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.
Bing, Yahoo! Search and Ad Sales Efficiencies
We’ve been following the Microsoft, Yahoo! Search dance for some time now. Yesterday, Kara Swisher posted that we might finally be close to an advertising deal between the #2 (Yahoo!) and #3 (Bing) players in search. While given previous false alarms on this topic, I’m not holding my breath. However, I thought it would be [...]
MySpace – Returning to Entertainment?
I was living vicariously through WSJ’s Julia Angwin’s Mogul-fest tweets last week (ironically throughout the week she tweeted that several moguls didn’t see the future in Twitter). While in Sun Valley, Angwin reported a brief interchange with Murdoch regarding the future direction of MySpace. Murdoch stated that MySpace needed to be re-focused “as an entertainment [...]
Gas Pump Prices and Cost Sensitivity
According to a survey fielded by AAA, 37.1 million Americans will be traveling over the July 4th holiday weekend. According to AAA if this prediction proves true, it will represent a 1.9% decrease from the same week in 2008. As we’ve done in the past, I’ll update our charts on actual gas prices and corresponding [...]
Movie Tickets – Reconciling Web Visits with Box Office Dollars
As we discovered in yesterday’s post, the demographics of web visitors by site and industry are constantly changing. I ran into this same phenomenon this morning when analyzing visits to the top movie ticket sites (e.g. Fandango and Moviefone). According to IMDb’s Box Office Mojo, year-to-date box office revenue for 2009 at $4.6 billion, puts [...]
Facebook Surge – The Gen X/Gen Y Tradeoff
Robin Goad, our UK Research Director wrote about the surge in traffic to Facebook in the UK in response to the premier this weekend of personalized or vanity usernames. Here’s a daily chart of Facebook’s U.S. marketshare: While we also witnessed an uptick in marketshare this weekend, up 2.8% from Friday June 12th to Saturday [...]
Real Estate Looking Up? Comparing Home and Apartment Queries
Last months release of April real estate figures indicates an uptick in the market. Existing home sales of 4.68MM for April were up 2.9% compared to March. New home sales registered a very slight increase of .2% or 352,000 new homes for the month. Even though housing starts were down a dismal 12.8%, when you [...]
General Motors, Search and Consumer Demand
As General Motors files for Chapter 11 today, and the government steps in with $30 billion in additional aid, online discussion seems focused on the appropriateness of government intervention. I’m preoccupied with a more basic question; assuming General Motors successfully restructures itself, is there sufficient demand for GM vehicles to maintain a viable business? Lets [...]
Wither the Auction?
Geoffrey Fowler had a very interesting piece (subscription required) in the the Wall Street Journal yesterday detailing eBay’s shift in focus at the hands of CEO John Donahoe. According to the article, while auctions accounted for over half of eBay’s $8.5 billion in revenue last year, looking forward, the company will focus on building secondary [...]
The Lambert Edge – American Idol Prediction
It’s time again for our American Idol season finale prediction. The chart of search volume for the two finalists, dramatic rocker Adam Lambert and boy-next-door Kris Allen would appear to make this prediction a no-brainer. Searches for “Adam Lambert” outnumber “Kris Allen” queries by a factor of 5-1. Closer examination of search variations on the [...]
Hulu and the Older Early Adopter
Starting this week, we will be writing a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal entitled Click. Below is our first piece. In “Alec in Huluwood,” Hulu.com’s first-ever Super Bowl TV spot, Alec Baldwin describes how the streaming video site, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., will allow television to fully, finally [...]