Green Tuesday is the Heaviest Online Spending Day of 2009
The Tuesday after the Green Monday gave a pleasant surprise clocking $913 million of total online sales, claiming the only day to have crossed $900 million. However, Green Monday (14th December) was disappointing with a negative growth of 1% when compared to 2008. Green Tuesday’s sales grew by a remarkable 21% when compared to the previous year’s online sales of $754 million. The two days following the Tuesday (15th December) also marked a considerable increase in sales when compared to previous year.

According to the industry experts, 17th December is the usual last day of offering free shipping for Christmas shopping by many online retailers. Holding until the last minute deals, online buyers did brisk purchasing in the last three days of the deals to grab the opportunity. This peculiar behavior by online shoppers resulted in some surprises in the sales value of the days following Green Monday.

2009 Top 10 Online Spending Days Vs 2008 Top 10 Online Spending Days
The top 10 online spending days in 2009 were 15th December, 30th November (Thanks Giving Day), 1st, 16th, 14th, 10th, 8th, 17th, 3rd and 2nd of December respectively.  Top nine individual days out of top ten days collected more than $800 millions each. Unlike last year’s comparable period where all the top ten days belongs to December, this year’s 30th November found a slot among the highest online spending days of the season. The total sales for 2009’s top ten online spending days reached $8,509 millions when compared to $8,056 millions of 2008 increasing by 5.62%.

Free Shipping Emerged as a Key Factor of Online Purchasing This Season
ComScore’s data reveals that free shipping grew as an important driver of online shopping throughout the 2009 holiday season. Online shoppers intentionally waited until they get free shipping offer from the retailers to purchase online. The volume of shopping that included free shipping increased considerably when compared to 2008’s holiday season.

Many factors contributed to the growth of this year’s online holiday sales. The major reasons include increasing consumer confidence, heavy snowfall, deep discounting, aggressive marketing activity, and overall positive cues from the economy. According to industry experts, the coming quarters are crucial to judge whether the optimism is temporary confining to only the holiday season or can continue in 2010 further recovering from the recession.

Marvist is an Internet advertising agency providing Internet marketing services to help companies to increase online sales and improve their profitability. Marvist was founded in 2005 and has been rapidly growing since then and has clients now in 11 countries including USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

First time drop in since last six years in Q3 revenues
If we observe trend of Q3 online advertising revenues, dropped by first time since last six years on year over year comparison. The online revenues 2004 to 2009 were $2.33billion, $3.14 billion, $4.78 billion, $5.26 billion, $5.9 billion and $5.5billion respectively. So this was the first drop because of economic crisis impact.

But if we look at statistics of the consumer online spending, according to the US department of commerce report consumers spent $34billion on online during the third quarter of 2009. This is an increase of 4.5percentage from q2’09 and 1.8percentage year over year comparison.

2008 first three quarters revenues vs 2009 first three quarters revenues
The total online revenues for first three quarters of 2008 were $17.4billions. This year because of economic crisis the revenues were almost reached by $16.39billions for first three quarters. Decreases by 5.8percentage compare to the last year first three quarters online revenues. The revenues were $5.46billion, $5.43billion and almost $5.5billion for first three quarters of 2009.
Same times in 2008 first three quarters revenues were $5.76billion, $5.74billion and $5.9billion.

2008 first half revenues vs 2009 first half revenues
According to the IAB report Internet advertising revenues were $10.9 billions in the first half of the year, declined by 5.3percentage compare to the last year during the same period. The revenues were $11.5 billions for first six months of 2008.

From the IAB online advertising revenue report for first half of 2009, Search and display related advertising continuing the top potions in revenue generation. Search ad revenue were on top with totaled $5,148million with 47percentage from total revenues and slight improvement from last year same period. Display related ad revenues included banner ads, rich media, digital video and sponsorship totaled $3,759million with 34percentage total revenues with second position. But declined by 1.1percentage compare to the last year same period.

Other formats like classified ads revenues totaled $1,116million, declined by almost 31percentage. Lead generation format revenues totaled $728millions declined by 9.6percentage. And E-mail ads revenues totaled $149millions declined by almost35percentage. The revenues in 2008 for search advertising, display related group advertising, online classifieds, lead generation and e-mail ads were $5,064billions, $3,799billions, $1,611billions, $806billions and $230billion respectively.

So far fourth quarter of 2008 online advertising revenues were on top
According to the IAB report if observed the quarter wise trend, fourth quarter of 2008 and fourth quarter of 2007 were on top positions in terms of total quarter revenue generation. The revenues were $6.1billion and $5.96billion revenues for Q4’08 and Q4’07.

So far fourth quarter of every year generating highest revenues in a year. Since it consists holiday season, so we may expect this year also some high revenues will come up for last quarter of the year.

Marvist is an Internet advertising agency providing Internet marketing solutions to help companies to increase online sales and improve their profitability. Marvist was founded in 2005 and has been rapidly growing since then and has clients now in 11 countries including USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Search ad continue as the top revenue generator
Search advertising revenue accounted 47% in first six months of 2009. Display ads and classifieds are next to search advertising respectively. In absolute numbers, search ad revenues totaled $5.1 billion for the first six months of this year, with no change reported in the corresponding period of 2008. However, the share in the total Internet advertising increased by 1.7% as the other segments’ share decreased. This shows that, there is no improvement in search ad revenue. The only difference is in terms of search advertising revenue percentage in the total revenue.

The most costly online display advertising revenues declined by 1.1% in the first half of 2009 when compared to the first half of 2008. The total revenues were $3.8 billion with 34% in first six months of 2009. The display related advertising revenues including banner ads generated $2,394 million with 22% of the total Internet advertising revenues. Rich media generated $704 million with 7% share, digital video ads generated $477 million with 4%, and sponsorship ads generated $184 million with 2% of total Internet ad revenues.

First time negative trend in first half revenues in 2009, since 2002
If the historical revenues trends are observed during the last seven years, for the first time there was a negative trend in year over year revenue growth in 2009 first half. The revenues were $2,978 million in 2002, $3,292 million in 2003, $4,590 million in 2004, $5,787 million in 2005, $7909 million in 2006, $9,993 million in 2007, $11,510 million in 2008 and $10,900 million in 2009. Earlier a negative growth trend was seen in 2000-2001 and 2001-2002. This trend appeared three times in the last ten years and first time in the last seven years.

Overall, search advertising revenues show positive trend, though there is a drop across all other advertising format revenues in the first half of 2009. It indicates that people who invested in search advertising got better revenues when compared to others who invested in other online advertising formats.

Marvist is an online advertising agency providing Internet marketing consulting consulting to help companies to increase online sales and improve their profitability. Marvist was founded in 2005 and has been rapidly growing since then and has clients now in 11 countries including USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Media Wise Ad Spending
Across all the advertising media, Internet Display ads (+6.5%) and FSI’s (+4.6%) were the only categories that showed positive expenditure growth. Other media such as Print declined in large values within its subcategories and resulted in aggregate decline of 24.2% for Newspaper media and 20.9% for Magazine media. TV segment also portrayed an overall decline of 10%. In addition, total spending in Radio media was down 24.6% due to ongoing weakness in automotive, retail, and local service businesses.

Category Wise Ad Spending
The ten largest advertising business categories spent nearly $34 billion, a drop of 14.5% from 2008. Among the top ten advertising categories, Telecom (7.5%) and Restaurants (0.6%) maintained positive trend in during the period. The top categories that had negative trends are Automotive (top spender on advertising by category) declined 31.1%, Financial Services by 24.3%, Local Services & Amusements by 15.8%, and Direct Response by 14.3%.

Ad spend on Internet and Increased in Pharmacy Industry
Drugmakers cut consumer advertising for prescription drugs by 7.8% to $2.3 billion for the first half of 2009 over the same period in 2008. During the same period, spending on TV advertising down by 6% to $1.5 billion, Magazine ad spending dropped 20% to $610 million and newspapers ad spend dropped 33% to $49million. However, spending on Internet increased by 205% to $119 million, along with Radio by 83% to $17 million.

Overall, spending on Internet advertising during the first half of 2009 compared to the same period of 2008 is notable. Biggest traditional advertising media such as print and TV is on the quick slide, where as the new and innovative categories such as Internet and free standing insert advertising are gaining popularity.

Marvist is an Internet advertising agency providing Internet marketing solutions to help companies to increase online sales and improve their profitability. Marvist was founded in 2005 and has been rapidly growing since then and has clients now in 11 countries including USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

A majority of the respondents said that online reviews of a product or service given by the earlier users have an influence on their purchasing decision. 84% of the Americans say online reviews have influence on their purchasing behavior. But interestingly, only 24% of the respondents said that they posted a review on a product or a service. This means, a small portion of people are influencing a majority of the people’s buying behavior. Therefore, the people who write reviews are more vital in online publicity and ultimately in the process of online purchasing.

People are finding online forums helpful in learning about a product or a service. According to the report, 66% of the respondents said that they have visited some type of online forum while they are looking to purchase a specific brand of product or service. Company websites are popular among the forums with 71% of the respondents’ visit and is followed by online rating systems and government/consumer advocacy systems with 57% and 54% respectively.

In a similar survey done by Rubicon Consulting, it is revealed that online reviews are only next to word-of-mouth publicity in influencing the purchasing decision. Around 20% of the respondents said that online reviews influence strongly, where as, it is 35% for word-of-mouth. Article published in a magazine/newspaper comes next with just more than 10%.

It is also found that 80% of the user generated content on the Web is produced by only 9% of the online population, who are termed as ‘most frequent contributors’. This point vindicates that small portion of the active participants dominate the user generated content. They are actively followed by the majority of the people who read the content and get influenced rather than contributing it.

User generated content is getting more and more important, as people trust on the feedback given by their fellow users. User generated content which is a result of social networking will gain more importance in the marketing and promotion strategies of the companies online as well as offline.

Marvist is an Internet advertising agency providing Internet marketing services to help companies to increase online sales and improve their profitability. Marvist was founded in 2005 and has been rapidly growing since then and has clients now in 11 countries including USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.