Here Are 12 Doggone Interesting Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

Thanks to the holidays, there are more digital marketing stats to delve into than usual. We’ve selected 12 of the most interesting numbers from the past seven days. 

1. The Engagement Lab studied digital advertising performances on Cyber Monday and found that the average conversion-to-sale rate was 0.16 percent. That’s a 184 percent increase over the previous before. Last year’s Cyber Monday conversion rate was 0.07 percent, representing a Sunday-to-Monday lift of 49 percent. More than anything, the raw conversion rates—well below even 1 percent—show how hard it is to create an online advertisement that actually gets viewers to click the buy button. 

2. That said, the percentage of lift compared to last year helps explain how Adobe found U.S. Cyber Monday orders totaled nearly $3.1 billion, a one-day Internet record and a 16 percent increase over the same day in 2014. The previous record was set last week on Black Friday, when $2.7 billion worth of goods was purchased.

3. Amazon scooped up 36 percent of all online sales on Cyber Monday, according to Slice Intelligence, an e-commerce data player. 

4. Amazon challenger Jet.com, which launched in July, reportedly brought in $2.7 million in sales on Monday. 

5. With so much noise on the Web, it’s getting more and more difficult to build social-media audiences, but at least one marketer has had a strong month when it comes to Facebook. From Nov. 9 through Dec. 1, toy brand Little Tikes grew its Facebook audience by more than 166,000 fans, according to Engagement Labs (not to be confused with the previously mentioned The Engagement Lab).

6. Pixability looked at the top 100 retailers, per the National Retailer Federation, to forecast YouTube ad spending among big merchants during the holidays. The Boston-based tech company prognosticates that YouTube’s skippable promos, called TrueView, will bring in $41 million this quarter for the Alphabet-owned video giant thanks to gift marketing.

7. Let’s move away from the holidays and into some stuff that’s not so cheery. Ad blocking is costing the digital publishing industry $781 million a year—yet it makes up only a small chunk of the $8.2 billion lost to other problems like bot traffic and content piracy, according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

8. VTech’s current public-relations disaster is one of the scariest holiday marketing tales of all time. The toy seller is reeling after learning that hackers gained access to data for about 6.4 million profiles belonging to children. Read here what marketing experts believe the Hong Kong-based company should do now. 

9. Hey, maybe Google+ ain’t dead after all. On Nov. 26, GlobalWebIndex said one in every four Internet users utilize Google’s social platform at least once a month. 

10. And, maybe Facebook ain’t dead yet with the kids. Forrester Research found that while only 65 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds think the social platform is “cool,” it surprisingly reels more of them in than Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter. Sixty-one percent of tweens and teens said Facebook is the social net they get on most often, per Forrester. Additionally, 47 percent are visiting Facebook more this year than they did in 2014.

11. Few people have been as ubiquitous in the media as Donald Trump has been in recent months, and the front–runner for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday chatted with Periscope users for about 10 minutes. In terms of viewers for his virtual Q&A, Trump’s high-water mark for the livestream was nearly 7,500.

12. Last but not least, on Tuesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan revealed that they plan to give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares over the course of their lifetimes. Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth is about $46.8 billion. The development came in conjunction with the announcement of the birth of their daughter, Max. 

Here Are 12 Doggone Interesting Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week