This is just a cool way to do a recruitment drive:

Hotel Chain Sites Powering Ahead

Compete.com, June 24, 2008

Compared to a year ago, consumer traffic to hotel chain websites is growing strongly with gains being made at every major provider. Despite concerns of a slowing economy impacting the lodging sector, there are more online hotel shoppers than ever before, providing a healthy and growing channel for the efficient distribution of inventory.

The average growth rate heading into the summer for hotel supplier websites versus a year ago was an impressive 26%. Aside from a few unusual months, such as a difficult February for Intercontinental, every chain is posting solid growth. Leading the pack in May was Hilton at +34% compared to a year ago, and lagging was Choice at +10%.

Many of the hotel websites are converting visitors more effectively than they were in early 2007. Indexed against that period, conversion rates in May 2008 are averaging 1.05x growth. While Starwood, Hilton and Intercontinental are posting the strongest gains, Best Western is consistently under indexed against its position a year earlier. At a 0.8 conversion rate index, Best Western is lagging each of its major competitors in improving the efficiency of its online channel.

Although economic uncertainty is thought to be weighing on the minds of consumers, signs of strength still remain in online hotel distribution. Website audiences at leading hotel chains are powering ahead and are up significantly from year ago levels. Additionally, select competitors have managed to improve their conversion rates despite the growing volume of visitors. Sites such as Best Western, however, have seen their conversion rates decline and must make it a priority to optimize their online channel performance. If not in place already, competitive benchmarking against key rivals will be critical to making this a success.

The Aim of Behavioral Targeting

Why isn’t behavioral targeting a hit with advertisers?

Behavioral targeting offers many potential benefits:

• For advertisers, effective behavioral targeting leads to ad campaigns that are more likely to sway their audience.
• For publishers, it can mean making more money from undersold or unsold ad inventory.
• For the public, it means the ad-supported Internet might become more relevant.

The promise of behavioral targeting is huge, but overdue.

eMarketer estimates that US spending for behaviorally targeted online advertising will reach only $775 million in 2008.

"The growth of behaviorally targeted online advertising has been delayed by incomplete development of technology, brand marketers that prefer to have their ads appear with relevant content and concerns over violating consumer privacy," says David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer and author of the new report, Behavioral Targeting: Marketing Trends. "But a number of things are changing."

In fact, eMarketer projects that behaviorally targeted ad spending will reach $4.4 billion by the end of 2012.

Behavioral targeting segments the audience based on observed and measured data, such as the pages or sites users visit, content viewed, search queries entered, ads clicked, information share on social networks and products placed in online shopping carts. This data is combined with the time, length and frequency of visits.

"Recency counts a lot, too," says Mr. Hallerman, "data from two weeks ago is far less accurate at predicting interest than that from two days ago."

Behavioral targeting is getting increasing attention from advertisers, publishers, the public, politicians and mainstream media. For now, though, it contributes little to total US Internet ad spending—only 3% for 2008.

"When pegged against the display online ad formats that are typically used for behavioral targeting, however," says Mr. Hallerman, "the importance of behavioral targeting to non-search advertising growth becomes clearer."

Nearly one in 10 content-site ad dollars will flow from behaviorally targeted advertising in 2008. That will rise to roughly one in four by the end of 2012.

"It is unclear how much display ad spending will increase behaviorally targeted ad spending, in contrast to how much behavioral targeting capabilities will increase display ad spending," says Mr. Hallerman.

Guests' videos star in hotels' online ads

By Roger Yu, USA TODAY

Aaron Schwartz, an executive recruiter in Fairfax, Va., wanted a nice memento of his vacation in Aruba.

Using his video camera, he filmed his stay at the Marriott Renaissance Ocean Suites last June — shots of the beautiful beach, flamingos along the water. He uploaded the video to his MySpace page and YouTube.

He then received a call from the resort's general manager, who liked the video so much that he offered Schwartz a free seven-day stay. He returned two months later and composed another video, even though the resort didn't ask him to.

Eager to capture the attention of Internet-savvy guests, hotels are becoming more serious about using online videos as a marketing tool. They're encouraging and monitoring guests' videos of their stays. They're creating their own YouTube channels and other video content to showcase their properties and to launch new brands.

It's a dramatic shift from traditional marketing, where communication flowed from hotels to customers. The new strategy aims to get customers to talk among themselves on sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, promoting word-of-mouth advertising.

"The center of gravity has shifted. We can't be seen as controlling the content. Now we have to participate in the conversation," says Kathleen Matthews, Marriott's communications chief.

Hotel videos fall broadly into two categories:

•Customers' input. Vacationers' videos posted online have been around for years. But hotel companies are more proactive in seeking more than room footage. Last year, Best Western asked customers to submit a 30-second video on why they're in "desperate need of a vacation." Holiday Inn Express invited popular YouTube comedian Kevin Nalty to help produce an online show about the chain. Sheraton also is urging guests to upload videos about their experiences to its website.

•Traveler information. Hotels also are producing their own content and inviting bloggers to link them on their sites. Starwood Hotels launched Spg.tv, a site with 50 hours of videos featuring the destinations where they have properties.

InterContinentalVideo.com is similar, with episodes of InterContinental concierges worldwide highlighting their hotels and points of interests in each city. This summer, Best Western will launch its YouTube channel, which will contain virtual tours, guest travelogues and classic company commercials.

To be sure, much of hotel-produced content involves commercials that are tailored for an online audience. Marriott hired David Elsewhere, an online personality known for his pop dancing, to film a YouTube commercial about TownePlace Suites.

"He has a following," Matthews says. "We can bring his following to our brand."

Guests' videos star in hotels' online ads

By Roger Yu, USA TODAY

Aaron Schwartz, an executive recruiter in Fairfax, Va., wanted a nice memento of his vacation in Aruba.

Using his video camera, he filmed his stay at the Marriott Renaissance Ocean Suites last June — shots of the beautiful beach, flamingos along the water. He uploaded the video to his MySpace page and YouTube.

He then received a call from the resort's general manager, who liked the video so much that he offered Schwartz a free seven-day stay. He returned two months later and composed another video, even though the resort didn't ask him to.

Eager to capture the attention of Internet-savvy guests, hotels are becoming more serious about using online videos as a marketing tool. They're encouraging and monitoring guests' videos of their stays. They're creating their own YouTube channels and other video content to showcase their properties and to launch new brands.

It's a dramatic shift from traditional marketing, where communication flowed from hotels to customers. The new strategy aims to get customers to talk among themselves on sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, promoting word-of-mouth advertising.

"The center of gravity has shifted. We can't be seen as controlling the content. Now we have to participate in the conversation," says Kathleen Matthews, Marriott's communications chief.

Hotel videos fall broadly into two categories:

•Customers' input. Vacationers' videos posted online have been around for years. But hotel companies are more proactive in seeking more than room footage. Last year, Best Western asked customers to submit a 30-second video on why they're in "desperate need of a vacation." Holiday Inn Express invited popular YouTube comedian Kevin Nalty to help produce an online show about the chain. Sheraton also is urging guests to upload videos about their experiences to its website.

•Traveler information. Hotels also are producing their own content and inviting bloggers to link them on their sites. Starwood Hotels launched Spg.tv, a site with 50 hours of videos featuring the destinations where they have properties.

InterContinentalVideo.com is similar, with episodes of InterContinental concierges worldwide highlighting their hotels and points of interests in each city. This summer, Best Western will launch its YouTube channel, which will contain virtual tours, guest travelogues and classic company commercials.

To be sure, much of hotel-produced content involves commercials that are tailored for an online audience. Marriott hired David Elsewhere, an online personality known for his pop dancing, to film a YouTube commercial about TownePlace Suites.

"He has a following," Matthews says. "We can bring his following to our brand."

Email Analytics Reveal Sweet Spots In Subject-Line Length

He says open rates climb when the subject lines are in the 50-character range or 80-character range. But, perhaps counterintuitively, they fall in the middle when the length is 60 or 70.

The magnetic Quist gave the keynote address Saturday at MediaPost's Email Insiders Summit conference: "Emailing People Not Lists: Using Customer Based Metrics to Drive Performance Improvement."

Research culled from 250 million messages sent over the past two years, with 660 different subject lines, has led him to believe that a 50-character subject line touting a "powerful" offer is appealing (30% off Spring Getaway flights to Florida on Delta).

And a longer 80-character-plus line describing a newsletter in enticing fashion works (Find out Secrets to Spice up your Barbecue this weekend and all Summer Long and enter to win a New Weber Grill.)

Somehow, in the 60- to-70-character middle, he says, the subject line is either too long or not long enough.

Quist has various theories, but one is that the longer the subject line, the better chance a marketer has of presenting different concepts that may appeal to different consumers and boosting open rates. So in the above example, some may be interested in the ways to improve their grilling, while others would seek the new grill, leading to higher open rates.

Quist's research--his clients include PayPal and Intercontinental Hotels in the U.S.--showing that "long subject lines work better" goes against conventional wisdom, he said.

"Our experience tended towards the belief that long subject lines work better," he said. (The longer the better goes against conventional wisdom.) A more descriptive subject line can also build goodwill with consumers, since it can provide enough info to easily either turn them on or turn them off.

Sharing Customer Service Stories Online

Fewer consumers suffer in silence.

Brand managers have long known that news—both good and bad—spreads quickly online. Now US consumers are using social media to share their customer care experiences.

More than 70% of US Internet users surveyed in February and March 2008 said they used social media at least sometimes to learn about customer care offered when considering a purchase, according to a Society for New Communications Research study commissioned by Nuance Communications.

More than nine out of 10 respondents agreed with the statement, "I have chosen companies/brands based on my customer care experiences."

"Clearly, the customer care experience is a major predictor of future purchase decisions," said Nora Ganim Barnes, senior fellow at the Society for New Communications Research.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they chose companies and brands based on customer care information which had been shared online.

More than eight out of 10 respondents said that "blogs, rating systems and discussion forums can give consumers a greater voice in effecting changes in customer care."

Although many respondents said that social media were useful for sharing customer care experiences, they didn't necessarily use social networks to look for that information. Search engines, ratings systems, discussion forums and blogs all rated higher than social networks for finding customer care experience information.

Consumers are likely to research customer care information at several stages prior to purchase, judging by a February 2008 PowerReviews-commissioned study conducted by the e-tailing group.

The study was specific to consumer reviews, but is still useful as an indicator of when consumers consult the advice of strangers.

Study respondents said they used customer reviews at the end of the research process to narrow down their choices.

Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at eMarketer, said there is a strong demand for the opinions of others, which can help online merchants.

"Not only do consumers notice product rating and reviews, they use and request them," Mr. Grau said. "Web retailers that offer ratings and reviews report a number of benefits, including more traffic, higher conversion rates and increased spending per transaction."

Social Networking Ad Spending Update

eMarketer has revised its US social network ad spending projections, estimating that advertisers will spend $1.4 billion to place ads on online social networks this year, down from the previous projection of $1.6 billion.

US online social network ad spending is now projected to reach $2.6 billion in 2012. In its last projection, made in December 2007, eMarketer estimated that spending would reach $2.7 billion in 2011. Spending in that year is now expected to be $2.4 billion.

eMarketer's figures take into account all forms of advertising within social networks, including display, search and video ads, as well as any fees that marketers pay to social networks to develop profile pages or conduct promotions. For the first time, the new numbers also include widget and application ad spending. While widgets and applications can also appear on blogs and personal start pages, the majority of development has been for social network environments.

Today's economy, combined with the fact that social networks are still trying to come up with successful ad models, has led to lowered ad spending projections for the next few years.

Social networks still show some promise in developing new forms of online advertising. MySpace's HyperTargeting initiative, for example, has helped double CPMs at the site, and 75% of advertisers that have tried it have come back for more, according to News Corp. Facebook's SocialAds concept attempts to improve the relevance of advertising by mining the connections between Facebook members.

Both sites will also see new revenue streams from local advertising and self-service advertising, in which marketers can execute ad buys using an automated system.

The challenge is that all of these new forms of advertising are more difficult to plan, measure and quantify than what advertisers are used to, and that has impacted spending growth.

eMarketer projects that US online social network ad spending will grow 55% this year, down from 163% growth in 2007. The good news is that spending growth at online social networks will be more than double the 23% growth that eMarketer projects for the total US online ad market. Social networks are among the most popular sites on the Internet—particularly for the hard-to-reach youth audience—and marketers will continue to look for ways to reach consumers at those sites.

MySpace will account for 53% of total US online social network ad spending this year, but it has had monetization difficulties. Revenues at Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. unit that is dominated by MySpace, fell to $210 million in the March quarter from $233 million in the previous quarter, News Corp. reported in its earnings conference call last week. News Corp.'s fiscal year ends June 30.

As a result, eMarketer has lowered its forecast for 2008 US ad spending on MySpace to $755 million, from the previous estimate of $850 million.

eMarketer also lowered its 2008 forecast for Facebook ad spending to $265 million, from the previous estimate of $305 million. In addition to issues related to the economy, Facebook may also see a short-term revenue dip if marketers use ad budgets to create applications for its platform instead of purchasing advertising. Facebook does not receive any direct ad revenue when marketers launch applications on the site.

Combined, MySpace and Facebook are expected to account for 72% of the total US social network ad spending pie this year. Spending at all other online social network sites (including general social networks, niche networks and marketer-created networks) is expected to reach $370 million this year, while widget and application ad spending is projected to rise to $40 million this year, from $15 million in 2007.

At $1.4 billion, social network advertising will make up 5.5% of total US online ad spending this year. However, after 2010 eMarketer projects that social network sites will receive a lesser share of total spending, falling to 5.1% in 2012 after a peak of 6% in 2009-2010.

The revised US forecast also changes eMarketer's worldwide social network ad spending estimates. eMarketer now projects that advertisers will spend $2 billion on social networks worldwide in 2008, rising to $3.8 billion in 2011. The previous figure for 2011 was $4.1 billion.

Internet Use Still Heaviest Among Young

The gap between time spent online and watching TV is closing

Adult consumers in the US still spend more time in front of televisions than they do online, according to a recently released survey sponsored by the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) industry association and conducted by Nielsen Media Research.

Survey respondents ages 18 to 34 spent over an hour per day more watching TV than on the Internet.

The gap between time spent online and time spent watching TV is closing, however.

In January 2008, TVB found that 18 to 34 year-olds spent 60.6 minutes more watching TV per day (206.0 minutes) than they did online (145.4 minutes). That is down from June 2006, when the gap was 137.4 minutes: 246.7 minutes for TV and 109.3 minutes online. Moreover, TV time decreased while Internet time increased.

The TVB study's demographic breakdown covered consumers ages 18 to 34. A separate study by JupiterResearch and Ipsos Insight reported results in more discrete age groups—and found that TV use actually trailed Internet use among the youngest consumers. As of August 2007, US consumers in the 18 to 24 year-old range went online an average of two more hours per week than they spent watching TV.

Consumers in the US ages 25 to 44 spent equal amounts of time on the Internet and watching TV, while those ages 45 and older spent more time watching TV than they did online.

Neither study specifically addressed multitasking, which can be significant, especially among younger consumers.

"Young people rarely use just one medium at a time," said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. "Often, when they are online, they’ll have TV or music on in the background."

Mobile Spam Problem in UK

MAY 8, 2008

A large proportion of UK mobile phone users are victims of mobile spam, according to a March 2008 YouGov-Cloudmark study.

Two-thirds of mobile users surveyed had been victims of mobile spam.

Among 18 to 24 year-olds, that number rose to 75%.

In turn, consumers are laying the blame on their mobile service providers. A full 28% of consumers blame their operator for unwanted messages and 44% would consider changing networks because of spam.

"Mobile spam may not be in the same league as traditional e-mail spam, but as this survey shows, subscribers' tolerance of unwanted and unsolicited mobile messages is virtually nil," said Neil Cook, head of technology at Cloudmark. "That means mobile operators simply can't afford to adopt a wait-and-see strategy."