Notes and Thoughts on Grocery 2.0

Just over a year ago, a new website called Hulu.com started showing television episodes from popular series like “The Office”, “Prison Break” and “House M.D.”. The NBC Universal and Fox TV venture was the first to show full episodes on a massive, consistent scale. Currently, the site is hugely popular, ranking as the 6th most watched video site this past September, with more than 142 million streams. That’s more than ESPN (128 million streams), CNN (118 million streams) and MTV Networks (97 million streams), according to Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus. But while online TV viewership continues to soar, traditional TV viewership has tanked.

This past Sunday’s premiere of “24: Redemption” failed to attract former loyal “24” viewers, indexing at 85 when compared to the last full season of “24”, which aired back in 2007. That’s a 15 point drop in loyal viewership. Even more telling is that “24”’s performance propelled Fox to finish first among the top networks.

When Senator John McCain cancelled an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman in September, Letterman’s disappointed remarks drew a web audience of 2 million page views across sites that reported them in the days following the show. The actual show drew a meager 4.25 million viewers.

But this trend is not new. Television viewership has been eroding for years, while scores of people have become even more dependent on the internet for content, entertainment and information. For the first four weeks of the new season, each of the five major broadcast networks was down in total audience, and across the five the decline averaged 11 percent. What’s new is that TV Networks are finally realizing that there’s a lot to learn from the web’s success, and it works both ways.

Television Networks need to combine TV’s branding power with the Web’s targeting and measurability capabilities. Already, cable companies have created a national platform to bring Web advertising techniques to mainstream TV.

Ironically, the device that will help TV become more like the web has been a significant contributor to the derailing of the traditional TV model: the DVR, now in about 28 percent of the nation’s homes. Research shows that people who have DVRs skip through 60 percent to 70 percent of the commercials to which they’re exposed. However, DVR has the ability to store targeted ads aimed at individual households and pause programs while viewers go to an interactive ad and then return to the program, allowing more engagement than traditional television.

TV has a chance to look a lot like the web, with near-limitless content choice and targeted advertising made possible by a digital backbone. That’s why the web, in turn, will become to look more like TV. And it already has. Google and Microsoft are making credible bets on TV as a major new revenue source. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has committed the company to getting 25 percent of its revenue from advertising in a few years, which will require growing the largest video ad channels.

Both Google and Microsoft executives agree that major tenets of the online world will make their way to TV. Advertisers will be able to segment audiences, measure performance in near real time, target specific audiences by demographics and behavior, and, crucially for them, manage inventory by allowing third parties to sell some space. Yet TV’s evolution will not inevitably look like the Web’s.

“One of the greatest enablers of the online world is its open architecture,” says Scott Howe, General Manager at Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Unit. “In the case of TV, it’s a series of proprietary technologies” making it more akin to the hodgepodge of standards and gatekeepers in the mobile world.

Regardless, TV’s growing acknowledgement of the superiority of internet advertising as it now exists is an industry turning point that will greatly affect media planning and buying. The question for advertisers is, when digital can provide all the benefits of telelvision, with greater measurability and targeting, less turn around and waste, at a fraction of the cost, why are you still running 30 second spots?

Rachel

Raley’s Family of Fine Stores to offer online advertising with MyWebGrocer

November 24, 2008, Colchester VT: Raley’s Family of Fine Stores is the latest grocery retailer to join the MyWebGrocer online advertising network. The service will be directly integrated into the MyWebGrocer ecommerce tools that are currently in place at Raley’s.

Raley’s signed on with MyWebGrocer in 2003 launching online grocery shopping. The addition of online advertising is a natural progression for them. A consumer can simply click on an ad and every related product in the retailer’s system is presented to the consumer. With a 47% click to buy ratio, online advertising is not only beneficial to the retailer, it is a value enhancing tool for the consumer. No other grocery ecommerce offering allows for this level of integration directly in the shopping experience.
Raley’s will now be part of the nation’s largest grocery advertising network hosting top advertisers such as Kellogg’s, Florida’s Natural, and General Mills. MyWebGrocer’s targeted online advertising solutions are increasing product sales and brand awareness for retailers across the entire country.
”When we saw the statistics on the value online advertising can bring to Raley’s and our consumers, it was an easy decision to move forward,” explains Paul Gianetto, Sr. Manager, Outside Sales for Raley’s. “This is a win-win offering for everyone involved.”

“Raley’s is a successful and long-time ecommerce partner,” commented Curt Alpeter, Sr. Vice President of Sales at MyWebGrocer. “Adding them to the network and gaining the geographic stores is a major win for MyWebGrocer and the network as a whole.”

About MyWebGrocer:
MyWebGrocer was one of the first to launch online Software as a Service for retail grocers in 1999. MyWebGrocer increases basket size, acquires new customers, retains current customers, and drives revenue in-store and online business for their clients. MyWebGrocer has the largest grocery advertising network in the country covering 85% of the US, earning their clients direct ad revenue. Some of their clients include Shoprite, Lowes Food Stores, Big Y, Food Lion and 90 other leading grocery chains. For more information please visit Mywebgrocer.com or call 1-888-662-2284.

About Raley’s Family of Fine Stores:
Founded in 1935 by Tom Raley, Raley’s Family of Fine Stores is a major grocery chain best known for high quality products, fresh produce and outstanding customer service. Built on strong family traditions, Raley’s continues to be family owned and operated. The company is based in West Sacramento, CA and operates 129 stores in Northern California and Nevada under four banners: Raley’s Supermarkets, Bel Air Markets, Nob Hill Foods and Food Source. For information about Raley’s Family of Fine Stores, please visit www.raleys.com.

Grocery shopping is up in this economy due to eat-at-home versus dining out costs. Consumers still want to feel special when they do shop. There have been articles and surveys telling us that customers don’t want to feel are hurried through the cash lines. They still like human interaction when they shop.

Online Grocery Shopping provides a great channel for this human connection between consumers and your store. Personal shoppers pick orders for your customers. When the order is picked up, they are greeted by the personal shopper who reviews their order and addresses the consumer by name.

So though it may seem in other ecommerce channels that the consumer is never seen by the supplier, the “click-and-mortar” features of Online Grocer Shopping brings a fresh way to connect with your customers.

/Dave

High prices in food and gas breaking your bank? Beat the rise in prices with online grocery. Online grocery shopping enables consumers to find money saving items and to get those items ordered and delivered in a matter of minutes. Some of MyWebGrocer’s clients featuring this service are Shoprite, Lowes Foods, and Big Y.

The price of gas has undoubtedly changed the way consumers make purchases. These changes range from cutting back on discretionary spending, to the way people get their items from store to home. From a Nielsen Global Online Survey, 94% of US consumers are shopping online. In a recent story from RIS Magazine, there has been a shift from in-store shopping to online and is related to sky high fuel costs, “The rising price of gasoline is reflected in American attitudes towards shopping according to a consumer survey released by iCongo and conducted by Harris Interactive. One third (33 percent) of online U.S. adults indicated they are more likely to shop online rather than in-person at a store due to the high price of gasoline.” The amount of gas consumers use traveling to and from the store could be retained by opting for grocery delivery thus saving money on gasoline purchases.

In a response to the economy MyWebGrocer has developed a money saving widget for online user’s to download. Shoprite was the first store to roll out this widget and has seen weekly increases in downloads. Widgets pull content or services from some other place on the Web and in this case a retail grocer’s website. It is a mechanism for portable content, commerce, community and transactions. User’s can download it for their Blogger, TypePad, Pageflakes, Netvibes, Freewebs and iGoogle pages. This allows them to save time and money by receiving their favorite content, information, and services directly on their social networking pages. User’s log on to these pages and the widget will display grocery items that are on sale in their favorite store. From there, the user can click and build their printable online shopping list. Creating a shopping list from items that are on sale will save the end user money. Consumers will always be aware of what is on sale.

Many people spend more time on the job during tough economic times. Interestingly enough, productivity goes up because people work harder to keep their jobs as well as make their companies remain strong. For an employee to spend a few more hours on the job and still get the grocery shopping complete, they will need online grocery shopping. Users can pick up their orders or have them delivered. The minimal service fee is well worth while when you weigh the quality and value of your time. Plus a personal shopper picks all the best items for the consumers so they are not spending time looking for what they need.

Cheers!
-Courtney

When it comes to the search results page, anything in the top 3 positions encourages clicks, the ads in the side panel can have great click through too – as long as they’re above the fold. The ads that drop below, well, let’s hope your competitor’s ads are less targeted than yours.

When someone is browsing a blog, or shopping, does it make a difference to the CTR if the ad is at the top of the page, a skyscraper on the side or that big ol’ 300 x 250 rectangle right in the middle of the page? Yes. Yes it does.

According to Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro, that top of the page placement can make a difference.

“There is brand lift that comes from dominating the top of page. The biggest question for our first study was, how valuable are those top-of-page slots? If you own the organic position, do you need to buy the top sponsored spot? Is there lift by owning both spots? The answer is yes, to both. The lift we saw in most metrics was well into double digits, significant for marketers. You gain a bigger share of mind when you own more top-of-page real estate.”

Owning the top spots in organic and paid search is great. I am a bit wary against the click cannibalism (do you want to pay for a click when you could get it for free?) But that’s another other discussion…

“You lose brand awareness when you’re not there. For generic keywords, even if you have a strong brand in a category, if you’re not in a result set and your competitors are, your position of dominance will start to erode. In fact, we’ve seen people looking for dominant brands in a result set when they weren’t present, and their confidence in both the quality of the search results and the brand position started to erode. Often, it’s the biggest and strongest brands that are the least concerned about their search visibility. This arrogance could wipe them from the consideration set of many prospective buyers.”

Don’t lose your mindshare. Yes, you may have become the generic name for a category, such as Kleenex, but if you’re not owning that top position people are going to notice and wonder why someone else is in your place. Maybe the other brand is better? The consumer doesn’t know, or really much care, but they do know that you’re not where they expected you to be and have now turned their attention to the brand who is.

“Competition on the results page is a good thing. If domination of a results page is good, total domination must be better, right? Well, no, actually. We found more engagement with the top-of-page results when there were a couple of well-known competitors, and engagement led to an overall lift in brand awareness for the test brand. The reason has to do with the intent of the user. If a user is launching a search looking for alternatives to consider in a purchase decision, a results set with only one brand isn’t a very good match to that intent. The user will spend less time considering it, because their confidence is lower. But a results set that brings back two or three well-known brands is a better match, resulting in more engagement. Of course, you’re now competing with those brands, so effective messaging, positioning and landing page strategies become more important. But you already knew that, right?”

Competition is fabulous. We all know this but like to believe that total domination will result in all clicks going to you. It’s possible, but chances are people will search harder to find your competition. Level the playing field and position yourself next to them, just make sure your marketing is on target.

Brand awareness and mindshare have always been a top priority for marketing; but make sure that you position yourself not only in the consumer’s mind, but on their screens as well. With everyone spending more and more time on the internet it is essential that your brand be online too. Improving your online visibility will only prove to be more beneficial as users become technologically savvy.

As people are searching it’s important that they can find you – on Google, Yahoo! or MSN, on blogs and Shopping Applications.

Elise

** Read the full article “Brands On Search: Connecting During Consideration” by Gord Hotchkiss at Search Insider