On Monday, the Energy Information Association released its latest gas price data; the U.S. price at the pump (all grades) stood at $3.51 at the end of April, the highest price on record. The conversation surrounding oil prices and the economy has made the price of gas a hot topic across political debates and fuel economy a component of recent automotive campaigns.

Does the price of gas actually run the engine of automotive interest in the US? If you sell compact cars it sure does. Compete tracked monthly shopping, or demand, for the compact car segment and compared it to the monthly U.S. weighted average gasoline (all grades) prices over recent months. Compete measures in-market demand by looking across all popular 3rd-party sites and aggregates unique shopping behavior by observing how many people actually utilize shopping tools for every make and model.

Compete also compared demand and gas prices for the most popular hybrid and best-known fuel-efficient compact car, the only U.S. model to exclusively offer every trim as a hybrid: the Toyota Prius. It appears, and not surprisingly so, that shopping spikes and falls coincident with gas prices.

Since launching, the Prius has been synonymous with fuel efficiency and hybrid fervor. April marked the highest shopper count total for Prius on record. Prius was the 4th most shopped model in the U.S. in April, when it had over 124,000 shoppers in that month alone. To put that in perspective, 124,000 shoppers was more than the entire shopper total for more than 25 other makes. In other words, more people shopped for a Prius than for all BMW models combined. Prius had more shoppers than the Lexus brand had in total despite the recent Lexus “power of h“ hybrid featured ad campaign. More people shopped for Prius than for Chrysler, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Pontiac or GMC to drive the point a little further down the road.
Prius outperformed all models combined (from a unique count, a person could have shopped for more than one model within a make) for the above-mentioned makes and in doing so outperformed the entire make demand for more than 70% of all major makes selling cars or trucks in the U.S. today. Does Prius deserve to be its own make with a portfolio of models that sell off of the fuel-efficient brand promise?

Prius has demonstrated that the right message at the right time works. Better fuel economy messaging works when gas prices peak for compact cars, and Prius has the hook consumers are willing to fish for in a compact car segment that is growing. I haven’t met many people that expect a severe decline in gas prices in the future, which would lead me to conclude that Prius is destined for yet more attention and subsequent success. Could the Prius brand extend across a wider range of products? I think it could. It certainly has enough attention from consumers at the moment to share shoppers across more models.

eBay has grown over the years to become a major center for online purchasing. In March 2008, over 75 million Americans visited eBay. Two thirds of these visitors performed a search on the site. This begs the question, what was being searched for?

Below is a table with the top 10 out of the 30 most searched terms on eBay in March 2008. The “Share” for each term is determined by dividing the searches made on a given term by the total number of searches made on the site.

Video games, electronics, handbags, and clothing dominate the list. Nintendo Wii, which seems to sell out before it can even reach a store’s shelf, is the most searched term by an enormous margin. Apple products and designer fashion are also quite frequently searched.

Click here to see the entire list of the Top 30 eBay Searches located on Compete’s Data Hub, which you can check out often for updates.

Korean Americans represent less than 1% of the US population. Still, SK Telecom thinks that segment is valuable enough that it markets a Helio sub-brand called “Helio Powered by SK Telecom” that offers Korean-language phones and content — and Korean-language advertising.

Because we’re thinking about segmentation more and more here at Compete, I took a look at areas online where Helio might be able to find Korean Americans and target them with advertising. So I used Behavior Match to check on the online habits of Korean-Americans. Behavior Match is Compete’s service that indexes all the sites on the web for a certain segment against the general US online population.

When looking at the sites where Korean Americans strongly over-index one category stood out: online video. Korean Americans were five (or more) times more likely to visit certain popular video sites than the general population. I’m not sure why that is, but these sites could be good spots to place advertising for Helio — or even Korean ads for Helio Powered by SK Telecom.

• Veoh.com (Korean Americans are 5.3x more likely to visit than general visitors): Veoh is an online TV site with thousands of videos. Veoh has some Korean-language content, but it is mainly focused on US TV.
• Rapidshare.com (7.2x more likely to visit): Rapidshare is an online file-sharing site that is popular for video sharing.
• Megaupload.com (6.1x more likely to visit): Like Rapidshare, Megaupload is a file sharing site with a video angle.
• Megavideo.com (5.2x more likely to visit): Megavideo is Megaupload’s answer to YouTube and some of the traffic it sees links in from Megaupload.

Among these sites Veoh is the clear leader in overall traffic, and also leads in terms of time spent on site.

With a high concentration of Korean American visitors and significant time spent on the sites by all visitors, these five may be excellent media buys for Helio, or anyone looking to target the Korean American segment.

Consumers have embraced the idea of the “triple-play,” but what about the “quad-play”? Are they ready to bundle wireless with phone, TV and Internet? Yesterday the Telecommunications & Media practice here at Compete released an in-depth study that reveals consumer sentiment around telecom bundles, details the specific telecom companies best positioned to capitalize on the bundle opportunity, and identifies the implications for other companies along the telecom value chain.

As part of the study, Compete conducted a targeted survey of over 2,500 online visitors to major telco sites. They were asked about their recent shopping experiences and interest in bundling new products and services into their existing telco bundles.

Overall, 43% of survey respondents (averaged across individual providers below) indicated that they would be either “likely” or “very likely” to consider purchasing cell phone service from their telco provider.

Other Key findings include:

• Interest in bundles increased 55% from July 2007 through March 2008
• 97% of consumers are most interested in the broadband Internet service component of the telco bundle
• Triple-Play bundle awareness is greater among cable companies than traditional telcos
• 62% of respondents said they would be impacted by having unlimited calls between their home phone and cell phone

For a copy of the complete report, please email Ryan Burke.

In less than two weeks, crime will run rampant in the streets. Crime bosses will come to power, assaults will be made with deadly weapons, and thousands of autos will undoubtedly be stolen. Luckily the only thing harmed will be pixels. On April 29th, Rockstar’s newest episode in the Grand Theft Auto series hits shelves. The hype around Grand Theft Auto 4 has been immense, but the real question is: does hype translate into sales?

One indicator of future sales is pre-launch demand – not people watching trailers or investigating rumors about the game, but those actually exhibiting shopping activity. Despite being available on both the PS3 and Xbox 360, demand is nowhere near that of 2007’s most anticipated game, Halo 3.

The chart above compares pre-launch demand of these two blockbuster games for the 15 weeks leading up to each game’s respective launch:

• During this crucial demand-building period, Halo 3 attracted an average of 4x the shoppers of Grand Theft Auto 4.
• As each game’s launch grew closer, demand for both game ramped up. In fact, in the last two weeks, GTA 4 has closed the demand gap…but not fully. Halo 3’s launch demand, in the same week was only 140% higher.

Has the Wii felt the burn by not offering the Grand Theft Auto Title?
Hardly. Sales for the Wii console have been reported on at length, and demand tells a similar story. The chart below shows Compete’s estimate of monthly in-market video console demand based on the number of U.S. consumers observed shopping online for each console* to console sales as reported by NDP group.

But there’s an interesting relationship between sales and online shopping activity: sales are capped at the total number of available units. Especially during this holiday season, a lot of demand for the Wii went unfulfilled.

• Demand for the Wii spiked to nearly 3.5 million shoppers in December of 2007, a growth of 62% year over year.
• Despite just barely edging Xbox 360 out in terms of December sales, the Wii crushed it rival in terms of demand. During both November and December Nintendo’s console attracted 2x more shoppers than the 360 (or the PS3).
• As the holiday season ended, the large gap between Wii demand and sales as shopping activity subsides, and more consoles become available for purchase.

It’s significant that the Wii is experiencing substantially higher demand than it did during it’s launch period, typically the case and indicative of a more significant trend. The escalating number of shoppers implies that many people are still “discovering” the Wii, and the massive volumes of traffic seem to reach beyond the “gamer” demographic. As gaming is clearly going mainstream, the intuitive design and social elements of the platform have consumers turning to the Wii in droves.

Just got back from CTIA in Vegas, and I have to admit I was a bit disappointed this year. There were very few of the blockbuster product launches typical of the show. In the ever-present race to discover the elusive ‘iPhone killer’, there were only a few notable device announcements (Sprint’s Samsung Instinct being a highlight), even though a number of companies positioned their next device as the latest and greatest to take on the AT&T/Apple juggernaut.

This story has been the same since Apple announced the iPhone over a year ago. Now that the shine has worn off, it is time to take another look to see if anyone has emerged as the Apple assassin. Given that the majority of wireless shoppers plan to use the online channel to research their next purchase, we took a look at the online interest in the iPhone and its competitive set. What we found is that the biggest competitor for the iPhone is . . . wait for it . . . the iPhone!

No surprise, but the recently launched 16GB iPhone is the most heavily cross-shopped device amongst online shoppers who consider the 8GB iPhone by hitting a product detail page on att.com.

Given that most cross consideration occurs within a particular carrier, things get a little more interesting when we look at the devices that are cross-shopped across carriers. By looking at the cross consideration of the iPhone across carriers, you can start to get a picture of the early favorites for the devices that are most likely to draw interest away from the iPhone.

It raised a few eyebrows at the time, but when Verizon Wireless CMO Mike Lanman said that the LG Voyager would “kill the iPhone” upon its unveiling last October, he may have been onto something. The iPhone isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but Lanman’s device has proven to be the iPhone’s primary competitor the past six months.

The volumes may not seem high, but the fact that 4% of everyone who viewed the iPhone on att.com in February also viewed the Voyager on verizonwireless.com represents a healthy interest. That number did drop to under 3% in March, with T-Mobile picking up the extra interest across the lineup of Blackberry Pearl, refurbished T-Mobile Dash, and the Blue Blackberry Pearl.

The fact that a refurbished device is now in the consideration set for the iPhone may also be indicative that the iPhone has finally fallen from its illustrious perch into the realm of other plain old ‘cool’ wireless devices.

To look at the newest of the iPhones, you can see that the cross-consideration of the 16GB iPhone looks a little different. This higher-priced device skews heavily towards Verizon Wireless, indicating a less price sensitive consumer who is comparing Verizon’s pricier service and devices versus T-Mobile.

The Voyager still stands as the biggest competitor to the various iPhone models in the market, but with overall interest levels falling in line with other popular handsets, you can start to sense the need for the Cupertino crew to put out the next generation iPhone device. Mr. Lanman is waiting.