Profile: Heather Dougherty is Director, Research at Hitwise. Heather is a leading authority in online commerce and marketing, a result of covering the field extensively since 1997. At Hitwise, Heather will continue her focus on this space, providing insight into online consumer behavior and competitive intelligence to Hitwise clients. Heather's expertise in the online commerce landscape has been quoted extensively in the press, including Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Business Week. Heather has also been a guest on ABC World News Tonight, CNBC, NPR, and CBS Radio. Heather speaks frequently at industry events such as Shop.org, Internet Retailer, Ad:tech and Search Engine Strategies. Prior to joining Hitwise, Heather was with Nielsen/NetRatings as the senior retail analyst, where she provided strategic analysis and designed custom research projects. Before her time at Nielsen, she spent four years with Jupiter Research covering the online retail and commerce space, including marketing and promotions, merchandising, and personalization. Heather earned a B.S. in Business Administration and Marketing at The Ohio State University.
Impact of paywall on NYTimes.com
After months of speculation, the paywall for The New York Times went live at 2pm on Monday, March 28th, which limits online readers (non-print subscribers) to 20 articles each month. For smartphone and tablet applications, only the top news section will remain free and access to other sections will need a subscription. To understand the [...]
Interest in Glenn Beck Increases with Departure
Following the announcement of the end of Glenn Beck’s Fox News program, there has been discussion of the impact of Beck’s declining ratings on the decision. Indeed, ratings for The Glenn Beck Program fell to an average of 1.9mm in January 2011 from their 2.8mm peak in January 2009. Although ratings for The Glenn Beck [...]
AirTran and Southwest Audience Compatibility
AirTran’s shareholders approved Southwest Airlines’ proposed acquisition on Wednesday, which was originally announced last year in September. The buyout will expand Southwest’s lead in market share of visits online among airlines, where their website already consistently ranks first in the US. The deal will further entrench Southwest’s position in southern states and also expand its [...]
Online Audiences of T-Mobile, AT & T and Verizon
If AT&T’s $39 billion bid to acquire T-Mobile passes regulatory scrutiny, it will push the new conglomerate past Verizon as the largest cellular provider in America. To understand AT&T’s potential gains, consider the audience breakout of visitors to T-Mobile’s site for account holders. The bulk of visitors to T-Mobile’s site came from web-users in the [...]
Hybrid and gas efficiency searches rise
With the cost of gas reaching new highs in recent weeks, consumers are looking to hybrid vehicles as a way to reduce spend on gasoline. Among the most popular hybrid car models, searches on the term ‘prius’ increased by 200% when comparing the week ending March 12, 2011 and February 12, 2011. Searches for ‘toyota [...]
Continued concerns over gas prices
The civil unrest in oil producing regions in Northern Africa and the Middle East has caused a steep increase in retail gas prices in recent weeks. Overall, gas prices have trended higher throughout the past year and the effects are not just apparent at the pump, but also online. The average price per gallon of [...]
News visits soar after earthquake and tsunami in Japan
Many in the US woke to the news of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan on Friday morning along with tsunami warnings for Hawaii and the west coast. As news and videos of the natural disaster spread, visits to the News & Media category hit a 3 year high on Friday, March 11th and [...]
Masters of the Sheeniverse
It’s already acknowledged that recent incidents in Charlie Sheen’s life and his subsequent barrage of interviews have created an online feeding frenzy. Indeed, Sheen has won the Guinness World Record for fastest time to reach one million followers on Twitter – he had gained over 100,000 followers without publishing a single tweet. On the same [...]
Social Media as a Social Change Agent
Social media sites are being lauded as enablers and conduits of social change in revolutions across north Africa. But the picture in the US has been slightly different – following the success the 2008 Obama Campaign’s online efforts, there has been some backlash about the real impact of social networking sites for causes. Indeed, the [...]
Detroit Needs Robocop campaign
Once again, the Internet provides the opportunity to make dreams come true, or at least get a viral campaign off the ground quickly. Despite the mayor shooting down the idea to build a statue of RoboCop (from the 1987 movie) in Detroit via Twitter on Feb 7th, a group of fans decided to begin raising [...]