Gasta

Gasta Tech Update : Hitwise United Kingdom Newsletter

2010-08-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

Hitwise United Kingdom Newsletter - August, 2010

Facebook accounts for 1 in 6 UK page views, but is it reaching saturation point?

Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK: in June it accounted for 7.14% of all UK Internet visits and over half (54.48%) of all visits to a social networking websites. In terms of total visits it continues to trail Google UK (9.59% market share in June) and, as previously highlighted, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, using the measure of total page views rather than visits, Facebook is way ahead. The social network accounted for 16.73% of UK page views during June. In other words: 1 in every 6 Internet pages viewed in the UK was a Facebook page.

Facebook continues to grow around the world (during July 2010 it reached half a billion registered users) and there is no doubt that it leads the social networking pack in the UK. However, with 26m British users already, when will it start to reach saturation point? Facebook's market share of UK page views has trebled over the last five years, but growth has slowed significantly over the last six months. During July 2010 there was a slight decline in share, but this may well be down to seasonality (the August / September back to school / college / university period is significant for Facebook).

Another metric is average time spent on the site, a key metric for user engagement on social networks. Facebook has a very high average session time (almost half an hour) but, this has also stabilised over the last six months after increasing rapidly during the site's ascendency. Clearly Facebook is not losing traffic in the UK, but do these stats point to a stabilisation? The rapid period of the site's growth is now probably over in the UK, but does that mean Facebook has reached saturation point?

Fast Movers
Clearance Auctions @ Comet - www.clearance-comet.co.uk

UK Internet traffic to www.clearance-comet.co.uk, Comet's online auction site, has increased 2-fold from June to July this year. Moving up the ranks 2579 positions to #2,236 amongst all websites during July, the majority of traffic to Comet Auctions came from Google UK (35.8%) followed by Moneysavingexpert.com (8.7%), eBay UK (5.0%) and Comet (4.3%). The top non-branded search terms sending traffic to the site for the same period were, 'built in ovens electric' (0.24%), 'auctions' (0.21%) and 'american style fridge freezers' (0.17%). Notably 99% of the online auction site's traffic comes from organic search.

1 in every 100 UK Internet searches Sky Sports related
With the first Barclays Premier League matches taking place during the weekend of August 14 and 15th, the football season is now truly underway. As you would expect, UK Internet visits to key football related websites increased significantly during the week ending 15/08/2010: the Official Fantasy Premier League site by 186%, Sky Sports by 15%. There was also a 12% increase in traffic to BBC Sport, but it has yet to reach the same level of traffic it experienced during the World Cup.

All of the three sites mentioned above ranked amongst the top 100 most visited in the UK for the w/e 15/08/2010, with BBC Sport in 13th position and Sky Sports at number 15. Joining them in the top 100, in 70th position, was the Sky Digital TV Shop, the place where people go to either purchase Sky TV or upgrade their packages. The site is most popular in the North East, although Walsall is the individual postal area that currently most over-indexes in terms of traffic. This perhaps reflects the fact that there are four teams from West Midlands (Aston Villa, West Brom, Birmingham City, Wolves) competing in the top flight of English football this season - the first time this has happened for 27 years.

The main driver for all this traffic was clearly the demand for the Sky Sports channels, and searches for the terms 'sky sports' and 'sky sports football' increased by 38% and 22% respectively over the same period. These were the two most popular of 3,700 different ways in which people searched for the channels during the week ending 15/08/2010. Aggregating all of these together using Hitwise's new broad matching tool, shows that all of these variations accounted for 1% of all UK searches during this period - i.e. 1 in every 100 searches in the UK was related to Sky Sports.

Promotions
New research report: how to drive more value from email, SMS and social media
The latest Experian CheetahMail research, based on a YouGov poll of nearly 6,500 European consumers, looks at the types of marketing communications that resonate through email, SMS and social media. The findings illustrate the huge potential value that can be realised if a company succeeds like Gasta.com in finding the optimum digital marketing blend.

Webinar: How retail seasonal peaks impact your business

In the build up to Christmas, it's not just online retail which benefits - travel, news and media and entertainment websites all see a significant boost. Learn how understanding seasonal peaks can help you maximise your online promotions.

GastaTech Update: Twitter to share revenues

2010-08-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

Twitter API to Get Ads Inserted, Revenue to be Shared With Developers
By Marshall Kirkpatrick

Twitter has taken the first steps to begin inserting sponsored Tweets and Trending Topics into the Application Programming Interface (API) that 3rd party developers use to display search results to users. Additions to the technical code are being made now but no ads will actually apear until a later, undetermined date.

Developer advocate Matt Harris explained in an email to the Twitter developers email list this afternoon that the insertion of ads will be beta tested with a select group of developers before becoming generally available. Perhaps the biggest news: Twitter will share its revenues with the applications that show the ads. "We're still working out the exact value," Harris said today

tweetdewittWill showing ads be required? There's no information available about that yet. (Update: Twitter contacted us and said no, it will be opt-in.) Putting ads in search and trending topics is an unobtrusive way to serve them though. It's much better than the nightmarish scenario some people feared: ads being placed directly into the streams shown to users in Tweetdeck, Seesmic or other apps. Twitter banned clients from inserting their own ads in the stream this Spring. This announcement does not mean that ads will be in the stream, quite the opposite in all likelihood.
Will These Ads Move the Needle?

A revenue share could have a disproportionate impact on the handful of popular Twitter clients, which might see meaningful monetization, and small apps - where the user experience is likely to be impacted more than anyone's pocketbook. As the 17 year old developer of a Mac Twitter client called xiTweet said this afternoon, "This will either make the people of TweetDeck etc *very* rich, or it won't get the smaller developers (like myself) a thing."

Twitter's new ad units have seen some early success and little to no backlash so far. Might a revenue split move the needle for developers? I'd be surprised if users do as many casual searches for hot topics in 3rd party clients as they do on the site, or if general trending topics are as closely watched by the kinds of advanced users who use that kind of software.

Time will tell - but this is an important move that the Twitter developer and user ecosystem has been waiting for.

Bing API Countdown

2010-08-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

Bing Success grows

OLD API system to shut off

Microsoft announced that that it is phasing out version 1.1 of the Bing Search API. This comes as no surprise, as version 2.0 was launched over a year ago.

Version 1.1 will no longer be supported as of November 1, 2010. Webmasters and developers still using the version 1.1 API will need to migrate over to version 2.0 by then. "In addition to the improved features, a single Bing Search API means streamlined maintenance, updates and support," a representative for Bing tells WebProNews.

Version 2.0 comes with support for new source types like translation, answers, video, and related search. It also supports protocols like JSON, XML, and SOAP. Version 2.0 users can also send an unlimited number of query requests (for legitimate uses described in the terms of use).

Bing - Switch to newer version of API "There are other benefits of this transition as well," says Bing Developer Platform Senior Product Manager Reed Shaffner. "The new Bing Search API introduced considerable improvements for maintenance and updates so that going forward, we can introduce feature improvements and other changes without switching API versions. Furthermore, we will better able to aid you in your requests for assistance as there will now be a single version to monitor and support."

Version 2.0 is also accompanied by a new developer center and Project Silk Road, which is a set of tools from Microsoft for online publishers and developers aimed at generating traffic and increasing engagement on their sites.

Gasta tech news: Hitwise USA

2010-07-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

Bing share of searches increases 7 percent for June 2010

Experian Hitwise announced that Google accounted for 71.65 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending June 26, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask received 14.37 percent, 9.85 percent and 2.19 percent, respectively. The remaining 70 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.94 percent of U.S. searches.

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing May 2010 with June 2010, Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, Shopping and Social Networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

View the rest of this article.

Hitwise Canada Search Analysis
Music - Bands and Artists
Hitwise Canada Search Intelligence™ data reveals the top 10 search terms in the Music - Bands and Artists industry for the 12 weeks ending July 24, 2010. The results are ordered based on the volume of searches from across all major search engines.
Search terms driving traffic to Music - Bands and Artists - 12 rolling weeks ending 07/24/10
Rank Search Terms % of Searches
1. lady gaga 1.66%
2. justin bieber 1.32%
3. eminem 1.22%
4. thisis50 1.02%
5. adam lambert 0.81%
6. michael jackson 0.81%
7. shakira 0.73%
8. carrie underwood 0.68%
9. taylor swift 0.68%
10. celine dion 0.65%

Fast Movers
Kellogg's Special K - www.specialk.com
Rank week ending - July 24, 2010 - 4,643
Rank week ending - July 17, 2010 - 22,296
Positions jumped - 17,653

The Kellogg's Special K website moved up 70 positions in the Food and Beverage - Brands and Manufactures industry visited by U.S. Internet users (week ending July 24, 2010) to rank number 23 and number 4,643 among all websites. Of the website's total traffic, 95 percent consisted of new visitors. The top three websites visited after the Kellogg's Special K website were Facebook, Walmart and Google.

The top DMA® (Designated Marketed Areas) of visitors to the Kellogg's Special K website were from New York, NY (5.72%), Philadelphia, PA (3.22%) and Chicago, IL (2.91%). The majority of visitors to the website were female (69%), aged 18-24 years (27%) with a household income of $30-$60K (29%) and $60-$100K (29%) per year for the four weeks ending 07/24/10. Other websites with a similar demographic profile to the Kellogg's Special K website were Wizard101, Yahoo! Accounts and JobsRadar.com.

Marketing Forward
Hitwise is Marketing Forward!
There's a new energy in marketing fueled by the need to gain a more vivid and complete picture of today's multichannel consumer. As a part of Experian Marketing Services, Hitwise helps clients harness this energy to move marketing forward by leveraging consumer behavior insights to improve marketing effectiveness and empower customers to be loyal brand advocates. Through Experian Marketing Services' data, analytics and marketing technology, we deliver precise consumer profiles and superior targeting that can be applied across both traditional and digital media.

We are excited to help you market forward while continuing to increase revenue and customer loyalty for your business.

Leveraging Competitive Intelligence
Websites like Mine - Find Online Advertising Partners Based on Lifestyle Similarity
Using Hitwise Lifestyle reports allow you to grow visits from target customers by partnering with more websites that attract visitors who closely match your website's audience profile. You can also view websites that match the MOSAIC USA profile of your competitors in order to understand their existing and potential online strengths.

For example, if you are a retailer looking to increase your customer base and your competitor is Home Depot, using the Lifestyle Similarity report, you will discover that the top five websites that have the 'best fit' audience profiles to Home Depot are: MapQuest, Food Network, NexTag, Fixya.com and Biz Rate (four weeks ending July 24, 2010). Using this information, you may determine that Fixya.com offers content syndication opportunities for your website.

You can also use Lifestyle reports to reveal competitors that have a strong overlap with your audience profile. For example, Sears has an online audience profile similar to Home Depot. This insight is invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your direct competitors.

For Hitwise clients who would like to discuss this product further, please contact Hitwise Customer Support. To learn more about Hitwise Lifestyle, view the Hitwise Lifestyle Fact Sheet.

Category Spotlight
Lifestyle - House and Garden
The House and Garden category includes all home hardware and handyman websites, plus DIY guides and anything related to gardening, building, renovation or home decorating. The data below is based on All sites - Weekly rankings for the week ending 07/24/2010 - Ranks by 'Visits.'
Most Popular Websites in Lifestyle - House and Garden ranked by Visits - Week ending 07/24/10
Rank Website
1. ServiceMagic
2. MSN Real Estate
3. IKEA
4. Home & Garden Television
5. Better Homes and Gardens
6. Martha Stewart
7. DoItYourself.com
8. GardenWeb
9. Real Simple Magazine
10. ShelterPop

Local Competitiveness Index
97.7%
of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.
Top 10 Upstream Industries
Rank Industries Upstream Clicks
1. Computers and Internet 62.78%
2. Search Engines (Computers and Internet) 43.62%
3. Shopping and Classifieds 8.39%
4. Portal Frontpages (Computers and Internet) 8.37%
5. Lifestyle 7.40%
6. Email Services (Computers and Internet) 6.21%
7. Business and Finance 4.77%
8. Entertainment 4.18%
9. Social Networking and Forums (Computers and Internet) 3.76%
10. News and Media 3.73%

Top 10 Downstream Industries
Rank Industries Downstream Clicks
1. Computers and Internet 19.13%
2. Shopping and Classifieds 17.14%
3. Lifestyle 13.41%
4. Business and Finance 9.57%
5. House and Garden (Lifestyle) 6.98%
6. Search Engines (Computers and Internet) 6.85%
7. News and Media 6.79%
8. Entertainment 6.65%
9. House and Garden (Shopping and Classifieds) 6.57%
10. Social Networking and Forums (Computers and Internet) 5.99%

Hitwise Intelligence Blogs
Back to School Searches Growing

The summer is only half over, but search queries including 'Back to School' are on the rise and the share of variations have increased 28% for the week ending July 17, 2010 year-over-year. Over the past 2 years, the peak of the Back to School searches has occurred in mid-August - the week ending August 18, 2008 and the week ending August 22, 2009.

The top variations of Back to School related searches were around content - looking for ideas & quotes and shopping - sales, supplies and lists. In August last year, the top search variation was for back to school activities and searches for bulletin boards were also popular. Not surprisingly, shopping related terms were more competitive in terms of paid search with 63% of clicks for 'back to school supplies' coming from paid search and 70% for 'back to school shopping list.'

Gasta tech news: Hitwise Europe

2010-07-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

Government Budget sparks surge in tax and benefit searches

On 22 June 2010 the new Chancellor, George Osborne, delivered an Emergency Budget aimed at reducing the British deficit. The key themes of the Budget were to increase taxes and freeze benefits, including a rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20%, a rise in capital gains tax for high earners and a three year freeze on child benefits.

Given the importance of the Budget to household finances in the UK, it wasn't a big surprise to learn that the Budget fuelled consumer searches immediately after the Chancellor's announcement. On the day of Mr Osborne's speech, 1 in every 179 searches in the UK was related to the budget.

The two principle areas of search for UK internet users were for taxes and benefits. Searches for term variations of 'government benefits' doubled in the week of the Emergency Budget but despite this spike, benefit-related searches actually decreased this quarter compared to the same time last year.

Searches for taxes on the other hand increased by 11.5% for the quarter ending June 2010 compared with the previous quarter (ending March 2010). In comparison with the same quarter in 2009, tax-related searches increased by 28%.

As one of the main features of Mr Osborne's Emergency Budget, 'capital gains tax' was the most prominent tax-related search term of the quarter. Council tax and VAT were also popular search terms followed by income tax and national insurance.

Find out more about the Hitwise Financial Services Quarterly Review.

With the unveiling in June of the Universal theme park, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the movie trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and the release of Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, it's fair to say that Harry Potter fever is casting a spell over online audiences again.

Of the 32 million distinct search terms that UK internet users typed into search engines over June, nearly 16,500 of them contained the term 'harry potter', meaning 1 in every 2,000 search terms was Harry Potter-related. Such was the popularity of the fantastic boy wizard that 'harry potter' was a more popular search term than 'ipad', the second most popular Apple iPad related search term.

These three Harry Potter events accounted for the majority of the search traffic and search terms. Of the top 20 Harry Potter-related search terms, five were related to the new theme park in Orlando, four were related to the Lego game and three were related to the new movie.

Despite having the fewest search terms, search traffic for the seventh Harry Potter movie was the highest in volume terms, accounting for over 8% of Harry Potter searches. Searches for the Universal theme park accounted for over 5.7% and the new Lego game took 3.8% of the market share of related searches.

Times Paywall traffic loss less than expected
The Times' recent controversial move to take their content behind a paywall and charge online consumers to read their content has attracted a lot of attention. As the first general news content provider to charge for its online content, there has been ample speculation about consumers deserting The Times in favour of free online content.

Since the paywall was erected, The Times has lost two thirds of its market share of visits. In the weeks before the paywall went up, www.thetimes.co.uk received an average of 4.29% of all visits to the News and Media - Print category. By the week ending 10/07/2010, The Times' market share of visits had dropped to 1.43%, just 33% of where it had been five weeks previously.

The latest data for the week ending 17/07/2010 shows that The Times' market share of visits has dropped off further still to account for 1.37% of the News and Media - Print category. The rate of decline is slowing however and the data suggests traffic to The Times' website is stabilising.

Despite the decline in traffic, The Times' website is still ranked higher than the Financial Times, its nearest competitor in the pay wall market. The FT has received deserved praise for its financial model, with one journalist suggesting they had "unlocked the secret of eternal profitability". If The Times can match that feat with its paywall then the exercise has been a success.

Time will tell if The Times loses further internet traffic and when the introductory offer of "£1 for the first 30 days" expires perhaps consumers will search for their news content from other providers. So far though, The Times seems to be doing just fine. For now Mr Murdoch's gamble has paid off.

marketing.uk@hitwise.com.

Gasta Search Engine Network

2010-07-20T18:46:00.000-07:00

Gasta Search Engine Network

Gasta.com extends its reach over 40.000,000 per month and begins exciting redevelopment. Watch this blog for more news on Europe's fastest growing search engine network

Gasta Tech Update: Sophia Search and Halo

2010-07-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

Gasta Tech Update: Sophia Search gets massive funding round and Halo pick up angel network award

Heavenly growth helps Halo to pick up angel network award

A Northern Ireland business investors network has fought off stiff competition to win UK Business Angel Network of the Year.

The Halo network, based at the Northern Ireland Science Park in Belfast, said the award marked "amazing" growth over the last year after it expanded from 35 to 135 investors.

Halo is supported by Invest Northern Ireland and InterTrade Ireland with the purpose of helping private investors (business angels) investing in Northern Ireland-based companies.

The network was also recognised for the establishment of only the second Enterprise Investment Scheme approved fund in the UK - a method to drive business angel investing.

It was also commended for developing several angel workshops and investee company training programmes, demonstrating non-financial means to support entrepreneurs and angels in Northern Ireland.

Richard Ferguson, Halo manager, said: "This recognition puts Halo and the Northern Ireland Science Park at the forefront of the angel investment industry in the UK and can only strengthen Halo's presence and reach here, to attract not only local investors, but those from all around the UK.

Angel investors from the mainland bring not just new money to the region, but also much experience and learning for our local angels."

He added: "We now have a world-leading Angel Investment Network with an accolade to prove it, but in years to come the true legacy will be the new breed of Northern Ireland companies that Halo helps create, who will in turn lead the world in their respective sectors."

Belfast technology company SOPHIA Search recently won £800,000 seed funding, the single largest angel investment ever made in Northern Ireland.

Gasta Tech Update: Gay and Lesbian Adults Are More Likely and More Frequent Blog Readers

2010-07-14T04:36:00.000-07:00

Gay and Lesbian Adults Are More Likely and More Frequent Blog Readers

Social Networks, Blog Popularity Remain High for Gay Americans over Past Three Years

NEW YORK and WASHINGTON, July 13 /PRNewswire/ -- As media trends accelerate towards citizen-journalism and blogger-created news content, a new national survey again validates that gay and lesbian adults online today are among the nation's most loyal and heaviest blog readers and social network users.

According to a recent national survey conducted online by Harris Interactive®, a majority of gay and lesbian adults are reading blogs. More than half (54%) of gay men and lesbian respondents report reading some type of blog, compared to only 40% of heterosexuals. This represents an incremental increase from March 2008 when 51% of gay and lesbian respondents reported reading some type of blog. A similar question was asked in November 2006 and at that time, only 32% of gay and lesbian adults reported reading blogs.

When it comes to the types of blogs popular with Americans, the survey also found 36% of gay and lesbian adults read news and current issue blogs, compared to 25% of heterosexual adults. A quarter (25%) of gay and lesbian adults also read entertainment and pop culture blogs, compared to 16% of heterosexuals. Considering the global and media attention focused on American politics and the Obama presidency, 22% of gay and lesbian adults also read political blogs, compared to just 14% of heterosexual adults. Confirming their sustained strong connection with travel news and opportunities, 16% of gay and lesbian respondents report reading travel blogs, compared to 8% of heterosexual respondents.

Not surprising, over one third (35%) of all lesbian and gay male adults report they read blogs specifically tailored for gay and lesbian news and interests. More than half (53%) of these readers also say they visit gay and lesbian blogs weekly, and one in five (19%) do so daily. Michael Rogers, veteran gay blogger and media activist reported that these findings mirror his experience: "My own work tells me gay men and lesbians have tremendous need and appetite for authentic gay news and information, and they want it fast. As director of the National Blogger and Citizen Journalist Initiative, I work with scores of bloggers to enhance skills, improve delivery and content and grow connections with a very receptive lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender audience across the U.S."

The new nationwide survey of 2,412 U.S. adults, (ages 18 and over), of whom 271 self identified as gay or lesbian (which includes an oversample of lesbian and gay adults), was conducted online between June 14 and 21, 2010, by Harris Interactive, a global market research and consulting firm, in conjunction with Witeck-Combs Communications, Inc., a strategic public relations and marketing communications firm with special expertise in the LGBT market.

Apart from avidly reading blogs, gay and lesbian adults also are choosing to connect online through social networking sites more often than their heterosexual counterparts. A remarkable three-quarters (73%) of gay and lesbian adults state they are members of Facebook, compared to 65% of heterosexual adults. Also, 32% of gay and lesbian respondents report being members of MySpace, compared to 22% of heterosexual respondents (albeit a shrinking number of both groups from past years). When it comes to the business-oriented social networking site, LinkedIn, 22% of gay and lesbian respondents report being members, while 16% of heterosexual adults state they are members. Finally, nearly 3 out of 10 (or 29%) gay men and lesbians report they are members of Twitter, while the same can be said of just 15% of heterosexual adults.

Significantly, 55% of gay men and lesbians say they visit social network sites at least once a day – but only 41% of heterosexual adults report that same frequency. Three out of ten gay men and women also say they visit sites several times a day, while only 17% of heterosexuals share that habit.

"Over this past decade, through many comparative measures – we see first-hand that online media consumption for gays and lesbians is strong and growing stronger," said Bob Witeck, CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications. "A majority of LGBT households are hungrier than ever to stay well informed and to expand their social, professional and personal connections online. In today's uncertain economy, and with companies and organizations competing for share of attention, it is clear that blogs and social networking sites have not only come of age for gay America – but in many ways have become the virtual, new gay community centers and marketplace."

Methodology

Harris Interactive conducted the study online within the United States between June 14 and 21, 2010, among 2,412 adults (ages 18 and over), of whom 341 self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender. We over-sampled gay men and lesbians in order to allow for more detailed analysis of these groups.

Figures for age, sex, race, education, region and income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. In addition, the results for the gay and lesbian sample were weighted separately based on profiles of the gay and lesbian population that Harris Interactive has compiled through many different online surveys. Propensity score weighting also was used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

About Harris Interactive

Harris Interactive is one of the world's leading custom market research firms, leveraging research, technology, and business acumen to transform relevant insight into actionable foresight. Known widely for the Harris Poll and for pioneering innovative research methodologies, Harris offers expertise in a wide range of industries including healthcare, technology, public affairs, energy, telecommunications, financial services, insurance, media, retail, restaurant, and consumer package goods. Serving clients in over 215 countries and territories through our North American, European, and Asian offices and a network of independent market research firms, Harris specializes in delivering research solutions that help us – and our clients – stay ahead of what's next. For more information, please visit http://www.harrisinteractive.com.

About Witeck-Combs Communications, Inc.

Witeck-Combs Communications, Inc. is the nation's premier marketing communications and consulting firm, specializing in developing and implementing effective strategies reaching the gay and lesbian consumer market. With over 16 years experience in this unique market, Witeck-Combs Communications not only serves as a bridge between corporate America and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender consumers (LGBT), but also provides counsel to countless non-profit organizations that aim to educate the public on gay and lesbian issues or to better reach their LGBT membership.

In April 2003, American Demographics magazine identified Bob Witeck and Wes Combs as two of 25 experts over the last 25 years who have made significant contributions to the fields of demographics, market research, media and trendspotting for their path breaking work on the gay and lesbian market, and in 2006 Bob Witeck and Wes Combs co-authored Business Inside Out: Capturing Millions of Brand Loyal Gay Consumers (Kaplan Publishing), considered the first-ever book on marketing insights, practical tips and strategies targeting the LGBT market. They have appeared in worldwide media outlets including Fortune, CNBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, Ad Age, New York Times and Washington Post. For more information visit www.witeckcombs.com.

Press Contact:

Harris Interactive

Regina Corso

212-539-9600

rcorso@harrisinteractive.com

Witeck-Combs Communications
Bob Witeck
info@witeckcombs.com

SOURCE Harris Interactive
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Gasta Tech Update: Hotwise Europe

2010-06-30T06:35:00.000-07:00

Hitwise News On Gasta.com

Feature Article
The brands topping the World Cup sponsorship league
Peroni, sponsors of the Italian team and England sponsors, Carlsberg saw the greatest number of UK Internet searches of all World Cup sponsors during the week ending 26/06/2010. Searches for Peroni, increased by 50% between the week ending June 19 and the week ending June 26, although the Italian team were on their way home from South Africa by June 24. Peroni's Experian Hitwise World Cup Index score increased from 100 to 150 based upon the volume of searches for the brand.

The promise of a last-16 tie against Germany saw UK Internet searches for Carlsberg increase by a third, while searches for Pepsi, sponsors of the USA, increased by the same amount. Telecoms businesses T-Mobile and Vodafone (down from fourth place in week two's index) completed the top five, but with a much lower increase in the volume of searches.

The results highlight the relative dominance of drinks brands in generating online buzz in the 2010 World Cup. Budweiser topped the brand index for the week ending 26/06/2010 with a 25% increase in online searches, while in the first week of the tournament, beer companies made up four of the top five performers.

Overall the best performing sector was food and drink, with a 4.8% increase in searches, followed by technology and telecoms with a 2.8% increase.

View the full article and past Brand Indexes.
Brand Index Week 3 - top five performers
Rank Brand Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index, w/e 19th June Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index w/e 26th June Week on week change (%)
1. Peroni 100 150 50.0%
2. Carlsberg 60 80 33.3%
3. Pepsi 49 65 33.3%
4. T-Mobile 110 118 7.2%
5. Vodafone 127 136 7.0%

Fast Movers
LoveFilm - www.lovefilm.com

Position for April 2010 - #134
Position for May 2010 - #89
Positions jumped - 45

Ranking 89th during May 2010, LoveFilm is now one of the top 100 websites in the UK, and the 11th most popular online retailer (putting it ahead of a number of big names including: B&Q, ASOS, Apple, Top Shop, Currys, and HMV). LoveFilm is also the second most visited movie website in the UK after IMDB.

Since taking over Amazon's DVD rental business in early 2008, UK internet traffic to LoveFilm has increased by 150%. Unlike most other retailers, the DVD rental subscription service isn't particularly reliant on search engines for traffic (they account for just one-fifth of visits vs. two-fifths for the typical retailer). Instead, other key sources of traffic are social networks (it is the 8th most popular retailer visited after Facebook), email and entertainment websites - with much of the former traffic coming via advertising, affiliates and refer a friend schemes.

News In Brief
Budget 2010: the online response
Given the wide range of changes introduced in the recent budget announcement, it was no surprise that many people went online to research both the key points and finer details. On 22/06/2010 1 in every 179 UK searches was budget related, including 21 of the top 1000 terms. 'budget 2010' was the 25th most searched for term in the UK on the day of the budget announcement, making it the top generic term ('budget' was 29th overall and 'world cup 2010' was 32nd).

After a number of the variations on the word 'budget', the next most popular term was 'capital gains tax', with tax credits, child benefit, VAT and the disability living allowance also picking up references in the top 1,000. 'bbc budget' was the top branded term ('sky news live' fell slightly outside of the top 1,000) and George Osbourne was the most searched for politician, followed by Harriet Harman (also falling outside the top 1,000).

As expected, both BBC News and Sky News experienced spikes in traffic following the budget announcement. Taking into account some of the smaller sites that benefited from traffic, Telegraph Blogs experienced the biggest increase (87% increase in UK Internet visits between 21/06/10 and 22/06/10), followed by Telegraph Shares (85%), Yahoo! Finance (74%) and MSN Money (60%).

View the 21 budget-related terms and read the full article.

Promotions
Hitwise 101 Training Webinar
Whether you are new to Hitwise or simply in need of a refresher, this 45 minute pre-recorded webinar will help you get the most out of your Hitwise subscription.

View the recording.

Hot Consumer Electronics List

The Hot Consumer Electronics List is a dynamic Excel-based report which leverages Hitwise's weekly search term data to produce an on-the-pulse view of the Consumer Electronics sector in the UK. Email marketing.uk@hitwise.com to find out how the Hot Consumer Electronics List helps marketers maximise PPC investment, assess and adjust search strategy to increase profits, maximise content appeal, effectively manage supply chains and improve campaign scheduling.

Media queries at Hitwise
If you are interested in using Hitwise content and statistics in publications and presentations, we encourage you to do so. Please source the content as "Hitwise United Kingdom - www.hitwise.com/uk".
Additionally, if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact our marketing team at newsletter.uk@hitwise.com.

Gasta Tech Update: Hitwise North America Newsletter

2010-06-05T05:58:00.000-07:00

Gasta Hitwise North America Newsletter - June, 2010

Feature Article
Google Share of Searches at 71 Percent for April 2010
Experian Hitwise announced that Google accounted for 71.40 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending May 1, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask received 14.96 percent, 9.43 percent and 2.18 percent, respectively. The remaining 78 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 2.03 percent of U.S. searches.

Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, were flat between March 2010 and April 2010. The same time period showed that shorter search queries - those averaging one to four words long - also were flat from month to month. Two-word searches comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 23.06 percent of all queries, and increased 1 percent in April 2010.

Marketing Forward
Hitwise is Marketing Forward!
There's a new energy in marketing fueled by the need to gain a more vivid and complete picture of today's multichannel consumer. As a part of Experian Marketing Services, Hitwise helps clients harness this energy to move marketing forward by leveraging consumer behavior insights to improve marketing effectiveness and empower customers to be loyal brand advocates.

We are excited to help you market forward while continuing to increase revenue and customer loyalty for your business. Learn more.

Search Terms Analysis
Fast Moving Search Terms to Travel
Hitwise Search Intelligence™ data reveals the top fast moving search terms for the Travel industry. The results are ranked by largest increase for the week ending May 15, 2010 versus the week ending April 17, 2010.
Fast Moving Search Terms for Travel Industry for the week ending 05/15/10 versus 04/17/10
Rank Search Term
1. jetblue 10 dollar flights
2. jacksonville nc hotels
3. greyhound bus station locations
4. vacation packages to las vegas
5. bolt bus
6. magic kingdom ticket prices
7. discount airfare websites
8. pet friendly vacation rentals montana
9. wild waves
10. myrtlebeach.com

Fast Movers
Yves Rocher USA - www.yvesrocherusa.com

Rank week ending - May 15, 2010 - 7
Rank week ending - May 8, 2010 - 44
Positions jumped - 37

The Yves Rocher USA website moved up 37 positions in the Lifestyle - Beauty Industry visited by U.S. Internet users (week ending May 15, 2010) to rank number 4 and number 3,339 among all websites. Of the website's total traffic, 53 percent consisted of returning visitors. The top three websites visited after the Yves Rocher USA website were My Points, secureorder.yvesrocherusa.com and T.G.I Friday's.

The top DMA® (Designated Marketed Areas) of visitors to the Yves Rocher USA website were from New York, NY (5.76%), Los Angeles, CA (4.15%) and Boston, MA (2.62%). The majority of visitors to the website were female (78%), aged 25-34 years (26%) with a household income of $30-$60K per year (35%) for the four weeks ending 05/15/10. Other websites with a similar demographic profile to the Yves Rocher USA website were BettyCrocker.com, QualityHealth.com and yourAVON.com.

Leveraging Competitive Intelligence
Understanding Competitors' Advertising Strategies by Comparing to Your Audience

By using Hitwise Demographics and Lifestyle tools, you can identify the differences between your website's audience and your competitors, industries and overall online population. For example, if you are IngDirect.com and your competitor is Etrade.com, by conducting an audience 'Compare With' report you will compare the key differences between two websites. In the chart below, you can see how ING Direct's audience profile differs from E* Financial by age. The representation index is highest for the 25-34 age brackets, where IngDirect.com attracts 14.17% more of the audience than Etrade.com with a share of 26% for the four weeks ending 05/15/2010. This insight is invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your direct competitors.

For Hitwise clients who would like to discuss this product further, please contact Hitwise Customer Support. To learn more about Hitwise Demographics, view the Hitwise Demographics Product Fact Sheet.

Category Spotlight
Entertainment - Television
Any sites related to TV are listed in this category, including the official websites of TV shows, television stations, ratings guides, program TV production companies and cable information. The data below is based on All sites - Weekly rankings for the week ending 05/15/2010 - Ranks by 'Visits.'
Entertainment - Television - All sites - Weekly rankings for the week ending 05/15/10 - Ranks by 'Visits'
Rank Website
1. The Weather Channel - US
2. MSNBC
3. CNN.com
4. ESPN
5. Hulu
6. Fox News
7. FOX Sports on MSN
8. ABC
9. Yahoo! TV
10. QVC.com

Local Competitiveness Index

97.5%
of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.

Top 10 Upstream Industries
Rank Industries Upstream Clicks
1. Computers and Internet 57.83%
2. Search Engines (Computers and Internet) 23.42%
3. Entertainment 17.54%
4. Portal Frontpages (Computers and Internet) 17.15%
5. News and Media 11.59%
6. Social Networking and Forums (Computers and Internet) 10.87%
7. Television (Entertainment) 10.59%
8. Email Services (Computers and Internet) 5.24%
9. Sports 4.55%
10. Broadcast Media (News and Media) 4.25%

Top 10 Downstream Industries
Rank Industries Downstream Clicks
1. Computers and Internet 28.28%
2. Entertainment 25.02%
3. News and Media 17.13%
4. Television (Entertainment) 13.99%
5. Sports 11.83%
6. Social Networking and Forums (Computers and Internet) 10.84%
7. Broadcast Media (News and Media) 8.44%
8. Search Engines (Computers and Internet) 8.14%
9. Lifestyle 6.53%
10. Business and Finance 6.22%

Online Segmentation Snapshot
The Most Popular Real Estate Websites for Hispanic Women
Using Hitwise Lifestyle, which incorporates MOSAIC USA, a leading household segmentation system, you can identify the most popular sites in an industry that attract a specific segment. For example, the top three websites in the Business and Finance - Real Estate category that attracted the largest volume of Hispanic women in the "Nuevo Hispanic Families" segment were Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), MRMLS Central Site and Movoto, Inc for the four weeks ending 05/15/10.

The Nuevo Hispanic Families Type consists of young Hispanic family households living in working-class neighborhoods, and they are generally under 45 years old. They earn lower-middle incomes from jobs as food service workers, retail clerks and construction laborers. As a family, they are frequent shoppers who like to browse stores patronizing retailers that sell athletic attire, such as, Finish Line, Nike and Footlocker. What Nuevo Hispanic Families may lack in money, they more than make up in their passion for various media. They love to watch network and cable television, especially family-friendly fare including Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network. Lifestyle data is available on over 30,000 websites.

To learn more about Hitwise Lifestyle, contact Hitwise.
Top Business and Finance - Real Estate Websites visited by Hispanic Females for the four weeks ending 05/15/10
Rank Site Domain Gender % Mosaic USA Type %
1. Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) www.naca.com 56.14% 5.15%
2. MRMLS Central Site www.imrmls.com 46.64% 4.96%
3. Movoto, Inc www.movoto.com 45.28% 4.57%
4. Westfield Shopping Centres - United States www.westfield.com 49.57% 3.79%
5. RoomMates.com www.roommates.com 52.05% 3.50%

Hitwise Intelligence Blogs
Canadian Searches for Loans and Credit Cards See Gains
June 2, 2010 - Heather Hopkins

Canadian internet searches for loans and credit cards showed gains year over year in the first quarter of 2010, reflecting the financial strain felt by consumers. Year over year, searches for loans increased 19.2% to the first quarter of 2010. Searches for loans showed a quarterly increase (comparing Q4 2009 and Q1 2010) of 42.5% likely a result of consumers searching for post-holiday shopping financial assistance.

This analysis was assembled for the Experian Insight Index that we recently published in the US, identifying key internet search trends against today's economic backdrop. I posted the first set of findings from the Canadian market a couple of weeks ago.

Media queries at Hitwise
If you are interested in using Hitwise content and statistics in publications and presentations, we encourage you to do so. Please source the content as "Hitwise North America - www.hitwise.com/us".
Additionally - if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact Matt Tatham at press@hitwise.com.

About this Newsletter
This monthly e-mail Newsletter is designed to provide Hitwise subscribers with analysis of new developments, industry trends and competitive activity. The powerful real-time web intelligence capabilities of Hitwise and a continual flow of additional research findings make this an indispensable business resource.

Gasta Tech A viral strategy for using paid search

2010-06-02T05:31:00.000-07:00

Gasta Tech A viral strategy for using paid search
By Seth Sarelson
March 12, 2010

* Each paid search click for a multi-channel merchant is more valuable for in-store revenue than for online revenue
* A coupon that's no better than your competitors' coupons or your standard everyday coupon isn't going to go viral
* Add a sense of urgency to your campaign by having a short-term expiration date on your coupon

Paid search has, and continues to be, one of the most effective ways of driving online sales. What you may not know is that paid search may actually be much more effective at driving in-store sales than it ever has been for ecommerce.

Co-author Jonathan Treiber is CEO and co-founder of RevTrax.

Data from a comScore and Yahoo study (PDF) actually suggest that consumers exposed to only search spent $16 in store for every $1 they spent online. Analysis of cross-channel conversion data by RevTrax has yielded the same conclusion -- that each paid search click for a multi-channel merchant is far more valuable for in-store revenue than it is for online revenue.

Given this data, it's no surprise that marketers are looking more and more to paid search as an incredibly cost-effective tool to drive in-store sales via use of a printable coupon. By combining paid search with consumer-initiated social media and email to facilitate virality, marketers can set the stage to make a big impact at a low cost in a way that is impossible with other marketing strategies -- especially print.

Here are five tips to help you use paid search to make your coupons go viral:

1. Dig deep. Give a high value offer. A coupon that's no better than your competitors' coupons or your standard everyday coupon isn't going to go viral. If you want to go viral, you're going to need to push your limits and create an extraordinary offer.

2. Search + social media + email = viral. Each time a consumer prints your coupon, you'll want to prompt him or her to either A) share the coupon via social media, B) email friends, or C) both. A social media interaction that's generated by a consumer recommending your coupon to friends is far more valuable than anything marketers can do on their own. You can easily accomplish this by adding a social media widget on the page where consumers print your coupon.

3. Offers should expire quickly. Add a sense of urgency to your campaign by having a short-term expiration date on your coupon. If consumers know that your coupon expires in several days, they'll engage more quickly than if it was outstanding for a month before expiring.

4. Measure thoroughly, optimize frequently, and repeat. You should know which keywords are generating the greatest numbers of clicks, prints and, ultimately, sales. The same keywords that generate the heaviest click volume aren't necessarily the ones that generate the most coupons printed and in-store sales. There are technologies available to help you measure the full conversion funnel from paid search ads to in-store sales for each individual keyword to optimize your bidding. Also, the more frequently you measure the data (i.e., daily versus weekly), the quicker you can optimize bid-management and drive better results.

5. Geo-target. Run campaigns with a tight radius around each store. You probably have a good sense for how far consumers will travel. Optimize your campaigns by setting a geographic radius around each store if possible. If you have too many stores or this is not possible, at least make sure that you exclude regions where you do not have a physical presence.

In addition to the things you can do right, there's one big thing to avoid:

Don't make the consumer jump through hoops. It's one thing to ask a consumer to give a name or email address to build your database. Do not ask the consumer for endless amounts of registration data that you won't use. Also, do not force the consumer to download software to print the coupon. These roadblocks are the killers of conversion rates and viral marketing. The rule of thumb is that keeping it simple will keep your customers happy.

As marketers make the transition from traditional media to search and other types of digital media to drive in-store sales, it's critical that marketers utilize best practices to increase ROI and make it easy for consumers to engage and share coupons with friends. When executed correctly, a search campaign driving traffic to a printable coupon can be one of the most effective and targeted ways to generate in-store sales with incredibly high ROI.

Seth Sarelson is COO and co-founder of RevTrax, where co-founder Jonathan Treiber is CEO.

Gasta WHITE LABEL Tech Update

2010-05-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

Gasta search network: Don’t think about it, just do it!!

Getting into the hearts and minds of web searchers requires building needs and becoming indispensible. It requires clean, accurate, and relevant results. The real secret sauce of the next generation of search will contain a multitude of ingredients that serve time, need, convenience, and desire. To bring them in, you have to be more compelling. To keep them, you have to be clever, and what Gasta.com has done is clever.

Gasta.com is getting ready to launch it biggest search innovation yet. Launched in 1997 the search engine network has been completely overhauled using the new Microsoft MVC platform, and this version of Gasta is the best yet with a lot of new Social Networking and Social marketing options.

You can now share search results straight to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Hi5, and a variety of other social networks. The results are faster (85% of sites are slower than Gasta). You can share Videos, News, Images, Blogs, and Adverts. Yes with Gasta.com new SearchMatch™ Platform you can send a link from your advertisement to a social network site, hence the role of the open networker and the key Influencer is utilized in your campaigns, simple.

As well as this Gasta now offers comparison shopping and seamless geo-ip targeting. The InstantLink directory is dropped but the keyword suggestion tool and suggested search tool is almalgamated into the SERp. This platform rewrite comes at a critical time for European Search industry as the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) has just released figures that show, Up to 70% of European advertisers intend to increase online ad spend during 2009, as budgets continue to shift as a result of the recession.

Gasta’s focus on niche, long tail keywords that match your services, and a cost effective pricing with no PPC, are exactly are what is needed bring eyeballs to your 'online window shopping experience'.

Whatever the approach to media might be, it's clear that a shift is in order. Not just a shift in creative focus or emotional triggers, but a shift in how we approach the most important aspect of the search: the people behind each need-defining query. To this end Gasta.com web3.0 has been worked out leveraging the DigitalDesign outlook strategies, leading into 2010.

1. Advertising networks that can effectively leverage social information will

become marginally more important.

2. Widgets, as vehicles to carry a message effectively within and across various

social media environments will become more popular.

3. Exchanges or clearing houses will arise to provide compensation in some form

(e.g., cash, rewards, points, status) for users.

4. Niche social media will become attractive places for brands to engage in SIM

because relevance can be increased.

5. Gasta: A hosted search white label solution in Action.

Gasta 3.0 will be launching at the end of this month. Mysearchmachine.com is an ongoing project of the Gasta search network

“Tell them and show them the great things they'll find. Great creative might actually get them there, but as history has taught us, it's hard to keep them when it's so easy to switch. Don't give them a learning curve, and for heaven's sake, please don't make them think”.

Gasta Tech Update: NISP Connect workshops

2010-05-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

NISP Connect on Gasta.com

NISP CONNECT Frameworks workshops present:
“Governance: How, when and why to build a Board”
Wed 19th May, 2010 @ University of Ulster, Magee (Room MS020)
By Scott Kennedy, Cleaver Fulton Rankin

A board of directors, or advisory board, can be one of the most enabling assets that an early stage venture has to leverage. It can also be one of the most disabling. Join us for a presentation and discussion that will include: An overview of director’s legal responsibilities and changes to the law and Tactics in recruiting and remunerating or incentivising board members.

nispconnect@nisp.co.uk

NISP CONNECT Frameworks workshops present:
“The War for Talent: Invest in the Best”
Thurs 20th May 2010, Northern Ireland Science Park
By Karen Davidson and Paul Gillen from law firm McGrigors.

People are the key to any business and incentivising and retaining key staff is critical for any employer who wishes to grow its business. This seminar will look at different approaches to reward individual talent, develop committed employees and maximise individual and team performance.

Click here for further details and to register

£25k Award - Search for the Next Big thing: Quick Pitch
Wed 2nd June 2010, Northern Ireland Science Park

Top 5 teams from each category: Hitech, Biotech, Cleantech and Digital Media & Software are chosen to give their quick pitch to a judging panel to see who makes it to the top ten of the competition.
Teams and judges only

NISP CONNECT Frameworks workshops present:
“Government Grants for Start-ups”
Wed 9th June 2010, Northern Ireland Science Park

Details coming soon

Halo Investor Forum
17th June 2010, @ Northern Ireland Science Park

Registered angels, guests and pitching companies only

halo News

Call Open for Next halo Investment Meeting

Halo only runs 5 investment meeting pa where selected companies can pitch for investment to an audience of 50-60 business angels. The third of the 2010 halo meetings will take place on 17th June, but the call for applications closes on 17th May. So far 8 companies have received funding of over £3/4m from halo angels.

To apply just fill in the short application form available on http://www.nisp.co.uk/NISP-Halo-Entrepreneurs.aspx

Norman's blog: “Science at the Polls
Norman Apsley, NISP Chief Executive

Science is not up front in any election manifesto that I know of but each expects science and the methods of science to be a key ingredient of a successful society both economical and socially. Despite this longed for impact, there won’t be many scientists in the mix, whoever wins. Recently New Scientist reported the large numbers of science trained and science advocates who would be leaving Westminster, not all for the best of reasons mind you. NS opined that it might be an up-hill task to get the new incumbents of whatever hue up to speed and it might herald the end of what has been a good 13 years of increased science funding.

nispconnect@nisp.co.uk

Locate your Company at Northern Ireland Science Park

For further information on work space at Northern Ireland Science Park, click here

Events and notifications from our affiliates

E-Synergy: Investor Ready: Are you Ready to pitch to a VC? Call for Applications!

To help companies prepare for the 2010 VC Forum run by NISP Connect, E-Synergy is seeking up to twelve qualified companies for the upcoming advanced course “Investor Ready; £500K+”, an intense three day course on 16, 17 and 29 June for companies hoping to raise private investment in 2010.

Applications for Investor Ready: £500K+ will be accepted from 7 May through 29 May 2010.

nispconnect@nisp.co.uk

Where the Ideas Come From
Thurs 20th May 2010, Council Chamber, Queen's University Belfast

Belfast City Council and Queen’s University Belfast are pleased to welcome Michael Johnson, Creative Director of Johnson Banks, the internationally renowned design and branding agency based in London. From a UK base, they work for clients as far afield as Philadelphia, Tokyo and Hawaii.

nispconnect@nisp.co.uk

BarCamp Belfast
Sat 22nd May, 2010, University of Ulster, York Street, Belfast

BarCamp is a unconference with a focus on design, web application development, open source technologies and social protocols. Presentations & panels are volunteered — and it's free to attend.

nispconnect@nisp.co.uk

InterTradeIreland Venture Capital Conference 2010
Wed 26th May 2010, Waterfront hall, Belfast

The ninth InterTradeIreland Venture Capital Conference is a 'back to basics' event focusing on raising the early rounds of equity for early-stage companies. The conference will showcase the current sources of equity capital available, both institutional and through the business angel networks on the island.

nispconnect@nisp.co.uk

IntertradeIreland Seedcorn 2010 Workshops
Various dates and venues throughout Ireland

Once again start-up companies across the island are being offered the opportunity to learn more about how to cash in on a €280,000 prize fund in the InterTradeIreland All-island Seedcorn Business Competition 2010. InterTradeIrelands equity advisers will talk about the benefits of entering the competition and how to prepare a business plan to attract potential investors during a series of free workshops. In addition, a previous winner will talk about their own personal experience of the competition.

nispconnect@nisp.co.uk

You are receiving this newsletter because you are a registered user of NISP CONNECT. If you would prefer not to receive this email or any emails in future please unsubscribe below

© ENGAGE4Business Ltd. 2010

Gasta Tech Update : Hitwise UK

2010-04-30T05:14:00.000-07:00

Hitwise News on Gasta Search Network

Feature Article
Volcanic Ash Cloud - online travel impact

During the week ending 17/04/2010 UK Internet users searched for over 10,000 different terms containing the word 'volcano', up from less than 1,000 the week prior. The reason for this surge was the volcanic eruption in Iceland that caused travel chaos across Northern Europe. UK Internet visits to Aviation websites (a category which includes both airline and airport homepages) increased by 45% for the same week. Interestingly, however, there wasn't a noticeable spike in visits to Weather websites.

The top non-aviation fast moving travel search term was 'eurostar', and UK Internet visits to Eurostar.com increased by 67% last week. In France, traffic increased by 22%. The other two transport areas to benefit from the flight cancellations were ferry companies (traffic to the industry was up 59% last week) and car hire provides (up 9%).

Read the full article.

Fast Movers
About my vote - www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

Position for the w/e 03/04/2010: #1118
Position for the w/e 10/04/2010: #303
Positions jumped: 815

Following the announcement that the General Election will take place on May 6, UK Internet searches for the term 'register to vote' increased 9-fold between the week ending April 3 and April 10.

The biggest recipient of UK Internet traffic from searches for 'register to vote' for the w/e 10/04/10 was Aboutmyvote.co.uk, the official voter registration website. As a result, UK Internet visits to the site increased by 252%. Over the same period, About My Vote received traffic from a wide range of vote-related search terms, with 28% of its search traffic coming via paid or sponsored links on the major search engines.

Read the full article.

News In Brief
Leadership debate winners: Lib Dems, Sky News, ITV and Twitter
After grabbing a lot of media attention, the consensus view after the leadership debate is that Nick Clegg came out on top, and UK searches for the Liberal Democrat leader increased 7-fold (with nearly 1200 distinct search terms containing the phrase 'nick clegg'), overtaking David Cameron and Gordon Brown for the w/e 17/04/10. The 'Nick Clegg Effect' also had a positive impact on visits to the Liberal Democrats' homepage, with share of visits increasing from 26.2% to 31.2%.

Also benefitting from the event were Politics sites (3.6% increase in visits on April 16) and News and Media Sites with a 12.7% increase. BBC News and the BBC homepage maintained the top two spots, but the big winners were Sky News (visits up 76.9% April 18) and ITV (up 58.7%). Visits to Twitter also increased to a new high on April 16, becoming the 23rd most visited website in the UK.

Read the full article.

BBQ searches take off as the sunshine comes out

After a cold winter, it's no surprise that Brits have been anticipating the summer for a number of weeks now. Looking at the volume of searches for the terms 'bbq', 'bbqs' and 'barbeques'" all of which started to increase at the end of February, 'bbq' is the most popular keyword and attracts significantly more variations than the other terms. For the 4 weeks ending April 3, the top 10 (of almost 3,500) search terms containing 'bbq' were:

1. bbq (4.1% of all searches containing 'bbq')
2. weber bbq (3.1%)
3. gas bbq (2.2%)
4. outback bbq (1.5%)
5. webber bbq (1.1%)
6. cobb bbq (1.1%)
7. charcoal bbq (0.9%)
8. cadac bbq (0.9%)
9. gas bbq sale (0.9%)
10. weber bbq uk (0.9%)

Read the full article.

Promotion
Hot Consumer Electronics List
For the week ending 10th April 2010

Searches for Garden Equipment (3% of all product searches) were 49% up on the previous week. Whilst garden furniture, the most searched for garden product with 16.9% of all garden equipment searches, has seen less searches than the previous weeks peak, lawn mowers have seen a 48.9% increase in searches, with 12.6% of all garden searches. Flymo, Black & Decker and Bosch were the top three most searched for garden equipment brands.

Want to find out more?

The Hot Consumer Electronics List is a dynamic Excel-based report which leverages Hitwise's weekly search term data to produce an on-the-pulse view of the Consumer Electronics sector in the UK. Email marketing.uk@hitwise.com to find out how the Hot Consumer Electronics List helps marketers maximise PPC investment, assess and adjust search strategy to increase profits, maximise content appeal, effectively manage supply chains and improve campaign scheduling.

Upcoming Events
Luxury Interactive Global Conference
Luxury Interactive Global Conference
The Waldorf Hilton, London, May 18, 2010 - May 19, 2010

Visit the Experian Hitwise booth and join Robin Goad, Research Director - Experian Hitwise UK, during the Luxury Innovation Spotlight on Tuesday 18th May at 11:55 as he speaks about utilizing competitive intelligence to drive your luxury business.

Register here to receive a 25% discount.

Omniture Summit
The Hilton London Metropole, London, May 20, 2010 - May 21, 2010

Join Experian CheetahMail and Hitwise at this year's Omniture Summit. With the explosion of social media, video and mobile content, as well as ad dollars shifting online, today's marketers are faced with a great challenge: harnessing digital content to engage and acquire customers. At Summit EMEA 2010, learn how to create, measure and optimise digital experiences to revolutionise how the world will engage with ideas and information in the coming decade. Experience 2 jam-packed days of training and education from Omniture experts, customers and industry luminaries.

If you are interested in using Hitwise content and statistics in publications and presentations, we encourage you to do so. Please source the content as "Hitwise United Kingdom - www.hitwise.com/uk".

Gasta Tech Update: LinkedIn traffic generation ob Gasta shared links

2010-04-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Gasta Search network Url shorteners and share apps in the search prove a winners with building resources and links from LinkedIn and Twitter.

LinkedIn Has New Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Site
Chris Crum | Staff Writer
April 24, 2010
http://www.WebProNews.com
Some Count LinkedIn as Top 5 Traffic Source

When you think about traffic-driving social networks, LinkedIn may not be the first thing that comes to your mind, and truth be told, there's a good chance it will not drive the kind of traffic Twitter or Facebook will for your site. However, some sites have found it to be a quite valuable traffic tool, and the company seems to want to further cement its status as such.

LinkedIn reportedly has about 65 million members. That may not seem like much compared to Facebooks 400 million (likely well over that by now in reality), but LinkedIn can bring a different brand of relevance to the table.

Has LinkedIn become an integral part to your marketing?
Let Us Know Here
Earlier this year, we talked to entrepreneur Lewis Howes (who claims that LinkedIn is one of the top traffic sources to his blogs) about how powerful LinkedIn can be for driving traffic. He had written on the subject previously at Darren Rowse's ProBlogger. "You need to take into consideration that LinkedIn has the highest average household income per user over any other social networking site (even NYTimes.com and BusinessWeek.com readers)," Howes told us. "That being said, these are business decision makers you are targeting with your traffic from LinkedIn. The network is for real, and it will only continue to grow in time..."

What's New

LinkedIn has announced some changes to its news sharing options, and some of them just may help content spread more like it would on Twitter. Notable changes include:

comScore Talks Mobile, Retail, and Chatroulette
Click Here to Watch the Live Video Now

1. Public vs. Private - Users now get complete control over who sees what they're sharing (everyone, connections, a group, or one person).

2. Images and article excerpt - Facebook-style images/excerpts that can increase clickthrough potential.

3. See and delete your own posts - preview, edit, and delete options for status updates to prevent typos.

4. Easily re-share - LinkedIn's version of the retweet - just click a button and share content with connections, groups or individuals. This could be a huge factor for traffic. Retweets are great for making content go viral.

5. Improved off-site sharing experience - Now content sites will be able to offer a similar sharing process for LinkedIn to its own internal re-share feature.

6. The URL shortener (Lnkd.in) - LinkedIn calls this a companion to its Twitter integration.

7. Attribution - Re-shared articles give "via-style" credit by attributing something you re-share to the person who shared it with you.

8. Shared items on your profile - If a user chooses to make shared items public, they will appear on their profile.

Howes told us that people don't generally associate LinkedIn with driving traffic, and that their perception of it is more like a resume or a way to get a job. "They don't see all of the powerful tools within LinkedIn that allow you to drive traffic back to your site," he said.

LinkedIn has recently launched some new integrations that can only help with a user's traffic strategy - notably, integrations with Twitter and Microsoft Outlook. "The Outlook integration is a way to connect more with your current LinkedIn contacts, and also help you grow you network as well," Howes noted. The Twitter integration obviously lets you tap into the following you already have on Twitter, which has already proven to be a significant traffic-driving tool.

Gasta Keywords

2010-04-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

HitWise North America Newsletter - April, 2010
Search Terms Analysis
'volcano'
Hitwise Search Intelligence™ data reveals the top websites from the complete list of websites that received traffic from the search term 'volcano'. The results are ordered based on the volume of traffic for the week ending April 17, 2010.
Most popular websites that received traffic from â€˜volcano' for the week ending 04/17/10
Rank Website Domain Share
1. Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org 9.20%
2. USA Today www.usatoday.com 6.98%
3. YouTube www.youtube.com 6.44%
4. BBC News news.bbc.co.uk 5.64%
5. The New York Times www.nytimes.com 3.84%
6. Yahoo! News news.yahoo.com 3.26%
7. msn www.msn.com 3.20%
8. Guardian.co.uk www.guardian.co.uk 3.12%

Fast Movers
TaxExtensions.com - www.taxextensions.com
Rank week ending - April 17, 2010 - 1,560
Rank week ending - April 10, 2010 - 27,128
Positions jumped - 25,568

The TaxExtensions.com website moved up 25,568 positions among all websites visited by U.S. Internet users (week ending April 17, 2010) to rank number 1,560 overall and number 9 in the Accountancy industry. Of the website's total traffic, 95.5 percent consisted of new visitors. The top three websites visited after the TaxExtensions.com website were Internal Revenue Service , Google and TurboTax .

The top DMAÂ® (Designated Marketed Areas) of visitors to the TaxExtensions.com website were from Dallas - Ft.Worth, TX (4.34%), New York, NY (3.84%) and Los Angeles, CA (3.38%). The majority of visitors to the website were female (62%), aged 55+ years (29%) with a household income of $30-$60K per year (36%) for the four weeks ending 04/17/10. Other websites with a similar demographic profile to the TaxExtensions.com website were My Life, Intelius and Home McAfee .

Leveraging Competitive Intelligence
Closing the Gap - Understanding Competitors' Search Marketing Strategies with Gap Analysis
By using Hitwise Search Intelligence™ 'Compare With' Reports, you can identify the search terms that are missing from your search campaigns and working for your competitors. For example, if you are Orbitz.com and one of your competitors is Priceline.com, by conducting a search terms 'Compare With' report you will discover keywords that are currently driving more traffic to Priceline.com than Orbitz. In the chart below, you can see the top search terms, not including the Priceline brand, that drive more traffic to Priceline.com than Orbitz.com are 'hotels.com,' 'cheap hotels,' 'hotels,' 'hotel' and 'enterprise car rental' for the four weeks ending 04/17/10. This insight is invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your direct competitors.

For Hitwise clients who would like to discuss this product further, please contact Hitwise Customer Support, or visit the Hitwise University and download the Hitwise Search Intelligence™ Product Fact Sheet

To learn more about Hitwise data and Search Terms Gap Analysis, view the Hitwise Search Intelligence™ Product Fact Sheet.
Search Terms driving traffic to Priceline.com - 4 weeks ending 04/17/10, compared with Search Terms driving traffic to Orbitz
Rank Search Terms Clicks Priceline.com Clicks Orbitz Difference
1. priceline 23.76% <0.046% 23.76%
2. priceline.com hotels 2.67% <0.046% 2.67%
3. hotels.com 1.18% 0.05% 1.13%
4. cheap hotels 1.01% 0.34% 0.67%
5. price line 0.56% <0.046% 0.56%
6. hotels 0.46% 0.18% 0.27%
7. hotel 0.20% <0.046% 0.20%
8. enterprise car rental 0.16% <0.046% 0.16%
9. budget car rental 0.15% <0.046% 0.15%
10. cheaphotels.com 0.15% <0.046% 0.15%

Category Spotlight
Travel - Agencies
This category contains websites that provide third-party bookings for travel services, such as package holidays, flights, and tours. The category also includes the websites of offline travel agencies and tour operators, as well as publishers of travel deals and travel price comparison sites. It does not include sites which focus exclusively on accommodation bookings. The data below is based on All sites - Weekly rankings for the week ending 04/17/2010 - Ranks by 'Visits.'
Travel - Agencies - All sites - Weekly rankings for the week ending 04/17/10 - Ranks by 'Visits'
Rank Website
1. Expedia
2. priceline.com
3. Travelocity
4. Orbitz
5. Yahoo! Travel
6. Hotwire
7. bookingbuddy
8. CheapOair.com
9. Bing Travel
10. Lowfares.com

Local Competitiveness Index

97.9%
of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.

Top 10 Upstream Industries
Rank Industries Upstream Clicks
1. Computers and Internet 42.30%
2. Travel 40.98%
3. Agencies (Travel) 26.67%
4. Search Engines (Computers and Internet) 23.78%
5. Email Services (Computers and Internet) 6.88%
6. Destinations and Accommodation (Travel) 6.80%
7. Transport (Travel) 6.49%
8. Portal Frontpages (Computers and Internet) 6.49%
9. Social Networking and Forums (Computers and Internet) 4.44%
10. Aviation 3.56%

Top 10 Downstream Industries
Rank Industries Downstream Clicks
1. Travel 60.58%
2. Agencies (Travel) 39.43%
3. Computers and Internet 16.13%
4. Transport (Travel) 9.76%
5. Destinations and Accommodation (Travel) 8.44%
6. Aviation 6.89%
7. Commercial Airlines (Aviation) 6.79%
8. Search Engines (Computers and Internet) 6.07%
9. Social Networking and Forums (Computers and Internet) 4.57%
10. Business and Finance 3.90%

The economic downturn in the US had a strong impact upon consumers and resulted in a decline in discretionary spending for nearly two years. However in March, retailers started to report increased sales, signaling that consumer confidence may be increasing and shoppers are willing to start making purchases again. One sector that was among the hardest hit during the downturn was the luxury space, but recently retailers like Nordstrom, Saks and Bergdorf Goodman are also reporting higher year-over-year sales.

Online traffic patterns are reflecting the same behavior, visits to a custom category of Designer & Luxury Retailers increased 28% for the week ending April 10, 2010 as compared to the same week in 2009. In comparison, one year ago, visits declined 18% for the week ending April 11, 2009 from the previous year. This trend emerged during the holiday season, where the market share of visits to Designer & Luxury Retailers started to reach the same levels of traffic as the 2007 season.

Gasta Tech Update : Social Media the Peer to Peer Marketing Industry

2010-04-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

Spotting the Creators of Peer Influence
Here's How to Find the People Who Generate 500 Billion Impressions a Year

Everyone knows people make impressions on each other -- it's called word of mouth. The question marketers always asked us was: just how many impressions? And who is responsible for the mass of those impressions?

Now we know. People make over 500 billion impressions on each other about products and services every year. And a small group of mass influencers are responsible for 80% of those impressions. This is the beginning of what we call Peer Influence Analysis.

Here's how it works. Start by counting every instance in which a person influences another person online about a product or service. (We model this from Forrester's 10,000 person survey, which asks how frequently they post, in what places, how many followers they have, and what products and services they post about.)

This influence comes in two types.

First, there is influence from people posting within social networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on. We call these instances influence impressions. Based on our surveys, we estimate people in the U.S. create 256 billion influence impression on each other in social networks every year. (Has anyone ever measured this number before?) Of these influence impressions, 62% come from Facebook.

Second, there is influence created by posts: blog posts, blog comments, discussion forum posts, and ratings and reviews. We call these influence posts. We estimate that people in the U.S. create 1.64 billion influence posts every year. If around 150 people view each of these posts (a conservative estimate, based on our research), that's another 250 billion-plus impressions. Blog posts and blog comments account for about 40% of these posts.

Add the impressions from both social networks and posts together and you get the 500 billion impressions. Once you start analyzing this huge pool of influence, you can draw some very interesting conclusions. Here are a few.

* People's influence on each other rivals online advertising. For comparison, for a 12-month period ending September 30 last year, Nielsen Online estimates advertisers created 1.974 trillion online advertising impressions, compared to the 500 billion impressions people make on each other about products and services. So people's online impressions on each other about products and services are about one-fourth of the online advertising impression. And peer impressions are more credible than advertising, since they come from friends. Take those numbers into your next budget meeting!
* A minority of people generate 80% of the impressions. Take a look at the graphic. About 6.2% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence impressions. Around 13.8% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence posts. We call these two groups Mass Connectors and Mass Mavens (if you've read "The Tipping Point" you know where we got the names.). If you're a marketer, you probably want to know who these people are (demographics, where they share, that kind of thing) -- once we've identified them, we can find that all out through the survey.
* You can do peer influencer analysis for any type of product or service. For example, mass influencers in consumer electronics are far more concentrated, somewhat more affluent and quite a bit more male than the general mass influencers. If you want to build a word-of-mouth strategy, you have to start with the information on mass influencers in your market.

It's time to start analyzing peer influence with the same discipline we apply to media. And it's time word-of-mouth got a budget that reflects the amount of influence people have, and who has it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josh Bernoff is co-author of "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies," a comprehensive analysis of corporate strategy for dealing with social technologies such as blogs, social networks and wikis, and is a VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research. He blogs at blogs.forrester.com/groundswell.

Gasta Tech Update : Investments

2010-04-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

When Your Business Needs Money: Angel Investors

If your growing business needs capital, but your personal resources are tapped out, don't despair - you can put your faith in angel investors. According to the University of New Hampshire's Center for Venture Research, there were more 234,000 active angel investors in the United States at the end of 2006 who invested in 51,000 private companies in the same year. You probably already know some of these people - they may even be your friends or neighbors.

In this article, we'll show you who these angels are and how they can save your company from financial ruin.

Who Are These People?
Active angel investors are a mix of the working wealthy and the retired rich. Some dabble in these private investments, while others manage their money full time. Like the businesses they invest in, angels come in all shapes and sizes.

Angels are diverse, but they are not always commonplace, so it would be a mistake to go door to door selling your company's stock. In fact, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has strict rules about selling the stock of a private company to angels. In many cases, a business owner should accept investment dollars only from people who meet the SEC definition of an accredited investor - namely, a person with at least $1 million in net worth, or an annual income of more than $200,000 ($300,000, if married). There are, of course, many considerations to finding an angel investor, so make sure to check with a qualified securities attorney before accepting an investment from anyone.

Find Your Piece of Heaven
Even though an angel investor may live right next door, most prefer to fly under the radar. Start any angel hunt by networking through your legal or financial advisors. These professionals usually know who the players are and where they hide. Other business owners are also a good source of leads and introductions: there are probably hundreds of entrepreneurs in your city that have partnered with angels in the past.

Fortunately, finding angels is starting to get a little easier because they are joining clubs or networks. A new industry association of angel groups has even emerged, called the Angel Capital Association (ACA). The ACA keeps tabs on angel groups and estimates that there are 265 of them nationwide.

Take a Leap of Faith
Although finding an angel partner can be tough, living with one can be even tougher. Before you jump into a deal with an angel, be sure the fit is right. The wrong angel investor can be a pesky partner. Once you take an angel's money, be prepared to provide regular reports and to listen carefully to offered advice. And they will offer advice. An angel investor often expects to become your business partner and may even want to play an active role in the company. The more your company relies on this person's money, the more closely he or she will watch your every move.

Of course, a nosy investor can be a curse or a blessing, depending on how you develop the relationship. Work with your investor(s) to take advantage of their wisdom and support. Luckily, angels tend to invest in the industries that they know the most about. A retired software executive will invest primarily in software, for example. Use this to your advantage by hooking up with angels that can lend their expertise to your business challenges. (For more see, Cashing In On The Venture Capital Cycle.)

What's In It for the Good Guys?
Make no mistake: all angels invest for just one primary reason - to increase their wealth. Their money is not free, and they will expect a sizable return in the long run. Many will be willing to wait four or five years to get their money back, but by then they will expect a return of two or three times their original investment.

Even if it's not clear to you at the beginning, an angel will always be looking for an exit strategy, and it's your job to provide one. Angel capital is flexible but expensive. Even though angels will give you several years to generate a return, they will expect to be well compensated for their patience. Rates of return north of 30% compounded per year are not uncommon targets.

Maximizing Value
The most difficult part of any angel negotiation is likely to be setting the valuation for your business. How much will they invest and what stake in your company will you give up? It's not uncommon for both parties to be unhappy with the final outcome of this negotiation. One way to satisfy everyone is to have a third party weigh in on the valuation process. Professional business valuation consultants are available to help with this process, but there are also financial tools to help you bridge this thorny problem.

One aptly named solution is a bridge loan. This financial structure allows an angel to loan capital to the business, and then allows him or her to convert that loan to stock at a future time (and a future valuation). Typically, the loan converts when a larger investor comes on board. The angel receives the same, or slightly better, valuation as the new investor. This works best when the business plans on seeking institutional venture capital or private equity.

Getting to Heaven
Finding an angel investor can be a great way to dip your foot into the private equity pool, but it is not an automatic pass to financial heaven. Fortunately, angel investing is not new, and you don't need to be afraid of the process. After all, angel investors have been around since Christopher Columbus convinced Queen Isabella I of Spain to pay for his voyage to America. With common sense and sound legal advice, an angel investor can help you turn a risky venture into a rich voyage of discovery.

by David Worrell (Contact Author | Biography)

An accomplished entrepreneur, author and consultant, David specializes in helping emerging companies solve tough financial and strategic issues. Worrell is currently CFO of his third startup, AmeriStart.

Gasta Tech Update : Tips to Ramp up The Profits from Your Blog

2010-04-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

Tips to Ramp up The Profits from Your Blog

This is an interesting LinkedIn group Started by Dan Lambeth, Network Marketing Lead Generation Specialist, Offering Free Marketing Training @ SponsorRepsOnline.com

.
If you are in a home based business, direct sales or network marketing business and you don’t have a blog you are missing a critical component of your online business. There is no end to the benefits of having a blog. You can have one for free if you already have a site hosted somewhere that has C-panel, which stands for control panel. All you have to do is click on Fantastico and then Wordpress and start building.

I won’t go into setting one up because that would be a whole different article but I will say it is easier than you think and if you have one at a free blog site you should really consider getting a self hosted blog like the one you can get through Wordpress because then you can play by your own rules.

If you go to Blogger.com, or any other free blogging site, you have to play by their rules and you could put a lot of work into one and lose it because of outside influences. Your work is a lot safer when you only have to play by your own rules.

These are some good tips if you want your blog to make you money but it’s your blog so play by your own rules but just to let you know, this is some very valuable and up to date information that is cutting edge and not hard to implement right away.

1. Your blog’s header is the most valuable space on your whole site. You should use a template that lets you replace the header or use a designer for a custom header.

2. Put an opt-in form on your home page. If you don’t have a form to capture contact info on your home page you might as well delete it because you are getting SMOKED by your competition. You need an auto-responder service so you can send out messages to your list of subscribers and these services all have a way to generate an opt-in form.

3. Using other pages on your blog is nice but you should always post every article on your home page. If you hide them on other pages you are losing the value of content on your home page.

4. Every article or post whether it is text, audio or video needs to have a call to action at the bottom that explicitly tells the reader what to do, where to click and what they will get or see. Tell them exactly what to do or it won’t work.

5. Your blog needs to be personalized so it will help show the type of person you are. It also helps to have pictures and videos and posts that bring out personality.

6. You can get more leads if you have more contact information on your site and require less information on your forms.

7. Having links to affiliate programs or products is great but it would also help if you had a review of those products posted on your blog.

8. You want to make getting around your blog site so easy a caveman can do it. It needs to be simple to find the content.

9. If you have a seal from a trusted site like Better Networker you need to put it at the top of the page and boost your credibility with testimonials and videos.

Anyone using social media in their online business needs a HUB to drive traffic to that they have total control over. This is like your own house and you invite others from all your sites to visit for a feast. You want to give them great content and valuable resources to feed on so they continue to return.

GastaTech Update: Bebo president Joanna Shields

2010-04-01T03:40:00.000-07:00

Ex Bebo President Shields Joins Facebook As Sales VP

After former Bebo president Joanna Shields left last May ahead of the dismantling of her AOL (NYSE: AOL) People Networks division, she teamed with TV producer Shine Group CEO Elisabeth Murdoch to create a social content company.

But now she’s getting back in to the social networking business proper, joining Facebook in a new role of sales and business development for VP Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Shields is taking many of the duties of Facebook’s top European guy Blake Chandlee, who, after setting the business up in western Europe from London, is taking a refocused role as emerging markets sales VP, focusing on growth in eastern Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

This is a full-time role, though Shine confirmed Shields will be staying on as a non-executive chairperson for the division, which it’s calling Shine View.

Facebook tells paidContent:UK both VPs report to global sales VP Mike Murphy, though Shields also has a dotted line to business development VP Dan Rose.

“Expect these regions to play a significant role in our global sales strategy,” says Chandlee of the Asia and Latin America focus.

Gasta Banner on 500 city cabs

2010-03-12T22:46:00.000-08:00

Gasta.com Tech Update: major UK push for Bing

2010-03-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

Microsoft launches major UK push for Bing
Big ad campaign urging 'Bing and decide'By Patrick Goss

Microsoft has announced that it will launch a major advertising campaign to encourage the UK to start using its Bing search engine.

The advertising campaign – which will run across major television stations – will use the slogan 'Bing and decide' and is aiming, in Microsoft's words, to help searchers make more informed decisions.

Microsoft's UK MD Ashley Highfield spoke to TechRadar last month about the need to up public awareness and get people to give Bing a try rather than sticking with search's 500 pound gorilla Google.

PR story to tell

"I think that we do need to have a marketing campaign and I think that the promotion we can give to it from some of our assets like MSN is very important," Highfield told TechRadar.

"We've got a PR story to tell. When people have used a product for the best part of a decade they don't realise that - particularly as 'to Google' has become a verb - their Hoover is looking a bit old fashioned next to the Dyson.

"We're Dyson – we've got the better product. Now Dyson came from nowhere and has become the UK's number one hoover.

"I want people to Google in Bing."

Tough task

Of course, actually persuading people to move away from a search engine that, for many, has become synonymous with the internet is going to be a tough ask.

"Bing is new, fresh and not another 'here today and gone tomorrow' project, concluded Highfield.

"This is trench warfare and it won't be over in days and months but years."

Gasta.com search engines are powered by Bing Search Technology.

Gasta.com: The Peter Jones Pedal Power 1000

2010-03-02T11:07:00.000-08:00

Hi,

The Peter Jones Pedal Power 1000

I am writing to ask for your help. David Walliams, of Little Britain fame, approached me last week and asked if I would help him raise money, through business, for his BT Sport Relief Million Pound Cycle Challenge. David is leading the challenge to cycle 1,000 miles from John O’Groats to Lands End, supported by a team of fellow celebrities - Jimmy Carr, Fearne Cotton, Miranda Hart, Patrick Kielty, Russell Howard and Davina McCall. Their aim is to raise £1 million! A real challenge in itself, let alone the actual bike ride.

The team started the gruelling 80-hour non-stop relay yesterday morning (1 March, 2010) and at the same time I kicked off my own marathon money-raising effort that aims to shine a spotlight on charitable companies willing to get behind an amazing cause.

I have pledged to help David by raising as much as I can towards his total, but I need your help in order to achieve our goal.

So how can you help me? In order to help David achieve his target and raise £1 million, I have launched a website asking small and medium sized companies to donate just £100 and be part of my Pedal Power 1000 - it's a bit like the FTSE 100, but with a focus on shining the spotlight on companies who want to help me back a brilliant cause. All details of this challenge and how your company can donate can be found on my home page, http://www.peterjones.tv. So, if you run your own company, or know anyone who does, then please support this Challenge and encourage others to do so too, and help us make a real difference.

After the challenge, I will be inviting the five largest donators, together with five donators chosen at random, to a lunch with me (and some of the celebs doing the challenge), where we can thank you personally for helping support this fantastic challenge and worthy cause.

All you have to do is click here to make your donation.

I would like to thank you in advance in taking the time to read this email and I hope you will get behind David and his dedicated team of celebs in what looks like a very challenging ride.

With my sincere thanks,

Gasta Tech Update : Facebook Users Like Gasta 'Search and Share' apps.

2010-02-25T07:53:00.000-08:00

Facebook Users Like to Share Content
by Jason Hahn

Facebook is comfortably ahead of the social networking pack when it comes to the sharing of content, according to data provided to TechCrunch by Gigya.

Gasta.com web sharing tools on the search index for videos, news, weblinks, and advertisers is proving very popular with its vast global regional users. According to Alexa Gasta.com has a 700% increaes in traffic since the launch of the 'search and apps'across the complete Gasta Network. Gasta 'search and share' apps currently share to Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Digg.

According to Gigya, 44 percent of article links, videos, photos and other content from more than 5,000 sites that is shared through Gigya’s widgets are posted to Facebook. These sites include NBA.com, PGA.com and Answers.com, among others.

Twitter received 29 percent of this sharing through social media sites, followed by Yahoo! with 18 percent and MySpace with 9 percent.

AddThis affirmed this finding, as its numbers show that Facebook received 33 percent of observed sharing via the company’s sharing buttons. E-mail was second with 13 percent, followed by printing out copies of the content with 9 percent, Twitter with 9 percent, Favorites with 8 percent, Google with 6 percent and MySpace with 6 percent.

AddToAny, another company with a sharing widget, also shows that Facebook leads the way in terms of sharing, with 24 percent of such actions heading to Facebook.

In terms of site authentication (entering an existing username and password to log into another Web site), Facebook leads the way in the Entertainment, Live Event Chat and News categories, but with varying degrees of success in each.

In the Entertainment category, Facebook accounts for 52 percent of site authentication logins, while Google accounted for 17 percent. Yahoo! got 12 percent, followed by Twitter with 11 percent, MySpace with 7 percent and AOL with 1 percent.

For Live Event Chat, Facebook led the way with 56 percent, while Twitter followed with 28 percent of site authentication logins. Yahoo! followed with 9 percent, while MySpace had 7 percent.

For News, Facebook led by a slim margin with 31 percent of logins, followed closely by Google with 30 percent. Yahoo! wasn’t too far behind with 25 percent, while Twitter had 11 percent and AOL had 3 percent.

It’s clear that users of different sites appear more interested in different topics, and this might help site owners to better understand how their users share their content and how to make it easier for them to do so.

Sources:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/16/facebook-44-percent-social-sharing/

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007530

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/02/facebook-corners-44-of-social-sharing.html

Gasta Imedia Connection Update: New era in Advertising online.

2010-02-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

How to break into the new era of advertising

Consumers are tired of a one-sided relationship that exists solely to sell them more products. Doug Levy of imc2 explains why consumer trust and strong relationships will shape the future of marketing. case in point: Gasta.com has now been established over 13 years and has a client base of over 200,000 advertisers.

It goes without saying that every marketer would love to spend less on advertising and simultaneously generate more profit. The problem right now, though, is that consumers don't think very highly of marketing and advertising.

In fact, the words consumers associate with marketing are less than flattering: coercion, deception, and manipulation all come up in conversation, according to Doug Levy, CEO of imc2.

Consumers feel that way because marketing is still stuck in what Levy calls the "consumer era," one in which marketers gathered as much information as possible about consumers, with the end goal of persuading them to buy a product.

If you couldn't tell from the aforementioned words commonly associated with marketing, consumers are awfully tired of this approach.

"If you were to have a friend who, every time they were with you, said 'I want to learn as much as I can about you to sell you more of my product,' you wouldn't want to hang out with them very much," said Levy, speaking at the iMedia Brand Summit in Las Vegas.

Marketing right now is on the cusp of a new era -- the "relationship era" -- where marketing is less about persuasion and more about fostering sustainable relationships. This new era of marketing is about the brand partnering with consumers, instead of merely learning about them.

"Previously, campaigns would start and stop," Levy said. "Now, they're always on. People are in constant dialogue with each other. Campaigns were about buying, but now they have something consumers want to join into."

Previous eras of marketing were built largely on consumer transactions. Sometimes consumer trust factored in, but by-and-large the most successful brands were the ones with the most transactions. In this new era, transactions and trust are two separate but equal factors in judging successful marketing.

Levy presented imc2's brand sustainability map, which pinpointed what kinds of relationships brands had with consumers. Using data from 250,000 consumer surveys, Levy showed which brands were building what he called "sustainable relationships" -- ones with high levels of trust and transactions -- and which brands were failing.

Costco and Target were two brands that consumers trusted and also gave their money to. A brand like Subway, however, landed high on the trust scale because of its health-friendly message, but that didn't necessarily mean consumers were willing to pony up their money. Subway, therefore, only has what Levy called an "emotional relationship" with consumers.

It's not easy for a brand to build sustainable relationships with consumers, but in this new era of relationship marketing, those that do will truly prosper. Levy had five tips for brands looking to break through and find success in the age of relationship marketing:

1. Clarify purpose
2. Commit to sustainable relationships
3. Connect with authenticity
4. Treat customers as partners
5. Engage

Following these five steps doesn't necessarily lead to short-term success. Levy used Google as an example, pointing out that the search giant is more focused on long-term success than short-term gains -- and its stock rose exponentially as a result of that mindset.

One audience member asked Levy how imc2, or any other agency, could possibly convince clients to focus more on the long tail.

"I don't think we need to," Levy said. "They can save money now, generate more profit now, and build a higher level of trust."

Rich Cherecwich is deputy editor, iMedia Connection.