ChaCha Search Data Provide Brand Insights

ChaCha has done a number of interesting things lately to expand its audience and utility, such as Facebook integration. The company is now seeking to offer marketers access to its data around brand affinity and purchase intent. ChaCha offers one of the most direct marketing channels to the youth market in the US and has fielded millions of questions about products and brands by teens and young adults (13-24).

It recently commissioned an analysis of its data and queries to expose trends and preferences among its users. Here are some charts from a report released in conjunction with this analysis:

There’s more data and discussion in the report. The idea here, however, is that ChaCha has a massive database of queries (like Google) that show trends, etc. The difference is that ChaCha’s audience is very demographically specific.

CEO Scott Jones also told me previously that the company has great success with polls, which offers something like a massive youth focus group for brands.

Apple vs. Google: Who Is Obi Wan?

“The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner, now I am the master.”

“Only a master of evil Darth.”

Facebook Expands Local Reach

Facebook has added an unspecified number of locations — think: many — to its geotargeting capability. According to a blog post today:

We’ve been listening to your feedback and have recently expanded the number of cities available for you to target when creating an ad! There are now many more cities available in a number of countries.

Facebook offers location and demographic targeting around the globe:

IP address and information provided in the profile (which is going to be more accurate) is what the company uses to determine location: 

Separately a recent study by Rice University’s grad school of business, sought to assess the marketing impact of a Facebook fan page on a Houston area local cafe chain, Dessert Gallery:

Facebook changed customer behavior for the better. People who had replied to both surveys and had become fans ended up being DG’s best customers: Though they spent about the same amount of money per visit, they increased their store visits per month after becoming Facebook fans and generated more positive word of mouth than nonfans. They went to DG 20% more often than nonfans and gave the store the highest share of their overall dining-out dollars. They were the most likely to recommend DG to friends and had the highest average Net Promoter Score—75, compared with 53 for Facebook users who were not fans and 66 for customers not on Facebook. DG fans also reported significantly greater emotional attachment to DG—3.4 on a four-point scale, compared with 3.0 for other customers. Additionally, fans were the most likely to say they chose DG over other establishments whenever possible.

To summarize, Dessert Gallery Facebook fans:

• Were more frequent customers and, in the aggregate, spent more than non-fans
• Had a greater emotional attachment to the business and were more likely to recommend it to friends

Caveats:

• Correlation doesn’t equal causation: did these people become fans because they were already more loyal to begin with?
• This is a single case study.
• The Rice biz school researchers coached the Dessert Gallery in some best practices and provided some general assistance around updates: 

We launched the Facebook page and invited everyone on the mailing list to become a fan. DG updated its page several times a week with pictures of goodies, news about contests and promotions, links to favorable reviews, and introductions to DG employees. 

To be sure Facebook is a powerful marketing tool and platform for SMBs. Most, however, don’t know how to “work it,” in the way that Dessert Gallery did. That learning will come over time. 

And to remind everyone there are 1.5 million “active” SMBs with Facebook pages. Despite the impressive targeting options, most of them aren’t going to really understand how to use Facebook Ads in an optimal way. 

But just imagine a suite of SMB services that Facebook might offer at, say, $25 per month. If 500K adopted that would translate into $150 million. Right now Facebook is on target to hit $1 billion in revenue soon. That hypothetical $150M number would thus represent 15% of total revenues.

Lawyers Smell ‘Blood in the Water’ with Yelp

According to a new blog post by Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, another suit, “virtually identical” to the earlier “class action,” has been filed against the company:

These misconceptions are also fueled by lawyers, who may have heard about Yelp’s recent financing round and may be seeking a share. So it’s no surprise that today another lawyer has filed a virtually identical lawsuit making the same inaccurate claims. (Don’t worry; they’re still not true.)

These copy cat suits get filed in what is known as a “race to the courthouse,” where lawyers jockey to be named the lead lawyer of the case and take the biggest share of legal fees; being among the first to file a suit increases the chance of being put in charge of the case.

The new case, also an intended class action, apparently involves the disappearance of reviews that the plaintiff had solicited from customers. The plaintiff claims these reviews were deleted in retaliation for not purchasing advertising on Yelp.

Yelp doesn’t like the practice and tends to view solicited reviews as bogus and thus often “suppresses” them, as Yelp’s Dylan Swift explained on the Ask the Local Engines panel at SMX West. But businesses sometimes get upset and angry about this (as indicated by the lawsuit), not understanding Yelp’s policy or how its algorithm works.

The lawyers, looking for what they may believe is a relatively easy settlement and/or PR, smell blood in the water. And there’s probably also no shortage of would-be plaintiffs: SMBs frustrated with or ignorant about how Yelp works.

There’s an irony in that these attorneys are likely soliciting plaintiffs in the same way that some of the local businesses have solicited reviews from their customers.

In all seriousness, Yelp is fighting against a rising tide of advice that argues “get your customers to write positive reviews” (to rank better). AlikeList, for example, is encouraging SMBs to ask customers to “like” or list them on the site. But lots of local SEOs argue in favor of review solicitation. In a way you can’t blame them; it’s a way for the business to try and have some control over the UGC phenomenon.

Yelp wants reviews to be “organic” but a host of SMB advice givers is now preaching review solicitation. It’s a tough battle Yelp is fighting.

Milo Adds Real-Time Sales/Pricing Data

This is a winner: Milo in addition to providing inventory data for local stores is now offering real-time pricing and sales alerts information:

Milo.com – the Web site that enables shoppers to research online and buy local – is helping its users shop even smarter through the addition of real-time sale prices on more than 2 million products at national and regional stores throughout the country. Shoppers are now able to search over 100,000 local sale prices each day and filter by category and merchant across 48,000 retailers, ranging from Best Buy to Blain’s Farm & Fleet.

Milo isn’t the first or only shopping site to provide price alerts, but it’s a nice addition to the company’s other data and features.

AlikeList Taps Facebook, Now Offers Ads

AlikeList announced two things yesterday: Facebook integration and a new advertising program. I first wrote about AlikeList when it launched in December:

My general inclination is to say there’s no more room and to ask what can anyone bring that hasn’t already been done. But the folks behind the site, who include Jim Delli Santi (once of SBC yellow pages and later Yahoo!) and now Mark Law (most recently of MapQuest but before that Yahoo!), have built something that sits right at the nexus of “local” and “social.” Another way to see it is as “An IYP for the “Twitter era.”

Here’s what the company said about Facebook integration in its release:

AlikeList has extended its consumer sharing and discovery capabilities in several ways. The first is deeper integration with Facebook. People can now post their “Likes” to their Facebook Wall and ask friends and family for business recommendations.  The AlikeList user interface has also been updated with new searching capabilities. There are now multiple search filtering options including “friends,” “friends of friends” and the entire AlikeList network.  In addition, the AlikeList homepage features “Most Liked” businesses in three major metropolitan areas: the Bay Area, Chicago and Denver.

The new ad product is called “Minute Ads” and offer a range of benefits (copy from the site):

• Post an instant offer or message to your Business Listing & PromoSite
• Search Engine OptimizationUnlimited changes to your ad
• 24×7 visibility of your ad
• PromoSite
• Website link
• Customer and Activity Dashboard

AlikeList is offering a free 30-day trial of the program.

AlikeList in a way has solved the tension between consumer-facing review sites and SMB advertiser interests. That tension has bubbled up most recently in the form of the dubious Yelp class-action suit. But there is frustration and uncertainty among SMBs about how to manage their reputations on Yelp and elsewhere. 

Very obnoxiously (bold, underscore, exclamation point) AlikeList’s PR people have been trying to piggyback on the Yelp lawsuit and related controversy over reviews to get exposure. But the point here and reflected in the AlikeList commercial below is that only positive recommendations are shown on the site; there are no “reviews” per se. In other words if a business isn’t “liked” it generally won’t appear on the site. People list only their favorites. 

Interestingly, AlikeList recommends that businesses promote “liking them” on AlikeList to their customers. In other words, solicit “reviews” — a practices that is actively frowned up on by Yelp. 

As a final note, the company tagline now appears to be “your online referral network” (at least for SMB-facing purposes).

DexOne FY 2009 Results

The former RH Donnelley reported full-year 2009 results this morning. Here they are:

Last year revenues were reportedly down approx 20% vs 2008. There’s no breakdown of online as a percentage of revenues.

This was interesting for 2010 guidance:

Year over year decline in advertising sales of between 12 percent and 15 percent.

I would assume that’s chiefly about the decline in print advertising.

Will AT&T Wind Up Buying Yahoo!?

Some time ago, before the original attempted takeover of Yahoo! by Microsoft I speculated that AT&T might be interested in buying the company (Yahoo! that is) given their complementary assets and historical partnership. While there would be “culture” issues, AT&T might still get the chance at some point.

On CNBC yesterday Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz indicated (via PaidContent) she would consider selling the company:

A notable exchange during Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s rather rowdy appearance on CNBC’s Power Lunch today. Moderator: “Is Yahoo better off as a trinket on someone else’s charm bracelet?” Bartz: “A trinket? What are you saying? Yahoo isn’t a trinket. Yahoo is the bracelet.” Moderator: “Would you get taken over? Would you get bought?” Bartz: “Absolutely. Any company at the right price.”

She later clarified that she wasn’t shopping the firm, so it would be “inappropriate” to name that “right price,” although she reiterated that if she had been CEO when Microsoft made its offer she would have taken it.

AT&T is worth $147 billion, while Yahoo!’s market cap is $22 billion.

Dex Integrates Yelp Reviews

Yellow pages sites have struggled to varying degrees to build a critical mass of reviews and have often turned to third parties to “back fill” or provide the content, which has become almost a competitive necessity (ALike has an interesting alternative approach). To that end this morning Dex announced that it was integrating Yelp reviews into online directory DexKnows:

Dex One Corporation, leading provider of marketing services and solutions for local businesses, today announced it has signed an agreement with Yelp (yelp.com), the fastest growing local business review site, to provide consumer feedback on its local search sites.

Dex One will be integrating the new content — ratings and reviews written by the Yelp community — on DexKnows.com later this month. The Yelp-branded content will appear within individual DexKnows.com local business listings and complement the existing user-generated content already provided by regular DexKnows.com users.

One question is whether the presence of Yelp reviews will encourage more DexOne users to submit content themselves.

Yelp Replaces Yahoo! Local

At a recent meeting at Yahoo, in which the company sought to correct the impression that it was “done” in search, I asked about the status of Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Local.

Yahoo! was originally the innovator in these areas but eventually ceded them to Google and Microsoft amid internal turmoil and budget decisions. During that meeting Yahoo! said it recognized the importance of these areas and would be reinvesting (especially given their importance in mobile).

At SMX West yesterday I moderated the “Ask the Local Search Engines” panel. That panel was supposed to feature Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. But Yahoo! pulled its speaker citing scheduling conflicts. I was totally amazed that the company didn’t provide a substitute speaker. At the very last minute I got Yelp to come in.

The session was great — the Q&A was 45 minutes — and Yelp’s presence gave the conversation some interesting new energy and direction,  about reviews and the challenges on the SMB side as well as the publisher side of managing the process. It also struck me that the unexpected change was symbolic of Yelp’s rise and Yahoo!’s unfortunate decline in the local space.

Yelp is now more important than Yahoo! Local to businesses and consumers.

I hope that Yahoo! does reinvest and makes Yahoo! Local more prominent again, however I’m not holding my breath.

Local Queries vs. ‘Local Intent’

One of the most interesting slides in my four sessions at SMX West yesterday was presented by Microsoft’s Raj Kapoor on the mobile search session. These data are from 2008 and based on an internal Microsoft analysis:

What the chart above appears to reflect is the contrast between explicit query distribution and user intent. It reflects roughly 70% of “measured” mobile queries were for entertainment, news and general Web search. It shows about 25% of queries seeking local information and about 5% looking for “shopping info.”

By contrast the self-reported “session intent” breakdown data is different. General Web queries fall to 23% and local information rises to 62%. If we include “shopping info,” which is ultimately about physical places to buy things, that combined figure rises to 87%.

I didn’t discuss this slide with Kapoor so I  might be misinterpreting it. At a minimum it means that consumers are more interested in local categories of information than it appears on the surface. The larger point is that what the search engine sees is often different than what people want and intend. Indeed, the search engine also doesn’t capture behavior (what people do after their research).

The search engine sees a meaningful but relatively smaller number of mobile queries for local information. The users report a much larger percentage of local intent queries.

The problem and challenge in quantifying local search has always been in the difference between the “explicit” and “implicit” local queries, as well as capturing subsequent behavior (which reveals intent). This recognition led Google to start showing maps and local results for queries without a geomodifier, recognizing that there are lots of queries that are ultimately local where the modifier is included.

Most of what happens online and certainly much of what happens on mobile devices, when commercial queries are involved, is about offline buying. The challenge has been to measure and make this phenomenon more transparent.

Amazingly, most analysts and marketers still don’t clearly see or understand the behavior. But this online-offline pattern is much much bigger than e-commerce and, frankly, anything else going on online.

Ballmer’s Favorite Bing Feature Is Maps

I was among the throng at the SMX Steve Ballmer keynote interview yesterday. I tweeted quite a bit about the surprisingly candid discussion:

Bing Maps has become a compelling product (more advanced than Google Maps in some respects) and so that completely makes sense.

My prior image of Steve Ballmer was the chair-throwing stereotype, but he was funny and likable in his interview. He was also relatively forthcoming and specific about the anti-trust battle with Google.

The market wants and needs healthy search competition. Search is the central gateway to content on the PC, and to a lesser degree in mobile. I use Google for the most part and don’t believe that Google has ascended to its perch via unscrupulous methods or unfair competition. However, power corrupts . . . So we need competition to keep the market in balance.

Google Expands ‘Click to Call’ Program

Google has decided to let all advertisers utilize its Click to Call program (only mobile, on high-end smartphones). Before you needed a physical address (i.e., local business). You associated a phone number with an address as part of Google’s location extensions in AdWords.

Now you no longer need a physical address and can use any phone number in your ad. So the call can go to a local distributor, store or national call center, however the advertiser would like to route or handle the call.

Google is still only charging for the click. In other words there’s no additional cost or separate bidding for the inclusion of the phone number. Google has done this to avoid complicating its system. But the company hopes that savvy advertisers will “get” the value of this and start bidding up the price of keywords and ads that contain phone numbers.

National advertisers apparently were seeking access to the program, so Google decided to expand it. These ads perform quite a bit better than conventional AdWords on smartphones, according to Google.

This is the PPCall program that everyone has waited for Google to implement, except that it’s a deal right now because you only pay the cost of a click. Early adopters will reap the benefits and the relatively low cost of these calls.

I’ve also written about it at SEL.

Google May Have Patented Geotargeting

Google has been awarded a patent entitled “Determining and/or using location information in an ad system” that has very broad implications for PC and mobile advertising.

While we all now take geo-targeting today for granted, back when this Google patent application was filed in April, 2004 it wasn’t as common. Dare I say it: Google may have just patented geo-targeting.

The rest of this post is at SEL.

SMB ‘Social Media Presence’ Now at 24%

Facebook recently said that it had 1.5 million active SMB profiles/pages on the site. That’s at least 10% of the addressable SMB market.

In the survey I conducted last year with MerchantCircle we found, among early adopter SMBs, a high degree of social media penetration (at levels above 40%).

EMarketer reports the results of a joint Network Solutions-University of Maryland SMB survey, which asserts that social media usage among SMBs has grown from 12% last year to 24% this year. The base here is very tiny (n=89) and thus the survey results should be received with caution. (The total survey base is 500.) However, directionally, the results are consistent with our data and other data in the market:

Among the 24% who responded that they use some form of social media, here’s the breakdown:

• A company page on a social networking site (75 percent)
• Posting status updates or articles of interest on social media sites (69 percent)
• Building a network through a site like LinkedIn (57 percent)
• Monitoring feedback about the business (54 percent)
• Maintaining a blog (39 percent)
• Tweeting about areas of expertise (26 percent)
• Using Twitter as a service channel (16 percent)

Also in the report, the breakdown of marketing methods used by these respondents:

• Print advertising: 37% (yp, newspaper)
• Email marketing: 24%
• Social media marketing: 19%
• Telephone sales: 18%
• Direct mail: 17%
• Broadcast advertising: 14% (TV and radio)

The “social media marketing” figure (19%) in the list immediately above seems to contradict the headline that 24% of SMBs are using social media. The apparent difference is that 24% refers to “social media presence” vs. “social media marketing” — a more active category.

Platial Shut-Down Means Nada for Local

Platial was one of the early mapping sites that allowed individuals to create personal maps, before Google MyMaps and Bing Maps “collections.” It launched in the heady period of early “mashups” along with a number of others doing similar things. The site is now winding down, having run out of money “18 months ago,” according to an interview in GigaOm with former CEO Di-Ann Eisner.

The interview semi-rhetorically asks: “what is means for geo” and other location-oriented startups. The short answer is: while investors have been spooked local is only gaining importance as mobile becomes an increasing force in consumer decision-making.

Platial itself never really had a business model. One could sort of generically say “advertising” but that was an area the company neglected for quite some time. Eventually a widget distribution strategy was developed, but there was limited scale. In GigaOm, Eisner says that local advertising didn’t materialize as fast as the company thought it would:

I’m not saying we didn’t have our own executional issues, but we were pretty well in front. We all assumed that the location-based advertising market would heat up a lot faster than it has. We’ve worked with all of them over the years: ReachLocal, AT&T/Ingenio. Advertisers are still thinking that within a city means location-targeted, so all of the benefits we were providing around a specific location were not very real.

The truth is that it’s always been hard for small startups to succeed in local given the “chicken and egg problem.” You have to build both sides of the business to gain traction. And if there are larger competitors (e.g., Google) it’s especially difficult to succeed on the consumer side. Google Maps has been so successful and had so much investment it was all-but impossible for Platial to think it could survive. It would have needed to change its model and set a new course.

Some things have improved since the heyday of “mashups.” There are now local ad networks (beyond AdSense) that are feeding ads to smaller sites: Citysearch/CityGrid, V-Enable and more to come. So the local advertising infrastructure has matured since Platial launched.

Paradoxically, just at the time that local is really becoming important — it’s always been important but most haven’t been able to see that clearly — investors are shying away. “We’ve already placed our local bets,” said one VC recently in deciding against taking a pitch from a startup that has decided not to continue.

Local will remain important for as long as there are people shopping in physical stores and there are small businesses that service customers close to home. It’s just a question of who has the fortitude, patience and funding to succeed.

Compete: 94% Do Online Research Pre-Purchase

A week or so ago Compete released some data showing how consumers use multiple sources of information prior to making a purchase and how those sources may differ by category. One interesting stat from the survey data that jumped out at me was the following:

[O]nly 6% of consumers surveyed as part of the Online Shopper Intelligence study indicated that they conducted no research prior to their last online purchase.

In other words, 94% did online research before making an online purchase.

While the context here is online purchase behavior, we can reasonably assume that this behavior is equally applicable to the far more common practice of buying offline. Most purchase behavior occurs offline (e-commerce is less than 4% of US retail) and these online buyers are not going to behave differently when they buy in physical stores.

Prior studies by comScore, BIGResearch, Yahoo! and others have found 80% to more than 90% of consumers buying in-store have consulted the Internet for information prior to purchase: ROBO.

Here’s another interesting piece of data from the Compete survey, showing the continuing popularity of coupon sites.

Source: Compete, Inc. 2/10.

Centro Debuts Media-Buying Platform ‘Transis’

This has been in the works for a very long time . . . now Centro is rolling out a comprehensive digital media buying platform that automates and centralizes media buying and planning. The tool/platform is called Transis.

The company says it will overcome digital media fragmentation and enable media buyers to “easily access 100 percent of all digital media opportunities including Web sites, networks, portals, social media, mobile and video.”

That’s quite a claim. A range of other benefits are outlined in the release.

If it works as advertised it makes exchanges (with their “non-premium” inventory) unnecessary . . . Here’s the promotional video:

Again, if the system performs it’s a radical leap forward and makes Centro hugely more valuable as a company.

SuperMedia Boosts ‘Super Guarantee’ Program

SuperMedia (formerly Idearc) is launching a new version of its Super Guarantee ad campaign and extending the program, which is now one year old. The program is only available to SuperMedia advertisers, but offers consumer benefits as follows:

If a consumer is not satisfied with the service provided by a participating SuperGuarantee business, SuperMedia will work to resolve any issues or, if unable to resolve the issue SuperMedia will reimburse the consumer up to $500 of the cost of labor for the service.

The company recently expanded the program to its EveryCarListed automotive vertical:

Building on the success of the SuperGuarantee program, SuperMedia’s new SuperGuarantee AutosSM program provides a free powertrain limited warranty that covers many automotive components including the engine, valves, bearings, pumps, transmission and drive axle up to $3,000 for consumers who find and purchase qualified vehicles through EveryCarListed.com® or Superpages.com®.

Previously when I spoke with SuperMedia, as the company emerged from bankruptcy earlier this year, CEO Scott Klein he said that Super Guarantee was helping to drive retention and usage in the print directory:

We’ve seen meaningful spikes in registrations and healthy improvement in possession and usage.” He said that the company uses Gallup to measure possession and usage and that in “90% of measured markets; possession and usage are up in double digits.” Klein added that call tracking numbers indicate increased call volumes from the print directory.

Why Pubs Can’t Charge for News Online

Pew has released a big new report (based on survey data) covering online (and mobile) news consumption. You can read or download the report here.

There are lots of interesting findings, just a few of which are as follows:

• Six in ten Americans (59%) get news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day, and the internet is now the third most popular news platform, behind local television news and national television news.
• While online, most people say they use between two and five online news sources and 65% say they do not have a single favorite website for news.  Some 21% say they routinely rely on just one site for their news and information.
• 75% of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% say they share links to news with others via those means.
• 51% of social networking site (e.g. Facebook) users who are also online news consumers say that on a typical day they get news items from people they follow.

Portal sites are the most commonly used source online for news:

Portal websites like Google News, AOL and Topix are the most commonly used online news sources, visited by over half of online news users on a typical day.  Also faring well are the sites of traditional news organizations with an offline presence, such as CNN, BBC and local or national newspapers.

What all this effectively means is that unless you’re a news “brand” (and there are very few) you can’t hope to charge anything for your content. And because traditional media no longer control distribution of their content online it will be equally difficult for them to make money on advertising because of a lack of reach.

Compare findings from the NAA and comScore about local newspaper websites being most trusted.