HotelMarketing.Com
July 2010

By Dr. Diana Driscoll

As hoteliers jump into the (perceived) shark-infested waters of social media and on-line marketing, it is easy to see how a fear of over-spending can creep in. The sheer volume of on-line marketing opportunities can overwhelm even the bravest of hearts, and empty even the fullest of wallets.

With the quickly changing profusion of opportunities, many hoteliers are encouraged to invest precious money and time into completely unfamiliar venues. So, where must the marketing dollars go to get the highest ROI?

The appropriate and engaging use of visual imagery is one of the most important investments you can make in your hotel’s marketing budget; and there are a plethora of ways to utilize this imagery to engage, bond and guide your potential guest into making that important booking. As explained by Laurie Babin in the Journal of Advertising, “The potential of imagery is both potent and provocative, especially when one takes into account that the forms of mental impressions include all five senses: hearing, touch, taste, smell, and sight.” In other words, it is possible for a person to experience a sensory stimulus without the stimulus ever being present (the “potent” part). The more senses stimulated, the greater the chances of a guest conversion and the extra benefit of better storage in the guest’s long-term memory (the “provocative” part). With great imagery, your guests can feel as though they’ve touched the velvety-soft pillows, smelled the gardenias outside the window, and tasted the béarnaise sauce on the extra tender steaks. This is what they need to feel in order to bond with your hotel, and to bond instantaneously. Images that convey facts alone aren’t nearly as compelling.

People are visual beings. If you think it’s mainly women who choose hotels based on imagery, think again. (Caveat: medical summaries are approaching. If you are not interested in such a genre, please skim through lightly, understanding that the author - an eye doctor/hotelier - believes this to be some of the most compelling aspects of the article!).

As reported in the NeuroReport (Sabatinalle, Flaisch, et al), activity in the part of the brain called the extrastriate visual cortex (as measured by MRI imaging; hang in here…) is greater when either of the sexes view emotional relative to neutral pictures. The MRI indicates the speed of decisions when presented with emotional visual stimuli – it is a measurable response in the brain. Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly to many), men make their choices when looking at pictures much more rapidly than women.

What does this mean for your hotel? If we liken this to “speed dating” for your hotel, the point may be more obvious. If your target market is the male business traveler, keep in mind that in general, males take approximately 2.5 seconds to make a decision to continue reading (or not) when visual imagery is involved (according to a study by Xerox in conjunction with The Loyola College in Maryland, U.S.A). Therefore, images must not just convey facts—they must involve the extrastriate visual cortex by including subtle, yet emotive features. In other words, such emotional stimuli may mean that the traveler makes the choice to be a guest at your hotel, but may not fully understand the reason for his or her choice (the extrastriate cortex is not a conscious level of the brain). Much like “speed dating” or other short bonding experiences, one just “has a feeling that it is right”. But these “feelings” are scientifically based, and measurable.

As explained by EVP, Creative Services of WD Partners, Lee Peterson, “Business owners often focus on the rational benefits of their brand out of necessity… speed, convenience, accuracy…but rationale works best when blended with great care with the emotional benefits of a brand….comfort, relaxation, trust….from our experience, no brand will reach its full potential until both are well attended to.”

So, hoteliers are faced with the challenge of providing both the rational and emotional benefits of their brand, and to do so in as short of a time frame as possible.

Interestingly, for leisure travel, women are the predominate decision makers - taking an average of 29 days and performing 12 searches and visiting 22 different travel sites prior to making their vacation bookings. With this sort of detailed evaluation, you will want to be sure that your visual imagery matches or exceeds that of your competitive set. According to the TIA (Travel Industry Association), the vast majority of reservations are still made at the visual gallery or one click later.

As if hoteliers don’t have enough to worry about, a terrifying new trend is becoming obvious. Because downloading imagery takes time, hoteliers and webmasters must be aware of this new threat – the ever-shortening attention spans involved in downloading visual stimuli. Research from web performance giant Akamai produced in conjunction with PhoCusWright, indicates that in a study of nearly 2,800 U.S. travel buyers, 57% will wait THREE seconds for a hotel web-site to download before abandoning it for other sites. Even worse, Generation Y (ages 18 – 24) expects travel sites to load in TWO and a HALF seconds. With the ever-popular multi-tasking trend, many of these potential guests will pull up other site while a slower one is downloading, dumping the slower one for one that pops up faster.

What does this all mean for you?

- You want your images to be found and downloaded easily and rapidly.

- You must make your images compelling – the “wow” factor can be achieved with the proper angle, lighting, colors and set up. Is your target market looking for a romantic weekend? Subtle and sensual photos are appropriate. Looking for the strictly business traveler? Photos of a relaxed businessperson reviewing a presentation over a cup of espresso out on the terrace may be more of what you’re looking for.

- You need to be certain that it is easy to book a room from the image pages, or one click after.

- Guests must feel as though they belong in your hotel, or I would go one step further to say that guests must feel as though they aspire to be in your hotel.

- Even still-life photos must be set up to communicate the level of energy you would like to convey to your potential guest.

- As much as possible, images must appeal to all of the senses – not just the visual.

- Visual stimuli must appeal to the emotions, not just the facts.

- A professional is most likely to be able to capture the above prerequisites, yet still keep an eye on the ever important SEO.

Visual imagery has become a method of marketing to a population that no longer wants to “be sold”. In “Capturing Today’s Over-Marketed Consumers,” Jon Schallerf states, “Effective marketing and advertising strategies are necessary to bond today’s consumer to a business. In fact, consumers have become so sophisticated in repelling advertising and marketing today, that the successful business must use new tactics to “sell” a consumer who repeatedly insists on not being ‘sold’”. Imagery is an almost subliminal way to “sell” your property, and yet the guest feels as though the entire decision was an intellectual, not an emotional decision. (There’s that extrastriate cortex thing again!).

What else should you consider when planning your visual imagery?

- It is important to make your hotel a destination spot – this means including images of the area. Make it a community, make it personal.

- In order to develop a strong visual identity, imagery should be unified along all marketing fronts – both print and on-line media. The images that guests see must be consistent, and this also spreads your costs of imagery along many different venues.

- The colors chosen for your imagery are critical. As stated by XEROX, “Color increases readers’ attention spans and recall by 82%.” You want your hotel to be remembered – choose colors wisely.

- Encourage your guests to take pictures of group interactions in your hotel and to upload them to their Facebook accounts or to the OTA’s. (When the guest submits them, no legal disclaimers are required by the hotel.)

- Where else can you, the hotelier, utilize professional visual imagery? The possibilities are nearly endless and include: websites, travel sites, the hotel’s Facebook page, numerous travel sites, Pegasus, Global Distribution Systems, Flickr accounts, YouTube accounts, numerous bookmarking tools, Twitter accounts, blogs, as well as any and all printed marketing material– fliers, brochures, direct mail pieces, etc.

One other item worth considering is that you need not fear “feeding the OTA beast” by placing compelling imagery on these sites. In the latest TIA (Travel Industry Association) study, it was found that although 68% of people shop for hotels on the OTA’s, only 39% choose to book there. So for now, if your guests are window-shopping on the OTA’s, you want your window-dressing to reflect the quality your hotel can offer. Your competitors certainly will.

By the way, while you were reading this article, 100+ hours of video were uploaded to YouTube. Why? We are visual people. So go ahead. Reach out, and visually, touch someone.

Pegasus
March 05, 2010

Future booking patterns based on Pegasus January 2010 data are confirming what other sources have already said - leisure travelers are gaining confidence. However, the mostly business GDS channel is different, with suppressed future bookings indicating that this market is still cautious.

Most everyone agrees that 2010 will be a challenging year for hoteliers to maximize revenues. However, the year got off to a positive start with January booking volumes showing growth (+9.46% vs. 2009, +9.69% vs. 2008 and +20.64% vs. 2007). Unfortunately, this is offset by depressed average daily rate (ADR), which in all cases is lower than that achieved in January 2009, 2008 and 2007. Overall net revenue is growing and, although not back to 2008 levels, it has risen above January 2007 (January 2010 up +2.45% vs. January 2007).

Future booking patterns are confirming what other sources have already said – leisure travelers are gaining confidence – evidenced by future months’ bookings greater than at the same point last year. However, the mostly business GDS channel is different, with suppressed future bookings indicating that this market is still cautious and there is a long way to go before reservations get back to 2008 levels.

Laurie Sullivan
Jul 21, 2009

Knowing how consumers research and gather information as they make plans to travel for business and pleasure can help marketers plan campaigns better. The study, "The Traveler's Road to Decision," released Tuesday from Google and OTX, reveals consumer research and buying habits across the Internet.

Business travelers are more likely to seek out money-saving packages, access travel sites from their mobile phone, and become a rewards travel program member. In fact, 25% of business travelers are more likely to access information on their phone, and 83% of business travelers belong to a rewards program.

"Search advertisers don't share the message of specific rewards programs," says Jessica Hoenes, account planner at Google. "They might have a great deal, such as buy two nights get one free, but what does that mean when it comes to their rewards program?"

The study, conducted between April 10 and 27, looks at general travel, hotel, car, air, cruises and destinations. The survey consists of responses from 5,002 consumers who have traveled at least once for personal or business reasons in the past six months.

The majority of personal travelers still plan to travel just as much or more throughout 2009, compared with 2008. Booking behavior has changed, however. Travelers will shop around more and wait for the best deal before they book.

Marketers should not become discouraged if campaigns lag in producing results until days before consumers embark on their travel plans. Year-over-year, the research to booking window gets much longer, but booking to travel has begun to shrink. Many consumers are holding out, but it doesn't mean that campaigns aren't working, according to Google's Insight for Search tool.

In an unrelated study, Google found research to booking could stretch as far as 18.1 weeks on average. That's when more generic phrases are searched on.

To find the best deals, consumers will search the Internet for information more often than any other source. So it would make sense that reviews influence the purchase decision, with 41% revealing they made personal plans vs. 50% for business based on reviews of others. An increasing number of travelers contribute to these reviews, too. In a similar study conducted in April 2008, only 9% of travelers surveyed had posted a review, 5% commented on a review, and 3% participated in a travel-related blog.

Consumers rely on search engines throughout the trip-planning process more so than travel search sites, although online travel agencies remain strong with 55% looking for business accommodations vs. 52% for personal. The study suggests 64% depend on search engines to plan personal trips vs. 56% for business. When it comes to searching for information on hotels, 81% rely on search engines when looking for business overnight accommodations vs. 67% personal; 74% business air travel vs. 59%; 60% destinations vs. 59% personal; and 51% vacation activities vs. 55% personal.

Perhaps that is why Microsoft rolled out Bing Travel, a vertical search query focused on finding the best airfare and hotel reservations. Bing Travel is one initiative that Microsoft launched to differentiate Bing from traditional search engines, such as Google or Yahoo.

Travel videos have also become important as people plan trips. They help people to visualize the surroundings and make better choices on where to stay and what to do. Videos created by peers are looked upon as being more trusted, compared with the videos that companies create to peddle goods and services.

The study points to YouTube as the most popular site for videos on both business and leisure travel. In fact, 81% and 79% sought out videos to view on YouTube; followed by Yahoo, 44% and 32%; Facebook, 41% and 30%; Hulu, 29% and 25%; MySpace, 29% and 21%; MSN, 31% and 18%; AOL, 24% and 14%; and Joost, 7% and 2%; respectively.

Online video is used through the entire planning process. When thinking about taking a trip, 63% of people turn to videos for personal travel vs. 66% for business; 47% and 56% when thinking about what type of trip to take; 60% and 64% when choosing a destination; 64% and 66% when looking for activity ideas; and 57% and 66% when deciding on accommodations and transportation, respectively.

It has also become common for people to upload their experiences onto video sites, with 6% sharing personal videos vs. 16% business-related. Compare this with a study done in April 2008, where only 4% of travelers surveyed had uploaded their own travel video in the previous 6 months

Max Starkov, Jason Price
August 18, 2008

Hoteliers need to work hard to nurture happy customers and avoid negative postings. They must monitor reviews on TripAdvisor especially, and react immediately if a negative review is posted. This articles shares some best practices on how to monitor online chatter about your hotel.

It’s common knowledge that the Internet has certainly changed how travel consumers perceive the credibility of information. Any discrepancy between “official” and “unofficial” content should be dealt with immediately. A travel supplier has to stand by its product/service, but cannot ignore the “popular vote” for its product’s quality. HeBS surveys and our own research show that consumer-generated content on social media sites and networks is perceived as more credible by online travelers. And the bigger the disparity between official and unofficial content, the bigger the gap in credibility.

So what are the most important hotel-related customer review sites? As part of a brand-defensive strategy, it’s unnecessary to monitor hundreds or thousands of review sites, but only the handful that the majority of travel reviewers’ visit. These sites are:

- TripAdvisor.com: TripAdvisor receives over 30 million visitors every month. The hotel can actively respond to any customer review via the ‘Hotel Owner’s Page’ by using the link located at the bottom of the page with customer reviews and then clicking on the ‘Respond to a Review’ link.

- Expedia.com: Expedia is the largest online travel agency (OTA). Currently the hotel can monitor all of Expedia’s customer reviews, but cannot actually respond to a review.

- Google.com: Google is the largest search engine with 60% of search traffic in the United States. Google provides a sampling of reviews for each hotel from TripAdvisor and other review sites (type in the hotel name + location, and then click on Reviews under the hotel listing). You can then visit each of the review sites and respond to an actual review there.

By monitoring reviews and comments on a weekly basis about your property on these 3 important websites, you can immediately address any issues and act appropriately. You must authorize someone specific at the property to respond to reviews (both negative and very positive).

By Enid Burns, Search Engine Watch
Mar 21, 2008

Google leads the top five search engines in the U.S. for share of searches, according to data released by comScore.

In Febuary, nearly 10 billion "core" searches were conducted in the U.S., which accounts for a 6 percent decline from January search activity. Core searches are defined as those searches performed on the five major engines: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask, plus across partner sites and channels.

Search queries were down at all search engines. Google served 5.9 billion search queries, down 5 percent from January. In February, Google's share of searches was 59.2 percent, up from 58.5 percent.

Yahoo's search share slipped from 22.2 percent in January to 21.6 percent in February. Overall, it served 2.1 billion searches, down 8 percent from the previous month.

ComScore's QSearch data are based on an opt-in global panel of over 2 million consumers. The panel is observed for browsing and transactional behavior and participates in survey research to capture attitudes.

PhoCusWright's U.S. Online Travel Overview Seventh Edition
November 2, 2007
The U.S. travel market entered a new era of channel balance in 2007. This was the first year that more travel was purchased online than offline in the U.S. While online travel continues to grow faster than the market as a whole, the maturity of the channel has led to a significant slowdown in growth compared to the torrid pace of the past.

However, the gap between online and offline will continue to widen as more and more travelers shift behavior to online shopping and buying. But the future is less about share shift and more about the realization that consumers will continue to use multiple channels as long as they are available to them and the price differential is acceptable. This price differential, if there is one, will be measured against the convenience of using one channel versus another, various perks, relationships with brand, and the type and complexities of the trip.

While online sales continue to grow, the pace is not the same for certain segments of the market. Depending on the channel (online travel agency or supplier-direct Web site) or the product (point-to-point air, chain hotel, cruise, complex itineraries), online is still in various stages of development.

Consumer marketing is more complex due to search, social media and other Internet outlets that need to be more closely aligned with a holistic marketing program.

Key Findings Include:

Emarketer
July 25, 2007
NEW YORK, NY (July 25, 2007)–Online video advertising holds great promise. The high engagement factor of video, combined with the Internet's tracking and targeting capabilities, offers a valuable revenue stream for Web publishers and a highly accountable method for brand advertisers to sway the hearts and minds of target audiences.

But several factors are preventing the ad spend from rivaling the audience size, according to eMarketer's report, "Video Advertising Online: Spending and Audience."

Next year represents a mass-market benchmark, as more than 50% of the US population - 155.2 million people - will watch video online. How this audience reacts to online video advertising will ultimately shape the format.

2007 will show the greatest year-over-year growth for online video ad spending, rising 89% to $775 million. But more significantly, the growth rate will remain near or above 40% through 2011, when video ad spending will reach $4.3 billion.

Even by 2011, the amount of time spent watching video online will be more significant than the ad dollars chasing those eyeballs.

"As marketers and Web publishers look for ways to expand video's place in the online advertising universe, two key concerns will keep growth below expectations," says David Hallerman, senior analyst and author of the report. "One is the uncertainty about what the audience will accept, with questions about where in the content the ad will run and how long it will run for. The other is the difficulty gathering together enough video ad inventory, with questions about ad placement and how to monetize the billions of user-generated video streams."

PhoCusWright Inc
December 15, 2006

Sherman, Conn., USA, December 15, 2006 - According to a new report from PhoCusWright Inc., next year for the first time transactions on the Internet will account for over half (54%) of all U.S. travel bookings. The report, PhoCusWright's U.S. Online Travel Overview, is now in its sixth edition and is used by members of the travel, tourism and hospitality industries to assess the domestic leisure/unmanaged business online travel market. It analyzes this market by segment, channel and major players, projecting trends through 2008.

* Online distribution has become the #1 channel in hospitality:

In 2005 over 25% of all hotel room revenue will be booked online. Another 25% of hotel bookings will be directly influenced by the Internet but done offline. In 2006 this percentage will exceed 27% to 29%. Overall travel booked online will exceed 31% to 35% of total bookings over the next 2 years. (PhoCusWright, HeBS). We expect that by 2009 over 50% of all hotel bookings will be performed online. The direct vs. indirect ratio in the online channel will follow closely with the offline channel (75:25) and will become as favorable as 80:20 in favor of the direct channel due to the diminishing role of call centers, travel agents, and traditional tour operators, rate parity and better channel control on behalf of the major brands).

New York TImes, March 14, 2006
By STUART ELLIOTT

MADISON AVENUE, searching for ways to remain more relevant to consumers and clients, is focusing on, well, search. Agencies are investing in search engine marketing to provide services for clients to buy ads like this one for Diet Pepsi, appearing on Yahoo.

More agencies and their parent companies are stepping up online investments in what is known as search marketing or search engine marketing, an estimated $5.1 billion category last year that has been growing far faster than traditional advertising in media like television and newspapers.

The goal of the agencies and agency companies is to offer search marketing services internally rather than requiring clients to go to independent specialist agencies.

Search marketing is epitomized by the text ads that appear next to results from online searches; marketers buy the rights for their ads to appear on-screen when computer users type in key words. There is also search engine optimization, which tries to determine how to elevate a client's Web site in the listings when computer users look for a subject or topic.

Both practices tap into the seemingly limitless demand for finding information on the Internet. Operators of Web sites that do not specialize in search are even considering adding the feature, not only to serve customers better but to also tap into the boom in search-related advertising.

At first, marketers "burned at the beginning of the decade by the dot-com bust" hesitated to spend ad dollars on search marketing, said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer, a research company in New York.

Now, "they have seen it is very effective," he added, and are expanding their spending into nascent realms like video search. Last week, eMarketer forecast that ad revenue from search engine marketing would climb to almost $6.5 billion this year, from $5.1 billion in 2005, and reach more than $10 billion by 2009.

The latest big agency to step up its search game is OgilvyOne Worldwide, part of the giant Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide division of the WPP Group. OgilvyOne is forming a unit dedicated to search marketing, NeoSearch@Ogilvy, within Neo- @Ogilvy, a global digital and direct-marketing media division that was opened last month.

NeoSearch@Ogilvy is starting with 150 employees in offices in markets that include Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and the United States. Clients include Allstate, Cisco, I.B.M., Novartis and Sprint Nextel.

NeoSearch@Ogilvy hopes to have up to 300 employees by the end of the year, said Nasreen Madhany, global chief executive for Neo@Ogilvy, growing internally as well as through acquisitions.

NeoSearch@Ogilvy is in the final stages of an agreement to acquire Catalyst on-line in Newtonville, Mass., which specializes in work for health care and pharmaceutical marketers like Biogen Idec, Novartis and Pfizer. An announcement of the deal is expected this week. Additional acquisitions are nearing completion in China and Europe.

"Search is so tied to R.O.I.," said Stuart Bogaty, leader of the North American operations of NeoSearch@Ogilvy, referring to the ability of search marketing to satisfy the increasing need to prove a return on investment for ad spending. That is because advertisers pay only when a computer user clicks on a text ad that appears adjacent to search results.

The pay-per-click model is efficient but leaves a marketer vulnerable to click fraud, dubious clicks from unknown sources with no intention of purchasing anything advertised. Such click fraud, often orchestrated from remote sites, drives up the cost of business for a marketer with no offsetting revenue from sales.

Google, the behemoth search leader, agreed last week to settle a class-action lawsuit by offering ad credits of up to $90 million to marketers that believed they were charged for invalid clicks.

"Click fraud will not be the fly in the ointment" that damages the long-term prospects for search engine marketing, Mr. Bogaty said, adding: "We've had a lot of conversations with the Googles and Yahoos of the world. They've said they're already taking out a tremendous amount of what would qualify as click fraud.

"That said, there is still much to be done."

Mr. Hallerman of eMarketer said that click fraud was "a problem I would not minimize, but I wouldn't blow it up, either. "It could be controlled by more transparency by the search engines," he added, in sharing their fraud prevention strategies with marketers. As search marketing becomes more prevalent, agencies are devoting more resources to further plumb its mysteries.

"People search the way they think; the language comes from their own personal language," said Stephen Tortorici, executive creative director at iCrossing, an agency with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Scottsdale, Ariz.

"Too often, we use our own language, our own jargon or corporate lingo to refer to how people think of things, search for things, but it should be according to the consumers' priorities," he added.

Mr. Tortorici, whose agency is creating a humorous campaign for batteries.com featuring a make-believe battery sociologist, offered what he called "a perfect example" of the distinctions involved: "Do you have a couch or do you have a sofa? That affects the way you search for things. When people search for 'sofa,' maybe they mean something more expensive, more upholstered."

November 16, (TIA)

LEADING TRAVEL INDUSTRY CONSUMER SURVEY REPORTS SIGNIFICANTLY MORE TRAVELERS PLAN AND BOOK TRIPS ONLINE

Consumers Responding More to Strategic Marketing than Paid Media

WASHINGTON, DC -- While the number of Americans using the Internet appears to have reached a plateau, those who plan and book trips or vacations online continues to climb rapidly, according to the Travelers’ Use of the Internet, 2005 Edition, released today by the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA).

The annual report, this year issued jointly with TIA co-sponsor and contributor USDM.net, shows that the Internet continues to grow as a dominant channel for both reaching and transacting with today’s travel consumers. In fact, while growth in the number of U.S. adult travelers using the Internet for any purpose has slowed, the number of online travelers who used the Internet to actually plan and book trips grew significantly this past year.

Survey results indicate a majority of online travelers (78 percent or 79 million Americans) turned to the Internet for travel or destination information in 2005 – much higher than the 65 percent of online travelers in 2004.

Survey findings also indicate that 82 percent of travelers who plan their trips online now also book reservations online. That indicates more than 64 million Americans bought or reserved an airline ticket, hotel room, rental car or package tour online this past year – up from 70 percent in 2004.

“Americans are turning to the Internet to plan and book their trips in greater numbers than ever before and it’s become increasingly obvious that the way we sell and distribute travel has changed forever,” said Dr. Suzanne Cook, TIA’s Senior Vice President of Research. “With the increases in online travel planning, other planning sources have declined, such as traditional travel agents.”

“Our research shows that women now outnumber men online and that women are more likely to plan and book leisure trips,” noted Dr. Cook. “It’s important that travel companies pay attention to that demographic and market themselves accordingly.”

Other trends and data to emerge from the Travelers’ Use of the Internet 2005:

More than nine out of 10 online travel planners said they used the Internet to plan a personal trip last year, while a quarter planned business trips online;

Jan 24, 7:28 AM (ET) - NEW YORK (AP)

Only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported Sunday that adults online in the United States are generally naive when it comes to how search engines work.

The major search engines all return a mix of regular results, based solely on relevance to the search terms entered, and sponsored links, for which a Web site had paid money to get displayed more prominently.

Google Inc. (GOOG) marks such ads as "sponsored links," Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) terms them "sponsor results" and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s MSN uses "sponsored sites." Such ads are placed to the right and on top of the regular search results, in some cases highlighted in a different color.

But only 38 percent of Web searchers even know of the distinction, and of those, not even half - 47 percent - say they can always tell which are paid. That comes out to only 18 percent of all Web searchers knowing when a link is paid.

Forty-five percent of Web searchers say they would stop using search engines if they thought they weren't being clear about such payments, yet 92 percent of Web searchers say they are confident about their searching abilities.

Deborah Fallows, a senior research fellow at Pew and the study's author, said the findings were surprising given that the same people are likely to know the difference between television programs and infomercials.

"We're still in the infancy of the Internet," Fallows said. "People are still kind of so pleased that they can go there, ask for something and get an answer that it's kind of not on their radar screen to look in a very scrutinizing way to see what's in the background there."

She said the results reflect blind trust on the part of the Web searcher rather than "anything nefarious on the part of the search engine."

Nonetheless, the Consumer Reports WebWatch studied the top 15 search engines and found many of them could do better in disclosing sponsorships, particularly when they practice "paid inclusion." That is when sites pay to make sure they are included in a search engine's index, though without guarantees that their links will be displayed more prominently.

The telephone-based Pew study was conducted May 14-June 17 and involved 2,200 adults, including 1,399 Internet users. Results based on Internet users have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

May 19, 2004 - INTERNET LOWERS REAL ESTATE COMMISSIONS

LITTLE ROCK (AP) - Real estate and mortgage brokers have less of a hold on clients from the start of the home-buying process, according to a national study which researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock helped organize.

More Americans are doing Internet research before they make their first calls when starting to buy a home - a practice that's lowered commissions in certain regions, the study concluded.

While less than 1 percent of 5 million homes bought and sold every year are closed online, the study found more than 70 percent of all home buyers start their search on the Internet.

Researchers at UALR, Syracuse University and Penn State surveyed 4,600 randomly selected real estate agents across the nation. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Results showed that the traditional real estate industry sees online brokers as a threat.

Some agents are lowering their commissions and providing fewer services to customers who have researched on their own. For example, a client could choose whether to pay for services such as open houses or printed flyers.

But more people want to work with professionals the nearer they get to buying and selling a home, the report said.

People were found to enlist traditional agents for three reasons: lack of "face time" with online professionals; unwillingness to hunt for houses alone; and a perceived lack of motivation from online brokers who work on salary instead of commission.

In the future, Internet sales could grow if online companies can persuade customers that closing a home online is more convenient than filling out a great deal of paperwork, the study said.

"This research demonstrates that the Internet is changing how people look for homes, as well as how they buy and sell their homes," said Rolf Wigand, who holds the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Chair in the Department of Information Science at UALR. "These developments clearly show that they are changing the real estate industry and are making the residential home market more transparent."

January 22, 2004 - TIA SHOWS CONTINUED GROWTH IN ONLINE TRAVEL BOOKERS; NEARLY ONE-THIRD BOOK ALL THEIR TRAVEL ONLINE

WASHINGTON, DC -- Travelers’ use of the Internet to plan and book their trips continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace, according to the Travel Industry Association of America’s (TIA) latest Travelers’ Use of the Internet study. More than 64 million online travelers—-30 percent of the U.S. adult population—-used the Internet last year to get information on destinations or to check prices or schedules. Of that group, 42.2 million actually booked travel online during 2003.

The number of Americans using the Internet for travel planning has stabilized at 64.1 million, due to the slower growth of “wired” households in the U.S. Still, the number of travelers booking airline tickets, hotel rooms and other travel services online continues to grow.

In 2003, over 42 million people—-or two-thirds of all online travel planners—-booked travel using the Internet, up 8 percent from 2002. And the number of online bookers doing all of their travel booking online continues to grow, with 29 percent now doing so, versus 23 percent in 2002.

“Greater use of the Internet seems to be changing travel patterns in other ways as well,” remarked Dr. Suzanne Cook, senior vice president of research for the Travel Industry Association of America. “The enhanced accessibility of last minute specials via the Internet, as well as low prices on last minute travel, is stimulating later booking patterns.”

Airline tickets continued to be the most frequently purchased travel products online, reported by 75 percent of all online travel bookers. This was followed closely by accommodations at 71 percent, a dramatic increase from 57 percent in 2002. Rental cars were the third most popular travel service or product booked online (43%). Online travel bookers spend an average of $2,600 online in a year, up from $2,300 in 2002.

The use of e-mail to market travel promotions has become an effective tool for travel suppliers such as hotels and airlines to generate additional business. Over 35 million online travelers have signed up with a travel supplier website or online travel service to receive e-mail offers and promotions. In addition, 10 million have been influenced by an e-mail promotion to actually take a trip they otherwise would not have taken.

In fact, Jupiter found that in 2001 for each $1 that the travel industry realized directly online, travel companies selling hotel products online garnered an additional $5 of booking revenue in traditional channels as a direct result of research that consumers did on the Web. A 2002 Jupiter study of 1,845 online travel buyers and browsers indicated that nearly half (48 percent) of those surveyed conducted research and purchased from an agency site, while 34 percent conducted research and purchased from a supplier site.

11/22/2002 - DESPERATELY SEEKING WEB LOG FILE STANDARDS
Traffick Online Zine - Cory Kleinschmidt

As any webmaster or search engine marketer knows, you can't measure the success of your web site or of your online marketing campaigns without knowing your site statistics. And the only way to know your stats is to dig deep into the bowels of your server's log files. But once you get in, you might not make it back!

Every page viewed on your site, every visit to your site, every referring URL, and hundreds of other bits of information, is stored in these labyrinthine text files that can grow to be hundreds of megabytes in size. It's nearly impossible to decipher these log files yourself, which is why software companies have created versatile -- and pricey -- programs to extract the useful nuggets of information contained therein.

Because many web visitors come from big ISPs who use proxy servers rather than fixed IP addresses to provide connectivity and route web traffic, the "referrer" URL may be misleading. Many computers may share the same IP address, if, for example, they all arrived through the same aol.com or earthlink.com proxy server, which can support hundreds of dynamic dial-up connections. This "referrer" may also be inaccurate because the earliest visit within a two-hour time frame from a specific IP address may not be the one that actually generated the customer order.

Here's a basic definition of log files (also called extended log files), courtesy of the World Wide Web Consortium (or W3C), the Internet standards group:

"An extended log file contains a sequence of lines containing ASCII characters terminated by either the sequence LF or CRLF. Log file generators should follow the line termination convention for the platform on which they are executed. Analyzers should accept either form. Each line may contain either a directive or an entry.

Entries consist of a sequence of fields relating to a single HTTP transaction. Fields are separated by whitespace, the use of tab characters for this purpose is encouraged. If a field is unused in a particular entry dash "-" marks the omitted field."

WebTrends is the industry standard log file software, and is used by thousands of companies around the world. Some hosting companies offer WebTrends reports to every site hosted on their servers free of charge, or perhaps for a small fee. There are also companies such as HitBox who offer free ASP -- application service provider -- hosted services that track your site stats in exchange for placing ads on your site.

Any hosting company worth its salt will give you access to your raw log files, which you can download and then analyze on your own using software from vendors like 123LogAnalyzer, SurfStats, and Sawmill.

These log file analyzers are usually good at giving you a general picture of the overall health of your site, but if you analyze your log files with more than one log analysis tool and you'll see that the world of site stats is a murky one filled with competing standards, conflicting definitions of basic terminology and few easy methods of understanding what the numbers mean.

One log file tool may report 100,000 page views for your site in a month's time, and another may report just 80,000. I talked with several of these vendors, and they all gave a litany of possible reasons for the discrepancy in page views: some log file software counts failed pages as page views, some have different definitions for what constitutes a page view or user session, or maybe the other program's parser -- which is the part of the software that scans the log file entries -- isn't up to snuff. But, none of the companies would admit that their software could do a better job in reporting numbers.

Referrers are those URLs that lead a user to your site or caused the browser to request something from your server. The vast majority of requests are made from your own URLs, since most HTML pages contain links to other objects such as graphics files. If one of your HTML pages contains links to 10 graphic images, then each request for the HTML page will produce 10 more hits with the referrer specified as the URL of your own HTML page. A *Referrer* is the URL of the last web page the user was on before coming to your web site. Therefore, this information reports the web pages that link to your site. Technically, if a user types in your URL directly, the browser will not record a referrer. In addition, the referrer variable is a new feature that was not supported in all browser types and versions. The recent browsers support the referrer attribute.

So, why does it seem so impossible for different log file programs to report numbers consistently? Here are some of the reasons:

1. There is no standard log file format.
Log file formats come in many different flavors. There are the different formats based on Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS); there's one for the free web server called Apache; and there are different formats for proxy servers (which act as Internet access gateways for networks).

2. There is no standard method for interpreting and parsing log files.
Many log file analyzers, OpenWebScope, for example, report the useless term "hits" as the more-useful-to-know term "page views." There are also different definitions of what constitutes a visitor session. Some programs say that if a visitor to your site is inactive for 10 minutes or more and then they come back, they count as a new visitor. Obviously users shouldn't be counted twice, but when you deal with dynamic IP addresses, it's hard to know if the user with IP address 64.217.243.22 was the same person as it was 10 minutes ago.

3. There is no standard way to track and measure success. Unless you contract with a specialized software company to track banner ad campaigns, PPC campaigns, and other sales promotions, you will have a difficult time calculating ROI, tracking referrers, and so on. Log files do record the pass-through URL parameters appended to links, but the data is so generic as to be almost useless.

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