Profile: GM, Global Research Hitwise Bill Tancer is the General Manager, Global Research at Hitwise. Bill brings 12+ years of marketing, market research and corporate strategy experience to Hitwise. As the GM for Global Research, Bill leads a team of research analysts in the US, UK and Australia, providing cutting-edge research and insight into online consumer behavior and the application of online competitive intelligence. Bill's analysis of the online landscape has been quoted extensively in the press, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Business Week, Television Week, Forbes Online and CNN Money. Bill is a frequent guest on CNBC, and has been interviewed on MSNBC, NPR, Dow Jones Marketwatch, CNN Radio and CBS Radio. Bill speaks frequently as a keynote and main agenda speaker at industry events such as Web 2.0 EXPO, Searchnomics 2007, J.P. Morgan Global Internet Conference, O'Reilly Money: Tech Conference, Columbia Business School Innovative Marketing Conference, Shop.org, Internet Retailer, Search Engine Strategies, E-tail, Ad:tech and PhocusWright. Additionally, he is the author of the weekly online column for TIME, "The Science of Search." He was also named Television Week's "12 to Watch" for 2008. Bill has served on the board of directors for SEMPO and he is currently on the advisory board for the PEW Internet and American Life Project. Prior to joining Hitwise, Bill has led market research and strategy teams at LookSmart, Zaplet, NBC Internet and Pacific Bell Internet Services. Bill has also covered the Internet sector for Gartner Group as a senior technology marketplace consultant. Bill has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Florida in Quantitative Management and a Juris Doctorate degree from the Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University.
Groupon down 50% LivingSocial up 27%
With all the debate and speculation regarding Groupon and its planned IPO, I thought it would be a great time to check back in with our previous analysis of traffic to Groupon and its nearest competitor Living Social. First, to be clear, the above chart measures web-based traffic to both domains and does not include [...]
Google Plus – Innovators and Early Adopters
On June 28, 2011, Google+ launched with a limited, invitation-only beta. Now, nearly a month and half later and a less restrictive invitation policy, what does the data have to say about who’s using the nascent network? The late Everett Rogers, in his book, Diffusion of Innovation, discusses the sequential adoption of new ideas or [...]
Dating Sites by Credit Score – A Valentine’s Day Special
This post is for all of our single readers. While it might be a little late to start your Valentine’s Day date search (we know that dating site visits typically surge the first week of the New Year), I thought I’d give you a novel new criteria to evaluate online dating sites. Why not add [...]
We’ve Got Credit, Yes We Do, We’ve Got Credit…
There are a few things I have yet to accurately predict with Internet data, namely political races and sporting events. Politics is tricky given the existence of confounding variables in visits to political sites. Sporting events, as skill based competition, have little relationship to search volume or Internet visits. That being said, there’s no reason [...]
Super Bowl, Search and Social
I love this time of year. Anticipation builds around the match-up, Green Bay vs. Pittsburgh, Danica Patrick plus Jillian Michaels on the eagerly anticipated Go Daddy commercial, and whether the Super Bowl could cause a heart attack mid-game. But beyond Packers vs. Steelers (I’ll leave the Patrick vs. Michaels match-up for a post game analysis) [...]
How Dr. Phil Ruined My Diet Search Chart
Dr. Phil, how could you? There are a few search term charts that I hold sacred, “prom dresses” and “diets” are my top two, in fact, I devoted a whole chapter of Click to “diet” searches and our New Year’s resolutions. So this year as I prepared to report for a sixth straight year that [...]
LivingSocial Closing the Gap
Let’s face it, $6 billion is a lot of money, especially considering the hyper-innovation we’re seeing in the social buying space. In a previous post less then two months ago we analyzed the difference between Groupon and LivingSocial visitors. At the time, visits to Groupon outnumber those to LivingSocial by a factor of 10-1. In [...]
LivingSocial and the Adoption Curve
The buzz continues to build around group coupon/social buying phenomenon. First Google’s rumored offering of $6 billion for sector leader Groupon, and now, the Washington Post is reporting that Amazon is poised to make a $150 million dollar investment in competitor LivingSocial. According to the Post, this investment will put LivingSocial’s valuation at $1 billion. [...]
VantageScore Provides New Insight Into Online Real Estate Visits
News yesterday that housing starts jumped 10.5% to a four month high provided some hope that the National Bureau of Economic Research’s pronouncement that the recession was so 2009, may in fact, have some validity. We’ve been following the online component to real estate industry activity, our Business – Real Estate category. In the chart [...]
Facebook – The Most Searched On Brand in the U.S.
As I’ve discussed before, examining search term data across all engines, while providing excellent tactical insight for search programs, also can provide invaluable insight for brand marketers. We’re now able to provide a new search metric beyond volume (search volume for a specific term over all term volume) and breadth (# of search term variations [...]