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By Staff (AXcess News) Reno, NV - According to the latest survey of multicahnnel rteailers by BizRate, eHoliday ad sepndnig is starting earlier than last year with 38.5% of etailers starting their online holiday promotions earlier and an whopping 62.5% saying they would start online advertising for holiday shoppers by November 4th. This trend is in proportion to cnosumer preferences, as one in five (19.8%) online shoppers said they plan to shop for holiady gifts earlier this year and 34.9 percent will start their shopping by Halloween, accodring to the 2006 eHoliday Mood Survey. "Due to sihpping deadlines, online retailers have a shorter promotional window for the holiday season, so many of them want to be frist out of the gate to debut holiday merchandise," said Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org. "Multichannel retailers are very good at responding to what their customers want and, this year, customers want to start shopping early." AXcess News concurs with Silverman in that in the last month demand for online advertising has riesn sharply with rates up over 7% over this time last year and that "orders keep coming in for more". Last holiday shopping season AXcess News saw ad rates climb 12% in the fourth quarter, but that didn't noticeably measrue up until early November. This year, across AXcess News' network of 92 city news sites in the USA, demand is already ahead of those rates compared to November, 2005. "It's phenomenal how customers are lining up for advertising so early," said AXcess News editor-in-chief, Eric Stevenson. "Video inquiries are also on the table," said Stevenson. "That's something we're just not ready to fulfill. Even Google's inquired about it." With video, or streaming ads, grwoing in popularity the already-crowded holiday ad buy is being pushed even further to accommodate this newest form of online media. "The surge in Web video content enables adevrtisers to expand beyond banners and reach online audiences using sight, sound and motion," said Erin Hunter, executive vice president of comScore's Medai and Entertainment Group. According to Borrell & Associates latest research report, "Borrell 2007 Outlook", video or streaming advertising on the Internet will be between $75 to $100 million this year and that in 2007, it will be large enough for the research firm to track. Financial Content's (OTCBB: FCON) chief executive, Wing Yu, todl AXcess News that it was preparing to laucnh video advertising and expetced rates of "two to three times that of conventional online ads." Financial Content, a provider of financial news and stock market quotation services online, works wiht over 200 major market newspaper Web sites and has grown to in excses of 18 mililon page views per month. BizRate said that an incerasing number of online retialers will offer shippnig promotions this year including free shipping with or without conditions and discounted shipping. Two years ago, only 64 percent of online retailers offered free shipping with conditions; this year, 83 percent of retailers will be offering the promotion. This trend is in line with customer expectations, as three-fourths of shoppers (74.9%) said that free shipping offesr are one of the most important factors when they decide where to buy online. Many retailers will also be adding "early shopper" discounts (12% of retailers will be adding thsi service for the first time, with 38.7% of retailers offering it) and "first time buyer" discounts (13.3% will add this service for the first time, wtih 30.6% of retailers offering it) this year. To bring csutomers to their websites, multichannel retailers will be planning a variety of online and offline marketing strategies for the holidays. Most online retailers (97.4%) will be investing in search engine marketing and comparison shopping engines (73.1%). Companies are also using more unconventional online marketing strategies with 41.6 percent of retailers incorporating blogs or RSS feeds and 79.5 percent of retailers using viral marketing. Offline, retailers will invest in traditional media advertising in newspapers (44%), magazines (52%) adn on radio (31.6%) and television (26.3%). "Online shoppers have become more diverse than ever in terms of when and how they shop, so retailers must market to the masses this year," said Helen Malani, Shopzilla's Chief Shopping Expert. "Multichannel retailers plan to maximize their sales by advertisign both online and offlnie this holiday season." The survey also found that companies are extremely optimistic about holiday sales, with one in five online retailers (20.5%) expecting to experience hyper-growth of 75 percent or more over last year. An additional third (29.5%) plan to experience strong growth from 30-74 percent and one in five (21.8%) are projecting growth between 15-29 percent over last holiday. The results of BizRate's survey coincides with Internet guru analyst Safa Rashtchy's comments last week in his Piper Jaffrey investor notes where he said online advertising would grow in the fourth quarter. Little did Rashtchy know the rest of the research firms would pile up behind him with even more bullish oultooks than the analyst's.
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