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The 2013 Digital Marketer Report is almost here. In anticipation of its release, here’s an excerpt from the online display advertising section: Here’s what marketers and advertisers need in order to lay the groundwork for success in their online advertising campaigns: Solid audience-based data is the foundation for display advertising success. Start with your CRM file and work with the right partners who can best leverage it and enhance your audience definition with robust data assets to create a highly targeted display audience. Actionable, value-based segmentation is a key campaign driver. Value-based segmentation assigns predicted economic values to customer or prospect audience targets – based upon the campaign objective – for the more cost-efficient real time display ad buying. Applying value-based segmentation to an audience according to sound consumer insights and analytics allows for more dynamic and cost-effective display media bidding. Scalability to drive campaign efficiency. You’ve defined your target audience with value-based segments. Now you need to reach that specific audience at scale to maximize campaign efficiency and get the most from your media budget. High-quality creative to drive engagement and conversion. Developing the right audience, targeting parameters and media strategy is only as good as the creative message displayed so the importance of highly relevant, targeted creative cannot be underestimated. Work with a partner who understands your target audience and campaign objectives to develop and deliver the most compelling message. Approaching your online display campaign set up this way will ensure it is built on a solid foundation, greatly increasing the likelihood of your program’s success. Keep in mind that data-driven, audience-based campaigns typically take a little more ramp-up time than more traditional advertising. Sometimes, if companies don’t see results right away, they might change or abandon their strategy too quickly. This new, digital path truly requires a shift in advertiser behavior and thinking. All is not lost if you don’t see results right out of the gate. The systems need time to use the data to target the best audience, hone in on the right media for that audience and bid on it accurately. All of these steps take time but are needed to drive performance. Marketers in the trenches may get comfortable as they start to see results, but they sometimes struggle with getting their senior leadership to accept the longer time frame and keep spending on display programs. Brand advertisers tend to buy into display better than performance-based advertisers because they are used to the time required to create repeated exposure that builds awareness, consideration, favorability and intent. The key takeaway is that you need to go into these campaigns feeling comfortable about the longer timeline required to allow traction and drive the results you seek. Pre-order The 2013 Digital Marketer Report today and be one of the first to get more great data, trends and insights.

In 2013 and beyond, marketers will have to work even harder to gain and maintain position in organic search results. They’ll also need to spend more effectively on paid search ads by knowing how their target customers use search, and by applying insight into their behaviors and attitudes to plan and execute better content and campaigns. Here’s an excerpt on the search landscape from the upcoming 2013 Digital Marketer Report: Five Websites captured 20 percent of all search activity in Q4 2012, while the top 500 captured nearly 50 percent. Expansion to the top 1,000 Websites reached nearly 75 percent, highlighting the challenges for marketers to reach potential customers through search, even for those with a large Web presence. Top five Websites to capture search clicks Websites Domain Q4 2012 – share of search clicks Facebook www.facebook.com 8.48% YouTube www.youtube.com 5.55% Yahoo! www.yahoo.com 2.63% Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org 2.01% Amazon.com www.amazon.com 1.40% Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise Even through paid search, the landscape changes very little — the top 10 Websites captured 16 percent of all paid search clicks, and the top 500 captured 56 percent. Top five Websites to capture paid search clicks Websites Domain Q4 2012 – share of paid search clicks Amazon www.amazon.com 4.19% eBay www.ebay.com 3.46% eHow www.ehow.com 2.44% BestBuy www.bestbuy.com 1.06% Yahoo! Shopping shopping.yahoo.com .85% Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise Breaking through the clutter is key to reaching customers who are in the market for your product and services. Understanding who your ideal customers are can help to focus your search campaigns on these consumers and see greater campaign effectiveness. For more digital consumer insights, pre-order The 2013 Digital Marketer Report today.

With the New Year upon us, many Americans have turned to the Internet to help with their 2013 resolution of losing weight. According to Experian Marketing Services’ data, the most searched for diet was the “Paleo diet” for the week ending January 5, 2013. Searches for diets are one of the more predictable patterns on the Internet, with the high point always being the first of the year, and the low-point being around Thanksgiving week. Marketers can benefit from this trend by understanding and planning around the seasonality of this interest. Other top 10 searches that contained the term diet for last week included popular diets such as the Atkins diet, Gluten Free diet, and the 8-hour diet. Additional top 2013 diet searches included the Cabbage Soup diet, South Beach diet, Shred diet and the HCG diet. The Paleo diet, Gluten Free diet and Shred diet are all new to the top 10 list. Looking back at the same week in 2012 the Dash diet owned the #1 spot, and in 2011 the HCG diet was #1. The actual top overall search term this past week was Paula Deen diet, as she announced that she lost more than 30 pounds after revealing she had diabetes earlier in 2012. Interestingly enough, the term diabetic diet made the top 10 searches for the second straight year. Other trends we noticed include the continued popularity of low carb diets with the Paleo, Atkins, South Beach diets all taking top place in search term data. We’re also seeing the return of a religion based diet (the Jesus diet was popular in 2010) with the Daniel's diet among the top 20 searches in 2013. Many fad diets pop-up this time year usually with a time period attached – 2-day, 17-day or 3-day diets. So who is doing all the searching? Females accounted for 58% of diet searches this past week and households who earn between $30K-60K a year made up the majority of searches with 33%. The states with highest index of diet searches include: Delaware, North Dakota, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Nebraska. For more insights like this please follow us on twitter @ExperianMKT. Learn more about the author, Matt Tatham