MediaBistro

Did you know that almost three-quarters (71 percent) of internet users are more likely to purchase from a brand that they are following on a social networking site such as Twitter or Facebook?

Indeed, social media now accounts for almost one-quarter (22.5 percent) of all time that U.S. citizens spend online, and this weight of activity transcends down to all levels – an incredible 91 percent of searchers say that they use Facebook to find local businesses online.

These, and other amazing social media statistics, can be seen in the infographic below.

Forbes

There¹s an awful lot of excitement in the digital publishing world around native advertising and a lot of new marketing dollars being spent on ads that blend seamlessly with or mimic the forms of content. What there¹s not an awful lot of is proof that native ads actually do what they¹re supposed to do, or even consensus on exactly what that is. A new study by Sharethrough and the IPG Media Lab provides some of the former while raising new questions about the latter.

The study surveyed 4,770 consumers on their responses to native ad formats, with 200 of the participants agreeing to have their eye movements tracked as they looked at different arrangements of ads and content. The results overwhelmingly backed up the central contention of companies like Sharethrough, which helps publishers push their native ads across different platforms: that readers are more likely to pay attention to marketing messages that resemble the content around them.

³As far as we could tell from all the things we measured, it was pretty much an equivalent level of engagement for content and native ads,² says Chris Schreiber, VP of marketing and communications at Sharethrough.

To quantify that, study subjects were 25% more likely to look at a native ad than they were at a banner, and they looked at them 53% more frequently, checking them out 4.1 times per session on average, versus 2.7% for banners.

The only metric in which banners significantly outperformed native ads was in brand recall, where they enjoyed a 38% to 25% advantage. Schreiber says the study authors weren¹t surprised ³because, if you think about it, a banner ad is just a big logo, typically.²

Read more… 

IDC Press Release

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. – As demand for Big Data technology and services continues to escalate, all levels of the Big Data technology stack will experience significant growth. Storage is a critical piece of the infrastructure component, increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53% between 2011 and 2016. International Data Corporation (IDC) has just published two in-depth studies – Storage for Big Data: Insight Into Usage Patterns(IDC #240372) and Influencers in Deployment of Storage for Big Data (IDC #240451) – built on findings from its first-ever survey on storage infrastructure for Big Data and analytics (BD&A).

The amount of data generated, processed, and stored by most organizations will continue to grow aggressively for the foreseeable future. “Storage will be one of the biggest areas of infrastructure spending for Big Data and analytics environments over the forecast period,” said Ashish Nadkarni, Research Director, Storage Systems. “Revenue from storage consumed by BD&A environments will increase from a mere $379.9 million in 2011 to nearly $6 billion in 2016. This growth will come largely from capacity-optimized systems (including dense enclosures), however, software-based distributed storage systems with internal disks to store post-processed data will also be embraced by some users.”

For the full release click here

IDG Global Solutions

84% of the Global Online Population Watch Video
Rapid growth in video consumption has created new opportunities for marketers to reach their target audiences.  The new infographic from IDG provides a quick snapshot of the market and highlights five key areas.

Video@IDG
With 150M video streams per month, and over 800+ videos produced each year, IDG reaches IT Decison Makers by syndicating videos and building video distribution platforms that run on IDG’s owned, operated and managed web, mobile and tablet sites.

[click for full view]

IDG Enterprise

IDG Enterprise’s 2013 Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise Research Details Main Stream Adoption of Mobile Devices, the Increasing Use of Business Apps and Cloud and Security Challenges

ClickZ

If I hear “SaaS” or “cloud” in the news one more time, I’m going to scream! Cloud computing has become a hugely overused buzzword over the past few years, although probably for good reason. Cloud companies have taken the technology world by storm, and have seen growth rates unlike any other sector in software. So why not study their adoption of marketing technologies to see if they are changing the way they go to market just as much as they are changing the tech world?

Software as a service (SaaS) had such an immediate impact because it allowed companies to use software over the Internet. Instead of large, upfront capital investments in hardware and software, companies could simply pay a monthly “lease” and use software via the Internet. Gmail is a great example of a SaaS technology. In the list of the largest SaaS companies, you might also recognize companies like Salesforce.com, VMware, and ExactTarget. Taking a closer look at the 17 largest SaaS companies can give us some interesting insight into adoption trends when it comes to marketing technologies.

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IDG Global Solutions

The US and western Europe make up a major share of digital spending but other regions are growing more quickly. IDC’s Karsten Weide has been tracking ad spend for several years. He spoke at the BtoB Digital Edge conference in March 2013 in San Francisco. At the event, IDG Global Solutions Director Howard Sholkin asked Weide to talk about the important regions for marketers…..

B2C

Email Still Isn’t Dead!

There were 1.3 billion Google search results for the phrase “email is dead” when I sat down to write this. Even though some may think that the era of connecting with consumers via their inbox is over, the numbers tell a very different story. Email is actually better than it’s ever been before, and companies who take advantage of the growing need for mobile-optimization and the very latest stats on best practices could see an ROI that makes interruption marketers want to cry.

As the public’s adoption of mobile technology and the Internet continues to grow, email marketing has proven to be one of the most rapidly changing fields within the arena of marketing. If you needed any more evidence that marketing is really a game for the most nimble, take the following stats to heart:

 Read more…

Content Marketing Inst./IDG

BtoB daily news

Technology companies continue to ramp up spending on paid search campaigns, driven by such pressures as international expansion and greater investments in content marketing, mobile and video. According to a report by search agency Covario Inc., ³Global Paid Search Spend Analysis,² spending on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising by its enterprise technology, consumer electronics and retail clients rose 15% in the fourth quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2011; for the year, the increase was 18% over 2011.

Paid search advertising on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, continued to accelerate throughout the year, with mobile PPC spending up 30% in the fourth quarter year-over-year. Last year, 36% of mobile ad spending was for advertising on smartphones and 64% for advertising on tablets.

Covario said there is “higher purchase affinity” among users of tablets.

“We are seeing our tech customers really invest in the mobile experience,” said Mike Gullaksen, Covario senior VP-managing director. “They are building out mobile as a full experience versus just a simplified desktop experience.”

Continue reading…