Every week we compile lots of interesting stats here at Fanscape. Here are some we thought we’d share with you from this past week:

Women Playing More Video Games

According to a report released this week by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA):

• 45% of the entire game playing population are women
• and they comprise 46% of the most frequent video game purchasers.
• Women 18 and older make up 31% of the video game-playing population
• while boys 17 and under represent only 19% of today’s gamers.
• 58% of Americans play video games and there are, on average, two gamers in each game-playing household.

A complimentary report from Magid Advisors states:

• 70% of women between the ages of 12 and 24 play video games.
• 61% of women between the ages of 45 and 64 also play games,
• compared to 57% of men in the same age group.
• 45% percent of smartphone owners play games on their phones regularly
• 69% of tablet owners play games on their tablet regularly.
• The spike in mobile gaming has sent the market for paid smartphone downloads up 122% year-to year and paid tablet downloads up 105% year-to-year.
• Close to 70% of all Americans play some kind of game either on the Web or on their smartphones, computers, tablets and consoles.

Source for above stats from USA TODAY article.

Just for Fun

On this day in history: June 14

• 1834 – Isaac Fischer Jr. patented sandpaper.
• 1900 – Hawaii became a U.S. territory.
• 1943 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schoolchildren could not be made to salute the U.S. flag if doing so conflicted with their religious beliefs.
• 1961 – Boy George from Culture Club born.
• 1965 – Paul McCartney recorded “Yesterday.”
• 1987 – The Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA title by defeating the defending Boston Celtics.
• 1988 – Kevin McHale (aka Artie from Glee) born.

Source: On This Day

We published our monthly newsletter today. Check it out below and if you want to see it in all its glory, with working links, click HERE.

Here are some cool things we read about this past week:

Google Spices Up Search Data with Nutritional Data
Google announced that users can type to ask the search engine questions about calories, carbohydrates and other information.  This means you can now ask how many grams of fat is in a banana or how many calories are in an egg, and the results show on a panel above linked results, similar to how Google’s calculator search works. The feature is live now.

FourSquare Testing Paid Promotions With NYC Small Businesses
Foursquare has started allowing a handful of local NYC merchants to promote their store listing within the service, meaning they will be able to target Foursquare users within the vicinity. Until recently, promoted listings were limited to large national merchants.

Twitter Releases Vine for Android
Twitter has released Vine for Android, bringing the 6-second video sharing service to Google’s mobile OS for the first time. The Vine app is available for Android smartphones now and is a free download for anyone running Android 4.0 or higher. The Vine app for Android arrives five months after it arrived on iPhone. It has managed to amass an impressive 13 million users on iOS alone.

Amazon Launches Online Grocery Delivery
Amazon has been quietly testing their online grocery business for years, and now it seems that they are ready to start rolling out the service in cities outside of their home territory.  Initial plans are to offer grocery delivery in Los Angeles, followed by San Francisco later this year. Depending on the success of the program, Amazon may expand to other urban areas in 2014 – some of which may be international.

Facebook Drops ‘Sponsored Stories’ As it Pares Down Ad Formats
Facebook announced today that it’s reducing the number of available ad products from 27 to less than half that amount over the next six months. One thing that’s on the chopping block is “sponsored stories,” as a standalone product.  The feature will be integrated into other ad offerings, it is not disappearing entirely.

Twitter Strikes Another Big Ad-World Deal With WPP
WPP Group has signed a global strategic partnership with Twitter meant to let WPP take advantage of Twitter data to inform more effective campaigns and enhance ad targeting. The company’s plan is to introduce new data products and services and to integrate Twitter data into WPP media and analytics platforms.

Google Adds Social Features to DoubleClick
Google has finally added new social capabilities to its DoubleClick online display advertising system, even as it faces new questions from the Federal Trade Commission over its growing dominance of the $36B U.S. digital ad market.  Google is incorporating social features made possible by the acquisition of Wildfire.  The new social marketing suite will allow advertisers to plug into the new version of DoubleClick to track the performance of non-paid social media campaigns such as polls and promotions along side display and search campaigns.

Global Social Media

Turkish Twitter Users Arrested
This week, several dozen Turkish Twitter users were arrested for allegedly spreading misinformation and making “libelous” comments on the microblog, as well as “inciting rebellion,” which may or may not refer to simply using Twitter to organize protests against the government. Up to 25 Twitter users have been detained by police, and 13 more are being sought.

Russia Today Hits One Billion Views on YouTube
Russia Today (RT) celebrated reaching one billion views on YouTube this week. The government funded broadcaster, which describes itself as an “autonomous non-profit organization,” launched a YouTube channel in 2007, as since then has delivered a range of video content including documentaries and interview-style programs. Russia Today has an engaged audience on YouTube. Compared to a traditional broadcast audience,  the audience accessing video on YouTube is younger and more technologically progressive. Because of this reason, RT is much more interactive.  Every video posted is meant to provoke a response.

Noteworthy Campaigns

Electric Car Powered by Social Media Rolls Across USA
An electric car fueled by social interaction completed a 1,000 mile journey from Kansas City, MO to Washington, DC yesterday. A group of 17 high schoolers and eight mentors left KC on May 31 in a restored 1967 Karmann Ghia to travel across the country. They were members of Minddrive, an educational non-profit program that uses hands-on projects to teach at-risk kids about math and science. The social good endeavor, dubbed the “social fuel tour,” was about social media and awareness. The car, rebuilt with an Arduino device that monitored social media activity, triggered the vehicle’s motor based on the number of tweets and posts about the project.

Every week we compile lots of interesting stats here at Fanscape. As we approach the middle of the year, we thought we’d share some stats from the first half of this year.  The University of North Carolina posted a blog citing a Brief History of Social Media and for this year they noted:

• YouTube tops one billion monthly users with 4 billion views per day, and launched paid channels to provide content creators with a means of earning revenue.
• Facebook user total climbs to 1.11 billion.
• Twitter has 500 million registered users, with more than 200 million active.
• Apple boasts over 50 billion app downloads
• Yahoo purchase Tumblr blogging-social media network, with 170 million users and 100 million blogs.
• Flickr has 87 million users and stores 8 billion photos, while Instagram has 100 million users storing 4 billion photos.
• LinkedIn has 225 million users, while MySpace has 25 million users.
• Pinterest has 48.7 million users, while WordPress hosts 74 million blogs.
• Dropbox has more than 100 million users with 1 billion files uploaded daily.
• Google+ has 343 million users.
• Reddit has 69.9 million monthly users, with 4.8 billion monthly page views.
• There are 156 million blogs.
• An Australian survey found 34 percent of social network users logged on at work, 13 percent at school, and 18 percent in the car, while 44 percent used social networks in bed, 7 percent in the bathroom, and 6 percent in the toilet.

Compiled by: University of North Carolina

Here are some cool things we read about this past week:

Facebook Launches Verified Accounts
Much like verified accounts on Twitter, verified Facebook pages will now display a small blue check next to their owner’s name. The check mark will also appear beside the profile name in search results, as well as anywhere else on Facebook where it appears. Also just like Twitter, Facebook’s verified status won’t be offered to everyone. They will be available to public figures with large audiences, namely celebrities, government officials, popular brands and some journalists.

Twitter Expands Lists
Twitter announced that its is updating its “List” feature, expanding it so that users can now have up to 1,000 lists with a maximum of 5,000 accounts in each one. In other Twitter news, the microblog is rolling out an ad-retargeting exchange similar to Facebook’s that would let brands retarget people who visit their site with ads on Twitter.

LinkedIn Adds Photo Sharing
LinkedIn has added the ability for users to upload photos, documents and presentations to their status updates. The new capability, which allows users to upload images and other content through the share box on the home page, will roll out to all members over the next few weeks. The sites’ 2.9 million Company Page owners now have the ability to directly upload images and files as well.

Tumblr Adds In-Stream Ads Online
A week after Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo for $1.1 billion, the blogging platform has announced that it will be rolling out its first sponsored web posts next month. These ads will be integrated into users’ streams, which until now on the desktop version of the site have only been populated next to content posted by other users they follow.

BuzzFeed, CNN and YouTube Plan Online Video Channel
This week, BuzzFeed launched “CNN BuzzFeed,” a YouTube channel featuring content from CNN that is designed to be shared via social networks.  The move is part of BuzzFeed’s plan to become a news destination for young adults.

Global Social Media

Social Media Marketing Increasingly Annoying UK Users
Details from a recent study indicate that UK users’ acceptance of ads on social sites is fairly low. Only 5% claim to have clicked on an ad in the past year and less than 1 in 10 feel that targeted advertising is relevant to them. Also, there has recently been an increase in the percentage of respondents who have stopped using social media altogether because they’ve had enough of promotions. The majority of users displayed negative attitudes towards social media marketing (just 10% of Europeans professed to trust social media marketing). 35% of respondents say they regularly hide companies’ updates if they update too often and 1 in 5 claim to have stopped using social media because they fear their information is being shared or used by 3rd party sites.

Noteworthy Campaigns

Taco Bell  Sends Custom Made Rings To Social Savvy Super Fans
Taco Bell sent glitzy, unique rings engraved with special Taco Bell script to eight young women who regularly tweet and post photos on Instagram about all things Taco Bell. The custom-rings were sent to both fans and celebrities including Chrissy Teigen, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Jessica Lu an actress on MTV’s Awkward and Leah Cecil, Miss California 2012. The  handmade gold-wire rings were designed for Taco Bell by an Orange Country, CA based designer (sourced on Etsy). A handwritten note accompanied each ring. Pictures of the rings have been showing up on Twitter and Instagram.

Corona Invites Fans to “Live It, Share It, Win It.”
Crown Imports’ Corona Extra and Corona Light brands are offering fans the opportunity to enhance their summer experience through the “Live it. Share it. Win it.” promotion. Through July 31, Corona fans are encouraged to capture and upload photos enjoying Corona inspired summer activities and tag them on CoronaSummer.com for a chance for their photo to appear in an upcoming ad for the brand. Corona will also be giving away weekly prizes and one of four U.S. Travel package grand prize experiences through codes on specially marked packages of Corona.

Every week we compile lots of interesting stats here at Fanscape. Here are some of our favorites from this past week.

Top Brands on Facebook

Here are the top 10 Food and Beverage brands on Facebook in terms of Likes.

• Coca-Cola – 67,231,518
• Starbucks – 34,665,379
• Oreo – 33,489,216
• McDonalds – 28,857,256
• Skittles – 25,369,743
• Pringles – 24,601,776
• Monster Energy – 23,179,602
• Pepsi – 16,961,880
• Kit Kat – 16,124,172
• Dr. Pepper – 15,376,619

Source: Zoomsphere

Moms

Booze + Millennials

Below is an Infographic created by market research company Scarborough about Millennials and their alcohol consumption habits.  Turns out…  (large file may take a min to load)

• 34% more likely to strive for high social status.
• 44% more likely to like to live a lifestyle that impresses others.
• Overall more likely to drink alternatives to tap water.

Source: Scarborough

I had a great time speaking on a panel this morning at the Sports Social TV Summit. I was a part of a panel discussion with members from the NFL, Turner Sports, Time Warner Cable, the Pac 12 and the Los Angeles Dodgers discussing various topics associated with Social TV.

Below are three clips tied to various questions that I was asked as well as an overview of our recently executed Way2Saturday program.

Way2Saturday & Social TV

Brand Question… Are brands asking for Social TV & second screen solutions?

The final response was from the Q&A session tied to Facebook Targeting

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

I recently attended the first ever Pinterest Partner Marketing Summit in NYC. This invite only event unveiled their emphasis on developing a strong partner program and also served as an opportunity to introduce new staff to the Pinterest partner team, new resources for brands and agencies and best practices to maximize the platform.

There were five primary areas of focus for the event.

1) Why Pinterest
2) Pinterest Interest Graph
3) New product enhancements (Rich Pin & Mobile Pin It)
4) Analytics & Partner Tools
5) Partner case studies & Best Practices

WHY PINTEREST

Ben Silbermann, Pinterest Co-Founder & CEO started the day by telling the story of Pinterest. He discussed his love of collections when he was young… stamps, butterflies, baseball cards, etc… he saw an opportunity as there was not an elegant solution to organize collections online.

He had roots with Google and was enamored by how the search giant was able to so seamlessly focus on enabling search & retrieval across the web. If you know what you are looking for Google provides an ideal platform for search & retrieval.

He actually related Pinterest more to Google & search than to other social channels such as Facebook. With Pinterest people vs. bots are indexing the webs content and organizing them by interests, something that is a bit more subjective but aligns with human behavior.

One of his key points was in defining Pinterests role in discovery of content.

“Discovery on the web is an unsolved problem & massive opportunity” – Ben Silbermann

With Pinterest, people are making discovery possible by organizing the web’s content around interests. This is their key point of differentiation as the platform is about discovery and action.

It was interesting to hear Ben’s story about the roots of Pinterest and it also provided insight into where the platform is going which leads to the Interest Graph.

INTEREST GRAPH

The Pinterest team spent a good bit of time discussing what they coined the Pinterest Interest Graph. An interest graph is an online representation of the specific things in which an individual is interested. And because the focus of Pinterest is based on what people are indexing on the web and then categorizing by interests, the Pinterest Interest Graph is the foundation for their business moving forward.

A key point of differentiation between Facebook’s Social Graph & Pinterest & even Twitters interest graphs are the fact that Interest Graphs are used to create people’s interest networks whereas Facebook and other social networks are organized around an individual’s friends and connections that follow them across the web.

The key to the interest graph for Pinterest is the ability to create personalized experiences that change based on an individuals life stage and interests. The association is less with people and more with things. This may include life events such as marriage, children, etc… and Pinterest hopes that by focusing on interests they are building a sustainable platform that can grow with users over time and continue to provide both utility and relevance based on discovery.

The key to the interest graph from a brand perspective is that a single product can be repined into other areas. As the single object passes across the interest graph across categories you are able to leverage the network of interests and passions vs. pushing a message and see how your product resonates in real time. This leads to driving discoverability by interest as well as distribution and lengthens the shelf life of content as it continually gets repined.

Interest Graph in action for me… I like Robots

PRODUCT ENHANCEMENTS

Pin it Button – the theme that was repeated the most over the course of the event was the focus on the Pin It button. Pinterest reiterated that a strong Pinterest strategy starts with enabling your domain. By enabling and focusing on driving & optimizing pins down to the individual product level are the key to driving more engagement and driving higher referral traffic.

Mobile Pinning – Earlier this week Pinterest launched the ability to integrate the Pin It button into a brands mobile application to further drive discoverability via mobile for both iOS & Android via SDKs. The SDK allows a brands users to create Pinterest content inside the branded app. Currently, this only supports pinning from the web, but the ability to pin local images is on the roadmap as well.

Here is an example of Mobile Pinning in action from the Brit + Co (launch partner) mobile app

Rich Pins – Also tied to this weeks launch was the release of Rich Pins. Pinterest hopes that Rich Pins lead to action and by adding more brand data to a pin tied to products, recipes & movies that more direct attribution and value for brands and users will be apparent. Product pins from a brand can showcase active inventory as well as price & references the source directly from the pin. Recipe Rich Pins allow more data to be added directly to the pin and movie pins offer insight into reviews as well as cast directly from the pin.

Product Pins

Recipe Pins

Movie Pins

Implementation – In order to implement Rich Pins meta tags need to applied to your domain and decide on the type of rich pin you want to apply for. Then once the meta tags have been validated you can apply to get them from Pinterest.

From a brand perspective, this is the first step to further enabling brand content and attribution. Especially the product pins can be of value to further drive action when discovered.

ANALYTICS & PARTNER TOOLS

On March 11th, Pinterest launched their data analytics tool. This was another key discussion point during the course of the event. The analytics tool supports Pinterest’s position to enable a brands .com as the suite focuses on content pinned directly from the .com and focus on how many people are pinning from the website, impressions & reach over time and which pins receive the most repins and who pins them as well as what other content people are pinning alongside them.

This data can be extremely useful when incorporating top pins into tailoring content for the website as well as other social channels. Nordstrom was a presenting brand and the key takeaway from their presentation was their focus on curating pins and using analytics as a driver for surfacing content on their website, e-mail as well as in store. By leveraging Pinterest in this way, Nordstrom claimed increased sell through in stores and online.

Nordstrom Top Pins via .com

Nordstrom in store

Pinterest also rolled out new partner tools starting with a revamped business.pinterest.com as well as a new business blog that will focused on enabling partners and will serve as the location for new product feature announcements. The team also announced that they will soon be providing webinars on best practices to further enable partners.

Unlike Facebook & Twitter, Pinterest is less about working directly with their partner teams and more about enabling the platform to allow brands to maximize their presence.

CASE STUDIES

During the course of the event four brands were represented including Target, Sephora, Nordstroms & Sony Electronics. I have already referenced how Nordstroms is leveraging Pinterest data to drive their content & in-store strategy. Below are a few key points from the Sephora & Sony Electronics presentations.

Sephora

The most compelling elements from the Sephora case study was their laser focus on identifying trends via pins. Their goals were tied to making it easier to pin from Sephora.com, use e-mail to encourage Pinterest engagement and encourage clients to pin their beauty shopping lists.

• Focus on top pins to inform content strategy across channels
• Content goes beyond simple product to incorporate DIY type content
• Testing various types of Pin to Win initiatives that are cross promoted

• Embedded Pinterest across social channels such as Facebook
• Created pinnable e-mails drove significant results including a 60% increase in referral traffic from Pinterest that has not subsided
• Focus on creating a shoppable experience on Pinterest
• Claimed that shoppers are closer to purchase in the path to purchase and stated a statistic of 15x the sales impact vs. Facebook

Sony Electronics

I was most impressed by the work of Sony electronics of the four brands that presented. What I liked about their story is they are not the first brand you think of when you think about the Pinterest platform. They are a manufacturer vs. retailer and their audience is a younger, high tech male group who is not the primary audience of the platform. They had very clearly defined strategy objectives of driving sales, acquisition and brand affinity on the platform and they have leveraged the social power of their internal organization as well as consumers to power their experience.

• Audience (Sony electronics appeal to more than women)
• They curated content that existed, retro products, artist style, influencers who shoot with their cameras etc…
• Launched presence with an employee contest to educate and curate relevant content across the organization
• Drove awareness via the Sony Electronics blog & e-mail
• E-mail is a critical component to their Pinterest strategy, pin, collect, share –> Pinterest focused messages get double the open rate
• Inform their content strategy based on Pins
• Leverage 3rd parties such as Curalate to identify influencers
• Executed innovative programs such as Pin Deals – unlock via 20 pins – flash sale & Pin it to give it – repins = $1 to charity and received 13,000 pins

• Partnered with relevant brands to enter new categories such as Pinterest partnership with American Airlines to enter travel

BEST PRACTICES

The following is a list of best practices that were discussed during the course of the event. This is not a comprehensive best practices list, but does highlight the key points that the Pinterest team & brands represented did speak to repeatedly.

Strategy

• The Pinterest team reiterated that the best Pinterest strategy starts with your domain.
• Remember boards are not destinations, most of the interaction will happen at the Pin level
• Pinnable E-mail is a critical component to a successful Pinterest strategy, enable content to be pinned on the individual content level

Platform

• Add Pin-It Button to domain
• Verify the business with Pinterest
• Enable Domain Analytics
• Activate & Incorporate Rich Pins to create a cleaner connection to inventory and enabling action
• Leverage the Mobile SDK’s to further enable sharing directly from a brands app

Content

• Learn from top pins, timely relevant pins that map to domain are key
• Optimize pins, Sony’s audience preferred product shots while Target’s audience resonates with Lifestyle images
• Short Captions are key, the goal is to tease to promote click through
• Focus on content that will drive repins
• Pin your product along with other inspirational content to boards
• Focus on creating ripples with content vs. “feed stuffing”

Contests

• When it comes to Pin It to Win it type of initiatives, it is important to ensure that there is a variety of content to pin
• A pin from a Pin it to Win it is good, but the focus should be on repins. Repins are the key to successful promotion on the platform

SUMMARY

The first Pinterest partner event was definitely insightful and the event closed with the following points:

1) Discovery on the web is an unsolved problem & massive opportunity
2) People are making discovery possible by organizing the web’s content around interests
3) You can make your business more discoverable by inspiring people to pin

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

Here are some cool things we read about this past week:

Twitter Launches TV Ad Targeting
Twitter, this week, announced Twitter Amplify, a way of bringing real-time video into the site, with initial partners including BBC America, FOX, Fuse and the Weather Channel. Twitter Amplify will be very closely tied to ads and video on the platform. Similarly to what Twitter has already been doing with partners like the NBA where a video also features a link to an ad.  Twitter also announced TV ad targeting, which works like this: an advertiser uses a special dashboard which lets a brand monitor when an ad has aired on TV. Through this, the campaign manager can then send out Promoted Tweets that coordinate with them. They synchronize, using “video fingerprinting technology to automatically detect when and where a brand’s commercials are running on TV, without requiring the advertiser to do any manual tracking.” Twitter is banking on a crucial stat as the leap of faith that this will all work: 64% of mobile users on Twitter use it in front of the TV at home.

YouTube Enables Viewers to Shop Products on Videos
Google is releasing a new ‘channel gadget’ that will aim to shorten the path to purchase and translate video views to sales. The new technology will finally allow brands to sell products through their YouTube Channels. The new ‘shoppable’ videos will allow brands to partner with third party technology providers to allow viewers to click on a product and make a purchase.

Pinterest Launches New Format
Pinterest just got an upgrade that makes it easier for users to gather information by navigating in its site. Instead of exclusively linking back to the original source, pins from certain brands will now display information such as recipes, movie reviews, and price information. Pinterest has partnered with several brands, including eBay, Target, ModCloth, Sony and Netflix to introduce these descriptive pins – being called ‘Rich Pins.’

Twitter Launches Ad That Can Collect Personal Information for Marketers
Twitter announced a new kind of Tweet this week, designed specifically to allow marketers to easily collect information from Twitter users, if they chose to provide it. The format, an expanded Tweet called the “Lead Generation Card,” includes a button that with one click allows the user to provide their name, email address and a Twitter handle to the marketer as a request for a deal, more information or further communication.

Foursquare Debuts ‘Super-Specific’ Search Filters
Foursquare has refined its search capabilities to make it easier for users to look for particular venues. The location-based social network unveiled what it’s calling “super-specific searches” for iOS and Android this week.  Users can filter their searches based on criteria including: ‘I’ve checked in before,’ ‘I haven’t checked in,’ ‘my friends have checked in,’ ‘offering specials,’ ‘open now,’ and ‘I’ve saved.’

Twitter Announces Two-Factor Authentication
Twitter announced a new verification process to protect Twitter accounts. When activated, it means a second step to sign into your account, thus reducing the chances of someone hacking your profile.

Global Social Media

Two Out of Three Aussie Tweens Use Social Media
Even though children below 13 aren’t supposed to be allowed on most social media sites, 67% of Australian ‘tweens’ (ages 8-12) are socializing online. 28% use Skype and 26% use Facebook. 19% of Aussie tweens say they’ve chatted with someone online who they don’t know. 65% of the Australian internet population as a whole uses social networks, with the majority accessing it 5+ times per day.  There is very little information available about U.S. Tween social media.

Noteworthy Campaigns

Cereal Brand Lets Users Decide Ad Endings On Vine
Cereal brand Weetabix launched its latest campaign to promote its new breakfast line, ‘On The Go Breakfast Biscuits,’ using Vine. Weetabix released a Vine video series and asked their Twitter followers to decide the next step, whether to #getup or #hitsnooze, or #getbreakfast or #getout. The campaign produced four Vine videos with each sequence shot live depending on the responses of their Twitter followers. The videos reached over 262k users on Twitter.  Check out one of the Vine’s here.

Brazil’s Sky TV Let’s Subscribers Record Shows by Hashtag
Sky is testing a way for subscribers to record shows via Twitter. The technology generates a Twitter hashtag that works like a record button. The concept is in response to noticing that consumers were turning to Twitter for information about TV shows rather than the schedule programming on Sky’s website. Sky (majority owned by DirectTV) rolled out the service to subscribers this week.  Here’s how it works: Customers register on the Sky website and link their Twitter handles. When customers see @skybrasil tweet about shows they want to record, they retweet and add #skyrec. Sky connects the Twitter handles with the customers home DVRs and automatically record the program.

Every week we compile lots of interesting stats here at Fanscape. Here are some of our favorites from this past week.

Buzz-worthy Numbers

• Google processes 100 billion searches a month
• 50 Billion apps have been downloaded from the iTunes app store
• 75% of smartphones shipped in Q1 2013 use Android
• 100 Hours of Video Are Uploaded to YouTube Every Minute
• Mobile traffic in 2012 was 12X all internet traffic in the year 2000.

Our Math: Visitors on Tumblr Worth $47 Each

Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 billion is one of the biggest purchases of a social networking site since Facebook acquired Instagram for about $1 billion. Yahoo, which still has one of the most visited home pages on the Internet, has struggled to keep up with the rise of social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. By acquiring Tumblr, Yahoo will position itself to compete in a marketplace with an increased emphasis on social networks.

• Based on the Traffic listing from compete.com, Tumblr receives 23.2MM site visitors a month; equating to a value of $47 / unique visitor

Brand Influence on Purchase Decisions Increase with Income Level

Retail incentive marketing company Parago published their annual Shopper Behavior Study for 2013 and here are some of the things they found:

• Price sensitivity is up 75% across all income levels
• Price is 3X more influential on purchase decision than any other criteria
• 58% participate in social media content to receive exclusive rebates
• 8 in 10 people:
• Look for deals before they Shop
• Will drive 10 minutes out of their way for a $10 rebate
• Want rebates online and in-store

Source: Parago

Shopper Marketing Stats: The Death of Retail is Highly Exaggerated

A new study conducted by Nielsen shows that 77% of smartphone users who make a purchase after looking up retail-related information on their device buy in-store.

• 2 in 3 Americans prefer to shop in a store rather than online, Link
• 2 in 3 respondents would be more likely to shop in a store where they receive personal suggestions while shopping (such as nearby deals they might be interested in), and 86% are more likely to shop in-store rather than online if there are in-store only sales prices.
• 3 in 4 respondents would rather receive personalized coupons (such as those based on their purchases) than generic coupons.
• 3 in 4 say they typically make more purchases in a store if they’re in a good mood.
• The least favorite aspects of in-store shopping are dealing with crowds and waiting in the checkout, cited by 74% and 73% of respondents, respectively, as among their top 3 least favorite aspects.
• 62% would find the checkout process more enjoyable if they received personalized coupons based on their purchases.

War Casualty Stats

Usually we reserve this section for Fun Stats. Well, in honor of Memorial Weekend here in the US, we’ve decided to take the fun out and remind ourselves that the price of conflict goes far beyond money.

WAR/CONFLICT                                                         TOTAL DEATHS
Revolutionary War   1775 – 1783                                4,435
Franco-American Naval War    1798 – 1800               20
War of 1812      1812 – 1815                                       2,260
Spanish – American War  1898 – 1899                       2,446
World War I     1917 – 1918                                         116,516
World War II    1941 – 1946                                        405,399
Korean War    1950 – 1953                                          36,574
Cuba Bay of Pigs    1962 – 1962                                 9
Vietnam     1965 – 1975                                               58,209
Persian Gulf War     1990 – 1991                                  382
Kosovo     1999 – 1999                                                1
Operation Endure Freedom – Afghanistan ’01             1,745
Operation Iraqi Freedom     2003 – 2010                      4,420
Operation New Dawn     2010                                       66