Finding you the best research
To support the Digital Training Academy we look for examples of interesting research in digital trends from a wide variety of industry sectors. Any research firm, agency or media owner can submit a piece of research for our consideration, and on this page you'll find some of the studies we're currently using to support training in Europe, Asia and North America. If you'd like to submit examples of your work then email them into TheTeam@DigitalStrategyConsulting.com and after an initial review we'll be in touch if we feel they can be used to support learning goals.
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Staggering to reflect on, but half of the UK’s single population are now logging-on to dating sites. That’s the latest finding from web dating specialists Parship who reckon almost eight million Brits tried online dating last year, an increase of around 50% on 2005. The gender balance is pretty even (52 per cent of men vs 48 per cent of women use online dating). Parship’s UK and Ireland director Tony Blin Stoyle sees higher rates among older people: "UK singles, particularly those aged 30 to 40, recognise that as they get older and their social networks become smaller, they need to maximise their opportunities in order to meet a partner. if you rely on traditional routes and wait for a chance encounter with someone special, you could end up waiting a very long time."
Download the Parship Singles Survey UK 2008
The growth of internet access has greater implications than just an additional channel in the communications mix. As people explore the new platforms, they reappraise their use of the old ones, and as audiences swell the market becomes large enough to attract investment in content, entertainment and commerce. This virtuous circle has been fuelling the Digital Networked Society (DNS) and from this research snapshot for the UK market at the end of 2007, it’s clear that Europe’s leading digital economy has entered a new phase is the dynamics of use.
Blogging has moved from the fringes of the web to the mainstream. Over the last few years, collectively audiences have swelled, and this download of data from Digital's friends at NetRatings, you can see the latest traffic numbers for some fo the key blogs and platforms.
What form of advertising works best? That’s a question you’re always asked in the digital marketing industry, and every genre of websites have their own research to help you with the answer. But new insights from the OPA in the US are firming up exactly how much more impact video gives to campaigns, and why placing them inside content-rich destination sites adds further value still.
Central and Eastern Europe's Internet economy grows rapidly, with national online businesses standing shoulder to shoulder with the world's giants. With Internet penetration on the rise and more being spent on online advertising, digital enterprises are set for a new boom - although the pace and scale of these changes vary greatly from country to country. This first edition of the Digital Central and Eastern Europe tracking study draws a picture of the industry today.
Online or virtual communities have fast become the must-have component for every website. Media groups are shifting their strategies, and placing people at the heart of communication rather than at the end of it. Many corporate online strategies are centred around online community: from the eBay trading community, to dating in Match.com, to the child-safe world of Habbo Hotel. The boom in online communities is unstoppable as the internet becomes more deepseated in our day-to-day lives. What is an online community? Which communities are working? Who is benefiting from them today? How do they support your marketing strategy?
How effective is advertising in digital environment? Many asked about it and here is a piece of research which answers this questions. If you would like to know more about how to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of online advertising, not in isolation but as an integrated component of the marketing mix, reading of this study is a must.
The revolution in direct marketing continues as more firms realise the power of search. Search engines account for half the online advertising industry in some countries and theyre changing the nature of customer acquisition marketing forever. Now Central and Eastern Europe are heading towards their tipping points in the growth of search, and with the engines continuing to deliver waves of new products and tools, its clear the growth will not slow down.
Online advertising is changing the nature of marketing. This is happening across the world, but here in Western Europe we're seeing some of the trends that will eventually spread worldwide. The eighth edition of the Digital Europe tracking study provides extended analysis, commentary and deeper insights about how this exciting industry is changing. In our latest podcast feature Richard Eve interviews Danny Meadows-Klue about the study and asks where the industry is today and where it is heading.
Internet communications have become a routine part of the daily lives of most people in the technically advanced countries of Asia, Western Europe and North America. As part of this, online marketing has already become a mainstream part of the media mix. These facts and landmarks we collated for participants on the Digital Training Academies are a summary of the internet and marketing development Academy lectures and are intended to present a few highlights of the immense changes created through this industry.
This report tracks the take-off of online advertising since the mid-nineties and forecasts its rise to become one of the dominant media channels for marketers within the next three years. It predicts online will exceed £2bn in 2007 and quickly consolidate a market share comparable to national newspapers. It outlines some of the key drivers and suggests the role of search will become even greater.
Marketers have become increasingly aware of the implications of a changing media landscape. For example, continuing media fragmentation means that a more complex array of media plans are possible. Given that some media plans will be much more successful than others at engaging with consumers and delivering marketing profitability, marketers want to know how
“Word of mouth” is a hot topic in marketing these days. Indeed, in DoubleClick Touchpoints, their annual survey of online consumers, they have routinely seen respondents select “word of mouth” as a key factor that influences their purchase decisions across most product categories. But, aside from sending your product to your hundred favorite bloggers, how can marketers efficiently spend marketing dollars to influence word of mouth? That was a key question the authors of the report set out to answer in our 2006 DoubleClick Touchpoints IV survey.
The hype about Web 2.0 often obscures the practical benefits of this set of technologies, applications, and concepts. Development teams have begun using Web 2.0 user interface technologies, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and Social Computing features to create sometimes startling consumer applications. But few have yet applied these ideas to enterprise applications in more than trivial ways. When they do, application development professionals will find that Web 2.0 describes the transition of the Internet from flat, static, standalone Web sites into a participative, adaptive, consumer-centric medium. Snappy Web 2.0 user interfaces are the starting point, but capitalizing on Web 2.0 will require Agile development processes and a sharp focus on service creation, application assembly, and community-based development that most IT shops do not employ today. The path to Web 2.0 for enterprise apps won't always be clear, but the technology offers big rewards, including committed customers, more productive employees, and empowered communities that increase the rate of innovation around corporate assets like products and historical data.
Each visitor to a website is at a different stage in their relationship with the brand than the next visitor, and understanding and using this knowledge is critical in getting the best response and generating the highest ROI from your online marketing spend. If a web marketing platform can’t identify the stage in the sales cycle of each visitor, the website will continue to miss golden opportunities at converting and retaining warm prospects and customers. By successfully implementing the concept of RedEye’s e-Loyalty Ladder, you will be able to identify and correctly categorise your web visitors into a segment, and then communicate a highly targeted dialogue with them.
The vast majority of Web sites still use IP-Based server logs to analyse web usage. It is commonly recognised that IP-based tracking systems are the least accurate and so some companies who require more robust MI have turned to cookie based systems. Clients require robust data to enable them to create more profitable customer relationships by getting more customers spending more money, more often. RedEye has developed technology to overcome this problem which also allows them to measure the accuracy of IP and cookie systems by comparing them to a known set of data. The results from those comparisons are published for the first time in 2003. The study is based on analysis of two of the UK’s largest ecommerce web sites, www.asda.com and www.williamhill.co.uk. The results are staggering: The IP-based approach overestimated unique visitors by up to 7.6 times in a single month while a Cookie-based approach overestimated unique users by up to 2.3 times in the same period. 
These studies with The Henley Centre have given rich insights into the way consumers are influenced by what they see online. They paint a picture about the online strategies that create brand loyalty and brand trust and how the internet is changing consumers’ attitudes to brands. There are also insights into what marketers and advertisers can do.
