period
Apple vs Microsoft vs Sony [Graphs]
The core of any long-standing technology company is research and development. Here’s how Apple, Microsoft and Sony’s last decade of spending stack up.
Note that the first graph shows research and development as a percentage of revenue (to scale the spending by company, since revenues differ so greatly). This next graphic can help you conceptualize the revenue and R&D gap:
A Few Interesting Notes:
• Now, Microsoft spends about 17% of their revenue on R&D. Sony spends about 8%. Apple spends less than 4%.
• If you were to break down the amount of R&D that goes purely to physical (non-software) products sold by Apple and Sony, Sony would spend about $11.5 million per product while Apple would spend about $78.5 million per product. (Of course, that’s rolling the cost OS X and iPhone OS development into Macs and the iPhone, which could be seen as inflating their per product spending.)
• Microsoft just spends a lot of money in R&D, period—about $9 billion last year in generalized research (that often doesn’t lead to specific products). In terms of percentage growth over the last decade, Apple’s R&D has grown the most (nearly quadrupled) while Sony’s has grown the least (not quite doubled).
In light of these bare numbers, is it any surprise that Sony is struggling the most to capture the hearts and minds of a public hungry for gadgets?
Sources:
Apple
Apple Public Relations
Apple Investor Relations
Apple Insider 2004
Apple Insider 2005
Apple Insider 2006
Apple Insider 2008
Mac Observer
Microsoft
Microsoft Investor Relations
Sony
Sony Investor Relations
Research by David Chaid
The numbers vary depending on who you ask or whose data you use
Bing search volume continues to drop despite tons of ads and cheating — redirecting traffic from live.com, msn.com, microsoft.com, and windows search (see also – http://bit.ly/7qDBEz) .
The Nielsen Company today reported December 2009 data for the top U.S. Search Providers.
MegaView Search data – including total searches, unique searchers, search share, and all other search figures – cannot be trended with search results prior to October 2009 due to recent methodology changes.
Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider. Example: An estimated 6.7 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 67.3 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.
versus Oct 2009 numbers from hitwise
Map of IP addresses around the world used to commit Click-Fraud
A recently disbanded click fraud ring in China racked up $3 million worth of clicks in two weeks. $3 million that we’re aware of. Just how detectable is this whole business of racking up fraudulent ad revenue clicks?
That intricate mess of lines above represents a portion of DormRing1, the click fraud bunch that was caught in China. The lines show the relationship of some of the IP addresses involved in the fraud and how they are connected to some fraudulent ad clicks. The whole network actually “involved 200,000 different IP addresses and racked up more than $3 million worth of fraudulent clicks across 2,000 advertisers in a two-week period.” Impressive and scary at the same time.
The trouble is that no one really knows how much ad revenue DormRing1 collected before they were caught. Click-fraud monitoring services such as Anchor Intelligence, the ones behind this catch, are evolving to keep up with the scale on which these rings are operating. It’s still difficult to judge just how well they’re doing as they’re having to infiltrate forums and gain the trust of the perpetrators in a manner reminiscent of drug busts. But as the criminals are getting more elaborate, the investigations are too.
That good news aside, do me a favor: after you read this post, comment, and all that jazz, refresh the page a few times and—Ah…I mean, heh…just kidding. [Tech Crunch]
This is what happens when 99% of the inefficiencies are cut out of a system (advertising industry)
Update: Including Q3 09 numbers
Source: http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=140125
While no holding company’s results are pretty these days, Interpublic Group of Cos. last week posted particularly poor numbers, swinging to a net loss of over $35 million for the first nine months of 2009 from almost $60 million in profit during the same period in 2008. IPG’s third-quarter revenue fell 18% compared to declines of 14.4% at rival Omnicom Group, 8.7% at WPP (factoring out the effect of acquisitions and currency shifts) and 5.3% at Publicis Groupe. WPP’s reported revenue, including revenue from its big Taylor Nelson Sofres acquisition, rose 16.7%. In the same quarter, net income attributable to IPG tumbled 47.3%, more than double the drop of Omnicom (down 22.5%).
Google changed the game by changing the business model from paying for impressions to paying only when the advertiser gets the click. This helped to cut out the 99% of waste and inefficiency which existed in the industry.
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WPP Profit Dropped 47% in Second Quarter More Than Half of Company’s Revenue Came From Nontraditional Advertising |
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Using words such as “severe” and “surprise” to describe the recession’s impact on its business, WPP, the world’s largest advertising conglomerate, today said its profit was down 47% for the second quarter. And WPP Chief Executive Martin Sorrell said it will be a while before marketing executives begin to spend and take chances the way they did just a few years back.
FULL ARTICLE – Source: http://adage.com/article?article_id=138673
______________________________________________________________________
In a first half earnings statement released this morning, WPP Group announced that digital and direct marketing-related services now comprise 25% of its body.
WPP Group owns labels like 24/7 Real Media, Mediaedge:cia, MediaCom, Mindshare, GroupM and Outrider.
Digital and direct garnered $1.7 billion in revenues in the first half of ‘09, with a projected annual run rate of nearly $3.5 billion total. But it is digital media and advertising that appear to be dominating the segment.
Overall, first half revenues fell 2.9% to $6.4 billion in the first half on a reported basis, MediaPost reports. Like-for-like, however, total revenues slid 8.3% against the first half of 2008.
According to WPP, traditional advertising and “media investment management” have been the hardest-hit amidst the economic downturn.
“On a constant currency basis, advertising and media investment management revenues fell by 7.5%, with like-for-like revenues down 7.8%,” it stated.
Branding and identity, healthcare and specialist communications — which includes direct, internet and interactive — were least affected.
The media conglomerate committed to prioritizing the growth of digital communications, customer insights and strong geographic markets.
Related topics: Online Advertisers, Data Updates,
Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/updates/digitaldirect-marketing-now-25-of-wpp-group-10211/?utm_campaign=rssfeed&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink
JetBlue All-You-Can-Jet Pass – how viral can be manufactured (easily)
http://bit.ly/13sF7E
Enjoy unlimited travel with our All-You-Can-Jet Pass! For just $599* you can take JetBlue anywhere you like, as often as you like, from September 8 to October 8, 2009. Use your All-You-Can-Jet Pass for business, for pleasure, to visit your favorite cities or to meet with a client. You might as well just do it all! With more than 50 cities to choose from, and for just $599, it’s a deal you can’t pass up.
About the Pass
- $599 for a month of unlimited travel, any available seat
- Domestic taxes and fees included
- International and Puerto Rico taxes and fees not included
- On sale through Friday, August 21, 2009, or while supplies last
- Travel Dates: Tuesday, September 8, 2009 through Thursday, October 8, 2009
- Each flight must be booked no later than 11:59 p.m. MDT three days prior to the flight’s scheduled departure.
- Nonrefundable/nontransferable/no name changes permitted
- Customers who already have a flight booked during the pass travel period can pay the difference to upgrade to the pass by calling 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583), prompt 4.
- Each All-You-Can-Jet Pass is eligible for 35 TrueBlue points. Flights booked on the pass are not available for additional TrueBlue points.
To purchase an All-You-Can-Jet Pass:
Call 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583), option 4. You do not have to be a TrueBlue member at the time of purchase, but a TrueBlue number is required to book all flights.To join TrueBlue, click here; it’s free.
To book flights with your All-You-Can-Jet Pass:
- Before calling to reserve your flight, please visit jetblue.com to check availability and select flight times.
- Call 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583), prompt 4.
- Provide your pass number which is your original reservation number.
- Provide your TrueBlue number.
- You may only book one flight per city per day; if a violation of this policy is found, JetBlue will honor only the last booking made and cancel the customer’s other bookings from that city on that day.
- Each flight must be booked no later than 11:59 p.m. MDT three days prior to the flight’s scheduled departure.
- You can change/cancel flights for no fee with three (3) or more days notice; changes or cancellations to flight bookings made after 11:59 p.m. MDT three days prior to the flight’s scheduled departure will be charged standard JetBlue change/cancel fees.
To change or cancel All-You-Can-Jet Pass travel:
- Greater than three (3) days before a flight: $0 change/cancellation fees
- Less than three (3) days before a flight: JetBlue’s standard change/cancel fees apply
In the case of a no-show, the customer’s pass will be placed on hold, any reserved pass flights will be canceled, and no new flight segments wil be able to be booked until the customer pays a $100 no-show penalty.
*Other important restrictions apply. For complete details, please read the Full Terms and Conditions.
18,000+ clicks in 4 hours
Non-viral videos of funny wedding dances.
Notice the shape of the youtube stats curve – each of these has 8+ million views, but notice the straight line of views that were accumulated over almost a 2 year period. Notice they each also got a bump in view count recently due to being listed as related videos on the #JKWeddingDance video.
How Megan Fox got the equivalent of $50 million of Superbowl ad spending – for FREE! — the marketing of Megan Fox
godaddy superbowl ad spending led to sharp spikes in search volume every February for the last 5 years straight. Other advertisers who spent on Superbowl ads have similar lift in search volume from the TV advertising.
Source: Google Insights for Search
If you believe that lift in search volume indicates interest and intent and if you consider that each 30-second ad cost $3 million in 2009 (WSJ: NBC Super Bowl Ads to Cost $3 Million) and assuming GoDaddy’s ad did not air more than once, they spent $3 million to get their ad in front of a TON of people and to get people’s attention. Those people who saw the ad and were interested enough to take action went online and searched for more information by typing godaddy into search (see lift in search volume during February of each year) .
If we assume that it took $3 million to generate a certain lift in search we can use multiples to calculate the media dollar equivalent of any lift in search — for example, if godaddy spent $3 million to get X lift in search, then a 2X lift in search would have required $6 million of media (in a very very simplified back of the envelope estimate; it usually would cost more than 2x to get that lift) — i.e. it would have cost at least $6 million in superbowl ad media dollars to achieve a 2X lift in search volume.
So, if we now compare search volume on megan fox side by side with godaddy search volume, we will see that in Feb 2009 Megan Fox was indexing at 21 while godaddy was indexing at 12 (this is normalized to a scale of 0 – 100). So search volume on megan fox indicates she was getting the equivalent value to $6 million of super bowl media ad spend – FOR FREE — roughly 2X the search volume of godaddy in the same time period.
At the peak of her search volume in June 2009 (corresponding to the release of Transformers 2: The Revenge of the Fallen), she was indexing at 100 and godaddy at 7. This is 8x the index of godaddy of 12 during the Feb 2009 time period when they were airing their superbowl ads. This implies that she was getting the search volume that would have required the equivalent to a $24 million super bowl ad spend to achieve — again for FREE!
If you want to research futher, use the following link to bring up Google Insights for Search to see relative search volume
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=godaddy%2Cmegan%20fox&cmpt=q
In February 2008, Megan Fox indexed at 8 and GoDaddy at 8. In 2008, Superbowl ad spots cost only $2.7 million — so she had the equivalent search volume as a paid advertising spending $2.7 million on a Superbowl ad.
In 2007, Godaddy indexed at 6 during Feb 2007 Superbowl. Megan Fox indexed at 43 during the July release of the first Transformers movie — this is an 8X multiple on Superbowl ads that cost $2.6 million — or $21 million
So the perfect “product placement” of Megan Fox in the two Transformers movies garnered her nearly $50 million worth of advertising based on search volume equivalency. This does not even take into account her sustained and increasing search volume, compared to most advertisers’ search volumes which drop right back down to pre-ad levels once the ad is finished airing.
behavioral targeting works only in the brief research period leading up to the purchase
targeting based on a picture of their intent – by seeing what sites they visit; but this is limited to the time period relatively near the time of purchase – the length of time depends on the product (longer research period for larger ticket items)
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.
The Perfect Babe – Megan Fox (pics)
Megan Fox – The Perfect Babe Product Placement
No, this post is not about Megan Fox. Well, yeah it is. But it’s about the MARKETING of Megan Fox.
Megan Fox has been around in films and TV since 2001 (see filmography below). But it wasn’t until 2007 when she starred in the first Transformers movie that she burst on the scene and became an overnight mega celebrity, especially online (see Google Search Volume chart). If you look at Ford’s search volume during the same period, there was NO lift in search that was detectable — there probably was some lift, but it is simply not detectable.
So Megan Fox went from very very little awareness to not only massive awareness, but also massive demand — people remembered her name and even took action (performed searches on her name). If some product placements would have had only 10% of the success of the “megan fox” product placement, they might actually justify the immense cost a bit better (millions of dollars paid by the advertiser to the movie makers to place products into the storyline of the movie).
And why is she “perfect,” in the marketing sense, of course? Her search volume has not only sustained but also continued to grow. She was not a flash in the pan that went away after the advertising/media dollars stopped or the public interest died off (see the snuggie and etrade search volume charts below).
transformer girl, second girl in transformers, other girl in transformers – Isabel Lucas
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