Cross-border, cross-channel marketing is a key theme in this week’s update of digital news from around the world, though our lead story examines how Russian searchers are staying within their borders for this year’s New Year vacation period. Elsewhere: How Singles’ Day did in the US; new Pan-European privacy rules drafted; Latin American opinions on digital video ads; and the state of APAC cross-channel marketing.
New Year travel in Russia
As discussed by Russiansearchmarketing.com, the Russian holiday season’s peak is the first two weeks of January, a period in which people enjoy a 10-day holiday period (and no doubt prefer to escape some of the region’s coldest temperatures). This is apparently accompanied by a surge in travel search in December and January, across hotels, tours and air tickets. The latest figures via Yandex suggest that while domestic travel has traditionally lost out due to the weather, Russia economic downturn has motivated more to travel within the country’s borders.
Notable points from the article include:
- 127,000 monthly searches for “vacations during the New Year”
- 90,000 monthly searches for variations on “New Year in Sochi”
- 50,000 monthly searches for “vacation in January”
- Popularity of warmer resorts – 38,000 searches for “beach vacation”
- Conversely, ski holidays are also popular – 20,000 searches for “Russian ski resorts”
- Popular travel locations include Krasnodar Krai (Southern Russia), Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Crimea
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Singles’ Day CTR in US comparable to Valentine’s Day
Purna Virji, a rep for Bing Ads writing over at Search Engine Land, has revealed the cross-border e-commerce potential of China’s $14.3 billion Singles’ Day sales in the United States. Particularly important to marketers looking to exploit the event are the significant Chinese American populations in places like San Francisco (21%), Honolulu (10%) and Oakland (9%), among others.
While the article guards the numbers on the Y-Axis of its graphs about as closely as you’d expect, the spikes around Singles’ Day terms are undeniable. We are told that CTR increased from 54% percent to 82% on November 11 and 12 – comparable to the effect felt on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Singles’ Day queries on Bing also grew 28% year on year. Meanwhile, 30% of Singles’ Day deals were found to not in fact be deals – their prices not budging before or after the event (in some cases, prices actually went down after Singles’ Day)
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Pan-European data privacy rules draft agreed
A pan-European data privacy agreement four years in the making came one step closer to realisation on Wednesday 16 as the EU agreed on a draft plan for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Directive (DPD). In addition to establishing regulations for how data is handled by private and public organisations, the plan is a concerted push towards a more singular digital market for the 28 member states. The regulations may help ensure more effective prosecution for privacy violations.
An eleventh-hour proposal to define the “age of digital consent” for storage of personal details as 16 (usually 13 in common practice) received incredulous coverage from various outlets. Tech companies would have been obliged to have seek parental consent when collecting details about customers aged 13 to 16 – something they were quick to lobby against (along with child protection bodies, whose work would have obviously been undermined). The new draft allows the member states to opt out of the proposed increase.
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Survey of opinions on digital video ads Latin America
A study by IMS Group and comScore featured on eMarketer has collected common attitudes towards digital video ads in Latin America’s top six markets (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru). There are 121.8 million digital video viewers in Latin America, however, this is not a region that particularly enjoys sticking around for ads – 67% skip them when given the choice.
The survey tells a complex story of exasperation with ads but little desire to pay for content – 53% claim that they would watch more digital videos if ads were absent, though 50% would rather deal with ads if that means they don’t have to pay for content. Just 33% said they would be willing to pay for content if that meant they could get rid of ads on their video content. Nonetheless, 44% claim that digital video ads have motivated them to look for further info on an advertised brand.
The State of APAC cross-channel marketing
Over on Econsultancy, there is a write-up of a roundtable focused on cross-channel marketing at the recent Digital Cream Singapore event and it contains some useful insights into some of the key marketing issues in APAC. Points discussed included the range of channels – beyond social, web, search, display some traditional print and event avenues were mentioned, along with the difference in popularity of some platforms (Facebook is more useful in Indonesia than Singapore).
Given the scale issues inherent in such a diversity of channels, the roundtable made the case that topical content topics should be selected and repurposed across channel. They additionally stressed the importance of data capture via each of these channels and the fact that this can then be applied to sales efforts.
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Image credits
Prime Christmas fir in Russia photo by Flickr user kishjar
Red vs Blue photo by Flickr user Robert Couse-Baker
Fundamental Right photo by Flickr user Wrote
Pontao Brailia photo by Flickr user Carlos Cunha