button, no matter where you are.) I do know why there’s no Audible DRM support—because even the devices that supposedly support Audible files don’t support the ones most people buy from iTunes, so it’s a confusing mess for customers. But I’d still expect the nation’s biggest bookstore chain to get serious about audiobooks.

The great thing is that the fixes will come fast and steady, and like the iPhone, this thing will grow. For those of you who took the plunge already, I don’t need to tell you to be careful with 1.0 software, because as early adopters you are prepared. And for those of you who missed out on the first batch, guess what? That just means you can wait for the key bugglies to get fixed before you pony up $259. And for those who went for the Kindle this season instead? Congratulations, you have a very nice ebook reader too—for exactly the same price.

In fact, if you have to pick one right now, stick with the Kindle. It’s a tough call, because I see a lot of potential in Nook that might not be in Kindle, but damn if the Kindle hasn’t grown to comfortably inhabit its e-ink skin. As long as you don’t expect apps and extras on a Kindle, it delivers the best ebook experience there is at this moment. And it just went international. But while the limitations of a Kindle are clear, the limitations of the Nook are hazier, presumably further out.

For now, no one will laugh at you for owning either, though you will now surely be ridiculed for spending $400 on a Sony with glare issues, or—pardon me, iRex—anything that requires a stylus. And since many third-party readers are going with the Barnes & Noble store, you’d be dumb to buy any of them instead of the Nook. That may change in the future (can you believe I made it this far without mentioning Apple Tablet?) but for now, in the ebook department, there’s just these two big dogs surrounded by a bunch of poodles.

Merchants & Affiliates (source: MarketingSherpa)

Competition between companies and their affiliates is natural. Affiliates can be very effective at creating revenue-generating traffic through search so there’s an inherent tension in the system. See the main attitudes/policies with which merchants attempt to deal with this issue.

Merchant Affiliate Search Engine Marketing Policies — 2009 vs. 2007

Click here to see larger, printable version of this chart

With the advent of search marketing came the problem of competition between companies and the affiliates with whom they have, hopefully, symbiotic relationships. It’s in an affiliate’s best interests to generate search traffic using the most alluring keyword terms, and these are often branded, including the company name itself. Merchants for their part generally want to take full advantage of those same terms and to avoid ‘paying twice’ for affiliate search-driven clicks that they feel would have come to them anyway based on the keyword.

At the same time, affiliates can be very effective at creating revenue-generating traffic through search (some merchants simply cede paid search to their affiliates) so there’s an inherent tension in the system.

Above we see the main attitudes/policies with which merchants attempt to deal with this issue. Interestingly, the number of them who completely reserves brand/trademarked terms has dropped in favor of more nuanced approaches:

Offering specific terms to affiliates. This solution carves off specific terms that aren’t obviously navigational (BestBuy, BestBuy.com, etc.) and allows some or all affiliates to use them in the search marketing.

Limiting terms to the elite. As we saw in figures 3.20 and 3.21, a small number of affiliates tend to produce the lion’s share of revenue, and these elites are given the right to use some or all trademarked/branded terms. Another advantage of this is that monitoring and oversight are somewhat easier.

Placing bid limits. This tactic attempts to reduce competition in the never ending auction for ad placement. This speaks to the efficiency of some affiliates, which have determined that they can make money at keyword prices higher than the merchant itself.

Free reign. For some, the decrease in ROI because of the affiliate ‘cut’ is balanced against affiliates overall success and the affiliates become the ersatz search marketing arm of the merchant.