iPad is rapidly gaining share in terms of site visits.  With just a few weeks of availability, the iPad has shown rapid growth and in some cases, has overtaken more established mobile devices in terms of visits.  While iPad visits make up a small proportion of total site visits (typically less than 0.5%), this fast growth shows promise.  Whether this rapid growth rate can be sustained in the longer term remains to be seen.

iPad browsing behavior is more similar to desktop than mobile. Average pageviews per visit, bounce rate, and conversion rate from iPad visits tend to be more like desktop browser averages than mobile.  The table below compares site metrics among the most popular mobile devices to the site average – iPad usage is clearly not like the others.  The most likely explanation is the screen size which makes the user experience more like a desktop than a mobile device.  Based on site usage stats, the iPad web browser would be more appropriately classified as a desktop browser in tools like Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst.  The inability to view Flash content on the iPad is the primary difference, but most savvy online marketers are delivering Flash-free alternatives to the iPad and mobile device visitors.

iPad visits skew toward being email- and search-initiated. We were curious to know what was driving iPad visits to sites and if it differed from desktop usage.  It appears that iPad visits tend to skew more towards being email and search engine driven.  Traffic from email makes sense — the iPad is great for checking email and the ability to click on a promotion to visit a website is obvious.

Search was a little surprising at first although upon closer consideration it makes sense too.  The Safari web browser on the iPad provides an integrated search box.  When launching a new web browser window, text focus goes to the search box instead of the URL field, thereby encouraging individuals to use search as the default method of navigation.  Search results, both natural and paid, will remain an important factor for iPad users. It’s important to note that traffic sources vary greatly from site to site based on factors like industry vertical, marketing programs and brand recognition.

These initial stats seem very promising for the iPad and it will be interesting to see if these patterns hold up beyond the early adopters.  Marketers should examine iPad usage stats for their own websites and work towards making their site iPad-friendly.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

I watched the unveiling of the Apple iPad with some genuine excitement the other day. At the end of the presentation, I can honestly say that I was underwhelmed. The iPad is just a big iPhone…so what?!?

And then I thought…wait a minute…the thing is a big iPhone…that changes everything! (Well, not really, but it does have some interesting implications.)  What has really resonated with me is the concept of intimacy. With Steve Jobs demonstrating the iPad from a cushy looking chair, engaging the internet with his finger, it dawned on me what has just happened. The internet became a much less cerebral place. No longer is your interactivity with content tempered by mouse navigation, the internet reacts to your finger. It is instinctual, organic and perhaps even a little impulsive.

So, what exactly happened when Steve Jobs gave us the finger? Well, he just made the internet more visual. What makes you want to reach out and touch something more? A gorgeous picture, or a line of text? A blue link or a well-crafted image? Me, I think it is all about pictures when it comes to slate based computing (like the iPad). I think that the physical connection between user and screen meets at the image.

What does this mean for search? I believe that we are at the very beginning stages of a shift to a world of hybrid search engagement. Depending on your device, you may get a more visual search interface (iPad, iPhone, Android Phone…anything touch based) or a more text based interface (laptop, desktop, anything keyboard driven).

Google and Bing are all over this stuff. Google is ingratiating images into SERPs and AdWords. Bing has an interface that presents images really nicely. I predict that image based search and interactivity is going to skyrocket this year.

I am thrilled that Steve Jobs just gave me the finger.

Tim Kilroy is Vice President of Natural Search at PM Digital.

Tomorrow is a huge day in our lives as marketers.  I’m taking a not-so-wild shot at this not because I love Apple products (I don’t) but because their ability to transform entire industries by re-thinking how people want to live their lives is stunning.  Apple’s new tablet product will be launched and, with it, the typical hype and expectations are at a fever pitch.  And, they should be.  Although the Kindle from Amazon was a game-changer for the content industry, it hasn’t really changed the lives of marketers as Apple’s launch will.

The new Apple product will be far more than a device.  It will integrate multiple forms of content into a single destination and do what all of us have wished for since we started buying cellphones and computers for personal use. Voice, music, video, print, data, calendars and phone are all going to be experienced through this technology.

What does this mean for PM Digital clients and marketers overall?  It most definitely is going to accelerate the opportunities and challenges for the content business, and not just the printed word.  Communicating and consuming and shopping are going to change as well.  Paying for a “subscription” or content in any form will be far easier to actually do and to understand its benefits.  I anticipate the role of the search engines is going to be significantly altered as well, especially if Bing becomes the primary search partner, not Google.

But it also means that marketers’ direct relationship with consumers is changing.  Who collects the money is one thing.  Who is responsible for the cultivation and nurturing of customers – and how marketers will leverage new and existing media to reach those customers — is changing as well.

There’s much more to speculate about, but let’s see what happens tomorrow.  We’ll have lots to figure out once this gets released and marketed. More to come.

Chris Paradysz is CEO of PM Digital.

Our latest “Game Changers” review of important news developments looks at recent changes that are impacting both old and new media in a positive way.  Here are four transformations worth keeping an eye on.    

The New York Times and Paid Content

The New York Times announced last week that it will begin charging for online content starting in January 2011.  The Wall Street Journal, Consumer Reports and a handful of other publications already charge for some or all of their content.  PM Digital’s Chris Paradysz predicted in a prior blog post that this would become a trend in 2010 – the NY Times move announced this week supports that.  As a long-time reader of the NY Times, I have watched the steady shrinkage of the paper.  Some of this has been due to cost-cutting and, more recently, fewer advertisements.  Circulation is down, too.  Surely the NY Times needs a new business model to withstand these circumstances. Should the paper ever wither away and shut down, it would be a real loss of quality content.  I support the Times’ new fee structure and definitely plan on paying for it.

Text Donations and the Evolution of Payment

Texted donations brought millions of dollars in aid for Haiti.  American Red Cross’ 90999 and UNICEF’s 20222 raised considerable sums though this method.   Based on the amount of individual donations received through texting, it appears that the simplicity and speed millions experienced in making their donations this way is appealing.  Another success driver is ease of advertising, which was done widely on TV.  Also notable is that the 90%+ abandon rates typically seen with website  donations were not a factor with the texting method. 

After it’s all been tallied, my guess is that the donations themselves would have been higher had they been placed online.  It’s also worth noting that nonprofits won’t have future access to the donor names for cultivation efforts since the carriers won’t release texting donor data to the charities.  What we don’t know is if texting yielded donations from people who would never have given otherwise.  If so, texting represents a brand new universe created with a new response mechanism.   We may be on the cusp of other uses for cell phones with the carriers doing the payment collection.  Was this a one shot or the future?   Consider other payment evolutions.  Cash was replaced by checks, which were in turn replaced by credit/debit cards. While we’re seeing texting as a new front-end acquisition method, the backend evolution may turn out to be an even bigger story.       

Super Bowl Ads Go Long with Social Media

Super Bowl advertising will be getting lots of play this year making the $3 million spent per 30-second ad go further than it ever has in the past.  Since it’s also an Olympics year, these ads will be shown repeatedly from now through at least mid-February.  As has been the case for the past few years, YouTube will make the ads available for viewing in one fell swoop, and this year they’ll be hoping for even more engagement by adding contests and ratings.  Twitter will play a big roll this year too, with the ads being tweeted and retweeted by the marketers who paid for them and (hopefully) by viewers as well.  Will the viral distribution be as big as the advertisers hope or will people get tired of the hype?  If these ads do have legs, the social media component could be a very nice value-add to the advertisers.  What’s likely is that those with a quality product will get wide distribution. 

A New Device from Apple

The iTablet, iPad, iSlate, TabletMac – whatever the name turns out to be — is the latest exciting development from Apple.  We could be looking at a new device that garners the type of love shown for the iPod and iPhone.  Not to mention the Kindle.  In fact, the iTunes store – already the number one shopping destination for music – has no doubt made Apple’s new device of particular interest to content providers like The New York Times.   I am not sure yet if I personally am ready for another device but this one should definitely be worth checking out.  January 27^th is the date the specifics should be announced.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.

1.  Mobile Matters – I have actually been beating the mobile drum since I worked on mobile search in 1997, but this year, mobile really matters. (Google and Apple have spent almost $1 billion in the last quarter to buy mobile ad networks…that should tell you something!) The growth of mobile is torrid and with the rise of the smartphone and ubiquitous 3G, mobile search is working. In 2010, you will see an appreciable amount of traffic from mobile browsers. Are you thinking of how you can present yourself to the mobile user? If you aren’t now, you should be.

2. Images Matter – Visual search is hot. There have been dozens and dozens of early stage visual search engines that have been no better than demo-ware. But Google Image search has exploded, and we see that our clients are driving traffic through images searches. (If you are looking for a red dress, doesn’t it make sense to look for the red dress in pictures?) And with the advent of Google Goggles, image search will continue to explode. Are you optimizing your images to be relevant and available for image search?

3. Not Being a Dog Matters – Do you remember this incredible cartoon which touted the invisibility of who you are online? Well, the world has changed dramatically since then, and your reputation as a marketer is now well known on the internet. In 2009, I suggested that reputation was about to become an important part of the online world, and 2010 that will become even more valuable. How you behave as a marketer, how you share information with customers, and how you engage with customers will have an impact on your search visibility in 2010.

4. Social Media Matters Even More – I am a bit of a broken record these days. With customers and prospects and colleagues, I am constantly singing the praises of social media. Social media is important from a marketing, customer experience and search perspective. And with its integration into search engines, it has become a hot search opportunity. But in 2010, these results will be more than novelty updates; they will become a core part of the way that we discover new content.

5. Speed Matters: Speed is crucial to search visibility. And by speed I mean speed in the old fashioned way. How long does it take your page to load? How responsive is your site? In 2010, this will matter. Google loves speed and they love a quality user experience. The sites that have the fastest response times will enjoy better visibility in 2010.

6. Content Matters – With the rise in social media outbursts and the fact that there are hundreds of pages published globally every second, search engines have become very selective about what they index. Duplicate content filters are set to high! Marketers must create quality content in order to be found and indexed. Simplistic variation won’t cut it (for instance, if you sell one shirt in 35 colors and each of them has its own page, expect that 34 of them will be filtered out.). In order to capture a spot in the search indexes, you need to have unique content. This is hard. It means more work for the marketer, but in 2010, content remains king.

7. Code Matters – Back when I started on the Internet in 1997, website code was pretty big. Lots of complex commands to achieve simple things. HTML has come a long way, and code has become less verbose (and HTML 5 looks terrific as a standard, BTW). But I see web pages everyday that have lots of bloated code. Believe it or not, search engines read your code. Too much code and your content gets lost. Less code on the page means that your content has a higher percentage of the search engine’s attention. And that is a good thing. In 2010, code matters.

8. Personalization Matters – In 2009, Google started personalizing everyone’s search results (regardless of whether you have a Google account or not). What this means is that you are likely to see more results from sites that you’ve already been to or links similar to the kinds of links that you’ve clicked on before. In 2010, this will increase. And for marketers that already get a lot of traffic, this is a good thing. You will still have great visibility to your existing searchers and to new searchers. This may make it harder in the future to steal a searcher who has been loyal to another marketer in the past. Fun stuff to be sure, but search personalization will be a BIG theme in 2010.

9. Customer Experience Matters: Already, bounce rate lives inside of the Google algorithm as a ranking factor (the higher your bounce rate, the lower you will rank for a term). I can see that bounce rate could be coupled with conversion rates to become a customer experience index. This index (lower bounce rate + higher conversion = better customer experience) could be one of those hidden factors in rankings…one that is hard to see, but makes a difference. My advice for 2010? Conversion optimization.

10. Bing Matters: Google owns a huge share of the search market. That is terrific. But in 2010, look for Bing to really matter. Are they going to capture the majority of the market? No way. BUT, Bing matters because it will have a 20%+ marketshare in 2010, which means that you will need to understand Bing and its users. In 2010, 2 out of every 10 visitors will come from Bing. You’ll want to treat them well.

And Finally, You Matter: When I talk to marketers, they feel like the world has turned against them a bit. The economy was after them throughout 2008 and 2009.  2010 looks better, but nowhere near easy. Google is throwing all kinds of changes at marketers, Bing is kicking up some dust, everyone tells you that you need to turn yourself into a social media mobile web 2.0 juggernaut or you will fall off the face of the earth. In 2010, we believe that you matter. The marketer is the lynchpin in this online ecosystem. Without the marketer, search engines have no way to make money. You matter. In 2010, look for opportunities in search and advertising to make you more efficient, to increase your return on investments, to help you acquire new customers. With the right focus, I predict that 2010 will be good for you.

Tim Kilroy is Vice President of Natural Search at PM Digital.

Several new features for Google Analytics were announced last month designed to make the free web analytics platform more powerful and easy to use.  Below is a highlight of several new features.

Goal tracking improvements.  In addition to increasing the number of configurable goals to 20 per profile, new site engagement goal types have been introduced.  Engagement goals can be set based on the visit duration or the number of pages viewed during a visit.  For example, a goal can be set to occur if time on site surpasses 10 minutes or after 12 pages have been viewed in a visit.  These new goal types allow site owners to measure the proportion of visits that meet a time on site or pageview threshold and are especially valuable for content websites.  AdWords advertisers can use these Google Analytics goals for campaign optimization in cases where ecommerce conversion is not applicable or the target behavior.

Mobile measurement.  As Google continues its expansion into mobile advertising, they’re also providing marketers with tools to measure usage of their mobile investments.  iPhone and Android mobile app developers can now use Google Analytics to measure user engagement within their apps.  New tools were also introduced for measuring traffic on mobile-formatted websites regardless of whether or not the mobile device runs JavaScript.  As consumers and marketers focus more on mobile, Google Analytics is providing a familiar framework for measurement.

Analytics Intelligence.  One of the most interesting new features is analytics intelligence, an algorithm based alert system designed to monitor data and automatically notify analysts to significant changes in data patterns, like a sudden decline in traffic from a referring site or an increase in bounce rate.  The goal is to shift effort from monitoring data to acting on data.  In addition to these automatic alerts, custom user-defined alerts can be set to notify analysts when a pre-defined change in metrics has occurred.

More details on these and other new features can be found on the Google Analytics blog. The new features are the latest in a series of enhancements to strengthen Google Analytics’ position as an enterprise-class web analytics platform.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

Local search ads take mobile leap on iPhone.

Google Sponsored Listings have started to appear within the Maps application installed on every iPhone and iPod touch device. These paid listings appear alongside organic results when users perform relevant searches, helping local customers find appropriate businesses from their mobile phone.  PM Digital is working on getting more details on the specifics of this new program and how it relates to Google’s Local Business Ads program.

Sponsored listings appear both in the map view and list view after a user performs a search. In the Map view, sponsored listings use a custom pushpin icon rather than the traditional red one used for search results. Also, these paid listings are labeled “Sponsored Link” beneath the business name.  In the List view of the search results, paid listings are shaded yellow as they are in Google search results, with the favicon-like graphic used in the pushpin also present. Our testing has found sponsored listings to appear at the top and bottom of search results.

When users click on a sponsored listing to view more details, some brief ad copy is present at the top of the page. Otherwise, the page looks like a traditional organic listing, providing street address, phone number, URL and buttons to get directions to the brick-and-mortar location.

Apple’s Maps application is installed by default on every iPhone and iPod touch device. The application was built by Apple, but uses Google’s mapping and search technology. This marks the first time advertisements have appeared within a pre-installed iPhone app. It appears that sponsored listings in Maps is a feature of iPhone OS 3.1, the most recent version of the mobile operating system released in September 2009.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.