It’s not all about search engine market share, conversion rate, campaign tracking, product demand, etc., etc. at Compete. We also enjoy looking into the clickstream crystal ball to see what’s going on in popular culture. On the heels of Britney Spears’ well “documented” birthday stunt, we were curious who was garnering all the attention in Hollywood land.

We looked at eonline.com and measured which celebrity on its Top Ten list reeled in the most page views in November, 2006. Below are the results.

Although she hasn’t released an album in years, Britney Spears managed to stay atop the competition, receiving 34% of the viewer ship of this list. Her recent divorce and birthday debacle no doubt managed to keep her in the top spot of the Top Ten list. Interesting enough, the recent marriage of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise solidified the TomCat duo as the 2nd and 3rd most viewed celebs. Incumbent Pamela Anderson somehow maintains her spot on the Top Ten list beating out the Simpson sisters (not Lisa and Maggie) and Lost costar Evangeline Lilly.

When analyzing this new list some clear themes develop. Below is a brief guide designed for stars looking to gain media coverage.

1. Get married.
2. Get divorced.
Extra Credit: execute step 1 and step 2 within in a short timeframe
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2.
4. Release an album (musical talent not required).
5. Do something stupid. Options include:
• Lip synch on SNL
• Let the world see your birthday suit – on your birthday
• Marry Tom Cruise
• Just be yourself (depends on who you are)

Get SnapShots of sites mentioned in this post:

• Eonline.com

We just wanted to let you know that November data is live on SnapShot.

Back in April we mentioned the face recognition site MyHeritage.com. The buzz surrounding this site has since then led to a significant increase in people visiting and utilizing the technology. In October, 2006, MyHeritage.com achieved the one million people per month mark. Earlier this year, a picture of me yielded matches to Martin Luther King Jr., Luciano Pavarotti, and late Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi. With the recent rampant popularity at this domain, I decided to give it another shot matching my mug to celebrities. When uploading my blog icon image, MyHeritage matched me to the following famous people:

On the left we have Carrie Underwood, the female country singer and previous winner of America Idol. Batting second is none other than the President of India, Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam. Lastly, is famous drummer and TV star, Travis Barker. Minus the tatoos, I think Travis might be the best fit. Note that both times I have tested this technology I have been matched to an Indian political leader.

Face recognition technology has caught on. The chart below shows a five-fold increase in people logging in to MyHeritage since August, 2006.

Completely offensive, extremely controversial, and unbelievably hilarious, the Borat movie has officially become a cultural phenomenon. And with reports of lawsuits from unwitting cast members popping up on The Smoking Gun and elsewhere, the adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity is proving to be true. The controversy has helped push the film to #1 at the box office for two weeks running.

But that success has also been helped by a new twist on the viral marketing approach. Released to the masses on November 3rd, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was one of the first movies to rely heavily on the MySpace ‘Black Carpet’ approach to advertising. The ‘Black Carpet’ is a movie marketing system that simply invites a small group of MySpacers to view screenings of an unreleased movie and relies upon word of mouth from there.

Judging by the trended people visits to Borat’s official MySpace page, it is safe to say that this advertising campaign worked.

But will there be a Borat backlash? The cast member shown on The Smoking Gun is not the only angered person who was featured in this mockumentary. The town of Glod, Romania is also suing the film makers for misrepresentation as they were tricked into being in the comedy thinking that it was a documentary highlighting their impoverished living state. Maybe Sacha Baron Cohen can use some of the wealth he’s earned to do the right thing for the people of Glod.

Get SnapShot’s of sites mentioned in this post:

• MySpace.com
• TheSmokingGun.com

Part I Summary:

In September of 2005, Scott Blum, the CEO of Buy.com announced in a TV commercial that his online shopping site would offer 10% off Amazon’s prices on books. Recently we analyzed Buy.com’s “10% off Amazon prices” campaign to measure the effectiveness of this David vs. Goliath approach. We found:

• After launching the campaign, Buy.com’s traffic grew relatively faster compared to Amazon.com during last year’s holiday season.
• The percentage of Amazon.com shoppers considering Buy.com nearly doubled in the months following the campaign launch.
• The campaign did not improve Buy.com’s conversion rate.

Our initial findings suggest Buy.com’s campaign was successful; however there are additional questions that need to be addressed before we can arrive at a definitive conclusion:

• Was the campaign solely responsible for Buy.com’s traffic lift?
• Did consumers understand the promotion was limited to books?
• Did Buy.com win the hearts and future purchases of legacy Amazon.com shoppers?

To explore these questions we reached out to people that shop at both sites. Using Compete’s targeted Consumer Input survey service we interviewed 170 individuals that were observed shopping at both Buy.com and Amazon during the promotional period.

Awareness/Behavior:

Compete found that 32% of shared shoppers were aware of the promotion. However, the majority of these respondents indicated their motivation to consider Buy.com was unrelated to the promotion. Of the ‘promotion aware’ respondents only 28% agreed or strongly agreed that they shopped at Buy.com because of the promotion. This indicates that only 9% of shared shoppers were positively motivated by the Buy.com campaign.

Understanding:

Did shoppers fully understand Buy.com’s “10% off Amazon prices” promotion? To its credit, Buy.com cleverly de-emphasized the details of the promotion playing down the special pricing applied only to in-stock books. In fact, the motivation of this article was a disgruntled Compete employee who didn’t pick up on the “only books” limitation. To measure the effects of this strategic ambiguity we asked ‘promotion aware’ respondents what their understanding of the campaign was. We provided five answer choices and found only 43% understood that the deal applied only to books.

Preference:

Buy.com successfully engaged 28% of promotion aware shoppers to return for future shopping. Despite the efforts from the Buy.com camp, Amazon.com remains the preferred site of overlap shoppers. In fact, 63% of respondents ranked Amazon.com their most preferred online store, compared to just 5% for Buy.com.

Conclusion:

Buy.com’s head-to-head promotion versus the mighty Amazon was inspirational, but only slightly effective in the grand scheme of internet retailing. Yes, the promotion increased visitor traffic and did lure existing Amazon shoppers; however, its long term effects are limited.

• Only 9% of shared shoppers – those who shopped at both Amazon and Buy.com – indicated the promotion positively effected their intentions on Buy.com.
• 58% of promotion aware shoppers did not understand the promotion was limited to books. Consumers who discover this detail and see it as a bait-and-switch might establish negative sentiments.
• Buy.com continues to struggle to become the preferred retail destination of shared shoppers with only 5% citing Buy.com as their preferred retailer compared to 63% who prefer Amazon.

Buy.com yielded a small win with its “10% off Amazon prices” promotion, but it’s clear they will need to pull out a few more tricks to truly challenge Amazon.

Get SnapShot’s of sites mentioned in this post:

• Amazon.com
• Buy.com

Football season is now officially in full swing, and fans are showing their loyalty by visiting the sites of the more popular teams in the NFL. Leading the way are The Dallas Cowboys, coming in as the most popular site of any NFL team and truly earning their title of America’s Team. No surprise here, really, with the combination of the always entertaining Terrell Owens and the always pleasant Cowgirl Cheerleaders, that site will consistently attract the eyes of many a football fan.

Last year’s Super Bowl champs are fighting to maintain their dominance, making an impressive showing as the number five site placing just ahead of the NFL’s premier franchise; the New England Patriots (guess where I am from). Amazingly, The Oakland Raiders made our top ten list despite starting off the season 0 and 5. Perhaps their fans were checking the site in hopes of selling jars of slightly used black and silver face paint.