• Users with incomes under $40k click 30% more often than users with incomes over $200k, Collective found. Users with only 'fair' credit scores click 20% more often than users with 'excellent' credit scores.
• What's more, users who are late adopters of new technologies clicked 50% more often than early adopters, while users who are economizing clicked 65% more often than users who purchase frequently online.
• Similarly, a preliminary study of 100 campaigns showed no correlation between CTR and brand lift and purchase intent as measured by VIZU post-impression surveys. Collective suggests that optimization of campaigns to achieve higher CTR may, in fact, reduce brand ROI.

 Do not let click through rate (CTR) be a reason to bump a branding campaign – there is enough research to show the folly of that thinking

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=149267&nid=126105

http://www.thestar.com/article/969668--knelman-new-yorker-partnership-a-coup-for-luminato

Article taken from www.thestar.com.

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Below is the press release from MasterCard Spending Pulse, Holiday 2010 saw nice growth.

Topline:

Women’s apparel +6% -- and one of best periods for this category since 2008!

Jewelry +8%

Luxury (outside of jewelry) + 7%

MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse, a macroeconomic report tracking national retail and services sales, today provided summary results for the 2010 holiday shopping season. In the 50-day period measured - November 5 through December 24 - the data showed overall season-over-season growth of 5.5%

If last year’s holiday story was about gaining some stability, this year’s is about getting back to growth. The 2010 holiday period is categorized by strong year-over-year growth in Apparel and continued strength in eCommerce. We also saw a noticeable return in spending in the larger ticket items, as exemplified by the solid growth in Jewelry, Luxury and even the Furniture category,” noted Michael McNamara, Vice President, Research and Analysis for SpendingPulse.

McNamara also noted that the momentum in 2010 holiday season spending appeared to have started as early as the second week of November, producing a month of solid growth and persisting through the traditional early December lull. “The cold weather across much of the country in December appeared to be a positive for the Apparel sector. While there was some disruptive weather in the Midwest and the West Coast towards the end of the season, the conditions did not seem to negatively impact the national sales momentum. In some cases the weather may have also benefited the eCommerce channel.”

SpendingPulse analyzed the eCommerce , Apparel, Electronics, Jewelry and Luxury ex-Jewelry sectors. Here are the end of season highlights for the period November 5 -December 24:

eCommerce
As with last year’s holiday season, eCommerce was the big winner this year, with seasonal sales up 15.4% . With online sales representing significant share of sector sales in areas such as Apparel, the double-digit growth rates are becoming more meaningful.

Apparel
Total Apparel was a strong performing category, growing 11.2% over the 2009 holiday season. Menswear reached double digit growth weighing in at 10.5% year-over-year. The Women’s Apparel category grew by 5.6%, making for one of the best periods of growth in this subcategory since the financial market turmoil in 2008. Considering the Apparel category was down by 0.4% during the 2009 season, the segment recorded a significant turnaround this season.

Electronics
The Electronics category was one of the lagging performers, growing 1.2% season-to-season. The flat to modest growth rates posted by the category throughout the holiday season could be due to the decline in TV prices, making it difficult for the sector to produce significant year-over-year growth.

Jewelry and Luxury
Jewelry and Luxury ex-Jewelry both improved during the 2010 season. After a mild start, Jewelry posted several weekly year-over-year increases and ended the season up 8.4%. Luxury ex-Jewelry started the season with a solid gain and then picked up steam, ending with a very respectable season-to-season growth of 6.7%
 

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The New Yorker Festival 2010

Article Source: Vanity Fair Daily

"What it's going to force is advertising models that are actually helpful and respectful to users ... and that's what will make it work, because people don't have the patience for anything else," he said at MediaPost's Future of Media Forum, part of Advertising Week.

Williams joined other thought leaders in offering predictions for the future. Today, that means Dec. 25 rather than 2025. The media world is spinning that fast.

There appeared to be two trends the panelists agreed on: mobile devices could essentially be glued to billions of hands soon, and it's a great time to be a consumer. Of course, how to capitalize on mobile growth is TBD. But short of Rupert Murdoch succeeding with Internet pay walls -- Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff said "no one is paying" -- content is abundant and still largely gratis.

At the same time, the cost of devices is coming down, which could dull Apple's bite. "The iPad and other devices are interesting, but I think they'll be dwarfed by smartphones, which are still growing like crazy," Twitter's Williams said. "And it's not the iPhone that's going to take over the world. The Android phones are going to be selling for $50, and everybody's going to have those."

For consumers, the new devices are fostering connections they could only dream of just five years ago. John Ross, who heads a fledgling agency at Interpublic focused on shopper behavior, said studying the decision-making process is humbling. Partly via social media and Web searches, consumers are exceedingly well-informed, forcing retailers to react, and agencies to break from a creative brief.

"In the absence of the brands and the retailers delivering information to them, they're increasingly seeking out each other," he said.

It's an "incredibly powerful consumer who knows more about the products and services than the associate in the store, the gentleman at the auto dealership or in some cases, the pharmacist," he said. And the trick is to embrace the hunger for information "in order to make those shoppers feel smarter."

Paul Rossi, an executive vice president with The Economist Group, said his company grapples with the consumer embrace of new devices, notably the iPad and the Kindle with its falling price.

Rossi said an Economist iPad app is coming in November. "We have to accept that these devices are taking off," he said. "The change in behavior of consumers in terms of reading magazines is a definite issue for us."

A second reality: billions of people in countries such as Brazil, China and India are still waiting to get online, but have cell phones.

"You're going to see this incredible explosion of online media consumption in various forms," he said. "Text, not just Web ... the geography of the world is very much changing, and you're seeing mobile devices as a leapfrog for people to consume media in a different way."

Rossi said capitalizing on brands is fundamental. "We sit down and talk about taking marketing budget share," he said, offering packages where half of the opportunities include branded events, and social media extensions.

Vanity Fair's Wolff noted: "We're in the midst of something nothing less than industrial transformation in which ... not everything will change, but all the faces will change -- the people in charge now will not be in charge," he said.

Article Source: MediaPost News