This free tool will let users download customised data and market-specific information in order to help understand how individuals use the internet. Google describe it as a tool that will deliver "consumer insights to support planning and decision-making in a fast changing digital landscape".
They break it down into three areas;
The Multiscreen world - Aims to quantify and understand Internet usage and attitudes across various devices. The base of this section is the entire population, both on and offline.
The Smart Shopper - Focuses on the consumer purchase journey and the role of the Internet in making purchase decisions.
The Smart Viewer - Provides insight into people's recent online video use across different devices.
Data in the Consumer Barometer is collected from two sources; the core Consumer Barometer questionnaire, which focuses on the adult online population and the Connected Consumer Study, which seeks to enumerate the total adult population and is used to weight the Consumer Barometer results. Data has been sourced from 50 different countries, involving over 150,000 respondents.
Snapshot of Multiscreen World in Consumer Barometer
Vertical sectors currently profiled within the Barometer include: clothing and footwear, home appliances, flights, hotels, cosmetics and groceries. New vertical sectors will be added on an ongoing basis as Google extends the insights.
Verdict: Although the data presented is very basic, its great to have in a handy go-to place. If you're needing a quick answer to some online behaviour or trends, the Consumer Barometer is a way of finding information quickly in an easy to manage way.
Make up your own mind at: http://www.consumerbarometer.com/
Another Google update enviability means Winners and Losers, this new update has been dubbed Panda 4.1 (although many of Google's other algorithms were updated) and news broke via Google employee Pierre Far's Google+ page. Medium and small websites are said to have benefitted most from 4.1, in the past Google has been accused of favouring the bigger players, but they expect to see the highest ranking sites to come in a variety of sizes now.
The Panda algorithm penalises content that it believes offers little or no value to users. What is new about the latest Panda update is that Google has developed new and more sophisticated signals to more accurately detect low-quality and thin content from ranking highly,
although it's worth noting that 4.1 has only effected 3-5% of search queries.
Losers
Gaming, lyric and some medical portals suffered organic search visibility losses, this seems to be because these sites tend to have thin, repeated, or aggregated content, and Google deems this type of content as low quality. Lyric websites often have identical content to their competitors, medical content sites have a habit of repeating content, while gaming sites have a lack of content compared to other platforms. Affiliate sites have also been deemed losers by many tech experts due to their thin content.
Winners
News websites, download portals and content sites benefitted due to the fact they are regularly updated with new, (presumably) high-quality and unique information. Another thing to note is that sites that were hit by the Panda 4.0 update have been working hard to delete duplicate and thin content over the past few months and as a result have recovered very well, examples include rd.com, Hotelguides.com and Yourtango.com.
Concerned about how this update may affect your website? Although it may seem that Google is trying to catch websites out, they're actually very clear with how they critique content. They suggest referring to the following questions when curating your own content;
Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
Raymond Kurzweil is the man who accurately predicted the structure of the brain over 50 years ago. We could fill this entire site with pretty outlandish things he's said - the fact he might live forever would be near the top. Despite a scarcity of evidence, he was proved right about the brain. Now he says by 2030, through ingested nanobots, our brains will be connected to the immense processing power of the cloud and that humanity will see the largest growth in intelligence since 65 million years ago when mammals grew their neocortexes and realigned the course of evolution (spoiler alert: the dinosaurs were the wrong answer).
A truly, literally, mind-blowing video.
... incidentally, Raymond Kurzweil is now Google's Director of Engineering. So it's probably as likely as cars driving themselves, a computer beating the top contestants at natural language based game-shows and telepathic control.
When YouTube was hailed as "The New Hollywood" it seemed as though the golden age of online video had arrived. Ordinary people were becoming stars, video was being democratized, from retro to cult to niche if ever there was a place where content was king it was the kingdom of YouTube.
The Bizarre Landscape of YouTube
Michael Jackson & Janet Jackson 'Scream' - The most expensive music video of all time at $7,000,000
33 million views
'Charlie Bit My Finger' Two otherwise unknown English kids (I'm guessing it didn't have huge production costs)
732 million views
... and here's the app off the back of it https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.viralspiral.charlie
While discussion of the "Greatest TV Drama Ever" can range from Breaking Bad to The Wire or from The Wire to Breaking Bad, YouTube offers literally millions of videos and each user likely has their own favourites.
Personal favourite: 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us' has it all from dreadful Japanese to English translation, an obnoxious soundtrack to smart, funny photo-editing. All in all it goes pretty far to summing up community driven, meme-led portion of the internet .
900,000 views
Of course the ludicrous freedom and variety was supported by a sophisticated and successful revenue model, with ad placement making YouTube its earnings. A figure of likely $5.6 billion in 2013, which is not too shabby. YouTube hit upon an irresistible offer for content creators, the chance to take home 55% of the profits from advertising around their videos, while YouTube takes a 45% cut. That's 55% of something (and potentially a lot) or 100% of nothing. It's an easy choice, one that made likes of PewDiePie millions of ad dollars for playing games and just generally putting himself on display.
Now YouTube seeks to offer premium models to diversify the experience and take some profit from the growing revenues of streaming services for both video and music. With many major labels comfortably tied into deals with YouTube already through publishing companies like music-only Vevo, smaller independent labels are fighting tooth and nail with YouTube claiming the terms they're being offered are unfair. YouTube's wielding its power by threatening to remove the videos from these labels already on the services. While one could argue YouTube is bullying the 'little guy' it's also fair to point out being able to have your wares in the shopfront that is YouTube has been a massive advantage for the labels.
The effects of YouTube go far beyond making some people very rich though, as exemplified by one lawsuit filed by Ghyslain Raza who claimed the sharing of his video had 'ruined his life'. Not a name you recognise? You may know him as Star Wars kid. Appropriately he's now a law school graduate - specialising in cyber bullying.
This is how you get the name 'Star Wars Kid'...
29 million views
From an often bizarre mishmash of poorly executed oddities YouTube has grown to be possibly the most dominant force in video on the planet, which is remarkable seeing as it was only started in 2005. Simply if you want a video online, overwhelmingly you go to YouTube (unless you're artsy enough to use Vimeo). Now it'll even support HD 60fps, offering Blu-Ray level quality from a little box on your browser. More than that though YouTube can wield the monolithic power of a media giant, decreeing what will and will not be happening (or seen) in online video - perhaps even video in general. Much like Google, YouTube has gone from being a relatively passive curator to an active director of content, making rules and distinctions and sub-levels as it goes.
Here's a 60 FPS video for Battlefield: Hardline, which further affirms YouTube's close relationship with gamer culture.
An odd sandpit where the likes of Billy in his bedroom with some pirated animation software and the cheapest midi keyboard he could find on Ebay can outdo Michael Bay and a billion dollars of exploding this and that. YouTube has the challenge to find a balance between its impeccably slick, media-dominating money-making aspirations and the interests and preferences of possibly most engaged large community on the web.
But with Google at the helm, who've shown an adeptness at growing huge and all-powerful while still remaining relatively well liked, YouTube stands a decent chance of juggling all those balls at once - if taking the odd swipe at some of the pillars of traditional media along the way. As long as it does there'll be a fair few more hits the like of "Leave Britney Alone" and "Nyan Cat" yet.
Nyan Cat
Racking up an amazing 110,000,000 views Nyan Cat has almost matched last year's Super Bowl for number of viewers - the most watched event in TV history
The highest level of internet adoration - incredibly talented people you've never met spending hours editing videos to grant you all manner of superpowers.
(credit: the guardian)
Check back next week for four more interesting stories.
As we head into Brazil 2014, only a tantalising 19 days away,
marketers are already twitching excitedly about the
prospect of a huge and highly engaged audience ripe for the picking.
Each of the nations competing has at least one player with a
verified account on Twitter, even Iran where Twitter is banned is represented by
Hossam Masini. Savvy Social Media Managers may be dreaming of the footballing
equivalent of another “Oreo moment” and looking back at past World Cups it’s
not hard to imagine where the talking points might come from:
Over his head
Nowhere near his head
Improper use of his head
With more people tuning in to watch the World Cup than the Olympics, Tour De France and the Superbowl (sorry America) combined this World Cup is neatly coinciding with the rise of the 'second screen'. More and more people are watching with a mobile in hand and soaking up the information and reaction on social media as well as making searches based on the events of the game.
Above is how the searches were made during the 2010 world cup final. Largely desktop with the most queries immediately after the final whistle.
Below is how the searches were made during a major Champions League game in 2014. Predominantly mobile, with the most searches made around key moments in the match.
All of this points to an active audience ready to react in real-time to anything truly engaging. Perhaps surprisingly young survey respondents are casting increasingly disapproving glances at ambush tactics in favour of "classier" official sponsorship. Young consumers are increasingly aware of the showboating antics of the some brands and guffaws are turning to weary sighs. On the other hand, through traditional sponsorship, major brands are dominating YouTube with World Cup focussed content racking up millions of views, with the not inconsiderable muscles of Nike and Adidas flexing most successfully. Even the official England team announcement was made on Twitter, a platform that didn't even exist when the likes of Lampard and Gerrard were making their debuts, long since they'd spent a good few years getting in each others' way.
Manchester City players, Lescott, Kompany and Hart celebrate Permier League win with a selfie.
Now though celebrity endorsements are an artform all to themselves, as Hart proves advertising anything he can get his capable hands on, user generated content has matured into a pillar of marketing strategy and 9/10s of the world loves a bit of the beautiful game. With 87% of UK Twitter users expecting to watch the World Cup and the hashtag #worldcup already having been used 10 million times it's almost hard to anticipate the scale of World Cup fever the network is going to be crushed under. For fans and marketers alike the excitement is at vuvuzela-pitch but hopefully marketers will have more interesting and intelligent things to say than "OMG" or ":(" following the inevitable penalty shoot out exit.
Whatever happens lets hope we have some worthy world champions, that Wayne Rooney improves on a tally to match me and you - of zero World Cup goals, and that 'soccer' produces something to finally dethrone that imperious Oreo.
...since Youtube, anyway. Twitch is a massively popular
platform for watching live-stream of video games in e-sports tournaments, with
some game-playing content creators even making their entire living from
ad-generated revenue on their videos. Assuming the WSJ, The Verge and Variety
are all on to something Google could be about to make a very important acquisition, for $1 billion (£594 million).
As soon as “video games” were mentioned a large
chunk of the mainstream media let out an audible sigh and devoted column
inches to the question of – “but why would you want to watch someone
else play games?!”. In the same way that Match of the Day starts each week with Gary
Lineker asking, – “So Alan, why do people want to watch other people play
football?”
As it happens people are watching other people play games – more people are
watching Twitch than MTV, ESPN and Breaking Bad.
With 45,000,000 monthly users Twitch is the fourth biggest source
of web traffic on the net at peak times in the US, behind only Google, Netflix
and Apple. In the process beating Facebook, Valve, Amazon and Hulu. All of these statistics add up to make Twitch a massive character in
the theatre of the internet and while it may belong to an audience that's largely
misunderstood, it’s by no means small audience.
What’s more they’re highly engaged - the average users watches
106 minutes of video a day, compared to YouTube’s 15 minutes – and they’re
obsessive about forming communities and innovating with the whole structure of
live-streaming. Beyond that, perhaps most importantly of all, they’re young,
with the average age user only at 21 Twitch could feasibly take many of its
devotees with it for years to come. Twitch is also breaking out of its box and
into increasingly less-niche territory, its native integration with both Xbox
One and Playstation 4 means that it will end up in the living rooms of possibly
hundreds of millions of people. More homes in the US own games consoles than
don’t.
Twitch's audience of high-spending 18-34 year old men (although 1 in 3 users is female) is actually one of the hardest for advertisers to reach as these people are abandoning TV and other platforms where they'd be ripe for traditional advertising.
Twitch is, in short, on a massive roll. It’s the YouTube of
live-streaming, a leader in a game of one player, it’s increased exponentially
in scale without losing engagement amongst its users. With a healthy degree of cynicism you could argue Google is buying the only even slightly viable competitor to YouTube’s market share. But its scale sees it
creak from time to time, its service isn’t necessarily running at optimum and
now Google with their blank cheques and fearless innovation can buy, develop and design Twitch’s
way to untouchable, monolithic stability.
With
Apple and Samsung returning to the courtrooms to fight the second round of the
ongoing patent case an interesting bi-product has been the public release of
several internal correspondences from major Apple staff.
The ‘Holy War’
First up
is the Apple vs Google battle that is seemingly dominating everything with a
microchip. Steve Jobs, Apple’s former CEO who tragically died in 2011 wasn't shy about his dislike for the internet giant, having famously promised
‘thermonuclear war’ on them. In Jobs’ biography he stated ‘“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen
product.” For the leaked e-mails Jobs settled for the equally dramatic
‘Holy War’ (scheduled for 2011). It’s an interesting thing to note with Apple
frequently denying paying any attention to their competitor’s actions and with
Google standing as an awkward but interested (and hugely related) 3rd party in the latest
court case. It was years removed from being the first time Jobs’ had threatened
‘war’ with Google, as in 2005 he’d let Sergey Brin of Google know that any
poaching of staff between the companies would lead to that outcome. That
behind-the-scenes agreement between major tech giants is currently the topic of
another unrelated court case.
Samsung
joined in for good measure, their own correspondence outlined their objective: “Beating Apple
is #1 Priority (everything must be in context of beating Apple).”
The ‘Top 100’
That
particular ‘Holy War’ was a prominent discussion point in a meeting of ‘The Top 100’, somewhere secret and far from the Cupertino
company’s main campus. The Top 100, it is revealed, is a select bunch of
Apple’s top employees that are invited to strategise the company’s plans for
the years ahead.
Samsung's Next Big Thing commercial that left Schiller, remarking "these guys are feeling it!".
Apple's 1984 superbowl commerical, widely regarded as one of the best ads of all time.
The Here and now
However
with Apple seeking a $2 billion dollar lawsuit and with the potential aftermath
of massive blocks on developments integral to the Android OS this courtcase
could leave a hugely different tech landscape. With Samsung making a handy
Google stooge for Apple it seems that whether ‘Thermonuclear’, ‘Holy’ or just
incredibly ‘Cold’ a true Apple vs Google clash may be on the horizon.
All that probably
will end up meaning though is more and more court cases.
The next frontier for consumer electronics could well be the
market of wearable technology. Giants such as Google, Sony and Samsung are
relentlessly pursuing a future of interaction, where time-honoured accessories
such as glasses and watches are upgraded into hyper-connected devices in the
increasingly pervasive ‘internet of things'. Apple are shuffling their feet and smiling coyly, but their promises of big things to come are likely to involve
the wearable market.
As smartphones reach an inevitable plateau in mature markets and the average
consumer is reluctant to pay over £500 for a marginally better camera and
shinier shiny bits, there is a clear need to create a new mass market of appeal
within technology. Which means wearable technology as it seeks the love of the masses will find itself hearing the same question again and
again:
… But does it look
good?
Google's current support for prescription glasses comes solely from in-house designs (credit: TNW)
Up until now the answer would have been uncertain, if you’re
kind, and tinged with negativity, but now Google has grabbed the reins and brought in Ray-Ban and Oakley (owned by Italian brand Luxottica) to
dramatically upgrade the look of its Glass units.
Google have also announced Android Wear, a stable platform,
an API which the whole network of differently-branded products can be built
upon, allowing potentially a variety of design flourishes and differing directions. Rather than buying into a
technophile dream of a connected-world, through imperfect experimental devices
(like early Glass explorers, perhaps), they’re buying the same thing they
always have: a really nice looking watch.
The recently announced moto 360, powered by Android Wear (credit: Techradar)
The near future could present a much more augmented
experience than just glasses and watches though, already Google has created internet-connected contact lenses that measure glucose levels for diabetics. In fact the mystery, importance
and sheer sci-fi appeal, of where Google is going next is worth its CEO, Larry Page, giving a talk on the topic to TED. The impact of wearable technology is
hard to estimate, but if it did reach widespread adoption all of the
established structure of the World Wide Web, advertising and even personal
health could need to be re-written. More than ever the world will be at your fingertips or hovering a few centimeters from your eyeball. A whole world of new opportunities, tasks made easier and information increasingly personalised and delivered at exactly the right moment. It's an exciting prospect. So it comes back to the shallow but fundamental question we may each find ourselves asking, not just as a boardroom consideration at Google, but the final thought before we put our own hands into our wallets and purses: but does it look good enough to wear?
Nielsen's Adview Pulse report released it's latest findings yesterday on the state advertising in 2013. Internet was the big winner with a 32% rise in spending in the first three quarters of the year compared to 2012.
The Google-owned video content site YouTube is primed for a 50% surge in advertising revenue by the end of 2013, according to eMarketer. Acquired by search and tech giant Google
in 2006 for $1.65bn, YouTube has more than one billion viewers every month and attracts
about 20% of all advertising spending on US online video, with 80% of traffic coming from outside the U.S.
Publicis digital agencies Razorfish and DigitasLBi have agreed a deal that sees unprecedented access to create and implement creative campaigns across Google's banner and mobile ad networks, YouTube, and brand pages on Google Plus and Hangouts.
Facebook has announced a unique partnership with Google to allow its popular ad-buying platform DoubleClick act as third-party software on the previously exclusive Facebook Exchange service.
In an interview with British broadsheet the Daily Telegraph, Havas chief executive David Jones has spoken candidly on Europe's economic recovery and his take on the Publicis-Omnicom super-merger.
Alongside fellow U.S conglomerates Amazon and Google, the world's leading social networking site Facebook has now been revealed to have have paid zero corporation tax in Britain for 2012, according to their latest accounts.
The Internet Advertising Bureau has today claimed that Britons spend one in twelve waking minutes - 43 hours per month - online, and digital marketers are spending more than ever, £66 per person in fact, to attract clicks.
In a range of interviews with The Drum magazine, senior executives across multiple digital agencies are coming to terms with Google's decision to encrypt natural search queries last March; affecting the levels of keyword analysis available to marketers in an effort to protect user privacy.
To celebrate its 15th birthday, tech giant Google has unveiled an update to its search algorithm that would affect 90% of queries. But before the SEO industry could go into meltdown - Google SVP Amrit Singhal revealed that the update had been in place for almost a month.
September has been the month of redesign for the U.S search giants - first Yahoo!, then Bing. And now, Google, the biggest of them all, has unveiled a remarketed app launcher as well as a new logo.
An anonymous source purporting to work for Google has suggested that third party cookies - collected for targeted advertising - will be replaced with a new software not unlike Apple's iAd, which collates mobile data. Safari has blocked third-party cookies since 2003.
.png)
