Industry Insights

SXSW week brought us more news from Twitter and Facebook, as well as new Hitwise traffic figures that might surprise you and a statement from Google on the future of display. Revisit all of the excitement from Austin by checking out our behind the scenes interviews, which were made possible by the sheer tenacity of David Berkowitz and some cool technology from Kyte.

Twitter Unveils @Anywhere at SXSW

The publishers above have already signed up for @anywhere.

Twitter announced a new platform at SXSW this week, which will allow publishers to integrate the service deeper into their site and create “open interactions” with readers directly from third-party sites (instead of Twitter.com). Early publishers to get on board include Amazon, Yahoo, Bing, Digg and the New York Times. For publishers, this means better interactions on their site and opportunities to accrue more followers.

In a Digital Connections post this week, David Berkowitz posed two questions that marketers should ask when considering how @anywhere will pan out in the future.

1. How important is Twitter for helping me achieve my marketing objectives?
2. How important do I want Twitter to be?

If Twitter’s an important communications channel, traffic driver, or a sales channel, then you need to follow @anywhere (literally, by following the account, and figuratively, by following related updates) and consider integrating it when it’s live.

If Twitter isn’t as essential yet, but you’re investing more resources into using it effectively and you see its influence rising (such as the share of traffic it sends to your site), then you can probably afford to be a fast follower – or a not so fast follower, where you can learn from how other sites use it before deciding how deep you want to dive in, if at all.

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Stories that made the digital headlines this week include a new whitepaper from Microsoft on the effectiveness of online  branding campaigns, Google’s newest search feature for online shoppers and exciting news about 360i’s participation in this year’s SXSW Interactive conference.

New Whitepaper: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Digital Advertising for Brand Campaigns

This week Microsoft released a new report that explores the significance of “dwell scores” – calculated by the time spent with advertising multiplied by the rate of active engagement with an ad – when it comes to digital programs. The research, derived from comScore and Eyeblaster data, shows that higher dwell scores correlate to “significant improvement in positive engagement with a brand post ad exposure.” The report notes that such positive effects often include a higher volume of branded search queries, more visits to the marketer’s Web site and higher levels of engagement by visitor’s on site.

As digital continues to become more and more central to brand strategy, understanding how consumers interact with online advertising will become increasingly important. As this report shows, click-through-rate alone cannot adequately measure the performance of branding campaigns – and other metrics such as dwell scores should be more closely considered.

Download the whitepaper: Digital Challenge: Being Greater with Data.

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This week’s top stories run the gamut — from web design trends among online retailers to new stats from comScore about social network usage. We also highlight an innovative campaign from Universal Pictures that integrates mobile with offline to promote the new film “Repo Men.” For more insights all week long be sure to follow us on Twitter — and if you’re looking for exciting careers in digital today is a great day to do so. It’s #findajobfriday here at 360i and we’ll be tweeting opportunities throughout the day.

E-Commerce Sites Poised for Improvements in 2010

According to a study by Internet Retailer and Vovici, web retailers have big plans to provide better online shopping experiences for consumers. The “Website Design Strategies & Tactics” report found that two-thirds of retailers plan a site redesign in 2010.

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Here’s your look at some of the week’s top stories in digital.

Google Now Indexing Facebook Page Updates in Real-Time Search

On Thursday Google announced that it has begun including Facebook Page updates into real-time search results. For now, the Facebook updates will come only from Pages (largely managed by brands, businesses and public figures) – of which there are about 3 million, according to TechCrunch. Google first debuted its real-time search functionality in December, when it began aggregating and displaying tweets within its search results.

So, what does the news mean for marketers? For one, brands with active Facebook pages could benefit from keyword-rich status updates. In addition, as Google’s Universal algorithm includes “Latest News” on a brand’s relevant keywords, they might consider joining the conversations during those opportune windows. Finally, the aggregation of Facebook updates within Latest News grants greater visibility to a marketer’s Facebook presence, and can therefore lead to increased Page traffic and fans.

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The Microsoft-Yahoo deal clears, Google explains some of its Buzz practices and Facebook continues to soar — we’ve got the week’s top stories in our latest roundup.

Microsoft-Yahoo Partnership Approved

Yesterday, Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they’ve been cleared to move forward with their much anticipated search partnership, which was initially declared in July. Since the engines now have received “unrestricted” clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission to implement the deal, we’ve revisited our earlier POV and highlighted some of key areas for digital marketers to focus on in the months leading up to complete, full-scale implementation.

Read 360i’s POV on the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership for more insights into what the deal will mean for marketers in the digital space.

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Image via Computer World

Google dominated industry chatter this week with its announcement of Buzz and swirling rumors of its plans to acquire social search service Aardvark. Foursquare also made headlines for its new partnerships with Zagat and the New York Times. We’ve summarized these items and more in the recap below.

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Behold the iPad: Apple’s new tablet debuted this week (image via Mashable).

What a week. Steve Jobs revealed Apple’s much-anticipated tablet, the iPad, to the world, location-based services continued to be main topics of conversation and we at 360i began a new chapter in our journey. We’ve got your complete recap below.

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