October-Design

Every once in awhile I like to “data dive” with the hopes of uncovering some factoid relevant to a question. Today is one of those days and the question I wanted to answer was “how big is the world wide web”? As is the case with any broadly defined question, there are numerous sources from which one can extract a myriad of answers. For our purpose though, we’ll focused on a few sources which will be identified shortly. So let’s go…

The World Wide Web by Active Domains: 112,583,548 (Alexa.com, Oct. 26, 2009)
Domains can be thought of as the address on a store front or house. They come in seven flavors, .com, .net, .info, .org, .edu, .gov, .biz.

• The Number One Alexa Ranked website is Google.com. Google gets (on average) 7% of the daily U.S. traffic or about 4.8 million visitors (Hitwise.com, July 2009). By contrast, October-Design’s Alexa Rank is 23,089,903 and gets on average 7 visitors a day.

The Number of Internet Users, World Wide: 1,668,870,408 (InternetWorldStats.com, Oct. 26th, 2009)

Internet Users by Country
• China – 338 million
• US – 227 million
• Japan – 94 million
• India – 81 million
• Brazil – 67 million
• Germany – 55 million
• UK – 48 million
• France – 42 million
• Russia – 38 million
• S. Korea – 27 million

• The highest percent of population with Internet Access is the U.K. with 79.8% having access;
the U.S. is second with 74.1%
and Japan is third with 74% of its’ population having Internet Access.

Estimated Number of “Indexed” Documents On the World Wide Web: 21.44 billion documents indexed (Oct 26, 09)
The key word is “indexed” which is the act of search engines reading a documents content and storing its information. It has been estimated that there are over 1 trillion documents online. However, not all documents are accessible through search engines or been indexed, nor do they have public facing hyperlinks.

Now for some analog world comparisons (just for fun):
• Population of New York City: 8,143,197
• Est. Number of Businesses in NYC: 485,000
• New York City is the United State’s largest regional economy and the worlds second largest city economy after Tokyo, Japan.
• New York City region represents $1.2 trillion of economic activity (2008 conference of Mayors); the 2008 total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the U.S. was $14.2 trillion (Source: U.S. Department of Commerce).

rwhite35

Apple (AAPL) beats Wall Street’s Earning Estimate by .40 per share, reporting a $1.82 per share results for its’ fiscal forth quarter (ending in September).

The primary driver behind this success story is Apples’ brand, and the consumers who continue to purchase iPhone, iPod -Touch and Macintosh PCs.

“This isn’t just a one-quarter phenomenon, there’s something bigger going on. There’s a paradigm shift from a cell phone, (to) a computer in your pocket. Apple’s going to run away with that and ultimately, the numbers are going to be inching up as we go forward into 2010,” Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, told CNBC.

“You know, it proves that even in a challenging economy people are willing to pay for what they perceive to be high quality product and a good value product,” said Cross Research Analyst Shannon Cross.

Our interest in this story is the last quote. “people are willing to pay for what they perceive to be high quality product and a good value product”. Another way to say it would be people are willing to pay for a brand if that brand fulfills its promise at a perceived value. Apple is certainly one of the premier brands fulfilling its’ promise to consumers.

Investment note: If you were smart, and bought Apple stock about a year ago, and sold it today (October 20th), you would have made about a $100 per share. That’s the power of a brand, hard at work.
rwhite35

In the early 90’s, the term “synergy” adorn every powerpoint and website imaginable. To say it was overused is an understatement. However, as old and tired as that term may seem, it very nicely describes the reason why client’s are getting results from broadly defined advertising campaigns. “No media vehicle left behind” is the catch phrase I would like to forward as a suitable alternate for “synergy”.

If you read through this blog, you’ll come across statistical data crumbs that support the larger issue that is audiences are fragmented, everywhere and not nearly as loyal as even 10 years ago. Think about how consumers listen to the radio or watch television; how they browse various news feeds and the text messages they send. How many of us have uploaded video’s to video servers, contributed to a blog or forum. The way we consume entertainment and information, and how we participate in conversations online and off has forever changed .

Intuitively, a synergistic advertising strategy would logically be better than a narrow one. Advertiser’s with broadly defined media plans are getting results, take Qdoba of Northeast Ohio. Their campaign includes Radio, Television, Internet(paid search and affiliate) and Mobile (text messaging). Individually, the results are hard to measure and appear to lack critical mass. But looked at in total, and a different picture emerges. Consumers are being inspired by broadcast and taking action through Internet and mobile.

When thinking about your advertising strategy, ask yourself these questions:
1.) Does a plan reach consumers in the way THEY want to be reached.
2.) Does it consider the regional influences and socio-economic demographics for a given market.
3.) Does it meet the advertising objectives for cost, accountability and longevity.
4.) Has a reasonable “success statement” been defined.

The answer to those question, when asked objectively, will lead to an advertising strategy that leaves no media vehicle behind, including traditional or new media.

rwhite35

Adobe Inc. (ADBE) announced at its’ annual developers conference, Adobe Max 2009, FLASH Player 10.1 includes support of multiple screens including smart phones and devices.

As a consumer, this is news specially if you have a Smart Mobile Device* and browse websites with FLASH content. FLASH content does not run on the Safari iPhone platform. As a developer, I’m excited because this means a better experience can be delivered with only one page of content for all platforms… But rarely is anything ever so perfect.

The technology and marketing industries continue to move toward delivering a user experience on the small screen that rivals bigger screens and for good reason, namely, critical mass. According to Nielsen.com, 18.5 million smartphones are currently in use with another 217 million mobile phone subscribers with multimedia capabilities. The ability to deliver rich, interactive content in the palm of a consumers hand, has been the holy grail of mobile marketing for some time now. A better browsing experience means more consumers pecking away at their Smart Mobile Device.

The new FLASH 10.1 is slated for full release by early 2010. * Now the caveat: Apple has not yet signed on to the project and it remains to be seen whether the iPhone and iPod Touch will support this new media player or not.

Holy Grail Quote:
King Arthur: Bloody peasant!
Peasant Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That’s what I’m on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw him, Didn’t you?

rwhite35