I researched a sample of 15 retailers (and a few direct to consumer manufacturers) spanning apparel and accessories, school supplies, computer hardware and software, and ancillary consumer electronics/entertainment categories for the period July 2008 and August 2008, the typical Back To School shopping period. I also looked at online advertising activity for these companies for the same period using our AdRelevance service.

It is worthy to note that Dell and Target are the two heavy hitters on online advertising impressions compared to all others in this sample. Although Amazon and Wal-Mart had significantly fewer online ad impressions than did Dell and Target, Amazon saw huge traffic to its site and Wal-Mart saw significant traffic as well. It seems that Dell has invested proportionately significantly more in online advertising during the BTS period to drive relatively lower traffic to its site than the other retailers.

For other retailers such as Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, OfficeMax and Office Deport, their spend levels and traffic seem proportionate. Does online advertising drive traffic? There is evidence it does, and there are other critical factors that drive online traffic, such as relevancy of retailer to the specific shopping period or need (here BTS), strength of the Brick & Mortar and/or online brand, etc.

Tags: back to school, online advertising, retail

The volatility in the real estate market is concerning, nay alarming, across the board from home-buyers, to lenders, to builders. Moreover, the recent upward trend in home foreclosures has compelled President Bush and the Congress to pass the Housing Bill, which comes as a huge respite to hundreds of thousands of homeowners on the brink of foreclosures and to mortgage lenders who bet heavily on sub-prime mortgages, especially two giants in the game - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now with books full of bad mortgages.

We looked at the trend in visitation across all Web sites within the Real Estate category and mapped it with the movement of the Case-Schiller Home Price Composite-20 Index. While the average price/value of a home in the US has been decreasing since the summer of 2006 (down more than 36 points), we see a significant growth in unique visitors (>11 million) to sites within this category during the same period. With the downward turn in home sales, it is likely that current homeowners may be visiting real estate sites to check their home’s value, keep tabs on interest rates, and keep abreast of other relevant information. Moreover, it is also possible that potential home buyers may be increasingly on the lookout for affordable homes.

The most traffic has been across a few key sites. Realtor.com has historically had the highest number of visitors and continues to do so. Yahoo! Real Estate and MSN Real Estate sites have seen some steady growth in visitors since 2005, while Yahoo! Real Estate has had a sharp rise in visitors since early 2007. Overall, AOL Real Estate has seen a decline in visitors.

While the number of visitors to real estate portals is on the rise, there has been a steep decline in advertising in the “Financial Services, Lender and Home Equity” category since December 2007, as reported by AdRelevance. For instance, in January of 2008, Countrywide Loans was the top advertiser delivering close to 6 billion impressions online, but since February it has maintained fewer than one billion impressions online. Other top contenders in the category (Citi Mortgage, GMAC Mortgage, Bank of America, Wachovia, etc.) have either completely withdrawn or drastically reduced their online advertising in this category, though the category experienced a slight up-tick in July.

It seems like online research content and news sites are drawing a steadily growing audience, but the advertisers are taking a step back with their investments in online advertising. Stay tuned for how the year winds up!

Tags: loan, online advertising, real estate