Total Time Being Spent Online is Up +24.3%

Is it a good time to be long-term bullish on the Internet? Take a look at the chart below -

We are spending more and more time consuming information online. Logically online advertising spend should follow a similar trajectory with marketers allocating their ad budgets in proportion to where people are spending their time. Needless to say, this is a time of considerable opportunity for online media properties and online marketers!

Source: Blog compete

McDonald's Offline Promotions Drive Online Traffic

McDonald's used to be an American institution; like Christmas decorations at Thanksgiving and candy on Halloween. It is now and international phenomenon, serving nearly 54 million customers each day in 120 countries and territories. Many of us have memories of when we were younger, begging our parents to take us to get a Happy Meal. Similarly, I remember begging my parents to take me to McDonald's so I could collect Monopoly game pieces.

This past October, McDonald's held its Monopoly game as it does every year and I decided to check if it had any impact on McDonalds.com site traffic. Surprisingly, it did, by a whopping 234.4%. Why is that surprising? Well, it's because there was little mention of the Monopoly game at McDonalds.com and the online game was hosted on a separate domain, monopoly.corsis.com.

Many of you are probably saying, "So what? People went to McDonalds.com assuming the online game was hosted there. They probably went, discovered the game wasn't there, and then left." WRONG! In addition to more unique visitors McDonalds.com received a much greater attention share for the month of October; more than double the domain's normal attention share, meaning during the month of October, visitors to McDonalds.com spent twice as much time as they typically do.

In addition to the staggering traffic to McDonalds.com in October (2.75 million), monopoly.corsis.com had over 5 million visitors in October. Counting visitors to both sites only once, nearly 5 million more people were exposed to McDonalds' online properties than in August (before the Monopoly promotion began). Considering that the Monopoly game is mainly focused offline, that is some amazing traffic being driven by an offline promotion. But that's not all I discovered….

This last graph shows traffic to McDonalds.com prior to this past October. Notice the major spikes in traffic? Every one of those spikes is the result of drastic traffic growth and is associated with an offline promotion.

McDonalds is having great success at driving traffic through its promotions. It's pretty remarkable considering that all of these promotions were primarily offline and all online aspects were hosted by a third party on a different domain (Promotions.com, now Corsis.com). Based on the data, if I were an online marketer for a brick and mortar company, I'd take a page from McDonalds' playbook and create some buzz through an offline promotion.

Source: Blog compete

Netflix vs. Blockbuster: Q3 Earnings Reports and Digital Delivery Strategies

If you have had a chance to read the Q3 Earnings Reports for both Netflix and Blockbuster you undoubtedly noted the glaring difference in strategies between the two competitors. While Netflix continues to concentrate on growing subscriptions, Blockbuster has decided to less narrowly focus on the online channel and continue to use the brick-and-mortar stores as its competitive advantage. Both camps, however, plan to further invest in the new digital delivery medium.

To summarize the two reports, below is a CEO quote from each company's Q3 Earnings Transcript.

"At a high level, our strategy is to build a very large DVD rental subscriber base and to bundle in the ability to watch those movies online." - Reed Hastings - Netflix, Inc. - Chairman, CEO

"…our pursuit of by-mail subscribers was a bit overzealous. Clearly our spending on that one channel was exceeding our returns." - James Keyes - Blockbuster Inc. - CEO

Compete data reflects the combating strategies of the two DVD rental giants. Since June 2007, site traffic of Netflix.com and Blockbuster.com has further divided as Blockbuster reels in its online channel marketing spend. In October, Netflix hosted four times the site traffic of Blockbuster.

Despite differing strategic blueprints, both Netflix and Blockbuster agree on the importance of the up-and-coming distribution channel; digital delivery. Netflix rolled out Watch Instantly (formerly Watch Now) in early 2007 and has managed to garner a significant volume of early adopters. Although download interest peaked in August of this year, actual usage of the product continues to climb month-over-month. There are currently 450,000 Watch Instantly users each month in the US.

Following suit, Blockbuster has announced plans to integrate the recently acquired movielink.com into Blockbuster.com as early as Q1 2008.

If DVD rental market share were a war, there have been several clear battles fought thus far. The first, being the brick-and-mortar battle, was won by Blockbuster. Netflix came on the scene and quickly declared victory in the second battle, online subscriptions, when Blockbuster waved the white flag in their Q3 Earnings Report. An imminent third battle is on the horizon, and the platform is digital delivery. Thus far Netflix has had success in the space but it is far too early to name a victor as Blockbuster's counter attack has not yet been rolled out.

Source: Blog compete

Nominate Compete.com for the Crunchies

The 2007 Crunchies is the first annual competition and award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. The Crunchies is a collaboration project between GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, VentureBeat and TechCrunch. You choose who wins.

If you like Compete.com please nominate Compete as the Best enterprise start-up in the 2007 Crunchies!

You can nominate companies for awards in 20 categories, and out of those nominations, 5 candidates will be picked for voting in each category on Monday, December 13.

Our report card for our first year:

Source: Blog compete

Fact or FanFiction.net? More Time Spent Than Social Networks

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