The majority of consumers--56 percent--said in a recent InsightExpress survey that they delete cookies from their computer monthly, but it's possible that far fewer actually succeed in doing so, said the research company. For the report, InsightExpress asked 800 online consumers participating in a study if they would be willing to immediately delete cookies on their computers. Half of the respondents said yes, but, of that group, only 35 percent successfully purged their computers of cookies. InsightExpress's conclusion, based on the failure of the rest of the group to expunge their cookies, is that "the deletion of cookies [is] greatly exaggerated." InsightExpress will release the entire report Tuesday at Ad:Tech in San Francisco. In March, a report by JupiterResearch stating that 39 percent of consumers delete cookies at least monthly roiled the online ad industry. The InsightExpress research is the latest challenge to the Jupiter report, but the conclusions don't appear to be definitive. For one thing, says Jupiter Research analyst Eric Peterson, some consumers who report deleting cookies don't manually purge cookies, but instead let anti-spyware or anti-adware programs delete them. Also, the report only measured how many consumers who were willing to delete cookies could do so manually; it's not known what proportion of the ones who weren't willing to delete their cookies would have been able to do so. In any event, said Peterson, even the InsightExpress research seems to show at least some cookie purging. "The issue is that cookie deletion is happening," Peterson said. "How often it's happening becomes somewhat academic."
Behavioral targeting firm Revenue Science announced Wednesday the release of its Audience Search behavioral targeting network, which has been live for about one month with three publisher partners. The Audience Search Network extends Revenue Science's existing business model, which is built on tracking consumers' behavior within a site and then serving ads within that same site. For the network, Revenue Science will pool together consumers who exhibit high-value behavior--such as showing an interest in purchasing a car or consumer electronics--regardless of which site Revenue Science first tracked them on, and then serving those consumers ads as they surf the Web. Revenue Science's behavioral network aims to target high value consumers by tracking their browsing habits with cookies, and then to allow its publishers to share those audiences to other publishers, sharing the revenue gained by serving targeted ads to the high-value customers. The audience-sharing scheme began a month ago, with three of Revenue Science's publishers - Bolt Media, which targets mainly teen and college student audiences, and two other publishers that Revenue Science declined to release. Other companies, including Claria, aQuantive and Tacoda Systems recently started their own versions of behavioral ad networks. Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan said that Revenue Science's entry into the market shows that behavioral targeting is "maturing." "It is a sign of the growing demand among online advertisers for reaching targeted audiences at scale, and we expect to see a number of other entrants into this space before the year is out," he said. Paul Edelhertz, senior vice president and general manager of the Revenue Science Network, said Edelhertz said that Revenue Science was responding to demand from its publisher and advertiser partners to increase their online ad spends. "The real demand we're trying to fulfill is taking all this offline money that's being spent disproportionately in television and print advertising and enabling that money to be spent online," he said. "That's what our agencies and advertisers are looking for." One possible pitfall for behavioral targeting networks is that publishers might balk at sharing their most valuable audiences--from an advertising point of view--with competitors. Revenue Science says its publishing partners control the data the company collects, however, and publishers who join the network can pick and choose whom their audiences can be shared with. "To do this in a really well aligned publisher-friendly way, the control is very important," Edelhertz said. According to Edelhertz, Revenue Science plans to expand the network soon. Publisher categories the company hopes to add are travel and financial services.
Google Wednesday announced the beta release of Google My Search History, a feature that allows individual users to refine their queries by allowing Google to track their search history and referencing their search history with every search they do. The service requires users to sign up--although Gmail users can just use their Gmail ID and password--to get Google started tracking their search histories. Once Google starts tracking, every query the user makes is recorded, and if he or she clicks on a results link, that result is also recorded. When a user enters a new query, the results page is accompanied by a "related history" link next to any search term when it appears. Users can also browse through their search history with a calendar, viewing when each search was made on what day. Users can also search the full text of any page which they reached from a Google results page. The search history information is stored on Google's own servers, which raises questions about possible privacy concerns and use of the information for targeting advertisement. A Google spokesman said that the company does not plan to use information for any other purpose than to refine searches. Users also have a number of privacy options that they can exercise themselves. The there is a button to "pause" the recording of queries for searches that users prefer not be saved, and searches already listed in the history can be deleted.
Web surfers consumed significantly more news and entertainment Web sites in 2004, even though overall Web pages viewed showed only moderate growth, according to research released Wednesday by Nielsen//NetRatings. Entertainment saw 119 percent growth in individual Web page consumption across 10 representative Web sites, while unique visitors were down slightly on those sites. Other categories turned up narrower margins. A block of education-related sites saw 72 percent growth in monthly page views per user, while unique visitors were down nearly 10 percent. Released at the Digital Marketing Conference and Expo in New York, Nielsen's white paper titled, "Integrated Interactive Marketing: Quantifying the Evolution of Online Engagement," emphasizes the growth of consumer engagement online. This increased engagement occurred in spite of the fact that unique visitor growth was down 4 percent and Web pages viewed per person was up only 2 percent for the market as a whole. Charles Buchwalter, Nielsen//NetRatings' vice president of analytics and the report's author, highlights findings that percentage growth of Web pages consumed per person in both the entertainment, and the education/careers segments were up significantly in 2004. In fact, Buchwalter reports significant increases in the number of pages viewed per person per month across all five categories--news/information, financial services, family/lifestyles, education/careers, and entertainment. Buchwalter outlined three keys to capturing consumers engagement: "[A]lign with the audience's passion, aggregate 'tribes' of like-minded people and allow them to network, and build faster, more efficient and easier to use mousetraps." By "mousetrap" Buchwalter means a company's Web site, and everything a company can do to improve users' experience with it, from an intuitive interface to a strong brand. Denoting the growing acceptance of online advertising, 2004 marked the first time the largest online advertiser, SBC Communications, also ranked among the top-10 overall advertisers The report also discussed other large advertisers that increased their online ad spend at various times throughout the year. Proctor & Gamble, which spent more than $3 billion overall on advertising last year, significantly increased its online spending in July with a campaign that ran on Yahoo! for the launch of Pampers' Feel 'n Learn Diapers. DaimlerChrysler, which grew its total ad spend 34.6 percent to $2.58 billion last year, spent steadily online, with peaks in the spring and fall.
Although the entertainment industry has attempted to crack down on downloads of pirated content, consumers continue to obtain music, movies and television shows from peer-to-peer networks. And, at least in the case of video content, consumers' use of peer-to-peer has recently increased, according to a report released Wednesday by media services firm Magna Global. "Video trading over peer-to-peer networks is today where the music industry was in 1999," said report author Brian Wieser, vice-president, director of industry analysis at Magna Global. "It's growing and should continue to grow at a fairly rapid clip." For instance, downloads of the television show "24" on BitTorrent networks nearly tripled from an average of 35,000 per episode in the 2003-2004 season to 95,000 for the 2004-2005 season. The report attributes those figures to research from Envisional, a UK-based peer-to-peer traffic monitoring company. The 10 most popular pirated TV downloads worldwide are: "24," "Stargate Atlantis," "The Simpsons," "Enterprise," "Stargate SG-1," "The O.C.," "Smallville," "Desperate Housewives," "Battlestar Galactica," and "Lost," according to a February survey by Envisional, cited in the report. Much of the downloading occurs overseas, especially in the English-language United Kingdom, where shows aren't usually broadcast until months after they've aired in the United States. Often, television shows available on peer-to-peer networks are stripped of commercials. But, said Wieser, the growing popularity of peer-to-peer networks need not be completely bad news for marketers. Instead, he suggests, advertisers might be able to find ways to reach consumers who use file-sharing networks. One possibility, stated the report, is to spread branded entertainment, virally, throughout the networks. Marketers might also distribute individual songs or videos and, at the end, ask consumers to visit a Web site. Wieser also suggested that marketers consider releasing classic commercials in networks for free distribution. The report also criticizes the entertainment industry for the "defense"-oriented stance it has so far taken. "Decoy copies of programs are placed online to frustrate would-be pirates (otherwise known as 'fans') and lawsuits such as the one against Grokster and its peers have been launched," stated the report. "We believe these tactics can at best delay the inevitable."