ExpertAdWords

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Yahoo recently released an interesting survay detailing users search behavior before making consumer electronic purchases.

Highlights of the survay include:

• 77% of consumer electronic purchases are influenced by Internet research
• The least amount of time spent researching products was 9 hours for cell phones
• The greatest amount of time spent researching was 15 hours for televisions
• 73% respondents reported comparing products and prices online
• 64% prefered shopping online because of the wider variety of products
• 44% would research online and then purchase offline - Daily Searchcast attributed this behavior to the fact that “it is impossible for consumers to accurately gage factors like pixel-resolution (of televisions) online”.

Interesting post about how Yahoo’s Panama has improved performance for their advertiser (More Early Panama Results at Clickz).

 Avenue A | Razorfish reported the following statistics about a week ago after the agency switched their clients from Overture to Yahoo Panama:

• Search Impressions – Up an average of 5%
• Cost Per Click – Down an average of 6%
• Click Rate – Up an average of 10%
• Conversion Rates – Down an average of 5%
• Overall CPA – Up an average of 6%

Additionally, SearchIgnite and 360i also reported similar results after they switched their clients.

Google became the dominate player in advertising to social networks today when Friendster announced that Google would be the primary advertiser on their network. Friendster which boosts over 40 million members has an active membership community of about 19.6 million people. Four out of Five of Friendster’s top markets are in Asia while the United States ranks fourth. Google plans on displaying both text and conceptual ads on the site.

Google already has a contract worth $900 million with MySpace, the largest social network in the US to display ads on their site till 2010. MySpace accounts for 80% of all traffic to social networks, has 106 million members as of August 2006, and reportedly attracts 230,000 new members a day. Google currently displays both text and contextual ads on MySpace.

Additionally, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten developed a social network service similar to Friendster and MySpace simply called Orkut which Google owns. Orkut reportedly has over 43.46 members and is primarily used in South America and Southwest Asia.