TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap

Here are the highlights from the TKG blog last week, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.

Google Brings a Taste of Online to Traditional Media 

We’ve long known Google to be on a path towards facilitating media buys across a cluster of offline traditional media. A clearer glimpse into this vision was given yesterday by Meredith Papp, Product Marketing Manager at Google, during TKGs session at SES. Working for the division which handles traditional media advertising strategies, she presented a few of the ways the company will be a one stop shop for online and offline media buys. (read more…)

Local Video Gets Play at SES San Jose

Today at SES Steve Espinosa, director of product development for eLocal Listing, stressed the importance of video to gain better search rankings and conversions in local search results. Specifically, SMB videos on eLocal Listing have seen a 3.34 X increase in clickthrough rates. This is a combination of pages getting higher rankings because of the presence of video (universal search), and the human factor of video thumbnails attracting the eye and the curiosity of searchers. (read more…)

Talking Local at SES San Jose 

At a pair of TKG-run sessions at SES San Jose, the value of good local data was a pervasive theme. This relates to the ongoing online-offline challenge in local media and search. The problem basically comes down to the inability for search engines to inherently track the convoluted process that starts with a search query and ends with a drive to Best Buy to pick up your new flat screen television. (read more…)

Google’s IYP Traffic Scores Add to Ranking Confusion

IBegin head Ahmed Farooq is shaking things up by publicizing Google’s take on top IYPs. Per Google’s methodology, Citysearch leads the way with 7.4 million uniques and a 3.2 percent reach. It beats Yellowpages.com with 6.8 million uniques, and Superpages.com with 6.2 million uniques. Next up are Yelp with 4.6 million uniques and Local.com with 3.2 million uniques. (read more…)

Zillow Changes Self-Serve Ad Platform

Since launching self-service EZ Ads in April 2007, Zillow.com has set a new standard for simple-to-buy, one-price ads, and 13,000 (mostly) local advertisers responded. Typical ad spends were about $50.Now as Zillow begins to have its inventory sold to 282 members of Yahoo’s newspaper consortium, it is rebranding EZ Ads as “Showcase Ads,” a self-serve platform that enables advertisers to buy “25, 50, 75, or 100 percent of the available ad views on searches for homes within a given ZIP code.” (read more…)

Study: Google Tops in Consumer Satisfaction

Google once again took the top spot for consumer satisfaction among portals and search engines in the University of Michigan’s quarterly study. Its score of 86 (out of 100) represents a 10 percent jump over 2007. This came during a period in which Google’s actual products didn’t undergo major changes and could therefore represent the natural momentum of a growing halo effect. Yahoo slipped 3 percent year over year with a score of 77, while MSN had flat growth with a score of 75. (read more…)

Check Out Google Android in Action

To follow up on last week’s post about a prospective Google Android-based T-Mobile phone, here is a video from MobileCrunch that demos Android. The video walks through an emulator of the operating system, which is basically a desktop version of the software that allows developers to test applications without requiring an Android-based phone (the iPhone SDK has the same thing). (read more…)

Krillion Branches Out With New Product Categories

Local product search provider Krillion today added 96 product categories to its “Localization Engine.” The new categories join Krillion’s current sweet spot of home appliances and consumer electronics, and include computers, office equipment, car audio & electronics, and tools & hardware. This brings its product categories to 155, including 900 brands, 20,000 big-box retail locations and more than a billion overall items. (read more…)

Newspapers and E-Billboards: 1-2 Punch?

Out-of-home advertising is booming, thanks to the emergence of super high definition electronic billboards now commonly found on the nation’s highways. But can they be used to boost the fortunes of an industry that is not so booming: newspapers? That’s the question posed by marketing execs at the Detroit Free Press (Freep.com) and MediaNews Group’s The Detroit News (Detnews.com). (read more…)

When Will Hyperlocal’s Time Come?

Topix CEO Chris Tolles has a well-reasoned piece in iMedia Connection. He writes that media usage and ad dollars are quickly moving online (which we know), but local content and ads aren’t moving as fast as comparative national metrics. But we’re starting to see a shift in attitudes and understanding of the local opportunity among national advertisers correlated with better location awareness, mobile standards and an online video explosion. (read more…)