Posts tagged amazon
Google AdWords’ biggest spenders revealed
Sep 6th
According to the document, which Google has not yet confirmed or denied the authenticity of, AT&T Mobile spent a whopping $8.08m on AdWords in June. Other big spenders included University of Phoenix-operator Apollo Group ($6.67m), Expedia ($5.85m) Amazon ($5.85m) and eBay ($4.25m).
One of the fastest rising spenders in June was a company battling perhaps the greatest PR crisis in memory: BP. The oil giant went from spending five-figures per month on AdWords to over $3.5m in June, highlighting the fact that when you need to get a message out and a message out fast, the internet and search engines are at the top of the list.
Certainly, it’s interesting to see just how much Google’s best customers are spending on AdWords, but perhaps more interesting are the amounts being spent by brands that aren’t pouring so much in.
Recognizable names such as BMW and Walt Disney, for instance, spent less than $500,000 on Google ads in June. And they’re the rule, not the exception. According to AdAge’s document, only 47 of the brands listed spent over $1m in June whereas 357 spent somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000.
Assuming the document AdAge has obtained is authentic and the numbers are accurate, Google investors, analysts and pundits have new insight into the company’s health. A couple of key takeaways:
- While Google, as a company, is highly-dependent on a single revenue stream (AdWords), its customer base, even at the high-end, is arguably quite diversified. As AdAge notes, the top ten advertisers in its document “collectively accounted for just 5% of Google’s U.S. revenue during the month.“
- Google still likely has the opportunity to see increased spend from major brands. The sub-$500,000 per month spend seen with major brands like BMW and Walt Disney is a drop in the bucket for these companies, and it’s hard to imagine a future in which some of these budgets won’t grow substantially, especially as consumers in the key demographics these brands target are increasingly found online.
Google Planning Pay-Per-View Film Service on YouTube
Aug 31st
Millions of people log-on to YouTube everyday to watch silly cat videos. Will those same people log-on to watch pay-per-view movies? This morning, the Financial Times reported that “Google’s YouTube video site is in negotiations with Hollywood’s leading movie studios to launch a global pay-per-view video service by the end of 2010.”
The service has been in beta testing since the beginning of the year and is said to have “caused excitement in Hollywood” where movie studios are struggling to come up with ways to replace dwindling revenues from DVD sales. Google’s movie rental product would compete directly with similar services from Netflix, Apple, Hulu and Amazon.com, among others.
When I wrote about YouTube’s movie rental plans last year, I was less than optimistic. Specifically, I wasn’t sure whether YouTube’s playback would be good enough to convince people…
Click to continue reading Google Planning Pay-Per-View Film Service on YouTube
Argos.co.uk rolls out same day delivery in London
Aug 4th
Argos has already had plenty of success with its Check and Reserve service. It accounted for 22% of the retailer’s total sales last year, and this channel grew by 36% for the second year running.
By adding these extra delivery options, Argos can expand the appeal of its Check and Reserve service, and offer something that most of its competitors cannot. At £4.95, the same day or nominated time delivery is also cheaper than Amazon’s equivalent service.
Argos will also be able to reserve items so customers can select a one hour delivery slot within 48 hours, a service which operates seven days a week.
As Shutl’s Tom Allason told Econsultancy last year, the delivery options offered by the company represent ’a significant game changer for e-commerce, as it shifts power back to multichannel retailers’.
Since the Shutl service requires that retailers have stores within five to ten miles of customers, this service allows multichannel retailers to offer something that pure plays cannot.
The link up with Argos is also a massive step forward for Shutl. According to Tom Allason:
From every angle, Argos are the ideal partner for us, with the customers, systems and stores required to propel Shutl into the national mainstream. It is, however, still early days and while I can’t see why anyone would ever choose to wait for a courier… we know that we have a lot to prove.
The trial will initially last for six months, and if successful, we my see this service extend beyond London, as Shutl plans to cover all major UK cities within the next 12 months.
According to Snow Valley’s Delivery Report earlier this year, just 14.4% of etailers offered the choice of a specific delivery date, while only 15% provided customers with the option of a specified time slot, and many of these were grocery retailers.
Offering to deliver items on a particular days can be a compelling prospect for customers, who may be either be impatient to get hold of their purchases, or else have work commitments that mean they cannot wait in all day for delivery.
Providing this kind of flexibility gives Argos the chance to appeal to more potential customers by providing a unique and persuasive selling point. It should also be especially useful at Christmas, making last minute shopping much easier.
How m-commerce made Amazon $1bn
Aug 2nd
Since launching under the Cadabra name back in the mid 90′s Amazon have consistently shown themselves to be innovative developers of multichannel strategy.
Functionality such as one-click ordering combined with multi departmental communication and delivery all conform to the cardinal rule of multichannel: make it easy.
Customers annoyed at the prospect of long registration forms or complex, segregated returns or service policies have obviously been voting with their wallets recently with the online books, games and..well…pretty much everything retailer declaring earnings greater than $1bn through it’s mobile commerce channels alone.
It’s worth remembering that financially speaking things aren’t entirely as rosy for the company, with no clear profit shown until the final quarter of it’s fourth business year and a growth strategy that seems horrendously slow.
Despite this, it is a model that’s proven to be robust enough for the often vague currents of online retail, while a consistent dedication to design, process and overall branding has enabled scalable long term success.
While this figure is undoubtedly due largely to this companywide strategic approach, it is a figure that helps ratify mobile commerce as a new growth sector, and one that marketing departments should consider carefully before rejecting.
Crucially, as well as having a dedicated iPhone app, Amazon has covered all bases with a mobile optimised website, which can appeal to a broader audience. This is similar to the approach taken by eBay, which has also seen some impressive mobile sales figures. A combination of a well known brand name and usable mobile sites has appealed to customers.
It can no longer be argued that customers are being turned off by lack of coverage or resolution on mobile devices, or that potential profits do not justify start-up and development costs.
While no official figures are forthcoming, it isn’t outside the realms of possibility to consider that Kindle’s continued growth in the face of stiff, Apple-shaped competition may have also had an influence when it came to generating the sizeable chunk of change.
Amazon has a history of leading the pack and once again seems to have placed their bets in the right place. Customers and devices are ready, meaning other businesses must now rise to the integration challenge or risk missing out on a sizeable slice of the market.
Like eBay, Amazon has been quick to release mobile commerce sites and apps, and while other retailers are still pondering such a move, these two giants of online retail have a firmly established mobile presence.
Jay Rockefeller’s Surveillance Machines
Jul 30th
The internets are a series of tubes attached to information-gathering machines. (photo: wheresmysocks via Flickr)
I don’t mean to be churlish. After all, Jay Rockefeller tried to conduct some kind of oversight over Bush’s illegal wiretap program. He even went so far as to write out by hand a letter to Dick Cheney telling him the wiretap program sounded like the data mining the Senate was in the process of specifically defunding. And Rockefeller was honest about his own capabilities to conduct oversight without the help of his more technical staffers.
As you know, I am neither a technician nor an attorney. Given the security restrictions associated with this activity, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate much less endorse these activities.
But is there any better demonstration that members of the Gang of Four cannot exercise oversight over such programs without staffer assistance than the way former Gang of Four member Rockefeller talks about the machines that collect and store data on you?
Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who appeared not to be a frequent customer of Amazon or eBay, was worried that an online retailer “records every book you purchase” and “these machines, as I call them, are storing all of this information about you.”
Apparently, the members of Congress protecting citizens from the powers of these surveillance machines are completely unfamiliar with the way they work and the data they’re already collecting. Yet both the Bush and Obama Administrations want to make sure they’re the only ones who learn about the surveillance those surveillance machines are doing.
![Share This icon](http://static1.firedoglake.com"/plugins/share-this/images/share-icon-16x16.gif"){kind=icon}
Apple Improves Hardware, Reduces Energy Consumption
Jul 29th
apple-charger
With swift competition from all sides, Apple has decided to improve its line of hardware with a few releases.
Recently, Apple launched its own brand of batter chargers for AA batteries, trying to take a stance on improving the optimization of energy usage.
The introduction of the charger will help to reduce the amount of power that is required by other competing chargers. It seems that the product helps to reduce energy consumption during charging by 10 times.
Normally, even when batteries are charged, chargers consume electricity due to a phenomena known as the vampire draw. The Apple charger helps to reduce this.
Apart from that, a new 27-inch LED display was released for the monitor product line. Ambient light sensor were also added to the screen that help to automatically adjust the brightness of the screen based on the surroundings.
In other news, there is fierce competition against the Apple iPad as Amazon unveils its latest Kindle features.
34% of shoppers prefer to buy online: report
Jul 21st
Factors influencing online purchases
The survey also looks at the features on websites which make it more likely that consumers will decide to shop online.
Free shipping was the most popular motivation for 82% of UK and 80% of US consumers, and gives etailers that offer this option a clear advantage over competitors.
Plenty of well-known retailers have caught on to the power of free shipping, with the likes of ASOS, John Lewis, Amazon all offering some degree of free shipping, and just as importantly, promoting it heavily throughout the site.
Price guarantees were an influence for 72% of UK and 64% of US shoppers, and suggests that providing promises to match competitors’ prices and even listing them on site can be a useful tactic for online retailers.
Offering alternative payment methods makes sense for etailers, as it allows them to capture as many customers as possible, appealing to those that may be concerned about card fraud or who simply don’t have a credit or debit card.
60% of UK consumers and 48% of those from the US said that alternatives such as PayPal would make it more likely that they would shop online.
Availability of product ratings was a factor for 59% of UK shoppers, as was the availability of user-generated or consumer product reviews (57%).
Online chat was less of an influence on purchases, with just 15% of UK and 22% of US respondents saying it would make them more likely to purchase online.
This is not surprising, since online chat is not widely available, especially in the UK. However, if it helps 15% to 22% of consumers to complete their purchase, then it is a worthwhile tool for online retailers.
E-commerce site issues
We also asked consumers how often they encountered various problems when attempting to make purchases online.
The most common problems uncovered by the survey were slow-loading pages and being unable to have specific questions answered (which is where online chat can be useful). These were frequent issues for 13% of respondents, and somewhat frequent for 31%.
Other common problems included inadequate site search functions, with 34% finding this a problem either frequently or somewhat frequently, and insufficient information (41%)
Online purchasing
Respondents were asked how much their most recent online purchase cost. Nearly half (46%) of surveyed consumers spent between £0-£100, with the largest proportions (29%) being between £25- £100.
37% of respondents spent between £100-£500 which may well account for a large amount of electrical or computer purchases.
Other highlights from the report
The continued importance of targeted and relevant email marketing came through in consumers’ responses. 50% said that irrelevant information devalued emails they received. while 50% said that emails weren’t valuable because there was “no special advantage” to receiving them.
36% replied that receiving an email had prompted them to make a purchase online, whilst around a quarter (27%) reported that an email was the cause of an offline purchase.
The younger the audience, the more mistrust there is towards advertising, though the majority of consumers appreciate receiving advertising messages when it is directly beneficial to them, such as receiving a discount on a product or service (57%).
Doug Liman To Save ‘The Last of the Tribe’
Jul 14th
Now that Warner Bros. have put their 3D version of The Three Musketeers on the backburner, director Doug Liman’s next project may be a more modern book-to-film adaptation of the newly-released work, The Last of the Tribe.
Variety is reporting that Liman is now attached to a big screen treatment of Washinton Post correspondent Monte Reel’s nonfiction novel, the full title of which is The Last of the Tribe: The Epic Quest to Save a Lone Man in the Amazon. The book will be adapted by screenwriter Mark Bailey, who received an Emmy nomination for his writing on the 2003 mini-series Pandemic: Facing AIDS.
Bailey will also serve as executive producer on the film, with Liman, David Bartis, Ed Saxon, Steve Schwarz, and Paula Mae Schwartz taking on producing duties. The Schwarzes are the founders…
Click to continue reading Doug Liman To Save ‘The Last of the Tribe’
