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WikiLeaks Battle to Stay Online

By Andrew Redfern @ 6th December 2010 1:14 pm Online Trends

WikiLeaks, the website which has been leaking 250,000 damaging and embarrassing US Diplomatic secrets since the 29th November 2010 has had to move its domain name twice since Friday after cyber attacks. On Friday, US host EveryDNS.net terminated services, it said the attacks threatened “the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites”.

After being forced off the Everydns.net server, WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, described the decision as “privatisation of state censorship” in the US.

Online retailer Amazon which had previously hosted WikiLeaks ended its agreement to host the site on Wednesday after it broke its terms of service by publishing classified content which it did not have the rights to. It has since moved its servers to France and Switzerland taking the wkikileaks.ch domain name.

It has since published a list of mirror sites containing the exact same information as the WikiLeaks site, which it hopes will provide continuous access to the domain. PayPal, the online payment processor has cut access for donations to WikiLeaks as its services cannot be used for activities “that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity” thus violating the acceptable use policy.

During the weekend the French Government took WikiLeaks’ main servers based in France offline it warned it was unacceptable that the country host sites which “violate the secret of diplomatic relations.”The Swiss registrar Switch, on Saturday said there was no reason for it to be taken off line. The Swiss Pirate Party has since started work moving the servers to Sweden to keep the domain online.

The site is not available in most parts of the UAE and China, although through the increasing number of mirror sites, access is becoming easier. Assenge Tweeted that there are now 355 mirror sites, this number is believed to be growing, WikiLeaks has asked users to create mirror sites using their hosting resources.

It is not the first time that WikiLeaks has had its domain disabled, in 2008 after releasing confidential information on a smaller scale, a group of Swiss bankers filed a law suit against the site, resulting in a court order for the domain to be disabled. Similar to the recent developments, it also used mirroring to stay online.

Black Friday Deals come to the UK

By Andrew Redfern @ 19th November 2010 10:42 am Online Trends

Black Friday, the US phenomenon, traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year being brought to British shores by e-tail giants Amazon UK. For US retailers Black Friday is the day when the most profit is made, for many, it is the first time of a year that they come out of the red and into the black, hence where the name “Black Friday” came from. Since the mid 1960′s, US shoppers have enjoyed huge savings during the annual shopping event that takes place the Friday after Thanks Giving- Friday 26th November. This year, Amazon.co.uk are giving UK online shoppers deals on this year’s Christmas must haves during the week starting 22nd November 2010, they will be “lightening deals” with discounts on limited numbers of products for a short time period. Amazon announced in a press release they will offer deals on 200 products including:

- Over 60% off Nintendo Wii Console
- Over 60% off Flip Mino High Definition Camcorders
- Over 60% off Microsoft Xbox consoles
- Canon PowerShot Cameras at less than half price
- Over 60% off Eternity Moment Eau de Parfum
- Over 70% off Pearl Necklaces
- Sony TVs at half price
- Coronation Street Golden Anniversary Collection DVD at less than half price

Through a search on the Google Trends tool using the top 10 must have gifts for Christmas 2010, we can see that the Wii and Xbox 360 have had the highest volume of searches in the last 30 days. All the usual Apple suspects following closely with the growing popularity of the iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone 4. In past years, Apple iPod, Nintendo and Xbox have had a huge increase in searches in the last quarter; this trend is set to continue in the run up for Christmas 2010.

It has been predicted that Christmas 2010 will be the best for retailers since 2007, before the recession. With more competition between online stores with Black Friday deals cheaper or even free delivery and shorter delivery times in the run up to Christmas online shopping will once more grow in popularity for this Christmas. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) online sales in the run up to Christmas are predicted to reach £11.5 billion in the UK, up £2.6 billion from last year, an astonishing 28.8% rise in total sales.

It will be interesting to see what other etailers will offer for their Black Friday Deals for the UK on this year’s Christmas must have gifts to compete with Amazon. Kelkoo, the online comparison site has predicted that about £11.5bn will be spent by UK online shoppers in the run up to Christmas this year compared to £9.96bn in 2009. The chart below shows the top 10 Christmas gadgets for 2010 and their share of searches.

Cyber Monday is the first Monday in December (6th December) when US shoppers head online to buy their Christmas gifts. This year, another hot shopping date has been added to the calendar, Manic Monday. Falling on Monday 29th November, it is expected to be the busiest shopping day of the year for online retailers; sales are set to reach £22.4 million an hour in the UK according to the Centre of Retail Research (CRR). On this day alone, the CRR has predicted consumers will spend £537million online, a 29% increase on last year.

Amazon’s announcement comes days after the ISACA warned that office workers will take the most risks when it comes to online shopping and McAfee, the anti-virus software provider warned of the “12 Scams of Christmas”.

These threats include iPad offer scams, where the victim is asked to provide credit card details for a “free iPad” which doesn’t exist and a social media version requesting a phone number for a “free iPad” this in fact results in a mobile scam costing $10 a week. E-cards are also being used by cyber-criminals to spread viruses and other malware rather than cheer. Charity scams, Christmas jobs, recession scams, phishing, fake gift cards, insecure wireless internet connections at airports/ hotels and Christmas themed downloads are also part of the warning.

Let’s hope this Christmas is one of cheer with UK online shoppers becoming more savvy at avoiding scams and getting nothing other than the promised massive savings through buying their Christmas gifts online.

Europe’s online ad industry predicted to overtake US

By Andrew Redfern @ 5th November 2010 10:25 am Online Trends

European online ad spend has shown double digit growth according to an Interactive Advertising Bureau report.

Spain’s ad spend increased by 20% followed by Poland with 18%, Italy 15%, Hungary 11%, UK, France and Bulgaria 10%, Romania 8%.

It is predicted if European ad spend continues to increase at the same rate, its online ad industry market value could overtake the US by summer 2011.

New companies are planning online ad campaigns every day for the first time. Greater reach, return on investment and customer interaction has motivated this move.

According to the CEO of the IAB, Alain Heureux, the growth is partly due to the fact that companies that are already advertising online are allocating a greater portion of their budget to the medium.

Performance based techniques are being used for branding and more targeted marketing to give better results, also cross media campaigns making use of various media including TV, Radio and Outdoor.

Hit Search Director Andrew Redfern commented “Double digit growth in advertising spend in not a surprise in the UK digital space, as it is a more mature market compared to Poland, Spain and Italy.

Given the return on investment nature of the digital area these figures underpin the huge part the digital industry is having in the UK economy.”

Adapted from Business and Leadership’s article “Double-digit growth for online ad spend”

PPC Tips for the Run up to Christmas

By Andrew Redfern @ 1st November 2010 4:44 pm Online Trends

While the basics of paid search behaviour and choice of keywords do not change throughout the run up to Christmas, the market conditions, however, vary by the way people buy, the way you sell and the way you compete.

Searches are more gift giving inclined, with increasing urgency as shipping deadlines get closer. As it is traditionally a heavily promotional time focusing on specific key dates – black Friday, cyber Monday and the increasing importance of shipping deadlines, sales and inventory levels vary significantly. As demand rises, competition heats up by existing competitors becoming more aggressive in their online marketing strategies and new competitors entering the market.

The chart below shows the volatile trends of the peak Christmas season last year (click on the graph for an enlarged version).

Peak Holiday PPC Seasons

The text ad is the first opportunity to answer to the searcher’s question, it must appeal to their gift giving intent, your promotions and distinguish itself from new and more agressive competition.

Alex Cohen, accomplished online marketer, blogger and presenter gives 3 tips to help increase click through rates and answer the most profitable holiday questions.

1. Segregate your brand keywords

Brand Keywords are unique, containing your brand name, they have high click through rates and low cost per click with high return on investment. Brand plus keywords contain your brand name and a category generic term. As there will be many brand plus terms, it is important to focus on the most profitable first for the Christmas period then to work through the rest in due time. The goal being to only attract brand plus queries, the last step to add your own brand terms as negative to any non brand campaigns

2. Manage your ads with ad parameters

The use of numbers in adverts, e.g. cost, inventory or discounts will help the ad to stand out against competitors, requiring a specific landing page which delivers the promise. You can add parameters to control changing figures for inventory stock or prices. The AdWords API blog has some good examples.

3. Query Mine for Winners

During the period leading up to Christmas, it is important to dig deeper into your search queries. People will search in new and different ways, especially as Google’s new ad format and Google instant have just launched and this is the first Christmas period that they will be used. It is important to focus on the highest volume/ cost terms and words that are converting profitably. These will separate out into unique ad groups with specific ad groups that address their intent.

Andy Donaldson (Hit Search Director) comments – ‘A Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign can either make or break a business over this critical period for online retail. Adopting a Christmas PPC strategy focused on a scalable return on investment should be the least your agency is focused on over the next few weeks…’

To ensure success in the run up to Christmas, paid adverts are critical. The best text ads are crafted by focusing on the specific Christmas intent in each search query. Use brand terms to break out your ad groups. Get specific in text ads with numerical parameters and mine search queries to fine tune even more directly.

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Adapted from Alex Cohen’s “3 holiday PPC Tips for Black Friday (and beyond)” http://searchenginewatch.com/3641490

Hit Search calls for help for digital push for SME’s

By Andrew Redfern @ 28th October 2010 12:43 pm Online Trends

According to the ‘Connected Kingdom’ report commissioned by Google, the UK internet is now worth more than £100 billion. A significant finding of the report was that the internet in the UK is growing at a rate of 10% every year, in 2008 it made up 7.2% of the UK economy and is predicted to generate up to 10% of the UK’s economy by 2015.

“As the report highlights the UK is the leading nation for e-commerce and the Internet is one of the key drivers for steady growth in the economy in 2010.” said Andy Redfern, Director of Hit Search Limited, online marketing specialists.

The UK has the largest per capita online market and the second largest e-commerce market in the world according to the report. Redfern add “At a time when the government is spending vast amount of time on austerity measures – a greater focus on getting the majority of SME’s digitally enabled from a sales point of view would no doubt help increase the country’s GDP.”

The report also found that the growing online industry accounts for approximately 250,000 UK jobs and will play a vital part for the UKs economic recovery during the next few years. Within the UK, the online industry is already larger than the construction, transport and utility sectors. Redfern commented “I am proud that our industry directly employees over 250,000 staff and growth of SME’s that use internet marketing outstrips those offline by a ratio of four to one. “

Redfern concludes “The Digital Inclusion task force focus was on the general public, this report highlights that greater investment is needed to push our business community online.”

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Social media and online video boost UK online ad spend

By Andrew Redfern @ 27th October 2010 11:31 am Online Trends

A report into the 2010 H1 Ad Spend by the Interactive Advertising Bureau UK shows an increase of 10% to almost £2bn in online advertising spending between January and June 2010 despite of the UK recession. One of the main drivers for the growth was online video advertising spending, which has increased fivefold in the last two years from £3.9m in the first half of 2008 to £20.7m in the first half of 2010.

Hit Search Director Andy Donaldson comments ‘We have actually noticed that as times got harder for clients of ours over the past few years, return on investment came to the fore front of marketing discussions and these discussions eventually ended up with online marketing at the centre of recent strategies. With the tracking tools available today, ROI is a key measurement for clients and one that strongly guides marketing spend.’

The report by IAB in partnership with PricewaterhouseCooper attributed the growth to an 8.9% increase in investment in search advertising and a 6.3% growth in display advertising.

The entertainment and media industry was the biggest spender on social media advertising followed by finance then FMCG brands with increased interest and investment by running major new media campaigns.

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16% Rise in Online Christmas Shopping

By Andrew Redfern @ 19th October 2010 11:22 am Online Trends

It has been predicted that in the run up to Christmas 2010, online sales will be up by 16% to £6.4bn on the same period of 2009. This will bring the total online sales for the year 2010 to £57.8bn compared to £49.8bn in 2009, supporting the trend towards the increase in online shopping which will certainly create a challenge to the dominance of the high street.

The prediction follows reports in June 2010 that online shopping had increased by 22% over the past year compared to 2008/2009. In September, online shopping sales had increased by 24% year on year as consumers started their Christmas and winter clothes shopping early. Chris Webster, head of retail consulting and technology at Capgemini noted an interesting observation that consumers are starting to spread the cost of Christmas over several pay checks and we may start to see an early peak in Christmas shopping spends.

Director of Hit Search Andy Donaldson commented on the topic “ We have a variety of huge retail brands and despite the economic downturn over the past 2 – 3 years they have prospered right throughout the year. Proof that by getting the online marketing mix right, can not only buck seasonal trends, but also stabilise businesses above and beyond their bricks and mortar sales – especially during this key period for retail.”

Hit Search provides a range of search engine optimisation and pay per click solutions helping you to increase your online presence for a share in this growing trend. Call 0845 643 9289 to hear about what we can do for you.

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