This post was co-authored with Vinayak Nair and Marty Henningsgard.

When an early snowstorm hit the Northeast on October 29, it left much of the hardest-hit areas in the region crippled without electricity, landline phone service, or fixed-line (i.e. classic web) Internet service as cable lines were brought down by the unseasonably heavy weather. To date, Connecticut residents – among the most affected by the storm – are continuing to endure the outages as restoration efforts go slowly.

With the Internet being a key source of information in emergency situations – as seen in our previous posts on the recent earthquakes that hit the East Coast and Japan – we wondered what impact the loss of power and Internet service had on Connecticut residents. Without the ready means to access the Internet at home, there would evidently be a noticeable change in digital media consumption for the region. To better quantify and understand the implications of the snowstorm on Internet use, comScore analyzed Internet traffic based on browser-based page views in the Connecticut local market in the days leading up to the storm and immediately following it.

Overall Internet Traffic Falls During the Snowstorm
In the chart below, we noted that following October 28, the level of overall (both classic web and mobile) Internet traffic, measured by page views, decreased by 37 percent going into October 30. What is most interesting in this chart, however, is a significant spike of 34 percent in mobile and computer Internet traffic seen on October 27 – two days before the storm itself. A closer look into what caused the spike in traffic revealed that the number of views for pages whose URLs included the key word “weather” increased by 81 percent from the day before (October 26), indicating that people were checking the forecast for the weekend at an unusually high rate.

Reinforcing these findings are data from comScore AdXpose’s aggregate online ad impression volume for the Hartford – New Haven region during the snowstorm. The ad impression data reveal an even steeper decline, with a 41-percent decrease in ad impressions viewed online from the October 28 to October 30.

Despite an Overall Decline in Internet Traffic, Mobile Internet Use Remained Stable
On closer examination, we can see that the overall decline in traffic was caused, unsurprisingly, by a decline in classic web use during the snowstorm. A comparison of classic Internet traffic in the region for the weekend of the snowstorm (October 28-30) reveals a staggering 41 percent decline relative to classic Internet use from the previous weekend (October 21-23).

In contrast, mobile Internet use remained at a relatively stable level, even when compared to the previous weekend. When people across the region lost the ability to access information on their computers, they likely relied on their mobile phones for information.

These data illustrate, once again, how mobile devices are become increasingly indispensable to people in times of emergencies, not just as a communication channel, but also as an alternative method of gathering information via the Internet when fixed line computers are unavailable. Yet, it is important to note that even mobile phones have their technological limitations as devices that rely on power sources to recharge and the availability of wireless signals. In areas where mobile carrier networks were disrupted in Connecticut due to the storm, mobile phones may not have been that much more helpful.

Last week, comScore released a report titled The Effects of the Recession on Brand Loyalty and Buy Down Behavior: 2011 Update, highlighting the results from a 4-year study on consumer purchasing behavior during the most recent U.S. recession. The results of the study indicate that as adverse economic conditions have endured, more consumers are “buying down” in terms of which brands they purchase (in CPG and select product categories). In other words, fewer consumers are buying the brands they “want most”, and instead purchase various brands that are on sale, or even switch to cheaper brands on a regular, ongoing basis. As consumers regularly buy down and in some cases become accustomed to using alternative brands, this phenomenon poses a major threat to premium brand sales and market share.

Multiple large scale studies of past recessions indicate that brands that continued to invest in marketing efforts during recessionary times not only maintained market share during the recession, but actually increased share post-recession. Unfortunately, it is typical for company cutbacks to target advertising budgets, often seen as an expendable cost. This makes it critical for advertisers to get the most for their advertising dollar. Using over 40 years of ad testing experience and research, comScore has identified several strategies that have been successfully used by brands to make the most of limited advertising budgets.

Evaluate Your Ad Strategy and Employ Early-Stage Screening Before Developing Creative

comScore research has shown that there is no positive relationship between the production cost of a television ad and its sales effectiveness. This finding points to the reality that even the most expensive creative efforts are unlikely to salvage an advertising strategy that is off the mark. comScore research shows that strategy evaluation and early-stage screening will almost guarantee that advertising will sell and that precious advertising dollars are not wasted. In a threatening economic environment, these steps have never been more critical. The table below shows that an above average creative strategy leads to an above average execution 70 percent of the time, and has yet to be observed to lead to a below average execution.

Aggressively Utilize 15-Second Television Ads

comScore has done extensive research on 15-second television ads, particularly those paired with a 30-second pool partner. In an analysis of over 300 such pairs, we have found that on average, 15-second spots are approximately three-quarters as strong as their 30-second counterparts. In fact, over 25 percent of the time the 15-second spot is as strong as or stronger than the 30-second spot. With a cost to air of just over half the price of 30-second ads, these shorter spots can often provide greater value per media dollar spent.

In multiple execution plans, abbreviated versions of 30-second ads can also be used to reduce production costs while simultaneously boosting GRPs. However, it is critical that the elements driving the success of the longer ad are understood and retained when creating the 15-second version. In single execution plans, original 15-second ads can be used in place of 30-seconds ads to take advantage of the lower media costs. One note of caution is that 15-second ads may not be appropriate for every situation. They are best when communication can be reduced to a single compelling idea with clear-cut benefits not requiring lengthy explanation or supporting information.

Understand the Persuasive Life of an Ad and Manage the “Wear-Out” of Your Advertising

comScore research has also demonstrated that as money is spent behind an ad, its selling power decreases as a function of GRPs, leading to diminishing sales returns. The chart below illustrates this relationship.

If you know the strength of the ads in your campaign, you can manage refreshment of creative to maximize delivery of selling power. If ads are aired for too long, they lose most of their selling power, and incremental media spend will bring minimal returns. Hence, timely refreshment is critical to optimizing media investment. Ad poolouts are a very cost-effective way to replace ads without producing totally new ads. For example, a published Citrucel case study showed that re-cutting footage from the shoot of a worn down execution not only refreshed the selling strength, it actually resulted in an execution stronger than the original ad.

In contrast, ads are frequently replaced prematurely when there is plenty of power remaining. If you know the starting strength of your ads, you can avoid leaving money on the table by replacing ads too soon. Simulation technology can be used with the known strength of available ads and wear-out learning to optimize the planned media spend and project the likelihood of achieving business objectives.

Take Advantage of Emerging Touch-Points and Synergies

The synergies from use of multiple media (e.g., TV, digital, print, in-store) can often yield the same advertising impact at a reduced expense. As an example, online advertising provides a viable means to effectively reach elusive TV audiences at an attractive cost, as illustrated by the 90/10 budget allocation below. Total GRPs and reach are seen to increase for the same cost relative to a TV only media spend.

It’s also important to know how the different elements of your campaign are working together. Any potential synergies, or negative interactions, can be assessed using a creative pre-testing platform that is designed to test the effectiveness of executions from multiple touchpoints both individually and synergistically. With this knowledge in hand, media spend can be placed behind those combinations yielding the greatest total sales impact.

While television is still a powerful communication medium, our research has shown that a well-integrated campaign can provide a substantial boost in overall effectiveness versus television alone. In the following example, an integrated campaign provided nearly twice the impact of television alone, and strongly reinforced a well-branded message.

Flighting versus Continuous Airing? Don’t Go Dark!

It is a common misconception that running bursts of advertising in periodic waves is an effective way to drive sales. This means that a period of “darkness” follows where no ads or brand messages are being delivered. According to our research, this is not the most effective approach; rather, continuous airing of ads (at lower levels) maintains awareness and keeps brand messages in the market. In our global television validation study, ads with similar levels of persuasive power realized greater share gains over the course of a quarter when utilizing continuous airing versus flighting. If media spending must be reduced, avoid flighting. Continuous spending, even at lower levels, is more effective.

When advertising budgets are under strain, it is important to understand and adhere to principles based on sound research in order to optimize returns on advertising investment. In addition, to improve the odds of success in the current economic environment, marketers must understand how to work under constrained budgets at maximum efficiency. Doing this will involve some initial expenditures, but if chosen wisely, the returns are well worth it.

In case you missed it, we recently released a study showing the first holistic analysis of cross-platform digital media consumption in the U.S., entitled Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits. The study brings together insights from across the comScore mobile suite of products and provides a first look at survey-based behavioral data on tablet use.

In the report, we explore the increasingly fragmented digital media landscape shaped by the widespread adoption of smartphones and entry of tablets and other web-enabled connected devices. As people become increasingly connected through the use of these devices, we are witnessing the transformation of consumers into digital omnivores able to engage seamlessly with a steady stream of digital content across different platforms. Below we will share with you a few key highlights of the broader trends we’re seeing, and tomorrow I’ll be conducting a webinar that will dive deeper into this topic. Below we will share with you a few key highlights of the broader trends we’re seeing, which I also presented at a recent comScore webinar on the topic. You can find the Digital Omnivores webinar presentation here.

Digital Omnivores Are a Global Phenomenon
An analysis of ten selected global markets in August 2011 showed a notable percentage of Internet traffic (measured as browser-based page views) coming from non-computer devices. Singapore led among those markets with more than 7 percent of all Internet traffic in the country coming from smartphones, tablets and other connected devices.

While mobile phones continue to be the main driver of non-computer traffic around the world, it is interesting to see tablets contributing a sizeable amount of traffic for a few mature technological markets. In Canada, tablets drove nearly 40 percent of all non-computer traffic.

Tablets on the Rise, Fueled by iPads
Although tablets have yet to be widely adopted, they already contribute nearly 2 percent of all U.S. Web browsing traffic, driven almost exclusively by the iPad, which currently accounts for more than 97 percent of all tablet traffic. More notably, iPads have also begun to account for a higher share of Internet traffic than iPhones (46.8 percent vs. 42.6 percent of all iOS device traffic), despite accounting for only half of the number of iPhones in use.

iOS Accounts for Largest Share of Connected Devices in Use and Non-Computer Traffic
The iPad significantly contributes to giving iOS the largest share of non-computer devices in use. The pie chart on the left illustrates each platform’s share of devices in use and shows iOS accounting for the highest share at 43.1 percent. The chart to the right shows the share of non-computer digital traffic driven by various platforms and reveals an even stronger position for iOS as it drove nearly 59 percent of non-computer traffic in August 2011 – again, buoyed by the iPad. While the iPad has thus far not seen a substantial competitor in the marketplace, this week’s launch of the Kindle Fire is likely to rapidly change that picture.

Implications for Advertisers and Publishers
These are only a few of the insights contained in our Digital Omnivores report, which you can download here. Advertisers and publishers are often left to wonder what digital media fragmentation means for them. While a multi-platform environment may seem chaotic, complex and difficult to navigate, it is actually presenting opportunities never before thought possible. Each platform represents a unique canvas for media engagement, which provides new opportunities for creativity in advertising. Brands that carry their message effectively across these media touchpoints are best positioned to create long term loyalty and high engagement with their audiences. The digital omnivore is now among us, and learning how to satisfy this complex media appetite is our challenge.

For more information on the webinar we recently presented, please visit Digital Omnivores: Key Insights into Today’s Connected Consumer.

For many brands, Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) has become a de facto standard for calculating advertising return. By separating incremental sales from base sales, MMM quantifies the contributions that each element of the marketing mix makes to the bottom line.

One criticism of MMM is that because its insights aren’t available until after an advertising campaign has run, they are not actionable. In a way, this criticism is a bit disingenuous because MMM is often able to provide general learnings for future media planning and trade deal optimization. But there is some truth to the fact that MMM and media plans (by themselves) often don’t provide reasonably accurate forecasts of future advertising return. This is primarily because the effectiveness of campaigns can vary widely from one to another due to differences in the relative strength of their particular advertising creative. Two campaigns with identical media plans can have vastly different sales outcomes because of differences in the persuasiveness of ads deployed.

To bridge this gap, comScore has worked with its advertising clients and their MMM suppliers to identify whether there is a predictive correlation between creative pre-testing and MMM results. Representing 37 brands within 27 product categories, we examined the results of 231 advertising campaigns and analyzed the relationship between the creative pre-test scores, media spend and subsequent MMM results. The results showed that across the product categories examined, the pre-test and spend data combined were predictive of the MMM outcomes at a compelling 0.90 correlation level (see below chart). This relationship held true within product categories and across individual brands as well.

There are several ways we have seen advertisers use this predictable relationship to their advantage. In one example, instead of using broad category averages as “norms” for comparing the pre-testing scores, some advertisers are setting pretesting goals based on desired sales outcomes. Other advertisers are using this relationship for dynamic allocations of media spend between campaign executions. And still others are using it in the boardroom and executive suite to secure approval for larger media budgets when they have ‘killer’ pre-test scores. Regardless of how it is deployed, this relationship provides enhanced actionability for brands, with the potential to result in real, monetary payoffs that until now were difficult to achieve. The resulting conclusion is that creative pre-testing represents a critical component for optimizing ad spend and maximizing the financial return from advertising investments.

This post was originally published at SearchEngineWatch on 11/14/2011.

In the age of global digital information, news travels remarkably fast. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) launched on September 17th and less than 2 months later, according to OccupyWallStreet.org, the movement has spread to more than 1,500 cities around the world. Similar to this year’s “Arab Spring” the internet has proven to be an integral part of these movements and their evolution. Without Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like, the world at large would never have been able to experience, and participate, in such real-time and visceral fashion. While the protesters, their cause, and their constituency are the obvious beneficiaries of the extensive news and social media coverage, the benefits can echo well beyond the message to the media companies who carry it. Publishers who deliver OWS content benefit from more viewers, more ad sales, and best case scenario, more permanent return viewers. But how many are actually capitalizing on this opportunity?

comScore Search Planner data suggests that an opportunity has been missed by nearly every news or video streaming publisher because they have not utilized paid search to their advantage. Search associated with Occupy Wall Street terms ballooned almost overnight, going from non-existent to more than 300,000 searches in just the final 2 weeks of September, highlighting the market demand for this content. Even more importantly from a marketing perspective, the first 3 weeks of October produced 1.6 million U.S. search visits to websites. Visitors to websites, and of even greater monetary value, video viewers on websites, mean advertising dollars for publishers. And it’s not just the short-term value of the event itself, but the lifetime value of new visitors who return to the site over the long term.

So you can imagine my surprise upon realizing that despite this incredible interest in Occupy Wall Street, publishers have collectively whiffed on capitalizing on paid search. Of those 1.6 million search click-throughs, more than 99% occurred on organic search links. The remaining paid search clicks are going to retailers capitalizing on customized OWS merchandise and the occasional political action group or organized movement associating itself with the cause. But almost none are going to publishers.

If you want to be the go-to destination for real-time video consumption, why wouldn’t you at least take a chance and run some tests associated with paid search advertising on a movement like Occupy Wall Street? Most every search seems related to news and video of the protests, not the purchase of OWS coffee mugs. Large, viral news stories don’t happen every day, but they are opportunities for specific outlets to establish an audience outside of their existing core group. Livestream is the official video streamer down in Zucotti Park; certainly there is an opportunity to introduce new content consumers to their brand. Instead of being lost in the extended collection of organic search links, why not sit alone on top of everything with a message front and center? Pole Position is a good place to start a race. And while paying for those paid search clicks in the immediate term might not pay off, it can be the beginning of a fruitful long-term relationship with that consumer.

OWS paid search notwithstanding, the lesson here is that any emergent news event is an opportunity for news organizations to gather up share of eyeballs with paid search. Because so few companies actually take the time and money to invest in current event paid search, the cost and barrier to entry will be relatively low -- at least until others wise up to the opportunity. It’s time to stop thinking about paid search only as a direct response tool and begin thinking about it for brand-building purposes, especially when the price is right. While the short-term ROI might still tell you you’re in the red, the long-term ROI could tell a much more positive story. The publishers who gather the clicks now might just be making the right investment to develop their news brand for the future.

Each year it seems that discussion of holiday e-commerce shopping revolves around Cyber Monday, the most significant marketing event of the season. The first Monday after Thanksgiving earned its moniker in 2005 as retailers in general – and Shop.org specifically – brought to light the fact that online holiday shopping saw a huge spike in activity on this day. The ostensible explanation for this phenomenon was that as people made their way back into the office after the long holiday weekend, they continued their Black Friday shopping online, but from their work computers with high speed connections. In fact, comScore has observed over the years that approximately half of all online spending occurring on Cyber Monday occurs via work computers.

As the Cyber Monday phenomenon was brought to light, however, there was a common misconception that it was the heaviest online spending day of the year. While comScore always observed a significant increase in spending on this day, online spending typically continued to climb into mid-December with several individual spending days surpassing the Cyber Monday totals.

Since its inception, we have witnessed an extremely strong growth in Cyber Monday spending with sales more than doubling from 2005-2010, with a compound annual growth rate of 16% during that timeframe. 2010 was an especially important year in the history of Cyber Monday as online spending reached $1.028 billion, the first time on record that a single day had eclipsed the $1 billion spending threshold. It also achieved another landmark by finishing as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the first time in history!

We at comScore have spent a lot of time in past holiday seasons dispelling the notion that Cyber Monday was the heaviest online spending day of the year, and just when it seemed that message finally began to sink in, Cyber Monday has a banner year and jumps to the top of the ranking.

Interestingly, from 2005-2007 Cyber Monday wasn’t even close to the top of the ranking, going from the 8th heaviest spending day to 12th to 9th. But in 2008, Cyber Monday’s overall importance in the context of the holiday shopping season began to change as it surged up the ranking to #3. The following year it ranked as the second heaviest spending day, and finally culminated in 2010 assuming the top position for the year.

Many might be wondering what dynamics shifted Cyber Monday’s relative importance to the holiday season, and I suspect that there is a combination of factors at play. The first such factor was the recession that began with the 2008 financial crisis. That year saw retail spending pull back considerably and it was the first and only time in history that online spending growth was actually negative for the holiday season. Retailers resorted to significant discounting during the holiday season to induce consumer spending, and timed much of it to begin on Cyber Monday. The heightened importance of discounts raised overall consumer awareness of Cyber Monday, which I believe has spilled into subsequent years.

The second factor is the number of calendar days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In 2008, Thanksgiving fell five days later than the previous year, creating pent-up consumer demand (since most spending picks up post-Thanksgiving) that likely gave Cyber Monday an additional boost that year. In 2009 and 2010 the number of days between holidays has expanded by one day each year, but the prime shopping season has remained somewhat shorter than average which has likely bolstered Cyber Monday spending.

Finally, I believe that consistent media coverage of Cyber Monday has helped to solidify consumer awareness of the day as an online marketing event over the years. In 2005-2007, the average consumer may only have had a vague understanding of Cyber Monday, whereas today the majority of consumers know what it is and the attractive types of deals they can anticipate. With increased awareness comes increased participation on the part of both retailers and consumers.

For Cyber Monday 2011, I think we will see another big spending day that will fall within the top 3 days of the year. Due to the relatively high number of shopping days between Christmas and New Year’s this year, it is likely that some of the early demand is smoothed out and that several of the days later in the season will contend with Cyber Monday. But I would not be surprised to see it reach a level of $1.2 billion as it once again kicks off the heavy part of the season of online holiday shopping.