Marketing Daily News

After analyzing 128 companies' policies regarding food marketing to children, nonprofit watchdog Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has issued a "report card" that gives nearly three-quarters (95) of them an "F" grade for not having policies or having "weak" policies.

The study, spanning food/beverage manufacturers, restaurant chains and entertainment/media companies, did not attempt to assess the companies' actual compliance in cases in which marketing-to-kids policies are in place. Instead, last summer, CSPI staff collected information on the existence/nonexistence and content of company policies via telephone interviews, company Web site searches, articles in the Nexis news service and Google keyword searches.

Companies were identified for inclusion based on food marketing expenditures data (including the Federal Trade Commission's 2008 report on marketing to children) and studies of the most often- visited kids' Web sites. Companies from the top 100 food processors and restaurants that market to children, as well as media companies with top-ranking/most popular licensed characters, movie theater chains, kids' TV channels, kids' movies and kids' magazines were included.

All 16 companies that have policies through the Council of Better Business Bureaus' Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) were included (CFBAI's principals include in-school marketing as well as other kids' food marketing). Of the 128 companies analyzed, 87 (68%) were found to have no policy regarding food marketing to children, earning them an automatic "F." Most of these "no policy" companies are restaurant chains or entertainment companies: Just 10 (24%) of the 42 restaurants analyzed and 13 (22%) of the 58 media entities analyzed were found to have policies, versus 18 (64%) of the 28 F&B manufacturers analyzed.

The long list of "no policy" companies includes the owners of restaurant chains Arby's, Chili's, Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar, Church's Chicken, Cheesecake Factory, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Carl's Jr., Hardee's, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Denny's, Applebee's, IHOP, Domino's Pizza, Golden Corral, Jack in the Box, Little Caesar, Panda Express, Panera Bread, Papa John's, Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen, Romano's Macaroni Grill, Home Town Buffet/Old Country Buffet, Sizzler, T.G.I. Friday's, Texas Roadhouse, Waffle House, Wendy's and Whataburger.

However, CSPI's "no policy" list does include some major food and beverage manufacturers, such as McKee Foods Corp. (Little Debbie snack cakes), Pinnacle Foods Group LLC (Aunt Jemima, Lender's, Duncan Hines), Sara Lee Corp., Schwan's Home Service, Inc. and Sunkist Growers, Inc. Eight companies were deemed to have "very weak" or vague policies, also earning them an "F": Bob Evans Farms, Inc., CBS Corp., American Dairy Queen Corp., Discovery Communications, LLP, Mattel, Inc., NBC Universal, Inc., Univision Communications Inc. and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (New Line Cinemas).

No company received an "A." Only one -- Mars, Inc. -- received a "B+," based both on its policy of not marketing to children under 12 and having marketing policies that cover "most of the key media approaches used to reach children, with the exception of on-package marketing and most marketing in high schools," according to CSPI.

One media company (Qubo Venture, LLC) and one food and beverage maker (Procter & Gamble, via its Pringles brand marketing) earned "B" grades. Six were graded "B-": Nestlé USA, Kraft Foods Global, Inc., Cadbury Adams USA, LLC, Hershey Company, Dunkin' Brands and General Mills, Inc. Seventeen companies received a "C."

Those getting a "C+" were Post Foods, PepsiCo, Inc., Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Coca-Cola Company. The "C's" were Walt Disney Company (ABC, Funschool and Pixar), Burger King Corp., Campbell Soup Company., Sesame Workshop, Hostess Brands, Kellogg Company and ConAgra Foods, Inc. (Chef Boyardee, Kid Cuisine and Peter Pan).

The "C-" list includes Unilever (Popsicle, Skippy), Highlights for Children, Inc., Dannon Company, McDonald's USA, LLC, H.J. Heinz Company (Bagel Bites) and Viacom International Inc. (Nickelodeon). (Per CSPI, companies that have a "no advertising to children under 12" policy in addition to Mars, Inc. include Cadbury Adams, Coca-Cola, Dunkin' Brands, Hershey, Highlights for Children, H.J. Heinz Co., Krispy Kreme and P&G. Those with a "no advertising to children under six" include Campbell Soup, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft, Nestlé, Post Foods and Unilever.)

Seven companies were graded "D," including "D+'s" Sunny Delight Beverages Co., Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corp., Cartoon Network and Ruby Tuesday, Inc., and "D's" Doctor's Associates Inc. (Subway), Yum Brands, Inc. (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) and CEC Entertainment Concepts L.P. (Chuck E. Cheese).

The aspects of policies that were analyzed spanned a broad range, including advertising in traditional and digital media, product placements, in-school and other marketing, as well as the nutrition standards applied in marketing policies.

Among all F&B manufacturers with marketing-to-kids policies, 94% had either nutrition standards or no-marketing-to-kids standards. In addition, 50% of restaurants and 46% of entertainment companies with kids' marketing policies had nutrition standards. Among companies with policies, 61% of food manufacturers, 50% of restaurants and 15% of entertainment companies had nutrition standards considered "good" by CSPI, or policies of not marketing food to kids.

"Despite the industry's self-regulatory system, the vast majority of food and entertainment companies have no protections in place for children," said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan, who headed up the study.

Noting that the FTC, together with other federal agencies, is expected to propose a set of nutrition criteria and other standards for foods marketed to children that the FTC "hopes" will be adopted on a voluntary basis once finalized in July, Wootan added that if companies who market food to kids do not adopt the standards voluntarily, "they will be clanging the death knell of their self-regulatory initiative and inviting strong government involvement in food marketing aimed at kids."

CSPI's bottom line, as summarized in its "report card" document (available on its Web site): "In order for self-regulation to result in meaningful change, all food and beverage manufacturers, restaurants and entertainment companies that market to children should adopt a uniform set of nutrition standards and apply them to the full range of their marketing to children. If substantial progress in corporate marketing practices does not occur by Jan. 1, 2012, the federal government should adopt legislation or regulations to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy foods."

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Marketing Daily

As part of a new sweepstakes promoting its chocolate squares, Ghirardelli Chocolate is broadcasting consumer-generated comments about peoples' favorite Ghirardelli "moments" in New York's Times Square, as well as streaming them live on the brand's site.

Fans are being asked to visit the "Million Moments of Timeless Pleasure" sweepstakes site area (ghirardellimoments.com), register and type in a 75-character message about when and where they most enjoy eating Ghirardelli Squares chocolates.

People may register for the sweeps by offering their "moments" any time between now and Oct. 31 (one moment per person per day may be entered), but only comments posted between now and the end of April are eligible for possible broadcasting in Times Square.

"Our customers have told us that there are a million different moments during the day when they reach for our premium chocolate, such as for a burst of energy after a long day or as a special reward after a big success," said Ghirardelli VP, marketing Mona Maher, explaining the creative inspiration for the promotion.

The grand prize for the sweeps is a trip for two to one of four world-famous squares: Times Square, Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, St. Marks Square in Venice or Trafalgar Square in London.

The sweeps also offers thousands of instant-win prizes of bags of chocolate and gift baskets, and one prize of free chocolate for a year.

Simultaneously, Ghirardelli is touring 10 major U.S. cities, distributing one million pieces of Squares chocolate along the way. Consumers can locate the Squares team and follow it on Twitter at @GhirardelliTour.

For more information visit www.mediapost.com

Marketing Daily

To help marketers, agencies and publishers understand how social media is influencing consumer brand perception and purchasing decisions, Knowledge Networks has teamed with MediaPost Communications Inc., the publisher of Marketing Daily and the parent of the Center for Media Research, to launch the "Faces of Social Media," a new, long-term tracking study providing a consumer-centric view of social media's effect on 30 key product categories.

The new syndicated report will track the marketing impact of social media in the general population and on users in five explicit social media segments ranging from "Evangelists" to "Passive Users." Parallels will be drawn from category-specific comparisons with non-users of social media to address the true incremental effect of social media.

"We are helping CMOs and brand managers decide to what degree they should play in social media and how best to target specific audiences," says Simon Kooyman, CEO of Knowledge Networks. "We are painting a more sophisticated picture of social media's influence, showing where and how category consideration and [social media] level of influence intersect."

"While there is a sea of data about social media, little of it speaks to the needs of marketers, who are trying to make specific plans for their categories and brands," adds Chuck Martin, director of MediaPost's Center for Media Research.

The report, which will publish biannual trends, will begin with a report benchmarking what proportion of product category consumers are the highest-potential targets across each of the social media user clusters, how their use of social media is impacting brand perceptions and decisions, how it relates to demographic composition, which social media platforms dominate, and how specific social media features influence the process, how use of social media impacts use of other media, perceived trust of social media information about specific product categories, the influence of "friends" versus "non-friends" on the attitudes of social media users, etc.

To ground the social media/category comparisons, the companies said overall media consumption for each social media segment will accompany the data, as well as a "Social Media Influence Score."

Knowledge Networks is one of the top 15 survey-based consumer research companies in the U.S., and is highly regarded for the quality of its research methods and the representation of its consumer panels.

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Online Media Daily

Those who follow hockey know the deadline for NHL teams to trade players came and went Wednesday. Typically, the day drives the most traffic and unique visitors to the NHL site. But this year, a real-time Twitter feed on the NHL's site produced the most impressive interaction with fans to date.

Michael DiLorenzo, the NHL's director of social media marketing and strategy, calls the number of people -- 1,500 -- who visited the Twitter channel Wednesday on the NHL site "small potatoes," but "significant." Each person on average viewed 8 pages and spent 25 minutes on the site. "That's the type of engagement you get on Facebook," he says.

TweetMixx Channel creates a distribution method for tweets. In December, the NHL became the first in a handful of companies to launch a white-label platform from Mixx that aggregates tweets from Twitter on Web sites and blogs.

While three Twitter feeds provide information, the one with the greatest influence comes from the Insiders' Tab, where tweets stream from influential North American hockey writers. In Canada and the United States, the NHL-related stream on Twitter appeared in the top 10 trending topics. Those tweets feed through the TweetMixx Channel and onto the league's site.

TweetMixx is not the only tool that provides additional content to publishers. AdGent 007 also integrates into Web sites, relying on an API widget that allows brands to integrate online advertising with real-time tweets and Twitter feeds.

Similar to TweetMixx, publishers can use tweetedia to control, manage and filter Twitter streams on sites. The free AdGent tool offers management of featured Twittter feeds. Publishers can use the free tool to support traditional banner advertisements with or without sponsorship. As an ad network, publishers can upload a widget on blogs and other sites.

AdGent 007 splits the revenue with participating bloggers, although the percentage is being worked out. The ads appear in a 300 x 350 dpi box at the bottom of the unit, but hosts don't have a say in the ads that appear in the box. The ads and social media aim to drive the traffic.

The NHL's social media strategy has attracted more hockey fans to the site. When Casie needed quick access via iPhone while at a baby shower to track the U.S. and Canadian game last Sunday, she relied on the NHL Web site for up-to-the-minute reports and scores.

The NHL hopes that kind of loyalty rings through to advertisers. The league hopes to support their TweetMixx Web page with sponsors looking to skin the page. DiLorenzo knew that social media continues to drive traffic to the NHL Web site, but now he has the numbers to back up the claim. "Our playoffs are coming up and we'll see something similar," he says. "Every night you have a couple of mashup games, but they are highly scrutinized and broken down by fans, similar to NFL games."

Statistics published by Facebook on the Gold Medal Hockey game on Sunday reflected the energy and excitement. The U.S. scored in the last 20 seconds after losing 2 to 1. That tie sent the game to overtime, where Canada scored to win.

The Facebook published data points to member status updates that align peaks in the game to reflect that winning point from Canada. Between 2:29 and 2:54 p.m. Pacific time, more than 3.5 million status updates were posted, which is twice the pace of the rest of the day. "When it comes to following NHL players and teams, our fans use social media as a second screen for sharing and amplifying what's happening on the ice," DiLorenzo says.

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Online Media Daily

Gaming companies could be wasting their time (and a lot of money) pouring their efforts into the wrong channels. A study released Tuesday indicates that the core gaming audience has a limited tolerance for messages directly from the publishers of games. In fact, the audience is even suspicious of "expert" reviews (such as those on IGN.com and Gamespot), which they perceive as biased because they are highly commercialized and subsidized by advertising from the publisher.

"The heavy gamer really disregarded the majority of publisher advertising and marketing; their preference was to go to the purest sources they could find," says Ivan Todorov, CEO of Blitz. "One thing that kept coming up in both the study and in the focus group was that they preferred to go to YouTube to watch game-play footage over the marketing or the destination Web sites, or even the content on Gamespot or IGN."

YouTube was an unmediated source, where other gamers had posted game play, that respondents trusted. "They tend to think that publisher content has been touched up, or sweetened up, in post-production to make the graphics look better," says Todorov. "They really prefer peer content." Another outlet that gamers went to for information was Wikipedia -- even before they went to the publisher site -- or sometimes, elsewhere after, avoiding the publisher site.

The top three sources cited as "one of the most important factors" in determining gaming purchases were talking to friends, having friends who played the games, and online peer reviews, with people citing friends as being twice as influential on their decision as expert reviewers. Surprisingly, only a small percentage said social networks were one of the most important factors.

This leads Todorov to conclude that social networks like Facebook are severely under-utilized. "Which really presents a good opportunity for game marketers to really enable those tools and platforms that allow gamers to become influencers," he says. On of the key way of doing this would be incorporating social platforms into game play, such as challenging friends to be high scores, etc.

The study also found that television was one of the biggest drivers of interest in games, but was most effective when featuring actual video of the game, something that Blitz found was often overlooked. Another obvious mistake that gaming marketers make, according to the report, is neglecting to clearly state what is new in a sequel, which can be a key buying-decision-making differential.

In an effort to better understand what types of marketing and what channels influence avid gamers Blitz, a marketing agency that has working with top video game publishers, commissioned Mintel to conduct a study of 1,000 gamers between the ages of 13 and 35 (with a 60/40 split between male and female respondents), supplemented with additional focus groups and research. For the purposes of the study, an avid gamer was one who played a minimum of 7 hours a week on either consoles or portable game devices, and buy at least 9 titles a year. The white paper that resulted, "Pulling the Trigger to Purchase," can be downloaded here.

"While this study focused strictly on the techniques used to market video games, targeting the 'avid gamer' is similar to targeting other key audiences that can act as influencers for brands. These groups help carry the banner for a brand, in a way that can often be perceived as more genuine than the brand pushing the message by itself," says Todorov.

Blitz is an integrated marketing agency that has worked with many video game publishers, including Activision/Blizzard, Atari, Bioware, Eidos, Electronic Arts, Lucas Arts, Midway, Nintendo and Vivendi Games.

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Social Media Adoption Yields New Customers For Small Businesses

The third wave of the Small Business Success Index, by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, reports social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the last year. Small businesses are increasingly investing in applications including blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

Key social media usage highlights (% of respondents)

• 75% surveyed have a company page on a social networking site
• 61% use social media for identi fying and attracting new customers
• 57% have built a network through a site like LinkedIn
• 45% expect social media to be profitable in the next twelve months

Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and Founder of an eye and vision care center, said "... I was forced to consider alternative options to keep my business visible... with a very small investment in social media marketing, I was able to generate new business opportunities... (and) most importantly, my marketing budget has been reduced by more than 80%... "

61% of the respondents use social media to identify new customers. The biggest expectation small business owners have from social media is expanding external marketing and engagement including identifying and attracting new customers, building brand awareness and staying engaged with customers.

50% of small business social media users say it takes more time than expected. While social media adoption has doubled in the last year, ther e are still some roadblocks to small businesses fully exploiting its potential. Another 17% feel that social media gives people a chance to criticize their business on the Internet. Related to this, only 6% feel that social media use has hurt the image of the business more than helped it.

Janet Wagner, director of the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland, says that "Social media levels the playing field for small businesses... "

Other key findings from the December 2009 Small Business Success Index:

Small businesses experience positive effects from the economic downturn:

• 72% have found ways to operate more efficiently (up significantly from 66% in June)
• 47%have been led to find new products and services that benefit customers
• 43% have become better teams as hard times force people to work together

Building online presence continues to be key focus for small businesses:

• Com pany Web sites seem to be the top technology investment in the next two years, with small businesses either adding new features/functionality to their existing Web sites or building one from scratch
• The ability to showcase their products and services online to attract new customers is second in the hierarchy of technology investments
• Social media investments rank third in small business investments to be made in the next two years

Customer service the biggest strength of small business owners:

• Small businesses are highly successful at answering customer questions, ensuring customer satisfaction, showing empathy, providing consistent service, resolving problems and winning repeat business
• Four of the six customer service dimensions have gotten stronger compared to a year ago, and one of these, ensuring customer satisfaction, is significantly higher

Connie Steele, Director at Network Solutions, concludes that "... social media can be the best friend for small business owners who constantly seek new ways to maximize productivity while keeping costs low... "

For more information visit www.mediapost.com

Media Daily

The YouTube team has been brainstorming about ways to improve search. On the home page, videos serve up, algorithmically driven by the person's search habits. But what if the searches tied into the types of videos that friends might watch on social networks?

Considering the genres and videos that friends view across a variety of social networks might become a good indicator for the type of videos the person searching would like to see, too. Better yet, YouTube could push out suggestions based on a combination of preferences.

And while a YouTube spokesperson says these ideas are not a product roadmap for search, they do represent the creative thinking that spawns ideas at Google's video site. One of those ideas that launched in January could represent the future of search on YouTube. The YouTube Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool, dubbed Disco supports Vevo music videos, as well as those from Warner Music and others.

The music tool, Disco -- incubated in TestTube, YouTube's lab for experimental projects -- allows people to search for an artist's name or song in the search box. The person searching can add the returned results into their playlist, or save or delete songs already queued up in the list to play.

"Preliminary data shows the average session time has increased substantially since we launched Disco," the Google spokesperson says.

YouTube is working on bringing additional advertising into the Disco music player. It recently added the ability to buy the songs played through Amazon.com and Apple iTunes. The tool also offers ad overlays that serve up in the first 10 seconds, which YouTube added shortly after the tool's launch. Additional advertising models will emerge in the coming months.

Products like Disco are focused on addressing that problem of search and discovery for music on YouTube. The tool, however, doesn't allow people to type in words, similar to the way you might on google.com, to find a song or artist. Try searching on words to a song in "Disco" and get a bunch of song titles that include the keywords.

Search on YouTube is complicated. The company continually looks for way to make music more discoverable. Most people think visually, rather than by keywords. They might type in "funny video" or "dog walking video." The person knows what they want to find, but it remains unclear how to discover it in YouTube search.

Upgrades to YouTube released Thursday include features in Disco, such as the ability to add videos to the queue. The site allows people to search results within the page while watching a video. Results appear on the right side of the video page, without interrupting the video viewing experience.

Searching and discovering music has become one of YouTube's priorities. Engagement follows, along with getting people to stay longer on the site and never leave.

For more information visit www.mediapost.com

MEDIA DAILY NEWS

Yahoo on Wednesday will announce a global partnership with Twitter to integrate real-time search. As part of Yahoo's Open Strategy to make the Web more open, people will have the ability to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo in their Twitter stream.

The integration follows similar moves by Google and Microsoft Bing, as well as Yahoo's agreement with Facebook in December. The deal allows Facebook users to share content from Yahoo sites with friends, such as comments on Flickr and Yahoo News.

Integrating Facebook and Twitter into Yahoo's sites allows anyone with a Yahoo ID to post status updates to multiple social networks simultaneously. Being signed into the network also lets Yahoo serve up relevant content specific to each person as they travel across news, sports, finance and other properties.

And although Yahoo's announcement Wednesday does not mention how the content in the real-time Twitter tweets will influence paid search or display ads, advertising industry experts expect to see even more changes in ad-serving tactics based on consumer behavior and preference.

The real-time search integration becomes available immediately on Yahoo Search. Other parts of the deal between Yahoo and Twitter are expected to launch later this year, such as the ability to share updates with friends through Yahoo Updates. Other features that will have to wait include updates on Yahoo's media properties Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Sports.

For more information visit www.mediapost.com

MEDIA DAILY NEWS

Twitter plans to launch an advertising platform in about a month, according to Seth Goldstein. The chief executive officer and co-founder of socialmedia.com led a panel Monday focused on the next wave of interactive advertising at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif., that shed light on Twitter's strategy.

Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost following the panel that "we are working on an ad platform, but it's only in the test phase."

During the panel, Banerji presented a chart that demonstrated peaks and the total number of tweets during the Super Bowl. One blue line represents tweets about the game. The red line represents tweets about brands and ads during the game. A spike during the final touchdown of the game corresponds to 50% of tweets on Twitter at that moment.

Twitter sees this sort of user behavior across the site all the time, Banerji said. "People are constantly talking and engaging with brands, sharing their feedback," he explained before the panel transitioned into a question-and-answer session. "What if brands start to participate? What would the chart look like then?"

There's a movement in Twitter to include hash tags in tweets to suggest the messages represent ads. Banerji said when Twitter launches an ad platform, the company will make it "explicitly clear that a sponsor" paid for the ad, and make it "relevant and useful, so the user doesn't think of it as an ad."

Banerji called the hash tag ads a "workaround," for now. Twitter engineers have a better idea what will and won't work, he said.

Goldstein, who also co-chairs the IAB social media committee, coaxed Banerji to share details on the "imminent" Twitter ad platform by asking questions such as "you were at Overture before, so what did you learn from that experience" when it comes to "developing the first search ads you're putting into Twitter?"

"Innovate very, very quickly, before someone innovates on top of you," Banerji said. "And be very, very focused on execution. Just be dedicated to your own roadmap and don't worry so much about what's happening around you."

Goldstein also asked, you will "likely in the next month or so offer Twitter owned and operated ads, perhaps?" to which Banerji replied, "that's right."

Completing the question, Goldstein asked how Twitter will manage that while supporting the ability to let a "thousand flowers bloom around the ecosystem?"

"We don't think of ourselves as a Web site -- essentially it's a platform," Banerji said. "We don't really control the ads or the way the tweets are viewed and then consumed. We are completely open around other people innovating around us. Ultimately, publishers should have choice. But the one area of concern for us -- and that's if bad ads get identified in Twitter -- it's a problem for us in the long term. So, we should do whatever we can to encourage positive behavior."

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MEDIA DAILY NEWS

Taking a page from its 2008 playbook, Visa is updating its "Go World" campaign with ready-made pieces to congratulate the company's sponsored athletes when they win a medal.

"We know through research that the way consumers connect to the games is through the athletes and their stories," Jennifer Bazante, head of global brand marketing for Visa, tells Marketing Daily. "It helps extend the window of the breakthrough moment for the athlete."

As a major sponsor of the games, Visa has already aired three commercials congratulating sponsor athletes. One commercial, celebrating downhill skier Julia Mancuso, animates a drawing the athlete made when she was a little girl depicting her winning medals at the Olympics. "Well, she doesn't have to draw her own posters anymore," says a voiceover from Morgan Freeman, as the video cuts to Mancuso celebrating her triumphant run. (Mancuso won silver in the downhill and super combined events.)

"It helps extend the story line a bit more," Bazante says. "It [also] helps keep the campaign fresh and relevant."

To create the spots, Visa is working closely with Olympics broadcaster NBC to capture moments from the athletes' races. Those moments are dropped into commercials prepared before the games began, Bazante says. The company has then contracted with NBC to run the ads directly after the athlete has been determined as a medalist. In addition to Mancuso's commercial, Visa has already run spots congratulating snowboard cross gold medalist Seth Wescott and Nordic combined silver medalist Johnny Spillane.

Visa first ran a commercial congratulating one of its sponsor athletes in 2008, when Michael Phelps won his eight gold medals during the Beijing games. The spot worked so well with consumers that Visa opted to extend the idea during this year's Olympic games, Bazante says.

"We thought it was interesting to see the performance of these spots in terms of the performance of the campaign," Bazante says. "As people are exposed to multiple spots, the more spots there are [in the pool], the better the performance for the entire campaign."

For more information visit www.mediapost.com

MEDIA DAILY NEWS

Facebook has replaced Yahoo as the second-largest U.S. Web property and is closing in on No. 1 Google, according to the latest data from Web analytics firm Compete. The social network in January drew an audience of nearly 134 million unique visitors, surging past Yahoo's 132 million. Google remained the top site, with a monthly audience of 148 million. (Google overtook Yahoo as No. 1 in Feb. 2008).

ComScore's estimate of Facebook's audience isn't quite as large. Its latest figures show Facebook doubling its audience in 2009 to 112 million, but still ranked fourth behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Compete's methodology includes reliance on a panel of 2 million U.S. Internet users selected as a representative cross-section of the population. ComScore also uses a panel of 2 million, but half its members are outside the U.S.

Both firms have also underscored that user engagement on Facebook has also grown dramatically. Compete found that 11.6% of all time spent online in January was spent on Facebook, compared to 4.25% for Yahoo and 4.1% for Google.

While the time-spent share for those two has been roughly flat in 2009, Facebook's share has more than doubled from about 5%. ComScore reported last month that Facebook made gains in several engagement metrics including average monthly minutes per visitor, jumping 45% from 170 to 247.

The Nielsen Co. on Tuesday came out with an even higher time-spent estimate for Facebook, finding users on average spent just over 7 hours on the site in January, up 10% from December.

That's far more than the average of about 2 hours users spent on Yahoo and Google. While figures from the various Web measurement firms may reveal discrepancies, they all indicate that Facebook continues to grow rapidly both in audience and usage rates. From an advertiser's viewpoint, that translates as improvement in both audience quantity and quality.

Facebook itself announced earlier this month hitting 400 million users worldwide only five months after reaching 300 million. With its growth not confined to the PC-based Web, the company also recently disclosed surpassing 100 million mobile users.

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