The Week in Review

Android is Most Popular Mobile OS in Past 6 Months

According to Nielsen’s numbers from August, Google’s Android was the most popular smartphone operating system in the U.S. in the past six months, followed by RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Apple’s iPhone OS. Overall, BlackBerry still holds the lead with 31 percent of the market, followed by 28 percent for iPhone OS and 19 percent for Android OS. (Nielsen)

Retailers Missing Out on Conversions with Limited Display Campaigns

According to MediaMind, about a third of all online display advertising by the retail industry happens during November and December, but most campaigns only reach Web users once. Just 41 percent of conversions for the retail industry occurred among users who were exposed to a display ad campaign once from May through August. This number jumped to 59 percent after two exposures, 69 percent after three exposures, 76 percent after four exposure and 80 percent after five exposures. (eMarketer)

Local Searchers Are Most Likely to Make Purchases

According to recent figures from comScore, 70 percent of mobile users made a purchase (via a website, in person or by phone) after conducting a search, compared with 67 percent of social networkers and 55 percent of all searchers. Though this is a lucrative segment, it’s also a very fragmented one. (Search Engine Land)

AOL Readying to Wow Online Bargain Hunters

Wow.com used to be a site about “World of Warcraft.” Now AOL is transitioning it to be a Groupon clone, with hopes of expanding beyond AOL properties. (Business Insider, paidContent.org)

Google TV Elicits Questions (About SEO)

Google TV’s website has finally launched, though there isn’t a whole lot to get excited about yet. There are still a bevy of questions to ask about it, including how ads are going to factor into the grand scheme. For site owners, designing pages that look good on a TV screen could pose some challenges. Text constraints only add to the headache that looms. This isn’t even to mention the SEO uncertainties Google TV brings. (CrunchGear, Search Engine Land)

Yahoo Set to Acquire Dapper

Dapper is a company that has already partnered with Yahoo on its “SmartAds” product, but now the giant portal appears set to gobble its smaller partner up to bulk up its display ad business. Its real-time bidding technology platform figures to be an important piece for Yahoo. Dapper already boasts some pretty impressive engagement numbers, and the acquisition could help Yahoo to edge in on Google’s territory. (CNET, VentureBeat)

Consistency is King

Don’t lose sight of the basics of SEO, especially consistency and standardization of SEO elements across a site, which seem to be lost in all the focus rightly given to relevancy and authority. When all SEO ranking elements point in the same direction, good things can happen. Duplicate content and canonicalization is a good illustration of this. (Search Engine Land)

The New Social Marketing Paradigm

Last year the questions were focused on who owns social, what networks will stick around and how we can monetize it. Today the questions are centered on who your influencers are, what they’re saying, how to apply advertising principles to this medium, what we can monitor and how we can manage this with current resources. The challenges we face are semantic filtering, response analytics/insight and platforms that must compress time and space. (MediaPost)

5 Tips for Turning Consumer Inaction into Action

Consumer inaction is a problem businesses have to confront, or else they won’t have a viable business at all. Five tips for shifting inactive consumers into the active column are reducing options, creating urgency, reducing risk, focusing your message and knowing your customer. (Econsultancy)

‘Advertising Option Icon’ Proposed by Ad Group to Improve Web Privacy

A group of big-time advertising organizations is pushing a self-regulatory program that would allow users to opt out of being tracked by its member organizations. Part of this is the placement of the “Advertising Option Icon” on Web pages that collect user data. Nevertheless, there are still some who are not satisfied and are calling for the government to step in and set rules. (NYTimes.com)

9 Ways to Build a Substantive Twitter Community

Sure, it’s easy to amass followers, but that might not say much about how significant that community really is. The point is to connect with people who will enrich your overall experience. Among the nine ways to build a true community on Twitter are to tweet even if no one’s watching, look at other people’s lists, jump into conversations that look interesting and avoid namedropping. (Brass Tack Thinking)

Facebook Event Could Be About…Events

There’s a Facebook event happening on Wednesday morning at the social networking site’s headquarters. The event could be related to Facebook Events and a tie-in with its acquisition of check-in service Hot Potato. (CNET)

Groupon Promotions Unprofitable for a Third of Businesses

According to a study from a marketing professor at Rice University, Groupon promotions are unprofitable for 32 percent of the businesses surveyed, and more than 40 percent of those businesses indicated they would not run a comparable promotion again. On the other hand, 66 percent of businesses indicated that their promotions were profitable. (ClickZ)

Google Instant Gets Blue Arrows

Last week, Google began displaying a movable blue arrow next to the first result of Google’s listings. It’s part of a new keyboard navigation feature. The blue arrow will also point at ads if they’re the first thing displayed on the search results page, but they won’t point at OneBox-style listings. The jury’s still out on how much this will affect anything. (Search Engine Land)

Google Seeks Relevancy

Why do we Google? No, really, why? It’s all driven by decision making and the fact that Google just serves up the most relevant results today. Then again, the search giant does benefit from a halo effect – research shows that placing the Google logo on another search engine’s results boosts their relevancy scores. For marketers, the goal is to show people how they can solve a problem or make a decision. Build a relevant brand that corners the market on a particular niche. (MediaPost)

More than 1 Billion Living in Virtual Worlds, Most Under 15 Years Old

In the third quarter, KZero observed more than 1 billion registered users in virtual-world sites, an increase of 51 million users from the second quarter, and a surge of 350 million users in the past year. Of this number, about 687 million are 15 and under. (ReadWriteWeb)

iPad Sales Don’t Cannibalize the PC Market

According to NPD Group, the common belief that the iPad is sparking cannibalization in the PC Market is incorrect, since iPad owners exhibit buying and ownership patterns that are different from the typical consumer-electronics customer. Just 13 percent of iPad owners bought an iPad instead of a PC, while 24 percent replaced a planned e-reader purchase with an iPad. (NPD)

Facebook is No. 2 in Online Video, Unveils New Ad Placement

Facebook is now No. 2 in the U.S. online video market by unique viewers, according to comScore. The social networking behemoth leapfrogged Yahoo and sits snugly behind Google (i.e., mostly YouTube). Facebook has also unfurled a fourth ad placement that will sit below the fold and will enable users to click through for special offers or to “like” brands. This should help the site to blow the $1.6 billion ad sales estimate made by Cowan and Company out of the water. (comScore, ClickZ)

AdWords vs. AdSense

If you’re new to the world of search marketing, knowing the difference between Google AdWords and AdSense is, well, quite crucial. AdWords is used by advertisers, while AdSense is used by publishers. Read on to learn about ad design flexibility, ad limit per page, click options and payment expectations for each. (PPC Hero)

Google Scribe and SEO

Google Scribe predicts the rest of what you’re typing. It’s a neat tool but does it have any use for SEO? Yes. It is meant to show “correct or popular phrases to use,” which should grab your attention. Use it for content research and on-page topic modeling. (Search Engine Journal)

Google is Indexing More Search Results

Google’s move to show more search results from a single domain was a big win for the online reputation management industry. Here’s a look at the factors involved in getting more results for a single domain. (Outspoken Media)

Spam is 95% of All E-mail

According to Panda Security, 95 percent of all e-mail sent around the world during the third quarter was spam. The top 10 spamming countries (India, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, South Korea, Vietnam, United States, Kazakhstan and Indonesia, in that order) are responsible for half of all spam. (CNET)

Goo.gl

Google has officially jumped into the URL-shortening game with Goo.gl. The search company is flashing its stability, security and speed. There are a bunch of neat features, too. (TechCrunch)

Google Wants to Replace JPEG with WebP

If Google had its way, JPEGs would be replaced with WebP, an open-source format for images that keeps the glossy look but reduces file sizes by around 40 percent. The result? Faster browsing, of course. (Mashable)

Facebook and Skype on the Verge of Partnering

Who needs Google Voice? Facebook is reportedly close to announcing an important partnership with Skype, which will include integration of SMS, video chat and Facebook Connect. This, along with its interest in cozying up to address books, signals a growing interest by Facebook to “mesh communications and community more tightly together and add more tools to allow people to do so.” (CNET)

AOL Continues Acquisition Streak with Thing Labs and Brizzly

TechCrunch was just the beginning for AOL, which acquired Thing Labs (a social app shop) and Brizzly (a Web-based alternative to Sessmic and TweetDeck). This still places AOL way, way, way behind the pack when it comes to mergers and acquisitions in 2010, as Google leads the way with 23, followed by IBM with 12 and HP with seven. (Mashable, CB Insights)

The Worth of a Facebook Impression

Believe it or not, Facebook impressions appear to be worth a whole lot more than impressions on other media. Take print advertising, for instance – the audiences are big and targeted, but the advertiser doesn’t learn much about how many readers actually saw the ad or what they thought about it. In fact, Facebook impressions are worth more than those from online display advertising and e-mail advertising/sponsored e-mail. Sponsored text links might give Facebook impressions a run for their money, but that’s about it. In the end, a Facebook impressions is worth the impression itself plus the interaction with the impression. (Go Sportn)

Most Tweets Get No Action

Sysomos analyzed 1.2 billion tweets in the past two months and found (unsurprisingly) that 71 percent of tweets don’t get a @reply or RT, and that 92 percent of RTs happen in the first hour. Meanwhile, of those tweets that do get a @reply, 85 percent get just one, 10.7 percent get two and 1.53 percent get three. (Sysomos)

The Future of Display Ads (According to Google)

Hot on the heels of the IAB’s call for new display ad format submissions and AOL’s unveiling of a new display ad format, Google posted about why it thinks display advertising is on the brink of a revolution. Among some of the predictions the search king is making are that by 2015, half of ad campaigns will include video ads bought on a cost-per-view basis, mobile will be the No. 1 screen through which users engage with advertisers’ digital brands and display advertising will be a $50 billion industry. (The Official Google Blog)

Content Creators Dying Out

“Creators,” or those who record videos, post blog entries, write reviews and post comments to articles online, are less active this year than they were in 2009. A lack of growth in the number of Creators means there is a “lack of fresh ideas, content and perspectives,” according to a Forrester analyst. (ReadWriteWeb)

Google Goes Hyperlocal on Mobile Search

Google is laying down some foundational bricks for hyperlocal search with its unveiling of hyperlocal search ads for mobile devices. (ReadWriteWeb)