Google maintains its top position for both the parent and brand rankings, while Microsoft (including NineMSN) took out second place in parent companies ranking and NineMSN/MSN ranked second for online brands.

Facebook continues to dominate Australians’ time spent online, accounting for close to eight hours (7:53:32) of the average internet users’ time in March 2010.

YouTube’s time spent online was also on par with some of the major publishers, which Nielsen said demonstrated the level of consumer engagement with online video content.

“While Google and Facebook stand out in the Australian online market as the brands with the most reach and the biggest share of users’ time respectively, it is interesting to see that brands featuring a great deal of locally produced content like Ninemsn and Yahoo7, News Digital Media and Fairfax Media maintain their position amongst the Top 10 in terms of reaching Australians as they have for some time,” comments Matt Bruce, managing director of Nielsen’s online business in Australia.

Australian’s total monthly internet usage peaked at close to one full day in March – according to the report, the average Australian internet user is now spending a total of 23 hours and 58 minutes online per month.

The email marketing study, entitled ‘Retail Email Marketing in Australia,’ involving Australian retailers such as the ABC Shop, Big W, Dick Smith and Myer, found that local retailers are 25% more likely to offer email recipients choices during the opt-in stage than those in the US, but lag behind in offering consumers compelling sale or discount incentives.

However, while 96% of the retailers in the US communicate with their customers via email, only 86% of Aussie retailers surveyed follow suit.

Local retailers are more savvy when it comes to conducting personalised email campaigns, with 35 % offering registrants preference choices during the sign-up process, compared to 28 %o in the US.

Australian retailers also differ when it comes to offering customers discounts – just more than half (56%) incorporate special incentives such as sales and discounts into their email messages, while 68 percent of US retailers enticed recipients with special offers.

“Australian retailers are outpacing those in the US in asking their recipients what they want at the beginning of the relationship, but should be offering similar options to those unsubscribing,” said Jeff Clark, managing director of Engage Digital, Silverpop’s partner in Australia and New Zealand.

“With irrelevancy being the number one reason people unsubscribe from email programs, listening to your customers and delivering the information they specifically ask for, can have a tremendous impact on your program’s effectiveness.”

Research from men’s website AskMen.com has revealed that 92% of Australian men said that online is their first port of call when looking for information on topics such as cars, gadgets, travel, money, fashion, dating and sex.

The survey, put together to celebrate the launch of the AskMen.com site in Australia, reviewed the opinions of around 700 Australian men revealing some key insights into brand and media consumption habits.

Of the men surveyed, 93% said they felt that websites offered them more up-to-date information than magazines or newspapers and that it was important to have access to both local and global information on men’s trends and issues.

Traditional media targeting the male segment has taken a fare battering over the past six months, with Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for the three months to December 2008 showing that of the 16 weekly audited men’s titles, 11 have experienced year-on-year declines of over 10%.

“With traditional print media failing to connect with men, and the financial pressure within organisations seeing many advertisers look to digital, the Australian launch of AskMen.com comes at an optimum time,” said Andrew Cordwell, national sales director, Fox Interactive Media.

In the US in November 2008, Nielsen Online recorded an average of 60 PC sessions per male net user compared with an average of 54 sessions for female users. Average time spent online was 4.4 hours longer for males than females.

Similarly, a Gallup poll found 53% of males spent more than one hour per day online, compared with just 42% of females.

Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer, senior analyst and author of the US report, Men Online explained, “Gender, even more than race or ethnicity, is a distinguishing factor of internet use, informing online behaviour and attitudes. Men spend more time online, conduct more searches on a daily basis and do not mind seeing ads. They are as engaged in social media as women are, and most are not put off by the companies and brands they find there.”

Key findings, in which participants could select up to three preferences, included:

• The top three fashion brands for Aussie men were Bonds (26%), Levis (24%) and Hugo Boss (23%)

• The three brands voted as making the best gadgets were Sony (68%), Apple (66%) and Nokia (41%)

• The most popular beer brands for Aussie men were Corona (30%), Pure Blonde (20%), Heineken (17%), Carlton Draught (16%) and Tooheys (15%)

• Aussie men’s three favourite car brands were BMW (30%), Audi (25%) and Porsche (23%)

• The three cars Australian men most desire are; the Aston Martin DB9 (52%) the Audi R8 (34%) and the Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 (33%)

• The iPhone (61%), Motion Flow 200hz (42%) and the 3D TV (30%) were voted as the best gadgets of 2009

• The three top travel destinations nominated by Australian men were New York (47%) London (33%) and Paris (24%)

• 77% of Australian men don’t think pick-up lines are an effective way of breaking the ice with women, and

• ‘Save for a rainy day’ was nominated the top piece of financial advice with 50% of Australian men in favour of this policy.

The report, aimed at providing an analysis of consumer generated media (CGM) in Australia, shows that CGM has become a mainstream activity for the majority of internet users.

Not only growing infiltration of CGM, but also a deepening of the level of involvement of consumers, with 57% publishing their opinions online in the last year.

More than two in five (41%) published opinions specifically about products, services and brands, and 86% read through the content.

It also suggests a trend that Australia’s corporate marketers should take note of is consumers’ openness to engage with companies and brands through this social media – 23% of online Australians interacted with a company via a social networking site during 2008, while one quarter participated on an organisation’s website by uploading photos/video or placing comments.

The opportunities for companies to make use of social media are certainly there, with more than half of Australians who use social networking (52%) stating companies need to find new ways for consumers to interact with their brands.

The three leading destinations for the majority of CGM participants are Facebook, MySpace and Blogspot, with Flickr, YouTube and Photobucket being the biggest movers in 2008.

While Flickr posted a 14 percentage point increase, and YouTube and Photobucket each recorded 11 percentage point increases, Facebook racked up an impressive 32 percentage point gain on 2007 (see Chart 1 below).

For bloggers, MySpace maintained its lead, with more than one third of bloggers (31%) preferring it over any other site.

The uptake of newcomer Twitter remains slow in Australia, and around half of all Twitter users (44%) have only been using the service since October 2008.

According to the report, newer offerings are mostly being consumed in addition to already established players such as MySpace (see Chart 2 below).

“Australians are adopting CGM with gusto. It’s surprising to see just how involved we are becoming – CGM has certainly burst onto the scene and is now a very real mainstream media in Australia. If companies are not listening to what is being said about their brands and products through this media, they should be,” says Melanie Ingrey, director of market research, Nielsen Online.

Comprising both social networks and blogs, ‘member communities’ are now visited by over two thirds (67%) of the global online population and are growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest online sectors (search, portals, PC software and email), according to the ‘Global Faces and Networked Places’ study.

The findings also indicate that time spent social networking is growing at three times the overall internet rate, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time, and that 35 to 49-year-olds are the fastest adopters of member communities.

Australians’ access of member communities lags a little behind global trends – although social networking and blogging activity was up 4.9% in 2008 to 59.9%, it remained around seven percentage points behind the global average, ranking Australia eighth out of the 10 countries surveyed.

“Social networking is becoming a fundamental part of the global online experience. While already two thirds of the global online population accesses member community sites, the vigorous adoption and migration of time shows no signs of slowing, and in Australia we certainly expect strong growth moving forward to bring us in line with global averages,” says Melanie Ingrey, director of market research for Nielsen Online.

According to the Nielsen report, Facebook is visited by three in every 10 internet users every month across the nine markets in which Nielsen tracks social networking use. Orkut in Brazil has the largest domestic online reach (70%) of any social network in these markets.

In Australia, social networkers spent an average of nearly three hours per month on Facebook, which is up from one hour per month versus the previous year.

The Nielsen report noted, however, that while Facebook has experienced extraordinary subscriber growth, it hasn’t necessarily been accompanied by a similar surge in advertising revenue.

In comparison, MySpace’s slower growth but more entertainment and content oriented offering has attracted more advertisers.

“We felt compelled to analyse the state of the social networking market globally and consider what implications this has for our publisher and advertiser clients,” explains Ingrey.

The ‘Community Engine 2010 Social Media Business Benchmarking Study’ also found that 70% of all Australian businesses intend conducting some form of social media activity this year, compared with just 40% in 2008.

The study, commissioned by social networking technology company Community Engine, found that businesses are moving a significant percentage of marketing budgets out of traditional media into social media – the greatest shifts of budgets were out of print media (47%) and direct marketing (33%).

Unsurprisingly, of the 347 organisations surveyed, many struggled with how to measure return on investment (ROI) in social media, with 29% indicating they had either not measured ROI from their social media activity or did not know how to.

In the SME sector, growth in the uptake of social media has been even stronger – in 2008, just 32% of SMEs used social media, which has more than doubled to 67% in 2010.

More than half of large businesses had allocated funds away from traditional media to fund social media – an example the report points to includes Jetstar’s decision to redeploy 40% of its marketing budget to social media.

Although 26.5% of Australian businesses now have a Facebook presence (17% on Twitter, 10% on YouTube and 5% on MySpace), the study revealed a high level of concern about ownership and control issues around third party social media platforms and their impact on customer relationships.

More than a third of big businesses and 27% of SMEs said they would prefer to create their own social network as an extension of their own website.

Melanie Ingrey, research director of Nielsen’s online division, asserted that Australian organisations cannot afford to overlook social media as an effective means of engaging with their customers and stakeholders.

“In the past year, there has been substantial growth in the number of consumers engaging with companies via social media, up from 23% in 2008 to 38% in 2009,” explained Ingrey.

However, the difficulty of measuring ROI or uncertainty on how to establish KPIs for social media were perceived as barriers to entry by 34% of respondents.

Among big businesses, 42% also said the fact that senior management had not yet ‘bought into’ social media was a barrier to their organisation investing in it.

“The really smart companies are recognising that instead of putting all their social media budgets into the likes of Facebook and MySpace, they should be allocating funds to establishing their own proprietary social networks to provide them with the best possible insights, and a more connected environment with their customers and other stakeholders,” said Community Engine managing director, Piers Hogarth-Scott.

In this day and age, internet marketing is emerging as one of the most viable and cost-effective marketing methodologies especially for small businesses. Here are three easy steps that you can follow for an effective e-marketing plan.

The process of using digital technology in order to sell goods or service is called e-marketing. With the growth of technology and the internet, it has become imperative for businesses to use e-marketing strategies to supplement their traditional marketing methods so as to generate more product sales and to reach a wider market.

E-businesses, though, would generally focus their attention on e-marketing alone. E-marketing uses the same basic concepts as that of traditional marketing. The purpose is to devise strategies in order to deliver your message across to your target market.

The difference with e-marketing lies in the options available to you when marketing and advertising your products, services or business. Of course, you could always use the traditional method, but it is wiser to take advantage of the marketing opportunities that the internet gives.

E-marketing produces tremendous results in terms of increased market share, high margins of profit and continued customer patronage. It is also ideal for small and medium-sized businesses for e-marketing is more affordable and less effort-intensive.

Nevertheless, in order to launch an effective e-marketing campaign, you would first have to create an e-marketing plan. The focus of an e-marketing plan is to ensure high response from prospective customers. Below is a summary of steps for creating an effective e-marketing plan.

Step 1: Determine your target market

Before anything else, you must identify your market. Rank and profile them accordingly and assign resources to each target group. Know their expectations, requirements, needs and wants so that you would have an idea how to go about with your sales pitch. This would also help you in determining your costs and ascertaining your expected benefits. It is also important that you study the market environment and your competitors’ marketing strategies, and give due notice to all possible opportunities.

Step 2: Set e-marketing plan objectives and e-marketing methods

You must immediately set your objectives for your marketing campaign. Are you aiming to increase product or business awareness? Are you aiming for higher website traffic? Would you like to rank high in search engine results? Your objectives may include establishing and raising your e-presence, disseminating business information and sales leads generation.

After determining your objectives, you must establish the e-marketing methods you would use to achieve your objectives. It is not advisable for you to use just one method. It is always wiser to use multiple e-marketing methods.

Step 3: Set a budget and determine your strategies

You should identify the strategies and techniques that you would use to launch your e-marketing campaign. Determine the tactics you would use for implementing your marketing methods. You should formulate strategies that are geared towards capturing your target market’s attention. You must position and differentiate your strategies and establish your priorities.

It is also very important that you carefully budget your expenses, regardless of what objective you have set and what methods you would like to employ. Make sure that your costs will not spiral out of your control. Use the cost/benefit analysis in order to determine an acceptable budget. The benefits should more than compensate for your marketing costs

According to a global Nielsen survey, a significant number of Australians would be willing to pay for quality online content.

The survey polled 27,000 across 54 countries, 500 of which were Australian.

It found that although few consumers had paid for online content previously, 51% said they’d consider paying for online movies, 49% books and 46% professionally produced video (including TV).

With regard to consumer generated content, few would pay – 9% would said they’d pay to view blogs, 16% consumer-generated video and 14% social communities. Although more would consider paying for podcasts (24%), only 19% would do the same for music radio and even fewer – 11% – for news/talk radio.

Pay walls for online news has become contentious since News Corp began making serious noise about pay walls for online news. Only 1% had previously paid for internet-only news, 4% for newspaper content online. 68% of respondents said they would not consider paying for online newspapers in the future and 78% said the same regarding internet-only news sources. A third of the Australians polled were OK with greater advertising supporting online content costs. However, if they were paying for the online content, 75% said there should be no advertising at all. The same number felt their existing subscriptions should cover the online offering.

“Australian consumers have a much higher propensity to pay for content which they know has been professionally produced such as music, movies and games, and an overwhelming majority (74%) say that paid-for content would have to be significantly better than what is currently available for free online before they would consider paying for it,” said Mark Higginson, director of analytics for Nielsen’s online business in Australia.

“On the other hand, content which has been created by fellow consumers such as blogs or videos holds little value, in part due to the extent to which such content is readily available online for free and, as a result, we are seeing fewer instances where consumers are forking out. Consumers’ attitudes to paying for content are still quite fragmented and highlight just how discriminating Internet audiences can be when it comes to different types of content,” noted Higginson. “For anyone providing online content, these are tricky times and monetisation models will have to be flexible – content providers need to look at providing more, not fewer, options to supporting the cost of their content.”