decline

Comparing Watch Brands via Search Volume

Two insights from this chart:

1. people buy watches for Christmas

2. overall search volume has been on the decline consistently for years

3. only watch brands which are mainly watches (vs Cartier which also makes jewelry, etc.) and also not generic words (e.g. omega) are detectable

timex movado seiko search volume Comparing Watch Brands via Search Volume

rolex timex cartier seiko swatch Comparing Watch Brands via Search Volume

Watch brands which are generic words like “omega” or “citizen” are hard to distinguish from the search volume for the generic word.

cartier omega fossil citizen search Comparing Watch Brands via Search Volume

omega momentum citizen search Comparing Watch Brands via Search Volume

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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment

TV Ad Revenues Drop 12% Online ad revenues grew 8% from 2008 to 2009

With the greater efficiencies of digital, the overall “pie” will shrink because fewer dollars are needed to achieve the same effect. In other terms — for every DOLLAR pulled out of traditional and general advertising, 20 – 50 CENTS is put back into “digital” channels and tactics. Thus the overall pie will continue to shrink while some parts grow and other parts shrink dramatically.

wasted ad dollars TV Ad Revenues Drop 12% Online ad revenues grew 8% from 2008 to 2009

Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/print/magazine-ad-revenues-pages-fall-in-q1-2010-12574

pib logo2 TV Ad Revenues Drop 12% Online ad revenues grew 8% from 2008 to 2009

Ad pages also declined in Q1 2010 compared to Q1 2009, falling 9.4%, according to the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB).

Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-ad-revenues-drop-12-12613/yankeegroup-media-averages-apr-2010jpg/

yankee group logo TV Ad Revenues Drop 12% Online ad revenues grew 8% from 2008 to 2009

Total US TV and online advertising revenues dropped 12% in 2009, although online revenues independently grew, according to research from The Yankee Group.

TV Revenue Decline Worse than Expected
In 2009, the total US TV and online advertising market totaled $67 billion, compared to $77 billion in 2008. TV advertising, by far the largest portion of this combined market, was hit especially hard by reductions in spending during 2009.

The TV ad market declined 21.2%, from $52 billion to $41 billion, between 2008 and 2009. This was significantly more than the 4% (or roughly $2.1 billion) decline The Yankee Group originally forecast in June 2009. As highlighted below, a shift in consumer attention primarily drove the steep decline in the TV ad market.

TV’s Loss is Internet’s Gain
Internet advertising grew during 2009, as a result of consumers spending more time online and less time watching TV. Online ad revenues grew 8.3% between 2008, when they totaled $24 billion, and 2009, when they totaled $26 billion.

yankeegroup media averages apr 2010 TV Ad Revenues Drop 12% Online ad revenues grew 8% from 2008 to 2009

Media Consumption Dwindles
The total amount of time consumers spent on media per day actually declined 14.3% between 2008 and 2009. Consumers spent about 14 hours per day on media in 2008, but only 12 hours per day in 2009. Most of the decline in media consumption was represented by declining TV viewership.

Americans spent an average of three hours and 17 minutes per day consuming TV and video in 2009, compared to an average of four hours and 13 minutes a day consuming online content. In addition, average daily mobile phone use reached one hour and 18 minutes. Thus Yankee Group advises marketers and advertisers to increase their focus on online and mobile promotions.

Annual US Ad Spending Falls 12.3%
Total US advertising expenditures (including print, radio, outdoor and free standing inserts) fell 12.3% in 2009, to $125.3 billion, as compared to 2008, according to Kantar Media.

Some of Kantar’s findings echo findings from the Yankee Group. Internet display advertising expenditures increased 7.3% for the year, aided by sharply higher spending from the telecom, factory auto and travel categories. Meanwhile, spot TV advertising fell 23.7%, Spanish language TV advertising dropped 8.9%, network TV fell advertising 7.6%, and cable TV advertising only fell 1.4%.

About the Data: Statistics are taken from the updated Yankee Group “2009 Anywhere Advertising Forecast.”

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Thursday, April 15th, 2010 news, statistics 1 Comment

Please Euthanize This Big Boy Already – How Lack of Innovation Killed Another Giant

Not only did the shift towards digital communication cause a continuing decline in revenues, the lack of innovation caused the U.S. Postal Service to fall far behind able competitors like FedEx, UPS, etc. (lowering prices is not innovation; and delivering 3 days a week is not innovation either.) We are at a point now where if the USPS disappeared, consumers will shift their remaining habits towards digital and existing delivery competitors will (gladly) absorb the incremental business (because they already work the routes anyway, and can even lower prices due to extra volume).

Source: http://bit.ly/9RHDtQ (BusinessWeek)

March 4 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Postal Service, facing a $238 billion budget deficit by 2020, should consider cutting delivery to as few as three days a week as the agency attempts to pare costs, a consulting firm said.

Those cuts are among changes McKinsey & Co. presented in a report this week at a postal conference in Washington. Options also included expanding business lines and restructuring retiree health benefits.

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Friday, March 5th, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

Windows Mobile’s Incredible Death Spiral

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/YplxNHBy8r0/windows-mobiles-incredible-death-spiral

500x smartphone platform share 01 Windows Mobiles Incredible Death SpiralBefore Windows Phone 7 was even an embryo of a concept, Windows Mobile was king: It powered nearly half of smartphones in use, a led the industry in features. Then, in 2007, things started to go wrong. Very, very wrong.

Silicon Alley Insider has charted Windows Mobile’s platform share, which is to say the proportion of users who were using it at a given time, over the last four years. For showing decline, figures like these are more telling than sales—they mean that, for years now, people haven’t been buying Windows Mobile phones nearly as fast as they’ve been ditching them.

More interesting than what it shows is what it projects: Windows Mobile 6.x phones have been collectively kneecapped by Microsoft’s announcement yesterday, and rendered spectacularly unbuyable outside of enterprise circles. In other words, that line—the one that dragged down past RIM in 2008, and that dropped past Apple last year—is going to keep plunging for the rest of this year, until Windows Phone 7 tries to haul it back up. And until then, it’s only going to get steeper. [Silicon Alley Insider]

 Windows Mobiles Incredible Death Spiral

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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

Facebook is going down – pageviews, average stay, pages per visit – why?

From the Compete charts below, it is clear that Facebook is seeing a decline in pageviews, average stay, and pages per visit.  But why?

I know that I have reduced the time I spend on Facebook and I have also reduced the number of messages and other social actions as well.  And I have deleted virtually all of my personal and family photos and will not upload any more. These may be the first signs of a waning of Facebook due to a number of factors.

I can’t get my stuff back out

For example, Facebook has stated that it will not participate in OpenSocial because they do not want people to be able to export their content, conversations, photos, etc, out of Facebook and use on another social network. I am concerned that I will not be able to retrieve or back up content which I believe is mine. I like to have control over my family photos, conversations with friends, etc. I am willing to accept as a “cost” of using the Facebook system the fact that they know who my friends are.  But I am less willing or unwilling to continue putting my content where I cannot get it back, in its entirety.  (Google Docs, for example, just launched a feature where you can back up everything back out of Google Docs into Microsoft Office formats).

Ads in the stream, erosion of trust

A second issue mentioned in a previous post is the increase in advertising on Facebook and also the more unscrupulous practice of injecting ads “into the stream” — ads masquerading as status updates. These are harmful to the overall trust built up in the community and I have un-friended quite a few people whose accounts were clearly used to promote events, products, etc.

Ad-effectiveness sucks

From a prior post – http://bit.ly/EhiW9 – Facebook advertising metric are absolutely abysmal. They keep trying to sell advertisers on the hundreds of billions of pageviews they throw off. But advertisers are getting smarter and more and more of them will buy ads on a cost-per-click basis (instead of CPM, cost per thousand impressions basis).  This means that the ad revenues that Facebook enjoyed from gross INefficiencies will be decimated.


facebook pageviews Facebook is going down   pageviews, average stay, pages per visit   why?

facebook average stay Facebook is going down   pageviews, average stay, pages per visit   why?

facebook pages per visit Facebook is going down   pageviews, average stay, pages per visit   why?

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Friday, October 30th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Despite massive increases in advertising, the biggest beer brands see massive drops in sales

Beer is yet another commodity and category that is being decimated by better quality alternatives. The means of production and distribution are no longer controlled by a very small number of big companies. Consumers find attractive alternatives in micro-brew beers or local beers. They have the means to access them (online) and have the product shipped directly to their homes.  So no matter how much advertising the big companies do, if their product is just not that great, they will continue to lose customers to alternatives. The “lime” version of Bud Light was said to cannibalize sales of regular Bud Light. And rightly so, consumers are looking for a better product.

Source: http://adage.com/article?article_id=138141

Fourth of July Holiday: Bargain Brands Gain, but Big Spenders Bud, Miller Lite and Corona Tap Out

By Jeremy Mullman

Published: July 27, 2009

Despite a flurry of new and improved ad pushes for the country’s leading brews, the days leading up to Independence Day, usually the biggest-selling period of the year for the category, led to gruesome sales declines vs. the same period last year. Sales for Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light and Budweiser plunged 7% and 14%, respectively, in grocery, convenience and drug stores during the two-week period ending July 5, according to scanner data from Information Resources Inc. Miller Lite suffered a 9% drop. The big importers were hurt badly too: Corona marketer Crown Imports watched sales decline 6% to 8%, while Heineken and Diageo each saw double-digit drops.

beer declines in sales 2009 Despite massive increases in advertising, the biggest beer brands see massive drops in sales

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Sunday, July 26th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Bing is bigger than CNN, Digg, Twitter? Not so fast!

Compete shows that Bing’s unique users in June 09 is bigger than Twitter, CNN, and Digg.

This is not because people are voluntarily going to Bing.com.  It is because Microsoft redirected all traffic from live.com and search traffic (results pages) from msn.com to bing.com.

bing twitter cnn digg unique visitors Bing is bigger than CNN, Digg, Twitter? Not so fast!

This is what it looks like when a site changes domain names and redirects all rtraffic from the old site.  By next month Compete will show the same “X” for Live.com vs Bing.com

dailymakeover makeoversolutions unique visitors Bing is bigger than CNN, Digg, Twitter? Not so fast!

Already starting to see the decline of traffic from live.com which is entirely redirected to bing.com

live search vs bing unique visitors Bing is bigger than CNN, Digg, Twitter? Not so fast!

bing compete Bing is bigger than CNN, Digg, Twitter? Not so fast!

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Thursday, July 9th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Fading Stars, Hit Driven Stars, Flatliners, Rising Stars

search volume of various movie and television celebrities is driven by movie or television show; some are hit drive, others have sustaining power

Increasing and sustaining search volume – Megan Fox

megan fox search volume Fading Stars, Hit Driven Stars, Flatliners, Rising Stars

Hit Driven – Emma Watson search volume goes with Harry Potter movie search volume, exactly

emma watson harry potter search volume Fading Stars, Hit Driven Stars, Flatliners, Rising Stars

Spider Man Movie, Kirsten Dunst and Toby Maguire stars – search volume match exactly

kirsten dunst toby maguire  Fading Stars, Hit Driven Stars, Flatliners, Rising Stars

Fading Stars – Jessica Alba has some search volume spikes around the time when movies come out, but there is an overall decline in baseline search volume over time.

jessica alba search volume Fading Stars, Hit Driven Stars, Flatliners, Rising Stars


Fading TV Show – in January of 2006 and 07 there was still significant search volume around the star of Fox’s 24. In 2008 and 09 there was not. Kim Bauer (Elisha Cuthbert)

jack bauer keifer sutherland search volume Fading Stars, Hit Driven Stars, Flatliners, Rising Stars

Flatliners – Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt search volume

brad pitt angelina jolie search volume Fading Stars, Hit Driven Stars, Flatliners, Rising Stars


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Monday, July 6th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments