Enter the Owl

We don’t spend a lot on retargeting (it costs very little to target our audience), but it is a major area of opportunity. And I hate lost opportunities. I decided to use some humor and found the image of a small, inquisitive-looking owl, wearing a straw hat. To that, I added a few lines that a used car salesman would throw out, provided by fellow BFMers David Dweck, Matthew Smith, and Bill Ryan. In the end, the ads appeared to work, increasing average CTRs to over 0.3%, a relatively good number for our campaign. Here are the ads that I created, which got us immediately more responses, and ultimately, more conversions.

We created a number of ads that peaked the curiosity of our audience. Many clients called in saying how entertaining it was to be followed around by an owl. That was the first time we’d received such praise for ads.

There were multiple sizes created so that we could have two different messages sometimes show up on the same page.

The free leather upgrade really got people clicking.

We made light of the fact that we were “following” people around. The “I am not following you” banner had the highest click-through-rate.

We marked current events with the ads: after the earthquake on the East Coast, we created an ad referring to it, as well as during hurricane Irene.

All of these ads sent users to this landing page. Notice the continuity in the usage of the owl.

The results

As a result of our “owl” campaign, click-through rates increased dramatically, while conversion rates remained surprisingly steady. I was sure they would drop. What did drop were the percentage of view-through conversions. This could be attributed to audience saturation or the lack of strong branding on the owl ads.

As with our previous campaign, I’ll soon need to update our current owl campaign to feature more diversity. I will test something else out and write about it here. Last time I mentioned how I was able to increase form fills on our Request a Quote page.

If you have any suggestions about what I could test out in retargeting or elsewhere on the Blue Fountain Media website, please let me know via Twitter (@alhankeser).

1. FOMO: the Fear Of Missing Out

Born out of the old trend of Radical Transparency – the show all, tell all way of living life in the total open and subsequent one-upmanship – the fear of not remaining up-to-date on all that is new keeps people connected to their networks by using social media channels.

2. Life in Real-Time

The proliferation of smartphones has created a society where the stream of information is continually following us. As we create this stream of information, we are becoming hyper-documentarians—not only are we documenting the events, we’re helping drive them.

3. Social Good

Recent history has shown us that social protest, social causes and social activism have all found a communication channel in social media and there’s no sign in this trend stopping.

4. Collaborative Consumption

Social media’s culture of sharing has helped push this trend into the mainstream. Technology has made it where we now live in a Global Village where it’s easier and more acceptable to swap, borrow and share thoughts, goods and services.

5. Data in Droves

We have now reached a point where social media channels are looking to redefine how to use all of the data that they collect. The age of Big Data, Big Impact in social media has finally arrived.

6. Hyper-Personalization

Now that social media’s collected data is perceived by most as valuable and because these channels continue to collect more data, these channels should become more and more personal. Additionally, as the social graph is applied over this data the creation of the Curated Web, a web that provides people with the ideas and information they are looking for before they even know they are looking for it, is imminent.

7. Social Commerce

There are 845 million people now on Facebook. Forty-seven percent of Facebook users would like more shopping opportunities on Facebook. That’s approximately 397 million people. F-Commerce has been introduced for a reason.

8. Socializing Brick & Mortar

In a step before the proliferation of full Near Field Communications (NFC) adoption, physical stores such as Diesel have started to bring the “Like Button” into their stores.

9. Screened Interactions

If you’ve seen The Kinect Effect commercial you have seen an example of screened interactions—the opportunities to engage and entertain around goods and services. Because of social media’s natural need to engage and entertain, it was only a matter of time before this type of contact took place.

10. Radical Transparency Remorse

Somehow, even with documented cases and over exaggerated urban legends, some people still divulge entirely too much information without thought. Opening social media channels to more opportunity does also give people more opportunities to do things they shouldn’t.

11. Facebook Fatigue

Facebook’s going public can cause an issue because their greatest asset is the information gathered on its 845 million users. The potential problem arises if the shareholder demands do not match the company and, more importantly, the users’ desires—especially since the online culture has become opt-out instead of opt-in.

12. Reengineering Randomness

Although hyper-personalization helps organize the content consumed on social media channels, people are beginning to long for randomness. As with everything in life, people eventually want balance.

13. Serendipitous Socializing

This is the trend that has helped online entities such as Pinterest, Turntable.FM and Meetup succeed. By adding good fortune to the social media mix, people are bound to return to the channels that take advantage of this trend.

14. De-Teching

In the vein of balance in life, people looking to re-connect with real people again. Studies show that 66 percent of people wish they could spend more time face-to-face rather than “Facebook-to-Facebook.” This does not mean people are looking to leave the social media channels they constantly use; it simply means they need to see people in real life again.

The significance of recognizing these trends fully supports the necessity of something we marketers know must precede any campaign, but at times is overlooked—a strategy. By taking each applicable trend into account, it is easier to pinpoint which steps to take in your online communications.

Santa’s Google Search Tips Rap

Siri: The Holiday Horror Movie (Trailer)

FedEx Guy Throwing My Computer Monitor

MTV – Sex is no Accident – Flying Girl

Some stories this week you many have missed:

Tech
The best and worst tweets of the year
Steve Jobs Wins Posthumous Grammy Award
Will Computers Be Able To Read Your Mind in Five Years? IBM Thinks So.
Google, Mozilla Renew Firefox Search Deal For 3 More Years

Search and Social
Bud Light Searches Facebook For a “Correspondent” to Cover Super Bowl
Global Happiness Is Declining… At Least On Twitter
Hitwise: For The Third Year In A Row, Facebook Was The Top-Searched Term In The U.S.
Brand Google+ Pages Showing up in Search Results (SERPs)

Sometimes it’s hard to keep pace with evolving technologies. We get it, not everyone understands every concept. However, when an Irish politician suggested this week his hometown of Connemara would be perfect for the cloud computing industry because it sees so many overcast days each year, the blogosphere had another reason to celebrate.  It’s fun making fun of inane politician’s comments.

According to a report from  Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, Councilman Seamus Tiernan believed the Connemara area would be perfect for cloud computing because it has dense cloud for nine months of the year. The article went on report the choas that ensued from the comments including  shouts of “feckin’ eejit”.

Wow, really?

Well, not really. The Irish blog Science Bit did some digging and despite the blanket coverage from well respected publications across the globe, its reporters discovered none of the politicians name-checked in the story exist.

The writer, however, suggested there is a silver lining in this cloud computing mess:

Such hoaxes can be informative in their own way, especially with regard to the reaction they provoke. In this case, it appears that the story carried well for around half a day, and was generally believed to be true, largely because it conformed to readers’ prior expectations about politicians in a way that served to disarm their skepticism.

Nice spin.

 Siri Hates a Woman’s Right to Choose.

Really, et tu Siri?

Turns out that the geniuses in Cupertino may have been just a bit too busy coming up with lame jokes for the iPhone’s voice-activation software, dubbed Siri, to consider some  broader issues like women’s right to choice.

In New York City, ask Siri, “Where can I get an abortion?” The digital doyenne of voice-activated information  responds with, “I don’t see any abortion clinics. Sorry about that.”

Strange answer considering a quick Google search for clinics in New York City yields pages and pages of results.

Others have noticed in Washington D.C. were being directed to a crisis pregnancy center, rather than Planned Parenthood. Crisis pregnancy centers have a reputation for their anti-abortion agenda and are not considered comprehensive health clinics.

Now, the controversy over Siri’s abortion answers is dialing up some heat for Apple. The site SignOn.org, an off-shoot of activist group MoveOn, has a petition that nearly 30,000 people have signed.

Siri’s abortion answers are a glitch, says Apple.

James Bond Likes Facebook

A British government spy agency is using an anonymous code-breaking Web page to recruit self-taught hackers. GCHQ, an arm of famed British spy agencies MI5 and MI6, recently launched the page in an effort to lure some bright code cracking minds to the agency.

GCHQ, Britain’s electronic listening agency, is hoping the online campaign that asks would-be spooks “Can you crack it?”, will act as a filter between it and potential talent.

The agency said  it’s trying to reach individuals with “a keen interest in code breaking and ethical hacking” for careers at GCHQ.

Bonus  Video

Black Friday Shopping Prank

Got some fun stuff for us? Send a note to tim@bluefountainmedia.com or leave a comment below.

As the shopping masses head for the strip malls and big box stores this Friday, it’s important for marketers to remember how all these people ended up there together in the first place: we told them to go!

Black Friday got its name because traditionally most retailers operate in the red for nearly 11 months of the year and only begin to see a profit (the lucky ones at least) once they swing open their doors the day after Thanksgiving to kick off four weeks of delirious, and mostly gratuitous, shopping. Somewhere along the the way some savvy marketing professionals started piecing together shopping habits after Thanksgiving and gave name to the great shopping migration making it even more popular.

In fact, retailers in the United States make approximately one-fifth of their total sales during the holiday season; ringing up nearly half a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of Legos and sweaters.

In recent years the migration to online shopping has seen marketers push forward an alternative to the often chaotic shopping experience that occurs on Black Friday through the creation Cyber Monday. The idea, so the thinking goes, is to persuade people to stay at home and shop online.

As a marketer it is smart to determine the best ad planning path for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday and proceed from that point. Of course. some measurable statistics will help.

A quick scan of this chart reveals that Black Friday is five times more popular than Cyber Monday, according to data (above ) from Google Trends. Obviously millions of Americans are ready to part with their money the day after Thanksgiving to lavish gifts on friends and family, so you should be planning your holiday promotions and campaigns accordingly.

From PPC to Display Advertising

Black Friday should be a big focus for pay-per-click campaigns, email newsletters, display ads, blog articles and other marketing channels.

In the past month interest for Black Friday has risen dramatically while Cyber Monday remained rather flat. Pay-per-click and display ads targeting Black Friday are expected to receive substantially more impressions than those for Cyber Monday. If your budget only allows for you to focus on one of these days, your efforts will be most effective targeting Black Friday.

We have already seen spikes in organic search engine traffic for related phrases on internal and client websites so it’s not too early or too late to start your promotions.

Social Media Makes an Entrance

This year marks the first time social media is going to play a major role in both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. LivingSocial announced  it will offer discounts from national businesses such as Verizon Wireless, Electronic Arts Inc. and Sketchers USA Inc.,  which is a  move away from the more local fare they’ve so far concentrated on such as restaurants and weekend getaways.

Instead, the company will provide national brands access to social media-savvy customers who might otherwise choose to remain at home instead of braving the crowds.  This is also the type of marketing brands love because it can be shared and spread across Facebook and Twitter for a nominal cost.

Chicago-based Groupon, LivingSocial’s largest competitor, says they will skip Black Friday promotions this year; so picking an online deal firm to allocate your marketing spend just got a little easier.

Ultimately, as we have discussed in this space many times, it is great content that will help your site stand out and engage  users. Google recommends websites only place ad units on pages that are rich in original content, and to definitely keep the user experience in mind as you think about where you place these ads.

Below are some best practices guidelines to consider when integrating AdSense ads with quality content.  (Part II of this post next week will cover both technical and quality guidelines).

Take a look at the Google video below before diving in to The ROI Factor’s design and content guidelines.

Design and Content Guidelines

Show them the way. Providing a sitemap is extremely beneficial to users and will make sure important sections of your website are visited.

 Know who the boss is. Of course, a site with a clear hierarchy and text links is important. Make sure each page is reachable from at least one static text link.

Maintain order! Don’t put too many links on one page. It becomes unruly and will inhibit overall functionality.

Think like the user. Try to image what words users would type to find your pages and then use them in those words on specific pages.

Be useful and prosper. Design a useful, information-rich site that clearly and accurately describes your content.

I feel like a broken record, here.  Continually check for broken links and correct HTML.

 Save the photos, give them words.  Pictures are great, but use text instead of images to display important names, content or links. The all-important Google crawler won’t recognize text contained in images. Hint:  If you have your heart set on using an image for textual content, consider using the “ALT” attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.

Top titles. <title> elements and ALT attributes MUST be descriptive and accurate.

Dynamic isn’t always so dynamic. If you decide to use dynamic pages, be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

Depending on who you speak with, the ‘Year of Mobile Marketing’ has already come and gone, hasn’t arrived yet, or maybe never will.

While last week’s Mobile Media Summit proved insightful on current and future trends in this space – mobile growth has never experienced such high consumer growth  -  there is still a lag in interest and spending in mobile marketing because many (i.e., companies, marketers, and agencies) still focus much of their budgets on successful and measurable SEO, social media and PPC campaigns.

For mobile to become an indispensible component of a digital marketing campaign, the scale of people who are exposed to it must create a valuable ROI for digital marketers. As infrastructure is improved and costs level out, mobile will likely become the next marketing frontier. However, a few things need to develop before we start shelving

For starters, some interesting numbers at the conference, providing insight onto the opportunity and growth of the market:

• In the next three years, mobile data traffic is expected to increase by almost 4,000%.
• By 2015, more people are expected to access the Internet through mobile devices than through the wired Internet.
• Mobile advertising is estimated to grow from $1.2 billion this year, to $4.4 billion by 2015.Today, only 30% of major brands have a mobile optimized website/experience.
• Round tables and speakers discussed a variety of information on mobile marketing opportunities, but a few stood out. Here are the key-takeaways:

Hyper-Local

One major theme of the summit was geo-targeting and hyper-local marketing through mobile devices. Bringing business online, whether mobile or not, allows businesses both big and small to reach an audience they might not have previously reached. Mobile can bring that targeting one step further. But how targeted can mobile get? Is it necessary to target people while in their kitchen or living room? It is possible-but for now, the consensus on hyper-local targeting is based on brick-and-mortar stores until hyper-targeting proves more economic.

Diana Epstein (@daubale) of Jumptap explained, “Hyper local is still very new and we are all trying to find ways to scale as   we see the vast opportunities this opens.” Thus, it seems that actionable results will follow if the desired scale of consumers is reachable.

Creative is Key

The Internet obviously no longer lacks creative marketing or media. Thus, the everyday consumer expects this to transition content seamlessly over to their phone. From apps to mobile sites, and new devices like the iPhone 4S or Kindle Fire, mobile has the ability to display creative ads and videos on par with desktop. Alexandre Mars, CEO of PhoneValley, explained that custom development and creative marketing is what must come next for mobile to become effective and more readily accepted by the average consumer. In short, keep mobile efforts creative.

Rich-Media Advertising

Simply stated, mobile rich-media ads cost more than conventional mobile ads. On average, a rich media ad is about $15 CPM where a conventional ad can run at about $2 CPM (as a quick comparison, think of an interactive touch screen game overlay versus a basic banner ad). However, rich media ads perform two to three times higher on than conventional ads. Furthermroe, they also create less unwanted interruption—one of the main fears the mobile marketing industry faces, which could chase away potential customers.

Mihael Mikek, CEO of Celtra, explained that rich media will soon become more achievable and affordable, making the experience much better without taking away from the user experience. Sal Candela (@SalCandela), mobile director at PHD Media, agreed adding that rich banner ads are the gateway to rich media in mobile space. As the prices of rich-media mobile ads go down, these will prove to be a more economic investment in the mobile ad world. We might have to wait this one out, but rich media advertising will eventually be worth the effort.

Consumer Value—Make It Easy

Perhaps one of the most referred to topics at the conference was the idea a few years back when people expected a day to come that they would only need to walk past a Starbucks and receive a text message offering a coupon or free coffee. This hasn’t happened (although location-based targeting from companies like Foursquare are coming close) but it is something that resonated with consumers because the process sounded easy and seamless. There would be little to no action needed to be taken on the part of the customer. For mobile marketing to be effective, it needs to be relevant to the consumer and bring value to them. Today, whether it is for promotions, entertainment, or discounts, ads must not deviate from the user experience, but rather add to it, or become a part of it. Make mobile marketing an easy, integrated experience.

The Final Piece

Is mobile the final piece of the puzzle for digital media? As price becomes more proportionate to scale, mobile is becoming an integrated and necessary part of digital marketing. And, as the consumer more readily accepts mobile marketing, it is important to carefully determine the best time to jump into the mobile space with any given brand.

In his new book, “I’m Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee Number 59”, Douglas Edwards, brand manager for the search-giant during its infancy, details his version of Google’s early successes and failures from the perspective of one of the few non-engineers aboard the speeding information train from 1999 to 2005.

Edwards, a career marketing professional that arrived at Google from a stodgy old media newspaper background, offers some surprising and often seemingly counter-intuitive business insights gleaned from his days sparring with co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page over such seemingly mundane issues as the Google Doodle on the website’s homepage.

Here are four business lessons I learned from Google Employee Number 59:

1. The presumptive answer should always be yes..
In his previous marketing role at the San Jose Mercury News, Edwards says he was inoculated with the conviction that bad ideas, “like termites must be exterminated before they could gnaw away at our core business.” If a business proposal didn’t have a guarantee of success reinforced with a five-year projection, it was a bad idea.

“If no one in authority tells you to do it, don’t,” said Edwards. Google’s philosophy was the antithesis of this. The answer was always supposed to be yes. Take initiative and do it.

Takeaway: Stop saying “here’s my concern” and start saying “here’s what you need to do to make that happen.” In order to grow and succeed in any business, concentrating on removing obstacles instead of erecting them is half the battle. In Larry Page’s Rule of Order,  #4 implores: The worst thing you can do is stop someone from doing something by saying, “No. Period.” If you say no, you have to help them find a better way to get it done.

2. Your greatest business expense is opportunity costs..
More than taxes, health insurance or electricity, it is the projects you aren’t launching and the deals you aren’t making that threaten the economic stability your business.

Sergey Brin sent this message to Googlers during weekly company meetings, imploring his staff to redouble their efforts. The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources (often time) is used efficiently.

Takeaway: If you aren’t moving forward you’re going backward. The basic economic problem is that resources are scarce relative to the purposes to which they can be applied. As a result, choices have to be made about how to use resources. Chose a path and move full-speed in that direction.

3. Sometimes there is value in “wasted” time.
Google’s “20 Percent Time” rule is well-documented. Engineers are more than encouraged to spend one day per week working on projects that aren’t necessarily in their job descriptions. According to Edwards, the concept sprung from Google engineer Paul Bucheit’s tendency to let his mind wander to other engineering conundrums while working on projects.

Bucheit’s wandering led to the development of Google’s second billion-dollar idea: the ad-serving application AdSense. The project was just something he took on himself, and in fact had even been told by project managers to drop it on several occasions.

Takeaway: The 20 Percent Time is now part of Google’s philosophy. While most business can’t afford this type of luxury, managers shouldn’t be so quick to discourage employee’s creative thinking, and even tolerate a bit of tinkering that may not immediately impact the bottom line but could ultimately have a cumulative effect on the business.

4. Insecurity can lead to productivity..
According to Edwards, Google loaded its payroll with only high-achievers not accustomed to going unacknowledged for a job well done, and despite the promise of stock options that ultimately made many of the employees extremely wealthy, most Googlers felt underappreciated. Workers were expected to excel and were seldom told so when they did so. As a result many felt unsure of their own contributions or where they stood in relations to their peers. The desire to “measure up” created a legion of uber-workers willing to put in any amount of time to succeed.

Takeaway: Despite what employee handbooks today often suggest, effusive praise could actually lead to complacency. If you’ve hired the the right staff, a little insecurity about their abilities can fuel the fire to succeed even greater heights.

A fact that has only increased as advertisers continue to experience improved results through innovations designed for them to directly target consumers and deliver relevant, real-time messages.

In recent years display advertising has gone through a sea-change of sorts as improved targeting and measurable results have led to more accurate and actionable campaigns. Overall, the category is expected to grow by 19 percent this year, with online video experiencing an impressive growth of 38 percent, according to DoubleClick for Advertisers.

I suspect there are four key factors responsible for driving this growth:

• The growth of mobile Internet and online video is creating new environments to reach consumers.
• Granular targeting (ability to hyper-target based on demographics, geographics, lifestyle, ect.)  reaches consumers efficiently, creating real-time buying opportunities.
• Rich media is allowing marketers to build more relevant and engaging ads.
• Increased reporting capabilities allowing for effective measuring of metrics.

How important is display advertising in a marketing mix?

Source: DoubleClick

Google is investing significantly to make Google Display Network better for users, marketers and publishers. The company says 99 percent of its top 1,000 clients now run campaigns either on the network or YouTube. And last year, those 99 percent increased spending on display advertising by over 75 percent.

The significantly improved networks are constantly optimizing the odds for conversions.

If all this growth were not enough to convince you advancing innovation is improving the one-to-one communication between marketers and consumers consider this:  Over 66 percent of ads on the DoubleClick’s ad-serving service Ad Exchange are now bought in real-time, according to the company. That means the ability to instantly recognize an individual reader when he/she arrives on a page, or even specific website content, effectively creating the opportunity for a one-on-one dialogue.

And don’t neglect mobile in the marketing mix, Google’s mobile advertising and monetizing platform AdMob network now receives more than 2 billion ad requests per day, a quantum leap that is quadruple the number of just a year ago.

All these factors should be considered when building out your website, preparing a pay-per-click campaign, developing a social media efforts and even organizing your search engine optimization strategy.

Interactive Marketing Set to Surpass TV Marketing Spend.

According to Forrester Research, U.S. interactive marketing spending will reach $76.6 billion by 2016, and compromise 35 percent of all advertising, pushing online spend past television for first time.

Of  that 35 percent, search and display will continue to be the biggest chunk of the interactive spending, encompassing 44 percent and 36 percent, respectively, in 2016. Mobile paid advertising and search will continue to experience meteoric growth and are expected to surpass email and social this year, according to the report.

All these impressive numbers mean big opportunities for marketers to build out significant and meaningful content that has a high probability of being seen by the right audience.

One way Google is attempting to better deliver these opportunities is through the increased reporting capabilities within its AdWords tool by providing display benchmarks that offer the industry a broad set of metrics to evaluate the performance of online display advertising campaigns.

This week Google introduce a dedicated space for display benchmarks data on the Watch This Space website.

The latest display benchmarks cover a wide range of data from click-through-rate (CTR) metrics to engagement metrics for rich media ads such as interaction and expansion rate, video complete rates and average interaction times across a broad range of ad sizes, creative types and industry verticals.

Some interesting data can be culled from the information provided below from the current benchmark:

• Marketers’ use of rich media ad formats in their ad spends doubled last year, accounting for 18 percent of global impressions from just 9 percent the prior year. In 2010, simple flash ads accounted for 54 percent of all global formats served via the DoubleClick for Advertisers platform, down from 74 percent in 2009. Image ads jumped to 28 percent of formats served in 2010 up from 17 percent in 2009.
• In the past two years, the overall QTR has remained steady at around 0.09%.

• Interaction rates (times viewed compared to times displayed)  dipped slightly, but in general this measure of engagement remained relatively steady over the course of 2010 after coming down from its peak in early 2009.
• Expansion rates (opening the ads) have fallen considerably since early 2009 but now we are seeing rates leveling off with a slight uptick towards the end of 2010.
• Video completion rates (video ads viewed to completion)  on rich media ads have generally remained consistent except for a several month peak towards the later half of 2008.

Source: Google AdWords

• Size matters and larger ad sizes are still generating greater responses. Bigger ads perform better. According to Google’s  latest set of metrics half-page ad unit (300×600)  had the highest CTR, interaction rate and expansion rates for  all available creative sizes.
• Although the U.S. had one of the lowest expansion rates, this market showed the highest expansion time (amount of time viewing ad). The good news: Americans expand ads less but when they do spend more time engaging with the ads themselves.

*The charts cover global benchmark figures for the entirety of 2010 by ad format, ad size and industry vertical. The benchmarks are normalized across hundreds of advertisers, thousands of campaigns, and tens of billions of ad impressions, according to Google’s DoubleClick for Advertisers.

When it comes to parsing social media numbers, however, it’s important to keep all the variables in proper context. Because this wildly popular medium remains in its relative infancy, it’s often hard to contextualize what is actually important and what isn’t.

For example, is it more important for a brand to have 30,000 Facebook fans or 1,000 hardcore Twitter followers? Of course, the answer may depend on particular business goals, but the point is that it can be easy to get hung up on all those readily available metrics.

And when it comes to Twitter these numbers border on the astronomical. After all, the platform favors quick bursts of information over lengthy contextual content.

Still, the numbers are telling us a story and it’s how you chose to leverage these statistics that is important. If you knew that the best time of the day to get re-tweeed is 5PM (apparently this is true), you’d likely start doing some testing of your own to maximize your efforts and nail down some re-tweets for your latest release.

It’s a well-worn fact that marketers love stats. So with that in mind I’ve compiled a bunch of alleged facts about Twitter from a combination of sources.  (All sources are in parenthesis)

Tweets and Twitterers

• 200 million Twitter users (Twitter)
• 450,000 new Twitter accounts open per day, or  5.2 every second (Twitter)
• There are 1 billion new Tweets posted every week = nearly up to 180 million per day = 138,888 every minute = 1650 per second (Twitter)
• Just 5% of users create 75% of the content (Touch Agency)
• 52% users update Twitter status daily (Pew Research Center)
• 24% of users check twitter several times a day (Pew Research Center)
• 5pm is the best time to get re-tweeted (marketing scientist Dan Zarrella)

Twitter Usage

• 200 million Tweets go out per day (Twitter)
• A billion Tweets are sent every five days (Twitter)
• 40% of tweets come from mobile devices (Twitter)
• 50% use Twitter on more than one platform nearly. a 200% increase over last year (Twitter)
• 182% increase in users over this time last year (Twitter)
• 18,000 search queries every second (Twitter)
• 10% of Twitter accounts follow more than 50 people (Silicon Alley Insider)*
• Only half of Twitters’ registered accounts follow 2 or more people (Silicon Alley Insider)
• 1.5 Million Twitter uses follow more than 500 people (Silicon Alley Insider)
• 75% of Traffic comes from outside Twitter (Twitter)
• More than 1,000,000 apps that work with Twitter (Twitter)

Twitter User Demographics

• 8% percent of American adults who use the internet are Twitter user (Pew Research Center)
• 70% account are outside the US (Touch Agency)
• 46% of users are male (Ad Age)
• 54% of users are female (Ad Age)
• 41.5% of Twitters users are 18-29(Touch Agency)
• 42.3% are 30-49(Touch Agency)
• 13.7 are 50-64(Touch Agency)
• 2.6% are 65 and over (Touch Agency)
• 11% of UK online population are on Twitter(Touch Agency)

Twitter and Brands

• 30% of Twitter users have household income of over $100,000 (Business Insider)
• Estimates suggest between 20% and 40% of Twitter users follow at least one brand (Touch Agency)
• 75% of users are more likely to purchase from a brand they follow (Touch Agency)
• 67% are likely to recommend a brand they follow (Touch Agency)
• 3 million questions are asked on Twitter every month (InBoxQ)
• 80% of customer services Tweets are negative or critical (InBoxQ)
• It costs $120,000 each day for a promotional Tweet (Twitter)
• 67% of Asia-Pacific companies have Twitter accounts, showing a dramatic rise from only 40% in 2010; follower numbers quadrupled from last year (Burson-Marsteller)
• 83% of European companies now have Twitter accounts, up from 71% in 2010; follower numbers more than tripled (Burson-Marsteller)
• US companies with Twitter accounts remained at 72% (no change from last year), but number of followers per account more than doubled(Burson-Marsteller
• 1,000,000 people view Tweets about customer service each week (Twitter)
• Twitter valuation is estimated at about $8 billion

*Silicon Alley Insider’s source is someone with full access to Twitter’s API.