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Pew Chronicles the Public’s Knowledge of Current Events: A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep

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NewsIQ Research from the Pew Research CenterAll right, folks. Are you prepared to be depressed?

The Pew Research Center for People and the Press has just published the results of its annual News IQ survey in which it asks members of the U.S. public a baker’s dozen questions about current events.

A total of ~1,000 people were surveyed by the Pew Research Center in mid-November. The multiple choice survey covered a mix of political, economic and business issues and included the questions shown below. (The percentages refer to how many answered each multiple choice question correctly).

 The company running the oil well that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico (BP) … 88% answered correctly
 The U.S. deficit compared to the 1990s (larger) … 77% correct
 The political party that won the 2010 midterm elections (Republicans) … 75% correct
 The international trade balance (U.S. buys more than it sells) … 64% correct
 The current U.S. unemployment rate (10%) … 53% correct

 The political party that will control the House of Representatives in 2011 (Republicans) … 46% correct
 The state of Indian/Pakistani relations (unfriendly) … 41% correct
 The category on which the U.S. Government spends the most dollars (defense) … 39% correct
 The name of the new Speaker of the House (John Boehner) … 38% correct
 The name of Google’s mobile phone software (Android) … 26% correct

 The amount of TARP loans repaid (more than 50%) … 16% correct
 The name of the new Prime Minister of Great Britain (David Cameron) … 15% correct
 The current U.S. annual inflation rate (1%) … 14% correct

The percentage of respondents who answered all questions correctly was … fewer than 1%. Ten questions? … just 6% answered correctly. Eight of the questions? … only 22%.

On average, respondents answered just five of the 13 questions correctly. Even college graduates scored relatively weak, with an average of just seven questions answered correctly.

The public appears to be best informed on basic economic issues such as the unemployment rate and the budget deficit, while nine in ten respondents correctly identified BP as the corporate culprit in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill event. Not surprisingly, these were among the biggest news stories of the past several quarterly news cycles.

The worst scores were recorded on the TARP program and the current inflation rate, which fewer than one in five respondents answered correctly (about the same as the David Cameron/UK question which people could be forgiven for answering incorrectly).

You can view detailed results from the survey, including breakouts by age, gender, race and political party affiliation. Not wishing to step into a thicket by editorializing on these differences, I’ll leave it to you to see for yourself by clicking through to the Pew findings on your own.

Pew concludes that while Americans are aware of “basic facts” regarding current events, they struggle with getting a good handle on the specifics.

Might this be a byproduct of how people are consuming news these days? After all, there’s far less reliance on newspapers or news magazine articles … and more emphasis on “headline news” and short sound bites.

That’s the sort of recipe that results in people knowing the gist of a story without gaining any particular depth of understanding beyond the headlines.

Now that you’ve seen the correct answers to the questions, you won’t be able to test yourself against the public at large, so I’ve kind of spoiled the fun. But a little honesty here: how well do you think you would have scored?

Online Display Ad Clickthrough Rates Finally Bottom Out … Near the Bottom

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Online Display Ad Clickthrough Rates Bottoming Out
Online display ad clickthrough rates have stopped declining ... bottoming out at 0.09%.
The latest news in online display advertising is that ad clickthrough rates have now leveled off after an extended period of decline – one that was exacerbated by the economic downturn.

So reports digital media marketing firm MediaMind (Eyeblaster). According to a report released this past week, one key reason for the decline being arrested is the greater sophistication of advertisers in targeting online advertising to audiences and groups that are more likely to be interested in them.

That being said, the overall clickthrough rate has leveled off at an abysmal 0.09%.

That is correct: less than one tenth of one percent. In any other business, this would be a rounding error.

If that statistic seems difficult to believe, consider this factoid: The average Internet user in America is delivered more than 2,000 display ads over the course of a single month. We might think that users would be inclined to click on more than just two or three of these ads during a month’s time.

But it’s important to realize that when users are in the mood to shop and buy, they’re typically going straight to the sites they like … or they’re using Google, Bing or some other search engine to find their way.

And it turns out there’s really no such thing as an “average” Internet user, anyway. Research conducted by digital marketing auditing and intelligence firm comScore, Inc. has found that around two-thirds of people on the Internet never click on any display ads during the course of a month. Moreover, only 16% of Internet users are responsible for around 80% of all clicks on display ads.

All the more reason why search marketing continues to be the online advertising powerhouse that it is. And why not? It’s putting your business in front of the customer when s/he is in “search-and-buy” mode … not when s/he’s doing something else.

Google: The Company Everyone Loves to Hate?

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Google, the company people love to hate?What is it about Google that gets people so riled up? After all, it’s a company that has revolutionized the ease in which we find and process information, not to mention the way we consume video content.

If that seems like an overstatement, just think back 15 years or so to how you once researched questions or searched for information … like trudging to the public library or placing “wish-and-wait-for” phone calls to other offices or government agencies.

Maybe we get frustrated with Google because even though the company’s informal slogan is “Don’t be Evil” … every time we turn around, it seems the company is saying or doing something to (deliberately?) engender consumer dissatisfaction.

Consider the comments of Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, who speaks often about the role of Google and how it relates to the personal privacy of consumers. There he goes, wandering from media outlet to media outlet, dropping bon mots — others might call them “verbal bombshells” — like these:

 “[Google is] building an augmented version of humanity, building computers to help human do the things they don’t do well, better.”

 “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can, more or less, know what you’re thinking about.”

 “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

What’s more, Mr. Schmidt seems to be digging in his heels on Google Maps. I’ve blogged before about this controversial initiative, as it began to become evident that Google was collecting more than just photos of people’s homes.

Just this past week, Google finally admitted that its Street View vehicles had been scooping up a lot more than just “meaningless fragments” of information from unsecured WiFi networks as it sweeps through neighborhoods. The digital harvest has included full e-mail addresses and passwords.

Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice president of engineering and research, seemed apologetic. “We are mortified by what happened,” he said.

But Eric Schmidt may have revealed the true feelings of the company when he suggested on CNN’s Parker-Spitzer program that the people who don’t like Google’s Street View vehicles taking pictures of their homes “can just move.”

Of course, complaining about Google is a great armchair activity that may be little more than petting grousing. I know of few (if any) people who would be willing to forego the benefits that Google’s vaunted information and content engine delivers.

Going forward, it does appear that Google may be a bit more receptive to the concerns people have expressed. This past Friday, the company announced that it has appointed a new “director of privacy” across its engineering and product management. Reportedly, Alma Whitten, the person appointed to this position, will be focusing on building privacy controls into products and internal practices.

We’ll see how that goes.

What’s Happening with Web Search Behaviors?

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Search EnginesMore than 460 million searches are performed every day on the Internet by U.S. consumers. A new report titled 2010 SERP Insights Study from Performics, an arm of Publicis Groupe, gives us interesting clues as to what’s happening in the world of web search these days.

The survey, fielded by Lancaster, PA-based ROI Research, queried 500 U.S. consumers who use a search engine at least once per week, found that people who search the Internet regularly are a persistent lot.

Nine out of ten respondents reported that they will modify their search and try again if they aren’t successful in their quest. Nearly as many will try an alternate search engine if they don’t succeed.

As for search engine preference, despite earnest efforts recently to knock Google down a notch or two, it remains fully ensconced on the top perch; three-fourths of the respondents in this survey identify Google as their primary search engine. Moreover, Google users are less likely to stray from their primary search engine and try elsewhere.

But interestingly, Google is the “search engine of choice” for seasoned searchers more than it is for newbies. The Performics study found that Google is the leading search engine for only ~57% of novice users, whereas Yahoo does much better among novices than regular users (~36% versus ~18% overall).

What about Bing? It’s continuing to look pretty weak across the board, with only ~7% preferring Bing.

The Performics 2010 study gives us a clear indication as to what searchers are typically seeking when they use search engines:

 Find a specific manufacturer or product web site: ~83%
 Gather information before making a purchase online: ~80%
 Find the best price for a product or service: ~78%
 Learn more about a product or service after seeing an ad elsewhere: ~78%
 Gather information before purchasing in-store or via a catalog: ~76%
 Find a location for purchasing a produce offline: ~74%
 Find coupons, specials, or sales: ~63%

As for what types of listings are more likely to attract clickthroughs, brand visibility on the search engine results page turns out to be more important than you might think. Here’s how respondents rated the likelihood to click on a search result:

 … If it includes the exact words searched for: ~88%
 … If it includes an image: ~53%
 … If the brand appears multiple times on the SERP: ~48%
 … If it includes a video: ~26%

The takeaway message here: Spend more energy on achieving multiple high SERP rankings than in creating catchy video content!

And what about paid or sponsored links – the program that’s contributing so much to Google’s sky-high stock price? As more searchers come to understand the difference between paid and “natural” search rankings … fewer are drawn to them. While over 90% of the respondents in this research study reported that they have ever clicked on paid sponsored listings, only about one in five of them do so on a frequent basis.

Google’s Instant Search: Instant Irritation?

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Google's Instant Search is a Non-StarterHow many of you have been noodling around with Google’s new Instant Search functionality since its unveiling earlier this month? I’ve spent the better part of a week working with it, trying hard to keep a “completely open mind” as to its benefits.

I’ve finally came to the conclusion that … I can’t stand it. I’m a pretty fast typist, and generally know what I’m searching for. I really don’t need Google “pre-anticipating” search results for me, and find the constantly jumping search results window extremely off-putting to the point of distraction.

I gave Instant Search a full week … and couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve now elected to turn it off completely.

Wondering if I was the only one with this view … it certainly didn’t take long to find out that there are a great many people out there who feel the same way. You can use Google search (either the “instant” or “traditional” will do fine) to find any number of blog posts and user comments about Google Instant Search that are just one notch shy of mutinous — and hardly genteel in their choice of language. (A few examples can be found here and here and here.)

If the comments by disgruntled users are to be believed, Bing/MSN may find itself with a nice little bump in search volume market share by the end of September.

And if that actually happens, Google Instant might die a quiet death – which wouldn’t be the first time Google laid an egg in its “throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks” approach to product development.

But if Google Instant does gain traction … there are some negative implications for search marketers as well. Many companies seek to structure their online marketing campaigns by determining the optimal amount of spending on search advertising, display ads and social media. The key to success in this endeavor is undertaking a process that examines the millions of cookies and billions of clicks that are made by web users, along with factoring in other elements like geographic location and time of day.

All of this information is weighed against the cost of various ads and the likelihood of success as they are served to the user. That’s determined by running regular models of millions of keywords and word combinations, judging the relative costs to determine the optimum frequency. For some of the most aggressive marketers, these models are run once or twice daily.

The advent of Google’s Instant Search scrambles all of that, because it makes the process even faster and more hectic than before. As those of you who have experimented with Instant Search know, you start seeing “suggested” search results with just the first one or two keystrokes … and those choices continue to change with each new keystroke made or movement of the cursor down the list of Google’s suggestions. For marketers, the result is a lot more velocity on the ad side – and more price changes.

As proof of this, within the first few days of Instant Search’s launch, sites that Instant Search recommends after the first one or two letters are typed into the search box – “Mapquest,” “Ticketmaster” and “Pandora” are three useful examples – were experiencing significant increases in traffic, whereas their hapless competitors were not.

If that’s what is happening with the big boys, where does this put smaller businesses? The answer is obvious: They’re going to get squeezed big-time … and as a result, their search advertising costs are going nowhere but up.

Mighty sporting of you, Google.

Updating the Marketing “4 Ps”

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The Four Ps of MarketingIn business, we like our checklists and concise bullet points. It’s all part of our impulse to distill ideas and principles down to their essence … and to promote economy and efficiency in whatever we do.

In marketing and communications, it’s no different. Most everyone who’s studied business in school knows about the “4 Ps” of marketing: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion.

Today, that listing seems woefully incomplete and inadequate – even quaint. Stepping in to fill the void are additional attributes that have been proffered by marketing specialists. Several of these newer lists — one coined by Robert Lauterborn, a professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina, and another from technology marketing specialist Paul Dunay — consist of a group of marketing “Cs”: Consumer, Cost, Convenience, Content, Connection, Communication, and Conversion.

But I like a new group of “Ps” as popularized by Jennifer Howard of Google’s B-to-B market group. She offers up five new “Ps” of digital marketing, and they go a long way toward filling the yawning gaps in the original list.

These new digital marketing attributes are Pulse, Pace, Precision, Performance, and Participation.

Beyond the fact that fair dues should be given to anyone who manages to come up with an additional set of five new attributes that likewise begin with the letter “P,” they happen to be worthwhile additions to the original list, and they help bring it into the interactive era.

The new set of marketing “Ps” can be further described like this:

Pulse – active listening and attention to customer, brand and competitor insights.

Pace – the speed at which marketing campaigns are carried out is critical. “Slow and steady” usually doesn’t cut it.

Precision – assuring that marketing messages are delivered to the right customers … at the right time … and place (e.g., PC or mobile device).

Participation – creating conversations with customers via rich media ad formats and social media platforms to enable them to “join the conversation.”

Performance – meeting expectations for results that notch ever higher, via measurable and accountable marketing and media tactics.

In the world of digital marketing and e-commerce, marketers like to borrow a term from the realm of traditional retailing. It’s the “moment of truth,” and it was first coined by Procter & Gamble executives to describe those critical 10 to 20 seconds when someone is standing in a store aisle and making decisions on what to purchase and what to pass by.

In the online world, Google refers to this phenomenon as the “zero moment of truth” (ZMOT) – when a potential buyer interfaces with a brand or a product on a computer, smartphone or other digital device. Why zero? Because instead of 10 or 20 seconds, many people take only a split second to decide whether they’ll stay and engage … or whether to ditch and switch.

Microsoft’s “next of Kin”? None, evidently.

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Microsoft Kin logoPeople say that today’s digital world has dramatically shortened the business and product development cycle. But even so, the amount of time it took for Microsoft to pull its Kin social phone off the market – a mere six weeks after its launch – has to be a record, or close to one.

For those who missed this eye-blink of a product introduction, the Kin was supposed to be a major component in Microsoft’s efforts to become a player in the mobile market, in response to the success of Apple’s iPod and iPhone, as well as a variety of new smartphones that are powered by Google’s Android software.

The New York Times has reported that this latest development “is the latest sign of disarray for Microsoft’s recently reorganized consumer products unit.”

Amazingly, for a product that was in development for several years and reportedly represented a resource investment of well over $1 million, Microsoft sold only a relative handful of units during the Kin’s star-crossed six-week introduction. Reports of sales volume vary – from a few thousand units on the upper end to as few as 500 on the low end. Either way, it’s a stunning defeat for a company that up until a short time ago, seemed well on its way to being an important player in the field.

What was Kin’s problem? In a nutshell, consumers didn’t like the product nor the way it was being sold. Verizon, Microsoft’s service provider partner, priced Kin service agreements like a smartphone – at ~$70 per month when combined with the mandated voice plans. But many people felt that the platform was mediocre and didn’t possess anything near the functionality of a smartphone. “A feature phone, not a smartphone,” was the common complaint.

Some people are wondering if there’s a bigger story afoot: whether or not Microsoft is still committed to its Windows Phone 7 platform. It’s fallen so far behind iPhone and Android, what are its chances of success now?

And that’s not all the bad news for Microsoft on the consumer side of the business. Gizmodo is reporting that Microsoft has also cancelled a project to develop its Courier tablet computer that would have competed with the iPad.

This is just the latest in a string of Microsoft consumer initiatives that have basically fallen flat – Money, Encarta, and now the Kin and Courier.

Once, Microsoft would have hung in there for the long haul. It doesn’t seem so today.

Google’s Wi-Fi Data Collection Snafu

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One of the news items that’s been bounding about the web and on the airwaves in recent days concerns an admission by Google that it “screwed up” by gathering private wireless data while taking pictures for its Street View mapping initiative.

The mishap came to light first in Australia, where Google was caught capturing 600 gigabytes worth of wi-fi data from personal and business wireless networks without owners’ permission. Google has since been accused of unauthorized interception of user personal data including e-mails, audio and video, which potentially could be linked to specific addresses.

Google insists that the personal data were “inadvertently” collected during the street sweeps by its large fleet of vehicles cruising cities in more than 30 countries.

[For those who are unfamiliar with Google’s Street View mapping tool, you can view an example here by vicariously sauntering down quaint, quiet Robinwood Avenue in Detroit’s North End – home of the late, lamented Marabel Chanin, the most famous inner city resident you’ve never heard of.]

Some observers may be content to take Google management at its word that personal data were “mistakenly” gathered during its street sweeps – despite the fact that this blunder was evidently repeated in Germany, Italy, France, Denmark, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and the Czech Republic … as well as here in the U.S. in states like Connecticut and Missouri.

Consumer Watchdog calls Google’s action “a flagrant intrusion into consumers’ privacy.” And the Connecticut and Missouri attorneys general are now weighing in as well with their own investigations.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this story is not whether Sergey Brin, Larry Page and the other honchos at Google might or might not have nefarious plans for the use of personal wi-fi data. It’s the realization that such information can be collected at all.

And the next time, it might not be by such a benign organization.

What’s the latest news in this juicy story? Google reports that it has deleted only the personal data it collected in Ireland, Denmark and Austria. For the time being, it’s holding onto the rest.

YouTube channels McDonalds: “Billions and billions served.”

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YouTube logoIn case anyone doubts the significance of YouTube as a media platform … the video sharing service just announced that it is now serving in excess of 2 billion video views per day.

For an entity that’s barely five years old, this statistic is pretty incredible. But it becomes easier to believe when the full extent of YouTube’s video inventory is understood.

In fact, these days nearly 24 hours of video footage is being uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s more than 34,000 hours of video each day.

Plus, there appears to be no end in sight to the growth of YouTube’s video library, as the rate of uploading has increased by nearly 20% over the past year.

The fact that the vast majority of YouTube videos are hardly worth the time it takes to watch them makes little difference. Far more than Yahoo Video or Hulu, this site has become the “go-to” place for finding everything from old TV commercials to short clips from movies or shows. Or to engage in the guilty pleasure of browsing around and viewing everything from news anchor bloopers to boring college commencement speeches and embarrassingly bad student dance recitals.

Actually, the number of people who visit YouTube to “channel surf” is astonishingly large. It’s become the new pastime that TV watching once was.

And the “social” aspect of YouTube is important as well, as people love to pass links to their favorite videos on to their friends. Or to “broadcast yourself,” as the site’s tagline states. YouTube makes that process easy and effortless, contributing to the burgeoning inventory of new video material.

When Google acquired YouTube in 2009, more than a few industry observers wondered about the rationale behind the purchase and questioned the effectiveness of YouTube’s business model. Looking back one year on, it’s hard to understand what the fuss was all about!

And just yesterday, Google announced ambitious new plans for YouTube. It’s begun converting the entire library of videos to its new WebM video format that incorporates VP8, special codec compression software that facilitates the delivery of smooth, high quality video images.

In yet another swipe at its rivals, Google is offering VP8 royalty-free, in a bid to knock Flash (Adobe) and H.264 (Apple) platforms off their current top perch. Will they be successful? Well, based on history …

Search Engine Rankings: Page 1 is Where It’s At

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All the hype you continually hear about how important it is to get on Page 1 of search engine result pages turns out to be … right on the money.

In a just-released study from digital marketing company iCrossing, nearly 9 million “non-branded” search queries conducted on Google, Yahoo and Bing were analyzed, with the clickthrough percentages from the first, second and third pages of the search engine results (SERPs) tallied.

It turned out that more than 8.5 million clickthroughs were made from the first page of results – a whopping 95% of the total. The rest was just crumbs: Clicks off the second page came in under 250,000, while third-page clicks clocked in at a paltry ~180,000.

The results were essentially the same for the three major search engines (all at 95% or 96%) – so it’s a clean sweep across the board and clearly behavior that fits all across the spectrum.

What this suggests is that when searching on generic or descriptive terms, most people will not go past the first page of results if they can’t find a site link that interests them. If they don’t hit paydirt on the first page, they’re far more likely to try another search using different keywords or phrases until they find a site on Page 1 that does the trick.

Comparing this newest iCrossing study with research from a few years back reveals that Page 1 clicks represent an even higher proportion today; earlier studies from a few years back had it pegged at 80% to 90%.

The implications of this study are be clear: if you’re looking to attract visitors to your site via generic or descriptive subject searches, you’d better make sure your site is designed so that it achieves first-page ranking … or your web efforts will be for naught.

That being said, the recipe for success in ranking hasn’t changed much at all. Despite all of the tempting “link juice” tips and tricks out there, the main keys to getting high rankings continue to be creating loads of good web content … speaking the same “language” as searchers (however inaccurate that might be) … and maintaining lots of good links to and from your site to increase its “relevance” to search engines.

No doubt, it’s getting tougher to achieve Page 1 ranking when there’s so much competition out there, but it’s well worth the effort.