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May 2007

Experian acquires Hitwise
Experian announced on April 19, 2007, that it has acquired Hitwise, a leading Internet marketing intelligence company, which helps clients monitor the performance of their websites and target their online advertising spend more effectively.   [ more ]

MySpace Driving More Retail Traffic than MSN Search
From a recent article at techcrunch.com, Experian’s Hitwise findings indicate that MySpace sent more US traffic to online retail sites in the previous week than MSN search, the third largest search engine on the web. That’s big news, as it’s tangible evidence that youth oriented online social networking is a market driver of serious proportions.   [ more ]

Looking Beyond the Mall: Retail Cluster Research from Experian
Most commercial databases listing shopping centers and shopping malls have between 25,000 and 50,000 entries. That may sound a lot, but our research suggests that for many retailers, the smaller and often less formal clusters of stores that get left out can be just as promising places to locate.   [ more ]

Micromarketer Generation3 wins ESRI New Partner of the Year Award
Experian Business Strategies team are in the spotlight for winning the special New Partner of the Year Award from ESRI, a company that designs and develops the world's leading geographic information system (GIS) technology and mapping software.   [ more ]

ICSC Convention in Las Vegas
Please visit us May 20-22 at the ICSC Convention in Las Vegas. Stop by our booth 257 and register to win a Navman GPS pedometer. Ask for a demonstration of any of our solutions or attend one of our information sessions.   [ more ]

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Experian acquires Hitwise

Experian added Internet marketing intelligence to our client offerings recently when we acquired Hitwise, which helps clients monitor their website performance and better target online marketing spend.

Founded in 1998, Hitwise collects and aggregates information from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on how over 25 million consumers use and search the Internet in the US, UK, Australia and other countries in Asia Pacific.  Using proprietary technology, Hitwise reports on nearly a million websites each day and sells this information to companies who market their services online. 

The data allows companies to benchmark their websites against competitors in terms of visitor market share, visitor profiles and time spent on sites.  It also helps companies to determine which are the best websites on which to advertise, which search engines drive traffic to their sites and which key words are most effective.

The data excludes personally identifiable information and is instead aggregated into broad segments. Going forward, the data will be coded into Experian Business Strategies’ Mosaic socio-demographic types and groups – ideal for all our clients who are already Mosaic users – as well as other existing classifications.

Mosaic USA classifies all neighborhoods, postal codes and U.S. households into 60 unique Mosaic types and 12 groupings that share similar demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.  This unique connection between households and geography already enables ‘real world’ marketers to effortlessly utilize targeted segments across all stages of analysis, planning and execution. By now taking Mosaic into the on-line world, we will be able to provide clients with a vastly richer understanding of the behavior of their customers and prospects. That in turn will enrich all of our retail location and real estate analysis, and help us to better predict future returns on ‘bricks and mortar’ investment.

To find out more about Hitwise, Mosaic and our Prediction services, please contact our VP of Sales, Debbie Diot at debbie.diot@experian.com or 972-874-5858 x12.

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MySpace driving more retail traffic than MSN search

From a recent article at techcrunch.com, Experian’s Hitwise findings indicate that MySpace sent more US traffic to online retail sites in the previous week than MSN search, the third largest search engine on the web. That’s big news, as it’s tangible evidence that youth oriented online social networking is a market driver of serious proportions.

Search related advertising last year was a $5 billion market, still small compared to $22 billion in magazines and $74 billion for TV advertising - but the landscape is changing. The Financial Times ran an article recently about the belief that the shortage of marketers skilled in negotiating sites like MySpace and YouTube is one of the biggest barriers to the growth of advertising online.

Even in the short term, it’s still up in the air between the big players. Google’s advertising, which is generally believed to be more effective than that of competitors, hasn’t kicked in at MySpace yet. If Google can make MySpace search more bearable when it takes over in the fourth quarter of this year, then you can expect MySpace to drive more traffic to retail sites than ever.

Perhaps more important to our readers, the numbers go some distance towards proving that young people using social networking sites are interested in shopping through links on those sites. In fact, they’re more of a force to reckon with than MSN searchers apparently. And social networking sites can profit from on site advertising just like search engines can.

In Experian Business Strategies, one of the key retail issues that we are currently examining is the link between bricks-and-mortar retailing and on-line shopping – do they compete with or reinforce one another, both generally and at the level of the individual brand? This new evidence of the importance of social networking sites introduces a whole new element to that debate. If you would like us to share some thoughts on the subject, please contact our Director of Marketing, Sheila Sheley at sheila.sheley@experian.com  who will be happy to arrange a consultation with you.

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Looking Beyond the Mall: Retail Cluster Data for Experian

Most commercial databases listing shopping centers and shopping malls have between 25,000 and 50,000 entries. These data represent all of the larger shopping centers in the United States and many smaller centers. If you are looking for major retailers in the US, then you will probably find them here. But a question that has been troubling us – and a lot of our clients – is what might be left out. There are two angles: 

  1. Many retailers today are not located in shopping centers but rather appear as freestanding businesses in retail “strips” or clusters.
  2. Many shopping centers, especially strip centers of 3-5 stores, don’t appear in any database.

How important are these retail clusters and small strip centers? We reckon that roughly 90% of all retail activity takes place in these retail areas, not in the traditional centers and malls. Hundreds of major retailers such as chain restaurants, convenience stores, pharmacies, and many others are likely to be found here, as well as in shopping centers.

Our research of all shopping areas in the United States showed that retail activity takes place in:

  • 15,000 to 20,000 “large” malls and shopping centers (with 50,000+ square feet)
  • 25,000 to 35,000 smaller centers (with 6-12 stores and 15,000 to 50,000 square feet)
  • 750,000 very small strip centers and retail areas ranging from busy commercial areas with 25-50 retail businesses per square mile to rural or edge areas with 10-15 retail businesses per square mile.

We believe that most retailers today need to understand and have access to the entire retail landscape, including all retail areas – recognizing that many of today’s “retail areas” will evolve into tomorrow’s shopping centers. And we are looking at how to identify and analyze those locations. If this is an issue that interests you, please contact our VP of Sales, Debbie Diot at debbie.diot@experian.com or 972-874-5858 x12.

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Micromarketer Generation3 wins ESRI New Partner of the Year Award

Experian Business Strategies is in the spotlight for winning the special New Partner of the Year Award from ESRI, a company that designs and develops the world's leading geographic information system (GIS) technology and mapping software. ESRI has more than 300,000 clients and 1,400 business partners operating in 90 countries across the globe. Our Micromarketer Generation3 product was the driving force that distinguished Experian Business Strategies from other organizations.

Each year, ESRI honors companies with New Partner of the Year Awards to recognize businesses that have been an ESRI partner for less than two years and who have achieved strong sales, business growth, innovative product marketing, developed a new market area from specialized knowledge and expertise or other acts of excellence.

At a recent gala event in Palm Springs, ESRI bestowed its New Partner of the Year Award on Experian Business Strategies. Gavin Digby, Micromarketer Generation3 Product Manager, accepted the award on the company's behalf.

Over the past 18 months, Experian Business Strategies has developed the third generation of our market-leading Micromarketer product, now based on ArcGIS technology. MicromarketerG3 (MMG3) is an integrated geographic analysis tool that provides customer profiling, trade area definition, sales territory analysis, data modeling, mapping and visualization in an easy-to-use software application. MMG3 was released in 2006 and has been very well received by clients. More that 500 existing Micromarketer clients and many news ones across the world are expected to be using MMG3 by the end of 2007.

To find out more about the capabilities of MicromarketerG3 and how it can help your business, please contact our VP of Sales, Debbie Diot at debbie.diot@experian.com or 972-874-5858 x12.

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ICSC Convention News

Please visit us May 20-22 at the ICSC Convention in Las Vegas. Stop by our booth 257 and register to win a Navman GPS pedometer. Ask for a demonstration of any of our solutions or attend one of our information sessions:

Sunday, May 20
2pm Using The Experian Site Score For Retail Site Selection
3pm Footfall – More Than Just Counting Customers
Monday, May 21
10am Mosaic Household Segmentation System
11am Property Lifecycle Management
1pm Footfall – More Than Just Counting Customers
2pm Targeting Your Best Customers with Micromarketer Generation3
3pm Using the Experian Site Score for Retail Site Selection
Tuesday, May 22
10am Using The Experian Site Score For Retail Site Selection
11am Footfall – More Than Just Counting Customers
1pm Looking Beyond the Mall – Using Experian’s Retail Cluster Data
2pm Targeting Your Best Customers with Micromarketer Generation3
3pm Property Lifecycle Management
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