Globalemarketer

European SME's Look to Expand Exports Amid Slow Domestic Economies

2011-11-29T10:37:00.000-08:00

According to Bloomberg Business Week, The small-to-midsize enterprises of Europe’s periphery—Ireland, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Italy—have their backs to the wall. Their domestic markets are tanking. So they have little choice but to try to export. Some companies domestic sales have dropped 80% or more, meaning survival means looking to new international markets.

That’s a difficult task. Germany’s midsize companies have spent decades turning themselves into world-class contenders. In contrast, the 8 million so-called peripheral SMEs, which employ 27 million people, have long struggled to overcome the high costs of labor, transport, and real estate in their domestic markets. These costs leave their largely low-tech products—including furniture, bricks, piping, and other construction equipment—ill-prepared for global competition.

“Small companies in peripheral countries will try to find new export markets, but they need to improve competitiveness,” says Peter Braendle of Swisscanto Asset Management. That’s especially tough, he says, since these euro zone countries can no longer devalue their currencies to make their products more affordable abroad.

According to Bloomberg, companies are looking to online marketing to keep costs down, but the need to export to expand and even survive looks to be a long term trend.

Marketing Executives Struggle to Measure Social Media ROI?

2011-10-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

In a report published by Georgina Prodhan of Reuters - Marketing chiefs feel overwhelmed by the growing volume of customer data on websites like Facebook and Twitter, and while they realise its potential value they consider themselves ill-equipped to harness it, an IBM study found.
Only 26 percent of chief marketing officers track blogs and just 40 percent track any online communications, while 82 percent still rely on traditional market research to shape marketing strategies, according to the study.
But most CMOs are struggling to prove that investments in social media marketing would yield returns, according to the survey of more than 1,700 CMOs published on Tuesday and carried out in face-to-face interviews from February to June.
"The perfect solution is to serve each consumer individually. The problem? There are 7 billion of them," said one CMO at a consumer-products firm in the survey.
Some 82 percent said they planned to increase their use of social media over the next 3-5 years.
Read the full article here:

Twitter Goes Global

2011-10-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

Twitter is expand globally as it has announced the launch of the service in five new languages: Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Hindi, Tagalog and Malay. This brings the total number of languages Twitter is available in to 17. Like many other online services, Twitter is mostly relying on volunteers for translation. To join in, head on over to Twitter's translation center.
The folks at Twitter also announced that six new languages are coming to the Translation Center soon: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Polish and Hungarian.

This follows the trends in other social media sites to expand globally and be more available in multiple languages. To read the entire article from Mashable, click here:

Panda Goes Global

2011-09-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

Although not expected to have the same impact in Europe as in the US and UK, Google’s Panda Update has now expanded around the world in all but several languages. The result is that many websites deemed not as relevant to the Google search algorithm as before the update are now being penalized, while others have been significantly elevated in visibility.

So, content more relevant to users based on search queries, rather than content deemed more “black hat seo” such as engaging in link farms, article directories, content farms, etc. are elevated in visibility.

European language bases websites took the biggest hits, whereas Chinese, Japanese and Korean language sites are still to be affected. Stay tuned as the importance of quality SEO content expands globally!

China Reaches 500 Million Internet Users

2011-08-10T18:14:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - China added 27.7 million Internet users, putting their grand at 485 million users nationwide in the first six months of 2011. While a staggering sum, that figure is only a minority of the country's 1.3 billion person population. User growth in China is slowing after large gains in previous years.Internet user growth in China has slowed dramatically over time.

For the January-June six-month period, growth was 6.1 percent, far less than the 9.4 percent growth last year. The figure was even far less than the Chinese Internet population increase of 20.5 percent in 2008, the same year China's total Internet population overtook the United States'.In short, these figures mean that 815 million people in China remain unconnected to the Internet. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, Internet usage is at 36.2 percent in China, compared to 78.2 percent in the U.S. or 90.2 percent in Greenland.

Brazil has similar Internet penetration, which helps explains the significance of these new statistics. While both Brazil and China have booming middle classes thanks to strong economic growth, two thirds of their populations remain disconnected from the Internet age. In both China and Brazil, there are large concentrations of rural, poor, elderly and otherwise marginalized people not participating in the online economy, unable to access the wealth of information available digitally.

Investor Jitters on Yandex

2011-08-10T18:04:00.000-07:00

Yandex Stock Drops: Moscow, Russia

According to the Moscow News, Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex plummeted in trading on the Nasdaq after the company announced its secondquarter results.
The company’s low operating margin dampened the mood of investors, hungry for BRIC tech stocks. They had previously very high expectations of Yandex, the second Russian internet venture to go public abroad. In May, an IPO valued Yandex at more than $8 billion.
Yandex and Mail Group now have to prove that their successful IPOs are based on stable growth perspectives. Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh said that the company had to significantly increase its spending on infrastructure, personnel and advertising campaigns.

‘Temporary’ losses
Russian analysts said they believed Yandex’s sudden loss was only temporary, associated with growing pains. Troika Dialog’s Anna Lepetukhina predicted that the company would soon be back to normal. The main cause for the drop to $34.23 ($25 was the IPO price) lies in high capital expenditures and low operational profitability, Lepetukhina said.
Yandex’s 42.1 per cent EBITDA margin (unaudited) and more than 30 per cent operating margin, disclosed by the company last week, are better than in many other industries. But investors rushed last week to get rid of the stock, which many of them bought in May.

http://www.themoscownews.com/business/20110801/188890135.html

Google face off with Facebook

2011-06-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

Google is ramping up its effort to challenge Facebook in the fast growing Social Networking Marketing arena. The new initiative is called Google+ and it will attempt to make online sharing and networking much more like real life.

In the global emarketing space, this could result in a very lucrative new revenue stream for Google. The challenge will be to allow limit their updates to a more targeted audience, not the so many acquaintances that are identified as "friends."

Facebook responded that there are "opportunities for innovation everywhere" in what they see as the relatively early days of social marketing. Stay tuned for more innovations in the global emarketing world.

By Brian Thomas www.globalemarketer.com

Indian eCommerce Grows

2011-05-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

The recent survey conducted by Nielsen, India has emerged as the 3rd biggest nation when it come to online shopping and using a credit card online. Drawn by the facilities offered by the Web and the diversity of products available on it, Indian netizens have emerged as the third biggest credit card users globally for online purchasing, next only to the Turkey and Ireland.

The survey shows more than 85 per cent of Internet users in the world are purchasing goods or services online, with credit cards as the most used method of payment.

Russia's Internet Market

2011-02-10T18:26:00.000-08:00

According to Yandex, one of Russia's most prominent IT companies, Russia is now the second largest IT company in Europe, just behind Germany. The internet market share in Russia is expanding quickly, even with only 43% of people in Russia being able to access the web. Techdirt.com reports that Russia's own government is responding to the new internet market by mimicking China's censorship policies: "Russia has apparently launched a "new initiative" to get volunteers to sign up for "The League of Internet Safety." Russia has claimed that it will expand its censorship efforts to the point of "policing [all] other negative content," which Techdirt condemns as a very "broad" definition."

This news, then, is a mixed bag for followers of e-marketing in Russia. On one hand, as the internet market grows, there will be more ways for foreigners to attract Russian markets. On the other hand, the Russian government could prevent its citizens from getting too involved with foreign e-marketing efforts. Russia has a lot of room to expand, with only 43% of its population having internet access. However, the way that this rapidly expanding market affects Russia's foreign business is almost solely in the hands of the government.

ROI and Social Media

2011-01-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

The question of whether or not social media actually has a significant ROI causes concern for many businesses. With many companies increasing their social media budgets for 2011, it is becoming more important to develop better ways to determine ROI. According to the emarketer newsletter, the Altimeter Group reports that 82% of its survey group of social media strategists will be investing in brand monitoring for their social media programs for 2011.

In addition, 48.3% of the survey’s respondents hope to create ROI measurements for their social media programs. Overall, social media strategists hope to create efficient ways to determine ROI for social media outreach in 2011. In order to increase buy-in from stakeholders, showing that social media provides value has become very important for many companies.

Canadians love to surf the web

2010-12-28T08:07:00.001-08:00

According to comScore, Canada has the highest internet penetration rate and Canadians spend more time online than internet users in any other country. On average, Canadians logged an average of 42 hours a month on the internet. Canadians are also huge fans of Facebook and Twitter.

Also, Canadians top the charts when it comes to watching online video. The Canadian Press reports that YouTube per capita consumption of video is No. 1 in the world. Canadian users view more videos than U.S. viewers, around 147 watched each month compared to 100 per U.S. viewer. Canada’s country director for Google, Chris O’Neill, reported, “It's just absolutely crazy in terms of how passionate Canadians are about YouTube.”

New record for U.S. online advertising

2010-11-30T16:41:00.000-08:00

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Internet ad sales reached a record high in the third quarter. Compared to last year, they rose 17 percent. The total revenue reached $6.4 billion, the highest ever for any quarter.

Baidu dominates the Chinese market

2010-11-22T06:20:00.000-08:00

The New York Times recently reported that Baidu, China’s top search engine, has a market value of $3 billion and operates the fourth-most trafficked Web site in the world. While most other Internet companies have not been able to tackle Google and Yahoo in their home markets, Baidu has done just that. However, some analysts question whether Baidu will be able to continue their stronghold in the Chinese market, since Google and Yahoo have such superior technology and global work forces.

Baidu has a unique position in the Chinese market, where it could continue to prosper form competition over other internet powerhouses. As the world’s fastest-growing major economy, China’s online market is the second largest in size, after the United States. With a population of 1.3 billion, about 130 million Chinese are frequent internet users.

In China, where censorship over the internet creates a frequent problem for many internet companies, Baidu has been able to maintain its position in the market. In exchange for letting censors oversee its Web site, Baidu has continued to dominate the Chinese market with support from the government.

While Baidu’s revenue reached 190 percent this year ($40.9 million), it still does not come close to Google’s expected gains of $7 billion. Currently, Google is building a research team in Beijing very close to Baidu’s headquarters. If Google wants to conquer Baidu in its home market, it certainly has a long road ahead. Baidu’s stronghold over the Chinese market will not be taken down easily.

Facebook sees an increase in display ads

2010-11-10T17:01:00.000-08:00

According to comScore, Facebook’s market share has increased by 13.9 percent in the last year. Capturing the leading number of display ads of any Internet publishing site in the third quarter, Facebook has become an online advertising powerhouse that now controls almost 25 percent of the sector.

Facebook can be a very valuable tool for businesses wishing to use display ads. Since the online advertising market is up 22 percent from a year ago, now is the time to consider the opportunities online marketing can provide for companies wishing to expand globally.

Alternative search engine launches

2010-11-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

Cnn.com reports that Blekko, a search engine designed to eliminate spam search results, launched this past week. Blekko is utilizing the latest technology, slashtags, to allow users to search specific subsets of the web. Initially, Blekko has set spam-eliminating queries in one of seven categories, such as health or personal finance. As the search engine expands, additional categories will be added.

With the arrival of new search engines, it becomes more important for companies to market themselves properly on the web. Will other search engines, such as Google or Yahoo, soon use the same technology to eliminate spam? If they do, businesses must consider creating specific marketing methods over the internet. Only time will tell what the rise of “alternative” search engines will have on global marketing techniques.

Survey reports that Russia has the most active social media population

2010-10-26T14:44:00.000-07:00

ComScore, an internet marketing research company, has reported that Russian internet users are the most active users of social networks. The ComScore survey states that 74.5 percent of all internet users in Russia visited a social network site at least once during August 2010. The average Russian internet user spends about 9.8 hours a month on a social network site.

Israel comes in second place with the average internet user spending 9.2 hours a month on a social network site, such as Facebook.

Turkey takes third place with a very active internet population. The average time per user spent on a social networking site is 7.6 hours a month.

Social Media World Growth Means New Opportunities

2010-10-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Rise of Facebook
According to comScore, U.S.-based Internet users spent, on average, 41.1 million minutes, or 9.9%, of their Web time on Facebook in the month of August, compared to 39.8 million minutes,or 9.6%, of their Web time on all of the Google Inc’s sites combined, including YouTube, Gmail, and Google News. Yahoo, which Facebook just bypassed for the first time in July, ranked in at No. 3, with users spending 37.7 million minute or 9.1%, of their time on the company’s sites.
Facebook’s rise in the worldwide Internet has been fantastic. The chart above clearly shows Facebook User growth in time, since its birth in 2004. This means a very significant opportunity to reach new customers worldwide~

You can see the number of Facebook users in each of the 8 main world geographic regions as of August 31, 2010 at the Facebook World Statistics.

Malaysia and Brazil see an increase in social media

2010-10-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

CNN.com reports that Malaysians and Brazilians have seen an overwhelming increase in social media of the past few years. According to the British research agency TNS, many people are spending more time on social media networking sites than on e-mail.
The TNS study reveals that Malaysians and Brazilians have the most friends on social media networks. On average, Malaysians have 233 friends and Brazilians have 231 friends. Also, research shows that emerging digital markets have exceeded more developed online markets in terms of social networking.
Businesses should consider using social media to target audiences in emerging digital markets such as Brazil and Malaysia. With the growth of the internet, social media continues to be an important part in internet marketing.

Top Languages on Internet in 2010 Released by Internet World Stats

2010-09-27T17:18:00.000-07:00

TOP TEN LANGUAGES IN THE INTERNET
Internet Users by Language
English
536,564,837
Chinese
444,948,013
Spanish
153,309,074
Japanese
99,143,700
Portuguese
82,548,200
German
75,158,584
Arabic
65,365,400
French
59,779,525
Russian
59,700,000
Korean
39,440,000

Brazil Internet users reached 68 million in 2009. IBGE Reports

2010-09-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reports that the total number of internet users in the country reached 67.9 million as at 31 December 2009, up 21.5% when compared to the previous year. According to the findings of its National Survey by Household Sample (PNAD), the number of people (aged ten and over) who use the internet increased by twelve million in the period under review, marking a massive increase on the 31.9 million users reported in 2005.

With the expected expansion of the Brazilian economy overall in the next few years, this presents an excellent opportunity to grow your international business in Latin America through targeted online marketine efforts.

Globalization of Social Networking

2010-09-21T06:42:00.000-07:00

According to Debra Aho Williamson, Senior Analyst ad eMarketer.com, the future of Social Networking is Global, and eMarketer forecasts that worldwide social network ad spending will rise 31% this year to $3.3 billion. Next year, spending is expected to increase an additional 29%, to nearly $4.3 billion. The US accounts for just over half of that total. But in 2011, US dominance will start to wane and international social network ad spending will increase more rapidly.

Why? According to Williamson there are three main reasons:

Social networks are popular in the US, but even more popular in many other markets.
Chinese social networks are strong performers
Facebook is growing rapidly outside the US

One more reason to think global when considering how to effectively reach new customers!

Is Baidu A Serious Global Player?

2010-09-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

According to the Wall Street Journal, Baidu is attempting to drive new revenue from international expansion. Baidu, of course, is the domestic Chinese search engine and leading the world's largest potential market. The US, however will not be the main target for Baidu because of the entrenched competition from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

If Baidu CEO Robin Li is to be taken seriously, keep your eyes out for a strong push worldwide from the company that was successful in China long before Google made a play for market expansion there. Only time will tell in the increasingly competitive global search wars!

The ROI of Social Media

2010-08-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

One question that marketing directors have been struggling to answer in the past few years is this: what is the ROI of social media? For a group that is constantly struggling to numerically capture the worth of different initiatives, social media poses an interesting problem. Sites like Facebook and Twitter have stormed the online world and it seems like almost everyone has hopped on board, but how can we truly measure their worth? Should marketing execs tie the ROI of social media directly to financial benefits and captured sales, or could there be more benefits of social media that are less easily tied to monetary contributions? Without methodologies to measure the dollar and cents worth of likes, followers, retweets, and comments, are we underestimating the true worth of social media but simply putting a financial value on them?

These questions largely remain unanswered, but a recent Forrester study on the ROI of social media certainly seems to think that there is more to Facebook and Twitter than their financial results. According to the study, social media should be measured across four perspectives - the financial perspective, the digital perspective, the brand perspective, and the risk management perspective.

While these categories certainly make more sense than simply reducing the ROI of social media down to a number and a dollar sign, there could be still more consequences, both good and bad, that are left uncovered with this analysis. This area will remain mirky for marketing execs for some time to come, for while they know that they must be tweeting, it is difficult to tell exactly what tweeting will bring.

What are your thoughts? How does your company measure the ROI of social media and other new technologies?

Steps Toward a Solar World

2010-07-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

On July 8, 2010 André Borschberg made a giant leap in aviation history when he flew for more than 26 hours in an airplane powered exclusively by the energy from the sun. Now I knew just as well as anyone else that solar power is an up-and-coming technology. We have all noticed the increasing number residential homes and even large scale industrial complexes with solar panels on the roof and we’ve even seen the futuristic looking solar powered cars. But when I read of this successful solar powered flight, I was shocked. To me this seemed like an enormous jump past the current level of the solar power industry. Fortunately since GMA has recently begun global distribution partnerships with a number of American solar companies, I have been able to research the state of the industry.

What I found was that the potential of solar energy far exceeded my expectations, but that our ability to harness it fell very short. Every hour the earth receives more energy from the sun than the world uses in an entire year. Solar energy, however, accounts for less than .01% of global energy demand. This discrepancy is caused by two main issues – the cost and the inefficiency of solar energy. While the sun produces massive amounts of energy, much of it is lost as it travels to Earth’s surface. The atmosphere absorbs around 19% of the sun’s energy and clouds take in another 35%. But even the 125-375 W/m² of solar energy that reaches land (for every 1,366 W/m²that reaches the outer edges of the atmosphere) is enough to solve the world’s energy needs many times over. However, the solar cells that we create generally have around a 15% efficiency rate in converting solar energy into useable energy. Furthermore, this technology is extremely expensive compared to conventional sources of power. This is largely because silicon, the material these cells are made from, is in short supply and creating silicon panels is a costly process.

These problems with solar energy leave the industry in a state of limbo. While the sun has the potential to provide the world with clean, free energy that won’t run out, we are not yet able to harness that energy in a very efficient and cost effective manner. However, scientists are currently working towards producing solar cells that are more efficient and less expensive to produce. Once breakthroughs are made in these attempts, solar energy will be able to become a much more mainstream technology for energy production. And even without such advances, the industry is continuing to grow steadily as larger numbers of consumers become concerned with environmental sustainability. The solar industry is one that I plan to watch, and possibly invest it, in coming years as the world continues to intensify its search for cleaner, more sustainable energy sources.

Cross Channel Marketing in a Blackberry World

2010-07-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

In a recent trip to the Verizon store for a long awaited phone upgrade, I came across an odd realization. In a store filled with at least 50 different phone models, only four were available without an internet plan. If 90% of the phones in the store allow customers to access the internet, then Verizon users are being forced to become more connected than ever before. The growing prevalence of brands like the Blackberry, Iphone, Kin, and Droid has proliferated this trend by keeping Americans in constant connection with news updates, emails, and social networking sites. As the American customer base is opting into constant connection with multiple marketing channels, marketing departments at companies big and small need to learn how to take advantage of this trend in order to increase the ROI of their campaigns.

As new marketing channels appear and increase in prevalence, truly successful marketing campaigns will not treat them as separate conduits. The growing connectedness of the American consumer makes cross-channel marketing more and more necessary. If your customer receives email, texts, and social media updates on a phone through which they can also access your website, an integrated campaign across these channels can do wonders while disconnected campaigns may simply cause annoyance. Picture this: after opting into an email campaign on your website or at a store, a customer receives a welcome email and a few days later a promotional email. Next, they receive an email suggesting they opt into a mobile campaign through which they will receive codes for the deal of the day, week, or month. This campaign constantly leads them back to your website where they can redeem their deal of the day. On the website you post links to your social media sites where customers can connect and possibly participate in larger promotional deals and competitions. Today, a customer can take all of these steps using a smart phone and will have instant access to messages you send out through all of these channels.

The necessity of building a strong cross-channel presence is clear, but how to use each channel to promote for your brand may seem less apparent. For more insight into creating a cross-channel campaign specific to your company that will increase your ROI, see Omniture’s presentation on cross-channel marketing and the success they have brought to certain companies. Omniture has a method of quantifying the ROI of different channels, including segmented email campaigns and social media that may prove helpful to any business looking to diversify their marketing campaigns.

What does the Eurozone crisis really mean for America?

2010-07-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

Over the Fourth of July weekend I brought my ten-year-old cousin, an avid money collector, a hand full of left over Euro coins from a recent trip to Paris. As his eyes began to light up I assumed that he was noticing that the same coins looked different depending on if I had gotten them in France, Italy, Spain, or Greece or perhaps that a coin could be worth two whole dollars in Europe. I was wrong. After hugging and thanking me, he looked up and said “this is the coolest money I have because it’s gonna be extinct next year, you know, the way Europe is.” Disregarding the fact that he had no understanding of the issues facing Europe, it caught me off guard that a ten-year old knew that Europe was in any kind of trouble at all. Did this mean that I had grossly under-exaggerated the threats facing Europe?

His words forced me to revisit articles that I’ve read over the past few months in order to clarify exactly what experts predict for the future of Europe. To my frustration, I found absolutely no consensus. When polled, many European and American figures predicted not only a collapse of the Eurozone, but also of the European Union. Others claim that while a few countries may drop the Euro, some will keep it and the EU will stay strong. A final group believes that the Eurozone is too important to fail and will be kept afloat despite protests in Greece or objections in Germany.

These experts did, however, agree on one subject. Whether the Euro survives or not, the recent Eurozone crisis will have repercussions in world export markets. The crisis has lowered the value of the Euro, making European goods cheaper than before on world markets. Furthermore, harsh austerity measures have been enacted across EU member states in response to the treaty-bashing levels of debt that almost all European countries are facing. This means slower growth, less consumerism, and seemingly higher price tags on foreign goods in one of America’s best export markets. Could US exporters be in trouble?

Probably not. While US exporters will undoubtedly see a dip in exports to Europe, there are many reasons to be confident in American exports. Growth rates in areas such as durable goods orders, which jumped by 2.9% in April 2010, suggest that US exporters have been among the fastest to recover from the recent recession. Furthermore, large manufacturers usually hedge against currency fluctuations and will be somewhat protected from the weakening euro. According to one analyst, as of June 7, 2010 there is little evidence that orders from and shipments to Europe have declined. Finally, economists at many big banks believe that Europe is not as essential to US exports as others believe. Analysts at Credit Suisse point to the fact that while the EU is an enormous market for US exports, recent growth in US exports has come from other parts of the world – such as Asia, Canada, and Mexico – and thus a slowdown in European growth will not leave a substantial void in US export expansion. Goldman Sachs adds that while slower growth and fiscal retrenchment in the Eurozone may slow exports to Europe, it is unlikely to have a significant effect on US growth unless it is associated with financial spillovers or side effects in other major US export markets.

So while now may the time to hop on a plane to Paris, stay a night at the Crillon, and go on a Chanel splurge, it is not the time for Americans to panic. Even if our nation’s ten-year-olds are tuned into the troubles facing our friends across Atlantic, Europe will survive, in whatever form, in a way that will not bankrupt American exporters. Unfortunately, while the European debt crisis may temporarily move the spotlight away from the enormity of American debt, eventually the US will need to begin reigning in its own spending, perhaps through austerity measures of its own, regardless of how European measures impact exports in the short term

Most Translated Web Pages Not Search Optimized

2010-03-09T11:47:00.000-08:00

According to multilingual search expert Andy Atkins-Kruger, there are monthly 12,100 searches for the phrase “Website Translation” and only 1,000 for “International SEO” (Google source). Of course, there are other phrases of importance such as “multilingual SEO” but that’s even small and actually there are a great many more varieties of website translation phrase than international SEO.

According to Andy, that roughly means that only 8% of people who translate their website bother at any point to either consider SEO or to buy a service for it. Is Far more people translate than employ any kind of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - which is much more the cream on the cake.

To maximize your visibility on global search engines, make sure your pages are not only properly translated, but search optimized as well!

Brian Thomas
Global eMarketer

Google Leaving China?

2010-03-09T11:41:00.000-08:00

Google has threatened to withdraw from China after a cyber attack out of China tried to break into the Gmail accounts of human rights activists according to Internet expert David Temple. They also targeted twenty other companies. In a blog post Google said it experienced a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure, with the probes originating from China” beginning in mid-December, which it said resulted in “the theft of intellectual property”.

They also cited attempts by the Chinese government to tighten censorship. Google said it was prepared to pull out if it was not permitted to run its local service without further censoring.

With the vast online potential of China, we think this dispute will be resolved!

Brian Thomas, Global eMarketer

Google Power

2009-08-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

Google has always been the dominating search engine in many countries. comScore reveals Google's market share in the chart above. It seems that Turkey, Brazil, and Italy Internet users are the biggest fans of Google. However, Google is not the key search engine everywhere; The market share in Korea is around only 12%. Nevertheless, Google has powerful influence over many of the online markets around the world.

Sussy Shi

Global eMarketer Analyst

Language Options May Not Be the Best For Your International Sites

2009-08-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

When wanting to expand your business globally, offering your website in multiple languages should be the first step. However, the way this option is set up may actually be detrimental to optimizing your international sites.

Browser Language Detection is the widely used method, which checks the visitor's language preference on the server through their browser and automatically redirects the visitor to the preferred language version of the site. IP Location Detection is another popular means. This provides local content based on the IP location of the visitor.

Both of these methods are problematic for search engines because spiders (a program that automatically monitors web pages) have difficulty in accessing the different versions of the site. A pull-down menu on the page to select the country is also not the best SEO optimization approach.

Luckily, XML sitemaps seem to be the solution for the moment. A unique XML sitemap for each of your country or language versions of the site will increase the chances that the key segments of your country sites are pushed to the search engines. For detailed instructions on developing XML sitemaps, visit http://www.sitemaps.org/.

For full article, visit: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634625.

Ana Lam
Global eMarketer Analyst

A success story: How Internet Marketing can expand your business

2009-08-05T05:25:00.000-07:00

According to Bernama.com, a Malaysian National News Agency, women in the Asia-Pacific region have managed to profitably expand their business thanks to the use of Internet marketing campaigns.

During the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Digital Economy Forum for Women (APEC Dew), Singapore’s Acting Information, Communication and the Arts Minister Lui Tuck Yew emphasized the importance of using new communication methods to expand the women’s business. He in fact cited many examples where handicraft producers in Thailand connected via Internet marketing with entrepreneurs in Korea who served as distributors for their products. This is a great example of how SEO optimization can help connect entrepreneurs from different parts of the world and create better business opportunities.

For the full article please visit: http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsworld.php?id=429772

Xenia Kolesnikov
Global eMarketer Analyst

Why China is becoming the most ideal place to expand your business

2009-07-26T13:48:00.001-07:00

According to Multilingual Search, Germany (.de) has had the world's most ccTLD registrations for the past few years. Now, China's ccTLD (.cn) is much more affordable and easier to obtain, thus resulting in about 20,000 country code registrations a day. China overtook Germany in the last month with about 11.4 million registrations.

It seems like China has been picking up steam in every aspect in terms of online marketing opportunities. Despite the current economic crisis, disposable incomes of urban residents still rose about 10.2% in the first quarter of 2009. In addition, the number of China's middle class consumers is always growing. These middle class consumers have an annual income ranging from 45,000 to 180,000 yuan (or $6,000 to $25,000).

Futhermore, it is estimated, by Xinhua, that there are about 290 million Internet users in China, thus deeming China as the country with the most Internet users. Although the online penetration rate is still low (21%) compared to other countries, it will surely increase within the next few years. China will become, perhaps, the most lucrative online markets in the world.

Sussy Shi

Global eMarketer Analyst

Why Continue to Spend on Marketing Research

2009-04-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

According to Geoff Ramsey, CEO, eMarketer this is not the time to cut back on market research. We agree, as studies time and again show that the companies that invest in sales and marketing show a dramatically higher growth rate once times pick up than companies that cut back!

Brian Thomas
GlobaleMarketer

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Here are three reasons why you might want to put yourself in the “increase” (or at least “maintain”) market research camp:

1. With the economy clouding the future, why throw away your flashlight when it could shine on intriguing consumer insights, hot technology trends and market opportunities?
The market is bleak out there, yet there are always opportunities lurking—if you have the tools to find them. Market research can often help you uncover little gems of insight that, when acted on, can connect you more closely with your customer or reveal new markets entirely.
As cited in the March 23 issue of BusinessWeek, MasterCard learned from market research that certain consumer technology adoption trends were occurring in emerging countries, and these were creating new and exciting growth opportunities for the industry—and for MasterCard in particular.
Other marketers, somewhat surprisingly, are choosing this year to aggressively boost their spending in social media marketing—because a wealth of research data from numerous sources is making a very compelling business argument for them to do so.
Besides, when you have to watch every dollar you spend on marketing, don’t you want to be fully informed as to how best to spend that dollar?

2. Market research can help you preserve budgets, projects and even people.
One of our clients in the pharmaceutical industry shared with me a fascinating story. When she and her team were threatened with nasty budget cuts that would decimate their spending on new media campaigns, as well as eliminate some of her core staff, she went straight to work. Using her subscription access to eMarketer, she was able to build a solid, data-supported case for upper management that ultimately convinced them to restore her budgets, including her staff.
In tough times, you need all the data artillery you can get your hands on, whether you get it from us or from one of the many other solid, dependable research sources out there. Market research data and insights—when used properly—can grease the wheels of corporate acceptance for proposals, presentations, recommendations, new business pitches and even entire marketing budgets.

3. Prepare for better times ahead.
You are not alone if your media and marketing budgets have been hacked into unrecognizable shapes. But why not use this temporary cutback as an opportunity to invest in the future? By immersing yourself and your team in market research data, focusing on up-and-coming trends and emerging consumer insights, you will be at the ready with “go-to-market” action plans when the budget ax is finally lifted.

That time may be coming sooner than you expect.

Worldwide Online Marketing Spending to Increase

2009-04-29T07:50:00.001-07:00

While other Ad spending is down, Internet spending is the only area of growth, increasing through 2011.

Brian Thomas
GlobaleMarketer

ZenithOptimedia now sees ad spending dropping 11% for magazines, 10% for radio, 5.5% for television, and on and on through the worldwide media spectrum.

“A lot of markets we were expecting to show at least modest growth this year are clearly going to be down substantially,” Jonathan Barnard of ZenithOptimedia told the Financial Times.
Amid the nearly unrelenting gloom, however, one figure shines out.

Internet advertising around the world continues to grow, projected to be up 8.6% this year—to reach 12.1% of overall global ad spending.
At least there is a little light at the end of the tunnel.

Globalemarketer updates

2009-04-27T12:16:00.000-07:00

Learn more about how to maximize your online marketing budget with helpful tips from the Globalemarketer! Stay tuned for more!

Brian Thomas