Today's NYTimes coverage of the IPhone captured a moment in time. Not only did they cover the debut of a game-changing product, but the newspaper also presented a powerful convergence of at least three different contemporary, that is digital, spheres of business - digital publishing (hint: it's harder than ever), mobile business models in the U.S. (hint: they still don't get it), and the power of PR (hint: companies are swinging harder than ever). Check it out at Project Netpop on Flickr.

I had the opportunity to participate at the New Communications Forum conference and enjoyed hearing about the case studies involving the collection and analysis of social media. Went to a presentation provided by Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora. If only he knew how important Pandora is in our office. We've mashed a few stations together and it keeps everybody happy. If you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend it - www.pandora.com.

My presentation on Netpop was received well and there were excellent follow up questions. That's always the best part. Read the coverage of my keynote - http://www.newcommreview.com/?p=1215 

Netpop is featured in the April issue of Quirk's Marketing Research Review. Our article - "The Role of the Internet in Brand Discovery" - clarifies the new shopping paradigm and how consumers uncover new purchasing options during the buying process. Download the .pdf.

TED 2008 came and went last week with all the laughs, tears and amazing insights one would expect from such an assemblage of inventors, scientists, writers, philosophers and global visionaries. If you haven’t heard of TED, you must visit the TED site and indulge in a few of the TED Talks posted there.

I had the honor of being a TED University professor this year, meaning I presented two very fast (12 minute) “classes” to TEDsters. A whirlwind event indeed! My class, “Tour of the China Web,” combined major themes from our Netpop research (Web 2.0, mobile, self-expression), various websites illustrating those themes, and some actual photos of Bejing taken in December. (Thank you, Grace, for the photos and your help in pulling this together!)

The presentation generated a lot of interest in our China data – particularly among investors/VCs and corporate representatives. One audience member asked whether I believed online advertising was destined to grow at a faster pace in China than other countries. Overall, I do see online advertising growing at a faster pace in China, given the greater interest among Chinese consumers to learn about products and brands online, and the growth of Internet usage in general. At just 3% of overall ad spend in 2007, it grew 48% from 2006 and still has a lot of room for growth. The U.S. online advertising business has been around longer, but is still growing at a healthy clip – around 19% year-over-year, a much faster pace than offline advertising channels. Thus both markets are poised for strong growth but, yes, I do see the China market surpassing the U.S. in growth, engagement and effectiveness overall.

 If anyone is curious to hear more about my TED-U class or the China data in general, I can be reached at cate@media-screen.com.

This must be the month for online shopping. As Netpop highlights the state of online shopping this month, Pew and Neilsen have each come out with their own take on the subject. If you haven’t seen those articles, here’s a quick synopsis:

Pew: Consumers acknowledge the convenience of online shopping, but concerns around placing personal and credit card information on the Web linger. Additionally, many consumers have been confused, frustrated and overwhelmed when researching products online.

Neilsen: The vast majority of Internet users in many countries around the world are shopping online, led by South Korea, the U.K. and Switzerland. (Not to worry: the U.S. is fourth.) Books are the most popular online purchase, followed by apparel, entertainment and travel items.

Our Netpop data offers some perspective on these findings. First, age does have a lot to do with the privacy and security concerns: 78 percent of 45+ are seriously concerned about credit/debit card fraud, versus 62 percent of 13 to 29 year-olds. But the concerns over privacy and safety are a bit of a red herring at this point. In point of fact, the percent who say credit/debit card fraud actually deters them from using the Internet more is dramatically lower: just 31 percent of 45+, and 18 percent of 13 to 29 year-olds. Moreover, while it is always in an e-commerce site’s best interest to use secure servers with all the appropriate icons and consumer reassurances, if an adult of reasonable means in an online market as mature as the U.S. or S. Korea has yet to start shopping online, it is questionable whether he or she will ever be a worthwhile marketing target.

We see the primary barrier to increased online buying to be the less-than-optimal online shopping experiences that we endure from time-to-time. As long as other, more satisfactory, modes of purchasing exist –a big, fun, local consumer electronics store for a new HDTV, the local pharmacy for shampoo, or an expert stock broker for buying mutual funds – the web will have to work harder to increase conversion rates.

But is an online sale the real end-goal? For some e-tailers, it is. But for many brands and retailers, a purchase in a retail store is just as valuable as one online, and seeing the web as somehow in competition with other channels is missing the point. Online research frequently leads to retail sales (28 percent of the time according to Netpop), and offline research can lead to online sales (10 percent of the time).

The real point is that consumers “own” the purchase process now – from initiation, to research and evaluation, to comparison, to decision, and, finally, to purchase. Consumers now have the tools and sources available to browse, dig and compare products to their heart’s content. With such a wealth of information, shoppers had better be ready for some degree of confusion and frustration. In other words, it is really theirs to choose – not necessarily to lose – if they decide to buy retail.

I can’t help but cringe when a site is said to “resemble a portal like Yahoo and AOL." Such is the way News Corp. exec, Peter Chernin, describes MySpace. From MySpace to YourSpace, New York Times.

 A portal-like “contemporary media platform” may make sense for Madison Avenue, but how long will this “contemporary portal” seem so, um, contemporary? I see users of MySpace aging 10 years in a matter of two.

The concept of creating a one-stop portal for the younger set is not indefensible: 13 to 17 year-olds spend 25 percent of time on their home page. This is less time than older users, but a decent chunk nonetheless. If a portal can persuade teens to make MySpace their start page on the Web, and the content from News Corp. is enough to keep them there, they’ll have maintain what is already a very nice ecosystem for online advertising.

But there is a general trend towards greater flexibility and eclecticism in online usage. Forty-six percent of broadband users in this age group (13-17) say they need to use many different sites, up 39 percent since 2006, while the percent saying they prefer to get everything they need from one site (30 percent) remains unchanged from last year. Search engines are the preferred type of start page for younger users, sites that inherently facilitate exploration of the wider Web. Teens are also at ease with multiple browser windows open at one time, multi-tasking on the Web as well as dueling entertainment and communication devices.

Okay true. But one could argue that convenience is never a bad thing. And a site that offers a little bit of everything (a la USA Today) is bound to appeal to a certain target audience. So they'll clean up the somewhat tawdry sides of MySpace, and - boom! - just what conservative advertisers – still fearful of the messy, uncontrollable Web – have been waiting for.

But there goes the brand, and with it, the target eyeballs. Hopefully Slingshot Labs, the newly-announced incubator created by the founders of MySpace, can provide new and cooler online destinations for MySpace refugees.

We've started our analysis of Play data for 2008 and looking forward to getting those reports out next month.

Our investigation of online entertainment was designed this year to break the content away from the device. Content now moves freely across devices large and small, digital and analog, desktop and handheld and consumer research must reflect that. But this blog post is not about Netpop | Play. It's actually about Yahoo! and the fact that this once former high-flyer is reportedly spiraling downward with no hope in sight (NYTimes, 1/11).

Josh and I happen to discuss Yahoo! quite frequently - Is it already a dinosaur? Can it still be a phoenix? I guess I've been the pessimist on this one in part because of the perspective I mentioned above. The media world is all over the place, the things we go online for are all over the place. We need a search engine more than we need a personalized home page. People are getting used to a new mode of media - one that embraces diversification. Everything is here, there and everywhere. Who needs a one-stop shop anymore? That's so simple. That's so 90s. That's so big media. Yahoo! always wanted to be the CBS or ABC of the Internet. The big media brand. It sure worked in the early dot-com days when advertising, even those new-fangled banner ads, were all about the old model anyway.

There is quite a lot of work to be done at Yahoo! to enhance it's image on Madison Avenue and on Main Street. They need to be a brand that makes sense for a new era when online media companies are expected to be the enablers and connectors, not the center-stage. Google may have become the borg, but they've managed to retain their self-effacing, under-the-radar stance quite well. Right now, Yahoo!s brand gets in the way of providing people with a sense that they have autonomous, unfiltered, control of their online experience.

Amid the post-caucus pundit spin (that followed the surprise wins of Obama and Huckabee), came the comment that word-of-mouth did more in Iowa to invigorate these candidates' campaigns than traditional advertising. The implicit point: People are increasingly distrustful of communication in the form of ads.People are listening to friends, family, colleagues more - placing greater weight on personal recommendations when forming their opinions and preferences.

Netpop is showing the same dynamic at work in the way consumers make choices about which movie to go see, which song to download or what new car to buy. The digital-splintering of mass media spurred a trend towards personal autonomy. With a wealth of information now available online, people have a far greater ability to access, analyze and interpret information themselves. If my opinion can be formulated and sharpened by the research I can do myself, then my opinion can be trusted. And the same goes for the opinions of my friends, people I know and trust - people who I know are like me.

So what should the goal of advertising be, aside from raising awareness and reminding everyone that your brand exists? Of course, it's to communicate a message or image, to entertain, engage, and/or be informative. But in the next - "second decade" of digitalization - the influence of traditional advertising will continue its decline, while marketers figure out ways to engage and SHAPE the conversations among consumers, both online and off.

The holidays are over and U.S. online-research-heads are assessing the, er, damage. Entering into the season last Fall, all indicators foretold what we now hear out of comScore:  e-commerce grew a healthy 19 percent this year (good news) but growth is slowing (the glory days have ended), and the growth was even shy of the 20 percent predicted. We see the same trend from our Netpop data with online shopping behavior inching up only slightly from last year. People are shopping more and spending more, but growth is slight. Yes, the glory days are over. Time to head to China and other booming online markets.  (Mobile may offer some growth and excitement for e-commerce in the U.S. but don't hold your breath. Asia and Europe will get there far faster.)

One thing struck me in particular about the reaction to the comScore data: The cynicism over comScore's "overly rosy" reporting of the data.  I tend to agree that the days of illogical "spin" of web market research need to end.  Publicity is good, but we as researchers need to be more insightful.  Enough of the cheerleading.  I can't blame comScore for wanting to promote the good stuff, but as the world goes increasingly global it would be helpful to have the U.S. numbers put in perspective with comparable data from other countries.   Online shopping and advertising are here to stay and their outlooks are far, far better than their analog counterparts. So let's relax and get smart.

Online Holiday Spending Through December 27 Nears $28 Billion,

An article on MSNBC caught my attention this morning:

Advertisers still don't know what surfers want
Disagreement continues over how to best gauge potential to buy

I can only imagine what an Internet/New-Media Marketing Manager is thinking:

"Does the Holy Grail of web metrics exist? Is it even possible to create a Holy Grail?"

Personally, I have a hard time thinking that there will ever be a holy grail to measure ROI. There never has been a perfect system, and the web won't enable one either. It's too complex a marketplace with too many channels that require specific solutions.

Instead of looking for the ONE answer for metrics, marketers have to combine different tools and understand trends rather than specific counts.

Click-stream and other observational data sources work best side-by-side with self-reported data that consumers provide.

The debate over THE source for data is a red herring for conservative companies to justify delaying a greater investment in online sources. The irony of the situation is that those companies will suffer in the end.

Netpop, is based on self-reported data and helps understand "surfers." Our Framework for understanding broadband consumers offers a clear perspective on how to approach them via product vertical, personal interests and a variety of other demographic and psychographic directions. Which is right for your particular product? It depends on what your particular product is.

Which brings us back to the original point. One of the reasons why there will never be ONE solution for measuring the ROI of online advertising is that each product and brand requires a unique strategy for creating effective advertising. Each campaign requires special handling.

Yet, the findings of our Netpop research and what Media-Screen conducts on behalf of clients, reveals a significant gap between user-behavior and the allocation of resources by most companies today. Avoiding online advertising today due to a lack of complete transparency could cost you more than missed opportunities. It may remove your ability to compete effectively tomorrow.