Thanks to the internet and eCommerce, we now have access to a larger amount of products than ever before. Consumers have become increasingly comfortable in buying online, especially with more and more eCommerce retailers jumping on board with free shipping and ‘one-click ordering’.

It is predicted by eMarketer that the number of U.S. consumers buying online will increase 14.9% to 170.3 million in 2015. Accompanying that, between 8-10% of all queries on Google are shopping related.

One of the issues with online shopping is the paradox of choice. Sometimes too much selection can be downright overwhelming. It’s a problem of which the internet is both a cause and a cure.

So what will the new generation of eCommerce online retailers be offering to make it easier for consumers? The answer is….. ‘Push Shopping’! Push Shopping consists of leveraging eCommerce, online data and expert curation to help consumers make up their minds.

Thanks to digital technology, we can ‘set it and forget it’ – whether it’s using Siri to remind you to get bread and milk on the way home, or paying your phone bill via direct debit. We have grown accustomed to letting our digital products automate our life. So why don’t we utilise this offline? Enter online subscription services. For the man with no time (and presumably no washing machine), ManPacks delivers socks and underwear each month. Guyhaus will cover your shaving cream, toothpaste and deodorant. And for the ladies, Hoseanna will auto-ship lip balm, razors and other essentials.

Personalisation is now expected amongst online shoppers. Based on algorithms, online retailers can suggest products based off your previous shopping habits, interests and likes. In fact, customers who click on a suggestion are 30% more likely to purchase. Subscription sites like Kim Kardashian’s Shoedazzle are great examples of this. When you land on the website, you are asked to complete a quiz that determines your style preferences. They then send you fashion and beauty products each month based on your statistically-determined ‘personal style’.

Overall, Push Shopping could significantly change the way we live our lives. Utilising automation based services, coupled with personalisation, Push Shopping could be the ‘architecture of serendipity’. As human beings living in an ever changing and automated world, Push Shopping could give us the suprise and delight we all crave in getting a gift, and most importantly, a gift that is tailored to what we like.

There are more and more subscription based Push Shopping websites popping up. These subscription sites inject new life into old business models and leverage the best of the web to create new real-world products and experiences.

My guess is that one day we will be able to use online software that tracks our family and friends and suggests Christmas/birthday/valentines gifts based on their recent ‘likes’. We mightn’t even have to worry about sending these gifts to them – postage may also be automated through our favourite sites.

Will you be using Push Shopping soon? Maybe even by next Christmas? It’s anyone’s guess!

This is a question that has, until now, presented potential advertisers with a degree of uncertainty when outlining advertising budgets, invariably stemming from their inability to categorically forecast returns. In essence, I liken advertising expenditure with putting money into a poker machine – sometimes you win, and win big (and yet don’t know how or why) and sometimes, you come out worse for wear.

The Next Big Thing?

While many agree that internet and digital advertising are increasingly forming pivotal channels within any modern marketing mix, TV and other traditional media platforms are by no means completely out-dated.

Increasingly, advertisers are opting to utilise integrated marketing strategies to convey a single message across numerous platforms. In doing so, advertisers attempt to ensure greater message retention, greater exposure and higher frequency with these tactics with an ultimate goal of achieving increased brand/message recall.

We know more and more people are consuming more than one form of media while watching television. Be it their smart phones, tablets or laptops, Australian audiences are moving towards the simultaneous consumption of both passive and interactive media.

So how will advertisers be able to capitalise on this evolving consumer trend?

Enter ‘Social-TV’

Already being pioneered in various countries around the world, the Seven Network, in conjunction with their internet and digital media interest Yahoo!7, are the first to bring such a product to Australia, with a free ‘Social-TV’ app called Fango (follow the link for a video demonstration).

In an official media release, Yahoo!7 have given a sneak peak of what advertisers can expect from this new medium moving forward. Although still in its infancy, Fango promises a renewed sense of audience engagement, placing particular emphasis on garnering and maintaining the attention of users who have become accustomed to the immediacy and interactivity of the internet.

“Fango is the social way to watch TV. It will provide a real-time social forum for fans to connect with each other around their favourite programmes and live media events. They won’t just be watching, they will have the opportunity to participate in real time…”

This means that, during the second set of the aforementioned Australian open quarter final, multitasking audiences can be voting on who is going to win the next point in real time, discussing the commentator’s remarks or even earning points and badges for responding to engaging brand communications!

The Fango platform will potentially open a whole new set of possibilities for media measurement by allowing networks and advertisers to better understand and monitor their consumer base. This will ultimately enable advertisers to drive more engaging, integrated and interactive ‘content moments’ to users within their desired demographic.

And here’s the big news, a huge barrier to entry for has been removed with Yahoo!7 confirming that the Fango will not be locked to the 7 Network. Yahoo!7 plan expand to the other Australian television networks in 2012.

Targeted Brand Building on TV?

Many will have doubted television’s ability to conduct truly interactive, direct response marketing communications; though the advent of Social-TV will definitely go some way to aiding this.

“Fango will have a range of advertising opportunities available connecting advertisers with a highly engaged audience…

“Fango provides a companion experience to connect brands with passionate fans within a social environment in a way not available before. We are working with advertisers to develop new advertising experiences that engage the consumer across multiple devices in a truly integrated way,”

–Yahoo!7 Official press release

TV has been a medium slow to adapt to and effectively co-exist with the ongoing digital marketing boom, and it’s heartening that TV is realising the opportunities and is starting to evolve.

Watch this space!

Now we are starting to see a new generation of start-ups focusing on moving transactions back to local neighborhoods through location-based mobile advertising.

Imagine this….

The Broncos are kicking off at Suncorp Stadium against your favorite team in 1 hour’s time.  Instead of going to eBay and bidding on tickets that won’t arrive until next week, now you can utilise location based apps on your mobile.  These apps allow you to see what is available within your local area, meaning that you may only have to make a short trip down the road to purchase those hallowed footy tickets.

But these apps don’t stop at tickets! You can see garage sales, jobs, real estate properties, restaurants, surfboards and more, all based on where you are located.

Some app development companies have been very specific in what they are targeting. Real Estate start-ups Zillow and Trulia have focused purely on Real Estate listings. Both apps allow users to instantly browse properties nearby and Trulia has noted that the percentage of its online visitors who also used its mobile app was as high as 46% in some US cities.

Another market that is inherently local is the job market. In the US, startup Zaarly is gaining some traction by creating a peer-to-peer job market. Zaarly allows users to state what they want done – bring me a drink, mow my lawn, teach me algebra – and the price they are willing to pay. Users can apply for jobs that appeal to them in their local area.

As advertising shifts local, here are some tips to ensure that your business is ready:

• Crawl before you can walk. If you’re a startup, or you are making your first investment into online marketing, get your backyard right first. Too many companies try to target everything under the sun and forget where their real customers come from.
• Be Specific. If you’re a restaurant, make sure that you’re listed on relevant apps like Urban Spoon etc. Keep an eye on what people are saying about your food. After all, if you’re only down the road from someone and they like your food, you’re likely to get them in your restaurant regularly.
• Target Local Keywords. When it comes to promoting your website, ensure that you are targeting a mixture of generic and local keywords. People are getting savvier and more specific in the way they search. Searchers are less willing to travel far distances.
• Remain Competitively Priced. With everything being at people’s fingertips through online and app-based devices, it’s imperative that your products/services are competitively priced.
• Get Social! Social Media strategies are incredibly effective in breaking down demographics amongst target markets. If your business hasn’t taken advantage of Facebook or Twitter, get in touch with Reload today!

Let us know how your business is ‘going local’.

After that article went live, I was contacted by the Me.dium search team who were keen to hear my thoughts on their new search engine.

The idea behind the me.dium search engine is that it they claim to be the first crowd-powered search engine. According to the team, search results are adjusted to reflect what users are currently browsing.

The idea seems sound. Having search results mediated by recent search trends should in theory create better results. The problem that I can see from my test searches is that unless you are searching for a high-popularity search term, there isn’t enough data to adjust the results based on trends, which mean you get standard search results.

Having said that, if you are looking for the latest “hot spots” on the net for a topical search term, then the me.dium search engine does seem to deliver some reasonably good results.

But to be fair to Google, let’s compare it using the search term I’ve used as a example before, “neon lighting Brisbane.”

In Google:

Of the top ten results 6 of the 10 were actually sites selling neon lights in Brisbane, one was a wikipedia article on Brisbane Tourism, two were informational sites on neon lights and one was my old article where I used ‘neon lighting brisbane’ as an example just like now.

In me.dium:

Top result was my old article, but five out of the ten were for sites actually selling neon lights, one was a wikipedia article, and three were sites that had some relevance to neon lights.

The Verdict:

The natural un-mediated results are not bad in me.dium, and they’re certainly better than Cuil. And when you search using popular terms the crowd-control does step in quite nicely, but realistically I would see no benefit in moving away from Google, especially when most SEO’s believe that Google takes clicking-patterns into consideration as part of their algorithm anyway.

Me.dium currently has over 2 million users who have installed the me.dium toolbar, and those users obviously find it useful but I won’t be switching anytime soon. A very good niche player.

The search engine, called cuil (pronounced “cool”) is an old Irish word for knowledge and is the brainchild of a former Google employee, Anna Patterson.

There are some in the industry who claim that cuil could threaten Google but others are very sceptical.

The engine works on the premise that it returns results based on content relevancy to the search criteria. They claim that this results in better search results for the user. They also claim to have indexed more pages than any other search engine on the net, over 120 billion.

Here’s the problems for Cuil as I see them. For one, the fact that they have gone down the content relevancy path is dangerous because it means that for certain three or four word search phrases, such as “neon lighting brisbane”, sites could theoretically keyword spam and get high listings.

Despite Cuil’s line that they weight content relevancy more heavily, in many cases I found that the sites that were ranking well on a search phrase only mentioned that phrase once on their page and weren’t even on that topic.

For a quick comparison, lets use a Google vs Cuil search for ‘neon lighting brisbane.’

In Google:

Of the top ten results (and let’s face it, that’s all that matters), 6 of the 10 were actually sites selling neon lights in Brisbane, one was a wikipedia article on Brisbane Tourism, two were informational sites on neon lights and one was my old article where I used ‘neon lighting brisbane’ as an example just like now.

In Cuil:

Unfortunately, the results were hopeless. There was one result for a blue light disco (not in Brisbane), a broadway musical in Brisbane, a chrysler site, a blog (who mentioned lighting in passing), a mini jukebox, a site selling computer hardware, a film studio, an electrical transformer store, and two news sites.

The Verdict:

Obviously this is just one example, but try your own searches and you’ll see that quite consistently Cuil generates fairly obscure results with little reference to the search topic.

Now I’m not trying to be too harsh on them, it would be very difficult to spring up overnight and upstage Google but they have a long way to go before they’re even playing in the same league.

Location targeting is a must, as is fixing the logo-like images that appear beside results that are either poorly cropped, pixelated or simply of no relevance to the site they are beside.

But users would probably put up with some of these drawbacks (at least for a while) if Cuil generated more relevant results than Google. However, they don’t really get close.

Don’t write them off just yet, the layout and design is quite nice, but underneath it all you just feel like there isn’t the guts that Google has.