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A debt of gratitude to a live richly lived. He left a massive imprint on all of society. Little aspect of technology has not been changed by Steve over the past 40 years.

Steve Jobs at TED

Tags: Steve Jobs

One of the most common questions is for folks to ask “how do I compare with my competitors?”  Could be spend, traffic, conversions, whatever…with the trackability of the internet everyone believes that we have perfect information and competitive insight all the time.

Fact is, it can be incredibly hard to leverage various sources to know definitively how your website metrics might compare with another.  There are rough ways to estimate it, but frankly its all black magic voodoo.  And any of these estimates don’t pass the barest of sniff tests.

To answer the question of “how am I doing” just sent out some very broad Google Analytics comparative stats.  Sort of interesting reading as a rough guideline of how your metrics might measure up. But remember, these are numbers across hundreds of thousands of G.A. websites, across all sorts of industries and nationalities. Draw firm conclusions at your own peril!

• Bounce Rates: US averages a 42% bounce rate, with paid search traffic at the lowest with 41.4% bounce rate (organic search had a 47.9% bounce rate).
• Traffic from direct-to-site is still the largest source with 36.5%.  Search engines (blending organic and paid) accounted for 27% of all traffic.
• Conversion rates in the US average around 1.0% (much lower than our internal averages of between 2% to 5% depending on page type). US did have among the worst-converting goal rates, with Italy, Iceland and even Russia ranking higher in conversion rates.

As a parent with kids at the prime Disney/Nick apogee, it’s always interesting seeing how they are affected by advertising, and how the advertisers try to reach them. Usually they are good with resisting the lure, and we always answer their plea for whatever toy they’ve just seen by saying “That was a really effective ad, wasn’t it”.

Regardless, this cloudmap makes it very clear how vocabulary is strongly leveraged to appeal to stereotypes in both boys and girls. No surprise if you’ve watched more than 5 minutes of Wizards of Waverly Place or Suite Life.

From blog Achilles Effect

Obviously, it’s not hard to tell which side of the word cloud is appealing to little boys or girls.

Tags: advertising, boys, girls

Even Partners can let loose once in awhile. Mark Evans, our resident smart guy and mister numbers, is now flaunting his new look. This of course, gives him a new title: Pimp Daddy In Residence.

Here at Ionic we do things a bit differently from most agencies: hallway debates over Google Analytics tagging methods, discussions on iframe implementations, and the occasional ruby versus python rant.  As an example, for the past several years we’ve been using Marin Software’s excellent paid search management software. It was robust, provided exceptional slicing & [...]

Tags: Art Messal, Google, google analytics, Ionic Media, Marin, MARS, performance marketing, tagging, Tim Brown

In the rush to leverage social media, traditional channels can suffer a backlash. But its important to remember traditional media channels still retain huge market share. They cannot be ignored as the advertising world contemplates a Facebook-centered future.

As consumers we typically don’t think in offline or online terms, as those are antiquated concepts when we are navigating between offline and online invisibly.  So instead here at Ionic Media we tend to look at advertising mediums as Push versus Pull. PUSH CHANNELS –Push channels are traditional broadcast vehicles designed to push your message [...]

Tags: advertising mediums, audience, awareness, brand, broadcast media, campaigns, demand, growth, integration, marketing, offline, online, pull marketing, push marketing, relationship, Social Media

Ionic Media has again been named to the Inc. Magazine list of the fastest growing private companies in the nation! This is our second time in the Inc spotlight, and we couldn’t be prouder of our team and what they’ve helped build. Read more here.

The Barcelona Principles Checklist The magnificent seven will rock your measurement world. Maybe. by Katie Delahaye Paine Editor’s note: Welcome to our Barcelona Summit coverage: For an overview of the Summit, and links to other articles, blogs and photos, see Everything You Need to Know about the Barcelona Summit. For a discussion of what the Barcelona [...]

JUNE 23, 2010 by metricsman Well, the Second European Summit on Measurement held last week in Barcelona has come and gone, but its impact may be felt for some time to come.  The Summit was organized by the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and the Institute for Public Relations.  The [...]