It’s time to stick a fork in the notion of “Cyber Monday.” In terms of traffic, there’s no doubt that the holiday season represents a period of peak activity for retailers of all shapes, sizes and online penetration, but the idea that a bevy of internet users will start frantically clicking the “add to cart” button on the Monday after Thanksgiving is just wrong. However, the weeks leading up to cyber Monday gives a really interesting perspective on how people use the web to shop.

The chart below shows the retail sector’s daily reach* and daily attention** from the 15th to the 26th of November, for a set of the top 50 online retailers in the U.S.

By considering both total visitors (Daily Reach) and total time (Daily Attention), it’s possible to expose any high-level changes in actual shopping behavior.

• There is a significant ramp up in both Attention and Reach from the period of November 15th through the 23rd, before both begin to trail off. On Thanksgiving, nearly 30% of every U.S internet browser visited one of the top 50 online retailers.
• A widening gap begins to develop between the two metrics on the 18th, indicating that visitors are spending less time per visit at retailers. A major factor in this could be related to research (more on this later).
• Interestingly, while Daily Reach peaks on the 22rd, Attention remains stable through the 25th indicating a trend of more involved site visitors on the 25 and 26th. Strangely, on “the biggest online shopping day of the year” Attention falls dramatically.

Continue reading “The Myth of Cyber Monday: Busted.” »

The Facebook application platform took the social networking scene by storm for the past few months. But with MySpace (the largest social network in the US by a magnitude of 3) now on board with OpenSocial, it’s essentially everyone against Facebook. How will this impact the social networking sector overall? We took a look at the heavy users of Facebook, Myspace, and the top 5 OpenSocial partners (as of last night), to see how each site’s core users compare, and what sort of applications may have the most success in the context open social.

Across all social networking domains, heavy users tend to use the web as an extension of their profile. However, where and how they use the web outside of their network varies greatly. The chart below shows what heavy social network users do outside of their respective network, based on affinity*.

Heavy Facebook users have a strong affinity for sites at the edge of Web 2.0, as well as those that power its more popular applications.

• This group has a very strong affinity for Twitter.com, which is both a new platform for communication and a Facebook application.
• Heavy Facebook users tend to shop at trendy online retailers, and are seven times more likely than the average internet user to visit apparel sites like AmericanApparel.net and “social” t-shirt site threadless.com
• These users also tend to keep tabs on the Silicon Valley scene and geeky humor, visiting xkcd.com, and valleywag.com at more than 8 times the average internet user.
• Unlike their Open Social peers, Facebook users tend to use applications (and their respective sites) to do everything from image editing to dating.
• Outside of Facebook, power users have an extremely high affinity for the Greek9.com social network, but relatively little interest in others.

While Heavy MySpace users perform many of the same actions as Facebook users, they do so in dramatically different ways.

• Beyond the use of AOL instant messenger (assumed by the high affinity for AIM pages) MySpace users prefer Meebo.com for instant communication.
• This group tends to shop at Youth oriented retailers, being more than 4 times as likely to visit Journeys.com and Hottopic.com as the average internet user.
• The lack of applications forces MySpace users to look outside for some things that Facebook provides within it’s application platform. Projectplaylist projects music, imageshack hosts their images, flirty youth sites allows them to date, and imikimi.com gets their photos to sparkle.
• MySpace users also rely heavily on third party layouts sites to customize their profile pages. There are literally hundreds of layout resources, many of which receive visitor counts in the hundreds of thousands.

There is an obvious international skew among the other OpenSocial partners, a function of Orkut and Hi5’s large international presence.

• US members of these sites seem to have a strong connection to India and Latin America (showing strong affinity to sites like Shaadi.com). Interestingly, this group is also 9 times more likely to visit USCIS.gov, which deals with the immigration process (not shown).
• In general, heavy users of smaller OpenSocial partners behave much more like MySpace users than Facebook Users. In fact, the users of these smaller networks often show strong affinity for some of the same layout template sites that appeal to Myspace users.

New App Opportunities?

So given OpenSocial partner’s (including MySpace’s) user preferences, what should application developers tackle first? There are plenty of way’s to build on the successful Facebook applications, but deeper in the affinity data, there are some needs that earlier developers have failed to meet.

• GOOD quote generation: Across all social networks, members can help define their persona through favorite sayings…usually (and ironically) created by someone else. As a result, across all three groups of users, there is a strong affinity to sites that provide large quote databases such as thinkexist.com.
• Lyrics search / lyrics integrated music players / lyric tagging: Similar to Quotations, members across all networks use lyric related sites heavily. The ability to search (or simply see) lyrics within a standard format, and then tag lyrics that help define one’s online self would be – according to affinity data – a very valuable tool for the social web.
• Social shopping: Kaboodle (sort of) already does this, but most users won’t join another network specifically to shop. Given diverse personal preferences, ease of communication, an affinity for ecommerce among social networks, and the ability to “crowd buy” due to a massive number of users, this sort of application could be a hit.

Facebook may be in the clear regardless of whether they join the OpenSocial party or not, at least for the short term. The site attracts a very different group of core users than its competitors, and a large part of this group is now heavily entrenched in Facebook. It will be difficult for this group to leave, and questionable as to whether they would even want to. Either way, the Facebook staff has a tough decision (and possibly road) ahead.

For this post, “Smaller OpenSocial Partners” included Orkut.com, Friendster.com, Hi5.com, Plaxo.com, and and Ning.

“Heavy Users” were defined as a user visiting the social network more than 15 days in the month of September

Many media buyers are often forced to secure ad inventory based on total impressions…which in turn gives web designers a terrific incentive to inject a website with as many unnecessary pages as visitors will swallow. MySpace has been frequently called out on its bloated structure just for this reason. Because of page view inflation, flash and the increasing use of AJAX, time based metrics provide a much clearer picture of visitor interaction with a site.

But comparing traditional page view-based traffic to time based traffic metrics yields an interesting analytic: page views per minute, calculated as the average number of pages served for each minute a visitor spends on a site. Page views per minute (PPM) is a function of two things: how fast visitors are consuming content and the inefficiency of a sites structure. So who are the worst PPM offenders? Surprise! MySpace isn’t one of them.

The chart below shows the top 20 sites in terms of Page views served per minute in September, along with each sites total number of visits.

Among the list of highest PPM sites, there is an interesting mix of domains that would naturally encourage users to refresh pages frequently, sites that (innocently) could probably be tightened up, and those that are simply trying to serve as many ad impressions as possible without driving visitors away.

Questionable Motives:

• Facebook.com – Facebook serves 3.4 pages per minute of active use. This could be a function of Facebook members digging into all the meaty content, but there’s also something funky going on. Looking at this metric over time, PPMs start to increase dramatically. Back in September 2006, Facebook was serving 2.5 pages per minute. The .9 PPM increase may not seem substantial, but when your site is generating nearly 14 billion page views, that’s nearly $4 million in incremental monthly ad revenue at a $1 CPM.

Impression factories:

• Smashawards.com – Smashawards was by far the worst offender on the list. Part of the Smashits network, this site serves 6 ads on every page. Additionally, it automatically refreshes itself after about a minute of inactivity, effectively forcing new page views, 6 new impressions. I would wager these ads don’t perform well.
• Southasianews.com - this news site has 6 different ad placements on their homepage. With that much content and a new page served every 10 seconds, some of those advertisers are getting ripped off.
• Mygirlyspace.com – While MySpace.com doesn’t make the list, at least two sites devoted to MySpace layouts do. This site actually serves an ad when you click through to another piece of content. Here’s a tip, don’t do this when someone clicks on a link looking to advertise with your site.
• Makeoversolutions.com – Part of the glam network, this site serves a new page every 17 seconds. A word to media buyers, other glam network sites just barely missed making the list.

Content buffets: Sites that should have high PPM

• Smugmug.com - Devoted entirely to photographs, this site allows subscribers to share photos on an ad-free platform. At the pace that people browse photos, (especially wedding photos, the biggest tag on the site) its appearance on this list is no surprise.
• Americansingles.com - While the high PPM at this online dating site may mean members aren’t finding the love they are looking for, it’s logical they would be checking out all their options, so a high PPM is not surprising.
• Davidsbridal.com – Wedding Gowns and Tuxedos? Lots of choices means a lot of (quick) decisions.
• Enterprise.com – Renting a car apparently means inputting a lot of information. Enterprise apparently took the approach of spacing this visitor information process over multiple pages.

This type of analysis is not something that can be applied universally, and it means nothing without considering a site’s design, purpose, and content. But it does help to expose sites that are clearly out to make money or hit traffic goals at the cost of visitor experience… and hopefully help move the needle away from non-performing banner ads.

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that a) going out to the movies has gotten ridiculously expensive and b) most mainstream movies aren’t terrific. Given these two truths, RottenTomatoes.com is a default stop most Fridays; one critic’s review may not be a good measure of my future satisfaction with a movie, but when multiple reviews are averaged they become a powerful tool.

Rotten tomatoes has been steadily growing for the past 5 years. The chart below shows unique visitors per month, from August 2002 to August 2007. Over that time period the site has grown from just over 1 million visitors to nearly 2.5, peaking in December at over 3 million. Interestingly, while unique visitors has fallen since the December peak, Visitors spend about 25% more time on the site, so monthly attention remains relatively consistent.

The home page of Rottentomatoes.com answers the most immediate question visitors have;“Is the movie I’m about to see not a dive?”. But at around $10 a seat, there are reasons to dig deeper, so what movies were RottenTomatoes.com visitors researching the most? The chart below shows the top 20 movies on RottenTomatoes ranked by the amount of total time spent on each movie, from January 2007 to August 2007, along with each movie’s total budget, opening weekend revenue, and “TomatoMeter” score.

• Its (sort of) all about the ad spend: It appears that the primary influence on consumer interest all comes back to money. Generally, movies with the largest budgets received the most traffic.
• …then our ticket lines will wait in the shade: An internet rock star, 300 was the only site with a sub-$100 million budget to make it into the top five. It’s enormous online presence also helped drived $72 million in opening weekend sales.
• Lipstick on a pig: Bad movies with big budgets (Eragon, Fantastic 4, Ghostrider) tend to attract far less interest on the site than their more positively reviewed peers, but it doesn’t seem to impact opening weekend sales.
• A different kind of action movie: Amazingly, even RottenTomatoes isn’t immune to the adult industry’s massive web presence. WWE Divas Undressed captured more attention on the site than Live Free or Die Hard.

…but I’d still bet on Mclane any day.

“Bootylicious” was dominating the airwaves , Rush Hour 2 was battling American Pie 2 for box office (if not artistic) greatness and the US was more concerned about stem cells than homeland security. It was August in 2001, and just because the Internet bubble had already burst, the internet itself was still going strong. With a full six years of technological growth and consumer adoption, how has the internet changed?

A lot.

We’ve been tracking internet activity for a while. Long enough, in fact, to look back now and find some really cool stuff. The table below shows the largest 50 sites circa August 2001, based on monthly attention. More importantly, it also shows how that attention share has shifted since.

Biggest Losers

• AudioGalaxy.com:A filesharing site falls completely off the radar? Who’da thunk it?
• Flowgo.com: Kids have short attention spans. Despite being more colorful than radioactive skittles, Flowgo’s “cute” media could not compete with Myspace’s glitter templates
• Iwin.com: Downloadable games? Sure…but not when the same thing can be played in a browser, and for free.
• Netscape.com: You can’t spell AWOL without AOL.
• Sina.com: Apparently the biggest website in China lost presence in the US
• Geocities.com, angelfire.com, tripod.com: Precursors to social networks are still precursors. It was fun while it lasted.
• Altavista.com: Babblefish successfully got me a D in French Class. Pouvez-vous dire vos résultats de recherche êtes-vous mauvais aussi?
• Excite.com: Victim of the bust and an unremarkable portal, the site still looks stuck in 2002.
• Lycos.com: Another unremarkable portal, another huge loser.
• Dogpile.com: With a name that implies that they aggregate crap, it’s no surprise that this site fell to the wayside as search improved.

Biggest Winners

• Google.com: While every other search engine/portal/search aggregator declined (or even completely fell off the map) Google.com now captures 381% more consumer attention than it did in August 2001.
• Pogo.com: The online gaming site has grown from a respectable attention share of .34% in 2001, it now grabs nearly 1.69% of all time spent online.
• CNN.com: The news giant captures about 48% more of consumers online attention than it did in 2001.
• Mapquest.com: Despite GPS being in just about every device but the toaster, the map and directions provider has grown more than 32% in terms of attention since 2001.

General Trends

• Consolidation of Search: In 2001, people apparently had a really hard time finding stuff. In the top 25 sites, 10 were some form of search engine or portal. With the exception of the MSN, Yahoo and Google, the rest have fallen out of the picture.
• Shift toward socialization: The top sites in 2001 were predominately focused on delivering one-way information, whether it be through search, professional produced media, or ecommerce. In 2007, the top 50 are skewed heavily towards social sites, so much so, in fact, that MySpace, Youtube, and Facebook account for a collective 14% of all time spent online.
• Increasing entertainment: With broadband speed comes broadband media and games. Pogo.com, runescape.com, and neopets.com all live in the top 25 sites on the web.

It’s interesting to note that almost all of these sites capture less online attention than in 2001. While this (in some cases) is a function of waning interests, an overall decrease in attention devoted to the top 50 sites speaks to the diversity of the current internet as it compares to 2001. More sites mean more places to spend time, and a naturally wider distribution of attention. But this hasn’t stopped the web from evolving dramatically, and for some really great sites to grow like crazy and some really poor ones to die off completely.

I started to grasp the magnitude of Halo 3 when I was watching FutureWeapons on the Discovery Channel, and Richard Machowicz all but gave a demo of the Banshee. Yes, in addition to branding a soda, and getting into arts and crafts with a massive diorama depicting the battle of John-1 1 7; they also bought out all of the advertising for a marathon run of the one show that only a fan of First Person Shooters could love. As gamers salivate in anticipation of this year’s biggest game, how has Halo 3 impacted the larger Xbox 360 market?

Back in February, we showed how Halo 3 had already started to drive gamers’ decisions to purchase the 360. Since then, the game’s influence has only grown. From November 2006 to August 2007, we assessed the degree to which Xbox 360 shoppers also considered various games at online retailers.

• In August, over 22% of all online Xbox 360 shoppers also visited Halo 3 pages at online retailers.
• Amazingly, through all of 2007, an average of nearly 16% of Xbox 360 shoppers also considered Halo 3. If this is any indication of sales, Halo 3 could have played a role in the sale of nearly 300,000 consoles in 2007 alone.
• While this overlap fluctuates monthly, the general trend is rising. With the game now tangible, this may be the tipping point for the 360 this holiday season.

Halo 3 comes in three different packages: Halo 3, Halo 3 Limited edition, and $130 Halo 3 Legendary edition which comes with a number of “collectible” accessories. What’s really interesting is the breakdown by package. The chart below shows the percentage of total Halo 3 shoppers who showed interest in each of the three Halo 3 packages.

• Nearly 40% of all shopping interest was devoted to the Basic Halo 3 package.
• The twice-as-expensive Legendary edition received nearly 32% of traffic.
• People appear to have gone to either extreme. The mid-priced Limited edition received a scant 22% of interest.
• In the last 4 months, Halo 3 pre-order pages received over 2.1 million visits.

Halo 3 is the first of a few games Microsoft is using to sway shoppers to their platform this holiday season. The marketing behind the game almost seems like a message to the past; to the early adopters who waited for days in line for a product that was prone to hardware failure and lacking a decent launch-lineup: “believe”…that all those problems will be someday be worth it.