SEO News

Posted by MichaelC-15022

When Penguin 4.0 launched in September 2016, the story from Gary Illyes of Google was that Penguin now just devalued spammy links, rather than penalizing a site by adjusting the site’s ranking downward, AKA a penalty.

Apparently for Penguin there is now “less need” for a disavow, according to a Facebook discussion between Gary Illyes and Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land back in September. He suggested that webmasters can help Google find spammy sites by disavowing links they know are bad. He also mentioned that manual actions still happen — and so I think we can safely infer that the disavow file is still useful in manual penalty recovery.

But algorithmic penalties DO still exist. A client of mine, who’d in the past built a lot of really spammy links to one of their sites, had me take a look at their backlinks about 10 days ago and build a disavow file. There was no manual penalty indicated in Search Console, but they didn’t rank at all for terms they were targeting — and they had a plenty strong backlink profile even after ignoring the spammy links.

I submitted the disavow file on March 2nd, 2017. Here’s the picture of what happened to their traffic:

4 days after the disavow file submission, their traffic went from just a couple hundred visits/day from Google search to nearly 3,000.

Penguin might no longer be handing out penalties, but clearly there are still algorithmic penalties handed out by Google. And clearly, the disavow file still works on these algorithmic penalties.

Perhaps we just need to give them another animal name. (Personally, I like the Okapi… goes along with the black-and-white animal theme, and, like Google algorithmic penalties, hardly anyone knows they still exist.)

Image courtesy Chester Zoo on Flickr.

I look forward to animated comments from other SEOs and webmasters who might have been suspecting the same thing!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Tom.Capper

A little over two weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at SearchLove San Diego. My presentation, Does Google Still Need Links, looked at the available evidence on how and to what extent Google is using links as a ranking factor in 2017, including the piece of research that I’m sharing here today.

One of the main points of my presentation was to argue that while links still do represent a useful source of information for Google’s ranking algorithm, Google now has many other sources, most of which they would never have dreamed of back when PageRank was conceived as a proxy for the popularity and authority of websites nearly 20 years ago.

Branded search volume is one such source of information, and one of the sources that is most accessible for us mere mortals, so I decided to take a deeper look on how it compared with a link-based metric. It also gives us some interesting insight into the KPIs we should be pursuing in our off-site marketing efforts — because brand awareness and link building are often conflicting goals.

For clarity, by branded search volume, I mean the monthly regional search volume for the brand of a ranking site. For example, for the page https://www.walmart.com/cp/Gift-Cards/96894, this would be the US monthly search volume for the term “walmart” (as given by Google Keyword Planner). I’ve written more about how I put together this dataset and dealt with edge cases below.

When picking my link-based metric for comparison, domain authority seemed a natural choice — it’s domain-level, which ought to be fair given that generally that’s the level of precision with which we can measure branded search volume, and it came out top in Moz’s study of domain-level link-based factors.

A note on correlation studies

Before I go any further, here’s a word of warning on correlation studies, including this one: They can easily miss the forest for the trees.

For example, the fact that domain authority (or branded search volume, or anything else) is positively correlated with rankings could indicate that any or all of the following is likely:

• Links cause sites to rank well
• Ranking well causes sites to get links
• Some third factor (e.g. reputation or age of site) causes sites to get both links and rankings

That’s not to say that correlation studies are useless — but we should use them to inform our understanding and prompt further investigation, not as the last word on what is and isn’t a ranking factor.

Methodology

(Or skip straight to the results!)

The Moz study referenced above used the provided 800 sample keywords from all 22 top-level categories in Google Keyword Planner, then looked at the top 50 results for each of these. After de-duplication, this results in 16,521 queries. Moz looked at only web results (no images, answer boxes, etc.), ignored queries with fewer than 25 results in total, and, as far as I can tell, used desktop rankings.

I’ve taken a slightly different approach. I reached out to STAT to request a sample of ~5,000 non-branded keywords for the US market. Like Moz, I stripped out non-web results, but unlike Moz, I also stripped out anything with a baserank worse than 10 (baserank being STAT’s way of presenting the ranking of a search result when non-web results are excluded). You can see the STAT export here.

Moz used Mean Spearman correlations, which is a process that involves ranking variables for each keyword, then taking the average correlation across all keywords. I’ve also chosen this method, and I’ll explain why using the below example:

For Keyword A, we have wildly varying branded search volumes in the top 5 search results. This means that search volume and rankings could never be particularly well-correlated, even though the results are perfectly sorted in order of search volume.

Moz’s approach avoids this problem by comparing the ranking position (the 2nd column in the table) with the column on the far right of the table — how each site ranks for the given variable.

In this case, correlating ranking directly with search volume would yield a correlation of (-)0.75. Correlating with ranked search volume yields a perfect correlation of 1.

This process is then repeated for every keyword in the sample (I counted desktop and mobile versions of the same keyword as two keywords), then the average correlation is taken.

Defining branded search volume

Initially, I thought that pulling branded search volume for every site in the sample would be as simple as looking up the search volume for their domain minus its subdomain and TLD (e.g. “walmart” for https://www.walmart.com/cp/Gift-Cards/96894). However, this proved surprisingly deficient. Take these examples:

• www.cruise.co.uk
• ecotalker.wordpress.com
• www.sf.k12.sd.us

Are the brands for these sites “cruise,” “wordpress,” and “sd,” respectively? Clearly not. To figure out what the branded search term was, I started by taking each potential candidate from the URL, e.g., for ecotalker.wordpress.com:

• Ecotalker
• Ecotalker wordpress
• Wordpress.com
• Wordpress

I then worked out what the highest search volume term was for which the subdomain in question ranked first — which in this case is a tie between “Ecotalker” and “Ecotalker wordpress,” both of which show up as having zero volume.

I’m leaning fairly heavily on Google’s synonym matching in search volume lookup here to catch any edge-edge-cases — for example, I’m confident that “ecotalker.wordpress” would show up with the same search volume as “ecotalker wordpress.”

You can see the resulting dataset of subdomains with their DA and branded search volume here.

(Once again, I’ve used STAT to pull the search volumes in bulk.)

The results: Brand awareness > links

Here’s the main story: branded search volume is better correlated with rankings than domain authority is.

However, there’s a few other points of interest here. Firstly, neither of these variables has a particularly strong correlation with rankings — a perfect correlation would be 1, and I’m finding a correlation between domain authority and rankings of 0.071, and a correlation between branded search volume and rankings of 0.1. This is very low by the standards of the Moz study, which found a correlation of 0.26 between domain authority and rankings using the same statistical methods.

I think the biggest difference that accounts for this is Moz’s use of 50 web results per query, compared to my use of 10. If true, this would imply that domain authority has much more to do with what it takes to get you onto the front page than it has to do with ranking in the top few results once you’re there.

Another potential difference is in the types of keyword in the two samples. Moz’s study has a fairly even breakdown of keywords between the 0–10k, 10k–20k, 20k–50k, and 50k+ buckets:

On the other hand, my keywords were more skewed towards the low end:

However, this doesn’t seem to be the cause of my lower correlation numbers. Take a look at the correlations for rankings for high volume keywords (10k+) only in my dataset:

Although the matchup between the two metrics gets a lot closer here, the overall correlations are still nowhere near as high as Moz’s, leading me to attribute that difference more to their use of 50 ranking positions than to the keywords themselves.

It’s worth noting that my sample size of high volume queries is only 980.

Regression analysis

Another way of looking at the relationship between two variables is to ask how much of the variation in one is explained by the other. For example, the average rank of a page in our sample is 5.5. If we have a specific page that ranks at position 7, and a model that predicts it will rank at 6, we have explained 33% of its variation from the average rank (for that particular page).

Using the data above, I constructed a number of models to predict the rankings of pages in my sample, then charted the proportion of variance explained by those models below (you can read more about this metric, normally called the R-squared, here).

Some explanations:

• Branded Search Volume of the ranking site – as discussed above
• Log(Branded Search Volume) – Taking the log of the branded search volume for a fairer comparison with domain authority, where, for example, a DA 40 site is much more than twice as well linked to as a DA 20 site.
• Ranked Branded Search Volume – How this site’s branded search volume compares to that of other sites ranking for the same keyword, as discussed above

Firstly, it’s worth noting that despite the very low R-squareds, all of the variables listed above were highly statistically significant — in the worst case scenario, within a one ten-millionth of a percent of being 100% significant. (In the best case scenario being a vigintillionth of a vigintillionth of a vigintillionth of a nonillionth of a percent away.)

However, the really interesting thing here is that including ranked domain authority and ranked branded search volume in the same model explains barely any more variation than just ranked branded search volume on its own.

To be clear: Nearly all of the variation in rankings that we can explain with reference to domain authority we could just as well explain with reference to branded search volume. On the other hand, the reverse is not true.

If you’d like to look into this data some more, the full set is here.

Nice data. Why should I care?

There are two main takeaways here:

1. If you care about your domain authority because it’s correlated with rankings, then you should care at least as much about your branded search volume.
2. The correlation between links and rankings might sometimes be a bit of a red-herring — it could be that links are themselves merely correlated with some third factor which better explains rankings.

There are also a bunch of softer takeaways to be had here, particularly around how weak (if highly statistically significant) both sets of correlations were. This places even more emphasis on relevancy and intent, which presumably make up the rest of the picture.

If you’re trying to produce content to build links, or if you find yourself reading a post or watching a presentation around this or any other link building techniques in the near future, there are some interesting questions here to add to those posed by Tomas Vaitulevicius back in November. In particular, if you’re producing content to gain links and brand awareness, it might not be very good at either, so you need to figure out what’s right for you and how to measure it.

I’m not saying in any of this that “links are dead,” or anything of the sort — more that we ought to be a bit more critical about how, why, and when they’re important. In particular, I think that they might be of increasingly little importance on the first page of results for competitive terms, but I’d be interested in your thoughts in the comments below.

I’d also love to see others conduct similar analysis. As with any research, cross-checking and replication studies are an important step in the process.

Either way, I’ll be writing more around this topic in the near future, so watch this space!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Correlation between spam rates and subscriber engagement

The latest report from Return Path highlights how industries that outperform the average on key email marketing metrics (like read rate, reply rate etc.) also see less email delivered to spam folders.

While the Hidden Metrics of Email Deliverability shows that overall spam placement has increased slightly year on year  – from 13% in 2016 vs 12% in 2015 – levels of positive engagement have significantly improved.

In terms of industries, the banking and finance and distribution and manufacturing categories saw just 6% of email delivered to spam folders, while this figure rose to 28% in the automotive category. 

Chart shows percentage of email delivered to spam folders

Generation X perform four in 10 family travel searches

New research from Bing Ads has revealed how families are searching for holiday inspiration and services online.

The report shows that 59% of searches for family holidays are undertaken by women compared to 41% by men. Similarly, Generation X (those aged 35 to 59) perform four of every 10 searches.

Other highlights from the report include how consumers are more likely to use mobile devices to search for inspiration and PCs or tablet devices to make a final reservation. Meanwhile, it appears consumers dream of visiting the beach all year long, meaning companies need to invest in year-round campaigns to capture this evergreen interest.

Nine in 10 consumers concerned about how companies use personal data

New research from Verint has found that while more consumers crave highly personalised customer service, they are also increasingly sceptical about how businesses collect and store personal data. 

From a study of more than 24,000 consumers, 80% said they like service that is personalised to their needs (which in turn relies on the use of customer data to deliver). 

However, 89% of consumers also want to know how companies keep their personal information secure, and 86% insist that they should know when their data is passed on to third parties.

Kinetic emails increase unique click rates by 18%

Experian’s Q4 2016 Email Benchmark Report has revealed that kinetic emails – i.e. those that include interactive content like carousel navigation – see greater levels of engagement than any other kind.

From analysis of seven brands in 2016, kinetic emails were found to increase unique click rates by as much as 18.3% and click-to-open rates by more than 10% compared to standard emails.

The report also highlights that email volume increased 17.4% year-over-year, while metrics like click and transaction rates, revenue per email and average order volumes all remained relatively stable during the same period.

British SMEs grow online exports by more than a third

New data from PayPal has revealed how small and medium-sized businesses benefitted from the record lows of the pound last year. 

SMEs in the UK saw their rate of growth treble to 34% year-on-year from July to December 2016. Similarly, while there was an uplift in PayPal sales for British businesses overall, the biggest impact was seen on small and medium-sized organisations, with the amount international shoppers spent with UK SMEs rising 13% per transaction in the last six months of 2016. 

Fashion and sports experienced the highest growth, with a 49% year-on-year increase in goods from these categories sold to international shoppers.

Native video ads boost ROI

Yahoo’s State of Native report suggests that native advertising continues to reign supreme, with the brand seeing exponential growth of native ad consumption in all regions and across all devices.

Data from more than 74.5bn native ad impressions show that publishers have seen a 446.7% lift in eCPMs (effective cost per thousand ad impressions) on native video ad placements compared to display.

The report also highlights how consumer engagement for specific apps and devices vary by time of day and location. For example, in the US, users spend the late afternoons and evenings on their smartphones, while their nights are spent on desktop. This is compared to other parts of the world, where nights are typically spent on smartphones. 

Household gifts drive the biggest basket value for Mother’s Day

According to Criteo, Brits are still lacking in imagination when it comes to buying Mother’s Day gifts online.

Data reveals that household gifts such as kitchen, laundry appliances and vacuums drive the biggest basket value for online sales. Similarly, gardening tools typically see a boost in sales with spring just around the corner. Last year, there was a 193% increase in units sold in the two week’s leading up to Mother’s Day.

In 2016, it was suggested that we spent a total of £928m on the day, with this figure expected to rise even higher this year.

TV accounts for 94% of viewed video ads in the UK

New data from Thinkbox has revealed that TV accounted for 93.8% of video ads viewed in the UK in 2016. This is the equivalent of 18 minutes and 53 seconds a day.

These figures are slightly down on 2015, when TV saw a share of 94.4%. However, other forms of video advertising saw far less engagement, with YouTube accounting for 0.7% of viewed video ads in 2016, while other online video (including Facebook) collectively accounted for 5.2%.

The average person is said to have watched 20 minutes of video ads a day in 2016, while total daily video consumption increased to 4 hours, 37 minutes in 2016.

Wearables now at an all-time high

The International Data Corporation has revealed that the global wearables market reached a new all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2016. In this period, 33.9m units were shipped, representing a year-on-year growth of 16.9%.

A total of 102.4m wearable devices were shipped in 2016 – a figure up 25% year-on-year. Insight suggests this could be due to single purpose devices evolving into hybrid ones, fusing together multiple health and fitness capabilities with smartphone technology.

In terms of brand dominance, Fitbit continued to reign supreme, with 22.5m shipments being made over the course of the whole year.

64% of decision-makers say sales and marketing teams could be more aligned

According to a YouGov survey of 725 business leaders, commissioned by Huthwaite International, 92% of respondents believe sales and marketing teams should work closely together.

Despite this fact, 64% also say that sales and marketing teams need to do more to facilitate this alignment. 

When it comes to the benefits of working more closely, 52% cited a consistent message delivered to clients and prospects, while 50% said the opportunity to gain new customers. Just 8% of respondents said they didn’t believe there was any benefit.

Correlation between spam rates and subscriber engagement

The latest report from Return Path highlights how industries that outperform the average on key email marketing metrics (like read rate, reply rate etc.) also see less email delivered to spam folders.

While the Hidden Metrics of Email Deliverability shows that overall spam placement has increased slightly year on year  – from 13% in 2016 vs 12% in 2015 – levels of positive engagement have significantly improved.

In terms of industries, the banking and finance and distribution and manufacturing categories saw just 6% of email delivered to spam folders, while this figure rose to 28% in the automotive category. 

Chart shows percentage of email delivered to spam folders

Generation X perform four in 10 family travel searches

New research from Bing Ads has revealed how families are searching for holiday inspiration and services online.

The report shows that 59% of searches for family holidays are undertaken by women compared to 41% by men. Similarly, Generation X (those aged 35 to 59) perform four of every 10 searches.

Other highlights from the report include how consumers are more likely to use mobile devices to search for inspiration and PCs or tablet devices to make a final reservation. Meanwhile, it appears consumers dream of visiting the beach all year long, meaning companies need to invest in year-round campaigns to capture this evergreen interest.

Nine in 10 consumers concerned about how companies use personal data

New research from Verint has found that while more consumers crave highly personalised customer service, they are also increasingly sceptical about how businesses collect and store personal data. 

From a study of more than 24,000 consumers, 80% said they like service that is personalised to their needs (which in turn relies on the use of customer data to deliver). 

However, 89% of consumers also want to know how companies keep their personal information secure, and 86% insist that they should know when their data is passed on to third parties.

Kinetic emails increase unique click rates by 18%

Experian’s Q4 2016 Email Benchmark Report has revealed that kinetic emails – i.e. those that include interactive content like carousel navigation – see greater levels of engagement than any other kind.

From analysis of seven brands in 2016, kinetic emails were found to increase unique click rates by as much as 18.3% and click-to-open rates by more than 10% compared to standard emails.

The report also highlights that email volume increased 17.4% year-over-year, while metrics like click and transaction rates, revenue per email and average order volumes all remained relatively stable during the same period.

British SMEs grow online exports by more than a third

New data from PayPal has revealed how small and medium-sized businesses benefitted from the record lows of the pound last year. 

SMEs in the UK saw their rate of growth treble to 34% year-on-year from July to December 2016. Similarly, while there was an uplift in PayPal sales for British businesses overall, the biggest impact was seen on small and medium-sized organisations, with the amount international shoppers spent with UK SMEs rising 13% per transaction in the last six months of 2016. 

Fashion and sports experienced the highest growth, with a 49% year-on-year increase in goods from these categories sold to international shoppers.

Native video ads boost ROI

Yahoo’s State of Native report suggests that native advertising continues to reign supreme, with the brand seeing exponential growth of native ad consumption in all regions and across all devices.

Data from more than 74.5bn native ad impressions show that publishers have seen a 446.7% lift in eCPMs (effective cost per thousand ad impressions) on native video ad placements compared to display.

The report also highlights how consumer engagement for specific apps and devices vary by time of day and location. For example, in the US, users spend the late afternoons and evenings on their smartphones, while their nights are spent on desktop. This is compared to other parts of the world, where nights are typically spent on smartphones. 

Household gifts drive the biggest basket value for Mother’s Day

According to Criteo, Brits are still lacking in imagination when it comes to buying Mother’s Day gifts online.

Data reveals that household gifts such as kitchen, laundry appliances and vacuums drive the biggest basket value for online sales. Similarly, gardening tools typically see a boost in sales with spring just around the corner. Last year, there was a 193% increase in units sold in the two week’s leading up to Mother’s Day.

In 2016, it was suggested that we spent a total of £928m on the day, with this figure expected to rise even higher this year.

TV accounts for 94% of viewed video ads in the UK

New data from Thinkbox has revealed that TV accounted for 93.8% of video ads viewed in the UK in 2016. This is the equivalent of 18 minutes and 53 seconds a day.

These figures are slightly down on 2015, when TV saw a share of 94.4%. However, other forms of video advertising saw far less engagement, with YouTube accounting for 0.7% of viewed video ads in 2016, while other online video (including Facebook) collectively accounted for 5.2%.

The average person is said to have watched 20 minutes of video ads a day in 2016, while total daily video consumption increased to 4 hours, 37 minutes in 2016.

Wearables now at an all-time high

The International Data Corporation has revealed that the global wearables market reached a new all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2016. In this period, 33.9m units were shipped, representing a year-on-year growth of 16.9%.

A total of 102.4m wearable devices were shipped in 2016 – a figure up 25% year-on-year. Insight suggests this could be due to single purpose devices evolving into hybrid ones, fusing together multiple health and fitness capabilities with smartphone technology.

In terms of brand dominance, Fitbit continued to reign supreme, with 22.5m shipments being made over the course of the whole year.

64% of decision-makers say sales and marketing teams could be more aligned

According to a YouGov survey of 725 business leaders, commissioned by Huthwaite International, 92% of respondents believe sales and marketing teams should work closely together.

Despite this fact, 64% also say that sales and marketing teams need to do more to facilitate this alignment. 

When it comes to the benefits of working more closely, 52% cited a consistent message delivered to clients and prospects, while 50% said the opportunity to gain new customers. Just 8% of respondents said they didn’t believe there was any benefit.

Correlation between spam rates and subscriber engagement

The latest report from Return Path highlights how industries that outperform the average on key email marketing metrics (like read rate, reply rate etc.) also see less email delivered to spam folders.

While the Hidden Metrics of Email Deliverability shows that overall spam placement has increased slightly year on year  – from 13% in 2016 vs 12% in 2015 – levels of positive engagement have significantly improved.

In terms of industries, the banking and finance and distribution and manufacturing categories saw just 6% of email delivered to spam folders, while this figure rose to 28% in the automotive category. 

Chart shows percentage of email delivered to spam folders

Generation X perform four in 10 family travel searches

New research from Bing Ads has revealed how families are searching for holiday inspiration and services online.

The report shows that 59% of searches for family holidays are undertaken by women compared to 41% by men. Similarly, Generation X (those aged 35 to 59) perform four of every 10 searches.

Other highlights from the report include how consumers are more likely to use mobile devices to search for inspiration and PCs or tablet devices to make a final reservation. Meanwhile, it appears consumers dream of visiting the beach all year long, meaning companies need to invest in year-round campaigns to capture this evergreen interest.

Nine in 10 consumers concerned about how companies use personal data

New research from Verint has found that while more consumers crave highly personalised customer service, they are also increasingly sceptical about how businesses collect and store personal data. 

From a study of more than 24,000 consumers, 80% said they like service that is personalised to their needs (which in turn relies on the use of customer data to deliver). 

However, 89% of consumers also want to know how companies keep their personal information secure, and 86% insist that they should know when their data is passed on to third parties.

Kinetic emails increase unique click rates by 18%

Experian’s Q4 2016 Email Benchmark Report has revealed that kinetic emails – i.e. those that include interactive content like carousel navigation – see greater levels of engagement than any other kind.

From analysis of seven brands in 2016, kinetic emails were found to increase unique click rates by as much as 18.3% and click-to-open rates by more than 10% compared to standard emails.

The report also highlights that email volume increased 17.4% year-over-year, while metrics like click and transaction rates, revenue per email and average order volumes all remained relatively stable during the same period.

British SMEs grow online exports by more than a third

New data from PayPal has revealed how small and medium-sized businesses benefitted from the record lows of the pound last year. 

SMEs in the UK saw their rate of growth treble to 34% year-on-year from July to December 2016. Similarly, while there was an uplift in PayPal sales for British businesses overall, the biggest impact was seen on small and medium-sized organisations, with the amount international shoppers spent with UK SMEs rising 13% per transaction in the last six months of 2016. 

Fashion and sports experienced the highest growth, with a 49% year-on-year increase in goods from these categories sold to international shoppers.

Native video ads boost ROI

Yahoo’s State of Native report suggests that native advertising continues to reign supreme, with the brand seeing exponential growth of native ad consumption in all regions and across all devices.

Data from more than 74.5bn native ad impressions show that publishers have seen a 446.7% lift in eCPMs (effective cost per thousand ad impressions) on native video ad placements compared to display.

The report also highlights how consumer engagement for specific apps and devices vary by time of day and location. For example, in the US, users spend the late afternoons and evenings on their smartphones, while their nights are spent on desktop. This is compared to other parts of the world, where nights are typically spent on smartphones. 

Household gifts drive the biggest basket value for Mother’s Day

According to Criteo, Brits are still lacking in imagination when it comes to buying Mother’s Day gifts online.

Data reveals that household gifts such as kitchen, laundry appliances and vacuums drive the biggest basket value for online sales. Similarly, gardening tools typically see a boost in sales with spring just around the corner. Last year, there was a 193% increase in units sold in the two week’s leading up to Mother’s Day.

In 2016, it was suggested that we spent a total of £928m on the day, with this figure expected to rise even higher this year.

TV accounts for 94% of viewed video ads in the UK

New data from Thinkbox has revealed that TV accounted for 93.8% of video ads viewed in the UK in 2016. This is the equivalent of 18 minutes and 53 seconds a day.

These figures are slightly down on 2015, when TV saw a share of 94.4%. However, other forms of video advertising saw far less engagement, with YouTube accounting for 0.7% of viewed video ads in 2016, while other online video (including Facebook) collectively accounted for 5.2%.

The average person is said to have watched 20 minutes of video ads a day in 2016, while total daily video consumption increased to 4 hours, 37 minutes in 2016.

Wearables now at an all-time high

The International Data Corporation has revealed that the global wearables market reached a new all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2016. In this period, 33.9m units were shipped, representing a year-on-year growth of 16.9%.

A total of 102.4m wearable devices were shipped in 2016 – a figure up 25% year-on-year. Insight suggests this could be due to single purpose devices evolving into hybrid ones, fusing together multiple health and fitness capabilities with smartphone technology.

In terms of brand dominance, Fitbit continued to reign supreme, with 22.5m shipments being made over the course of the whole year.

64% of decision-makers say sales and marketing teams could be more aligned

According to a YouGov survey of 725 business leaders, commissioned by Huthwaite International, 92% of respondents believe sales and marketing teams should work closely together.

Despite this fact, 64% also say that sales and marketing teams need to do more to facilitate this alignment. 

When it comes to the benefits of working more closely, 52% cited a consistent message delivered to clients and prospects, while 50% said the opportunity to gain new customers. Just 8% of respondents said they didn’t believe there was any benefit.

Correlation between spam rates and subscriber engagement

The latest report from Return Path highlights how industries that outperform the average on key email marketing metrics (like read rate, reply rate etc.) also see less email delivered to spam folders.

While the Hidden Metrics of Email Deliverability shows that overall spam placement has increased slightly year on year  – from 13% in 2016 vs 12% in 2015 – levels of positive engagement have significantly improved.

In terms of industries, the banking and finance and distribution and manufacturing categories saw just 6% of email delivered to spam folders, while this figure rose to 28% in the automotive category. 

Chart shows percentage of email delivered to spam folders

Generation X perform four in 10 family travel searches

New research from Bing Ads has revealed how families are searching for holiday inspiration and services online.

The report shows that 59% of searches for family holidays are undertaken by women compared to 41% by men. Similarly, Generation X (those aged 35 to 59) perform four of every 10 searches.

Other highlights from the report include how consumers are more likely to use mobile devices to search for inspiration and PCs or tablet devices to make a final reservation. Meanwhile, it appears consumers dream of visiting the beach all year long, meaning companies need to invest in year-round campaigns to capture this evergreen interest.

Nine in 10 consumers concerned about how companies use personal data

New research from Verint has found that while more consumers crave highly personalised customer service, they are also increasingly sceptical about how businesses collect and store personal data. 

From a study of more than 24,000 consumers, 80% said they like service that is personalised to their needs (which in turn relies on the use of customer data to deliver). 

However, 89% of consumers also want to know how companies keep their personal information secure, and 86% insist that they should know when their data is passed on to third parties.

Kinetic emails increase unique click rates by 18%

Experian’s Q4 2016 Email Benchmark Report has revealed that kinetic emails – i.e. those that include interactive content like carousel navigation – see greater levels of engagement than any other kind.

From analysis of seven brands in 2016, kinetic emails were found to increase unique click rates by as much as 18.3% and click-to-open rates by more than 10% compared to standard emails.

The report also highlights that email volume increased 17.4% year-over-year, while metrics like click and transaction rates, revenue per email and average order volumes all remained relatively stable during the same period.

British SMEs grow online exports by more than a third

New data from PayPal has revealed how small and medium-sized businesses benefitted from the record lows of the pound last year. 

SMEs in the UK saw their rate of growth treble to 34% year-on-year from July to December 2016. Similarly, while there was an uplift in PayPal sales for British businesses overall, the biggest impact was seen on small and medium-sized organisations, with the amount international shoppers spent with UK SMEs rising 13% per transaction in the last six months of 2016. 

Fashion and sports experienced the highest growth, with a 49% year-on-year increase in goods from these categories sold to international shoppers.

Native video ads boost ROI

Yahoo’s State of Native report suggests that native advertising continues to reign supreme, with the brand seeing exponential growth of native ad consumption in all regions and across all devices.

Data from more than 74.5bn native ad impressions show that publishers have seen a 446.7% lift in eCPMs (effective cost per thousand ad impressions) on native video ad placements compared to display.

The report also highlights how consumer engagement for specific apps and devices vary by time of day and location. For example, in the US, users spend the late afternoons and evenings on their smartphones, while their nights are spent on desktop. This is compared to other parts of the world, where nights are typically spent on smartphones. 

Household gifts drive the biggest basket value for Mother’s Day

According to Criteo, Brits are still lacking in imagination when it comes to buying Mother’s Day gifts online.

Data reveals that household gifts such as kitchen, laundry appliances and vacuums drive the biggest basket value for online sales. Similarly, gardening tools typically see a boost in sales with spring just around the corner. Last year, there was a 193% increase in units sold in the two week’s leading up to Mother’s Day.

Criteo also revealed that we spent a total of £928m on the day in 2016, with brands expected to see even higher figures this year.

TV accounts for 94% of viewed video ads in the UK

New data from Thinkbox has revealed that TV accounted for 93.8% of video ads viewed in the UK in 2016. This is the equivalent of 18 minutes and 53 seconds a day.

These figures are slightly down on 2015, when TV saw a share of 94.4%. However, other forms of video advertising saw far less engagement, with YouTube accounting for 0.7% of viewed video ads in 2016, while other online video (including Facebook) collectively accounted for 5.2%.

The average person is said to have watched 20 minutes of video ads a day in 2016, while total daily video consumption increased to 4 hours, 37 minutes in 2016.

Wearables now at an all-time high

The International Data Corporation has revealed that the global wearables market reached a new all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2016. In this period, 33.9m units were shipped, representing a year-on-year growth of 16.9%.

A total of 102.4m wearable devices were shipped in 2016 – a figure up 25% year-on-year. Insight suggests this could be due to single purpose devices evolving into hybrid ones, fusing together multiple health and fitness capabilities with smartphone technology.

In terms of brand dominance, Fitbit continued to reign supreme, with 22.5m shipments being made over the course of the whole year.

64% of decision-makers say sales and marketing teams could be more aligned

According to a YouGov survey of 725 business leaders, commissioned by Huthwaite International, 92% of respondents believe sales and marketing teams should work closely together.

Despite this fact, 64% also say that sales and marketing teams need to do more to facilitate this alignment. 

When it comes to the benefits of working more closely, 52% cited a consistent message delivered to clients and prospects, while 50% said the opportunity to gain new customers. Just 8% of respondents said they didn’t believe there was any benefit.