One of the companies I’ve been following for a long time is Etsy.com.  Etsy.com is a website for folks selling craft items – or as they put it “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade.”  More broadly, they are referred to in the startup world as P2P commerce (person-to-person) – similar to eBay or any other site that enables person-to-person transactions with the website in the middle taking a small cut.

The press around the site has been amazing.  According to Techcrunch, “$100 million worth of goods were sold on Etsy in 2008. The company is generating over $1 million/month in revenue, Kalin told me.”

Continue reading “Startup-Watch: A Closer Look at Etsy.com” »

Sometimes, it seems like omniscience.  With our Ad Impact product, we’re able to measure the impact of advertising exposure on online behavior.  Did an ad lead to more visits, searches, sales?  The answer rests comfortably in Compete’s data.  This gives us an enviable perspective on how (and whether!) specific ads and ad strategies work.

But of course, it takes work and experience to turn data and information into intelligence and insights.  (Omniscience would be deadly boring, if you think about it.)  Though we’ve been doing advertising effectiveness analysis for over a year now, we’re continually learning new things about online advertising.  The newest learning?  The time-honored concept of “advertising decay” is a myth.

Continue reading “The Myth of Advertising Decay” »

For years people have been asking the question “how does online behavior impact my offline sales?” The question has been asked so much so that an entire industry has been built around trying to find the answer. In comes Compete…

Yesterday, Compete and Cannondale Associates, a marketing and sales management consulting firm, announced a partnership that gives marketers new insight into online to offline purchases.  For the first time, marketers will be able to see which digital marketing campaigns are actually delivering results.   Specifically, the partnership will provide insight into the impact of online activities and media consumption (including search, ad exposure, sites visited, etc), on in-store purchase behavior and brand loyalty.

Read yesterday’s press release…

If the Retail world sees the end of the year as the Triple Crown, Halloween would be the Kentucky Derby. It is the initial measure of shoppers’ purchasing power leading into the holidays, and companies are quick to be the first out of the gate with sales of costumes, candy, and decorations. Search behavior offers a unique perspective on how consumers use the online channel for Halloween shopping; being relevant one month out of the year, Halloween shoppers do not have an obvious go-to place to find the necessities, and thus they turn to search as a discovery tool.

Continue reading “Halloween: An Experiment in Retail Blitzing” »

Many epic battles have been fought on soil, but far fewer in cyberspace.  Leave it to Walmart and Amazon to break that barrier.  Walmart and Amazon (and newcomer Target) are currently locked in an all out price war over online book sales that has culminated into the American Booksellers Association asking the Department of Justice to launch an antitrust investigation.

Continue reading “Walmart and Amazon declare war : Online Retailers Fight for Book Sales” »

I think Macgyver is the ultimate handyman.  The way he is able to fix, create, or build whatever it is he needs  under nearly any circumstances is amazing.

Most Americans don’t have Macgyver’s knowledge, capabilities, or writers- but what many of us do have is access to the Internet.  And when it comes to fixing, creating, or building, people are using it in record numbers.

Continue reading “Clicking Their Way to Home Improvement: How Consumers are using the web in home improvement projects” »