Google has published its findings regarding online shopping preferences, trends in Hungary – the research panel has interviewed 1000 Hungarian internet users about their web purchase attitudes, preferences between Dec 2 2008 and Feb 3 2009. The results of the e-commerce and internet search are showing no or not much surprises I think. There is perhaps one single country specific purchase, but the bulk of the data is just what you would expect of a maturing market in the EMEA region.

Google Hungary research on online shopping

In numbers and conclusions – internet shopping in Hungary 2008-2009

ROPO (research online – purchase offline) is more prevalent in Hungary than in more mature western markets

Research online before purchase is especially high regarding electronics goods (like the new favorite LED TV) and travel related items and services (most typically searching for cheap flights and airline tickets as well as accommodation). 72% of users check out options on the web before making their purchase decisions.

As for travel, tourism, less than half of the respondents, 48% completes the act of purchase online, while 24% of the users make up their minds based on the data they found online to make their shopping offline.

However, regarding electronic goods, the purchase in webstores is only 22%! In other words, even though internet research plays a crucial role (72%) in buying all kinds of electronic goods, TV, mp3 player, DVD player, home theater, what have you, only a fraction of that impact can be measured through web conversions, the rest of the shopping conversions will take effect in the B&M (brick and mortar) stores.

Geo-specific online shopping in Hungary: the success of the obligatory car insurance

Similarly to electronic goods and travel services, compulsory car insurance research on the web is popular amongst more than 75% of the users, out of which two thirds of them actually complete the purchase process online.

What do Hungarians use before buying goods?

Search (no surprise here either) – 88% of users use a search engine to find the desired goods before shopping. And as Google.hu is THE most popular search engine in Hungary with approx. 98% of share in the Hungarian search market, you can treat this number is 87-88% of potential buyers searching for goods on google.

Brand pages – official brand pages like nokia.hu or philips.hu have scored second with 54% in the popularity game. I was somewhat surprised by this result, as my gut instinct told me the second most popular search channel before purchase would be price comparison. But it is brand pages, there you go.

Retail stores – 49% – this is understandable, especially talking about trusted stores. Oftentimes users would like to see how much an item is going to cost for them. This vital information is not on a manufacturer’s site.

Shopping comparison / Price comparison – 48%. I wonder how western users use price comparison sites compared to manufacturer sites when it comes to researching and purchasing goods online, as my instinct tells me that shopping comparison is far more popular, but in Hungary brand sites outscored price comparison sites by 6%. Not a big difference, based on a 1000 respondents, but it is telling. As I have been working for the number 1 most visited Hungarian comparison shopping site (Árukereső), I think one of the reasons for this result is that users sometimes get confused about comparison shopping sites, they simply assume they are in another retail stores and wish to complete their purchase right on the site. Besides, another percentage of internet users in Hungary do not expect to get the updated fresh and detailed product information on price comparison or web retail shops, so they go the the manufacturer page (prices missing there, so it is in the early research phase I guess). Brands are brands after all, with a weightier brand value than most retails stores or comparison shopping sites or online auction sites have so far achieved.

Auction sites – 44%: Vatera and Teszvesz are the online auction sites in Hungary. We do not even need to say the two top, they are, period. In 2008 both were bought up (majority investment not total) by Allegro group (of Naspers), and in July 2009 Árukereső, the previously mentioned comparison shopping site has also become an Allegro group asset. That’s why one of the Hungarian twitter users was referring  to the  news that the local ebay in Hungary is in formation…

THE TAKEAWAY

As for advertising, it is pretty obvious that e-commerce companies, travel service providers, car insurance sites cannot live without working with Google (SEO for Google, AdWords PPC, SEO PR aimed at Google), but they are also dependent on shopping comparison sites (arukereso, argep, olcsobbat, depo, kirakat, shopmania – such a small country with 2-3 million users and so many comparison shopping sites, amazing right?). Other CPC tactics may include etarget (prevalent in a good range of content sites) and direct negotiations with major content sites (portals, catalogs, etc.)

PS: the illustration shows 4 columns representing the results for 4 products (digital camera, computer hardware, household equipment, and the 4th column is clothes and accessories). The vertical line (y axis) enlists the typical sources of information (TV, outdoor media, fliers, radio, direct mail, friends and family, papers, internet, earlier experience, browsing in the store, store assistant in shops, store assistant via remote communication)

Posting (my sparetime hobby more frequently accomplished in Hungarian) has been even rarer recently than before. Needless to say, not because search, or search related activities were getting lukewarm in Hungary. Quite on the contrary.

So why the silence? Partly because of our wedding. My biotech geek blogger boyfriend popped the question, and “I popped the answer yes” so we had our wedding ceremony last Saturday.

Although we have prepared with a 5-minute keynote presentation (including a short macbook recorded scene of how we were trying to prepare for the whole family event), technology let us down, and we resorted to our last weapon, the first dance. It seems we have brought the house down.

As we are both bloggers, and not very much keen on highly staged wedding photos, we were really glad to have another photo blogger friend to take some shots of the party. Some of which are:

I am also keen on restructuring the several different blogs I have been managing and/or participating in, so after one year of regular postings, and active reading and commenting on other blogs, I will sit down and think through how to keep on blogging. I’m afraid, I will not be able to keep gugli alive, although it has been a source of pleasure, excitement (and, let’s admit, meaningful networking) for me. I’m planning to have my last post on where and how I will continue for the next blogospell. So this is my penultimate post before saying goodbye, and reappearing in my new English blog.

Without words, videoshots and slideshows mixed:

“Tribute to the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. A night of remembrance, and celebration of the lives lost in the tragic incident on the morning of April 16th, 2007.” /The Official Google Channel on YouTube/

- just hung my head.

Google Hungary country representative has been chosen: Zoltan Peresztegi will be in charge of Google’s moves on the Hungarian market (almost exclusively business development for AdWords partners, hardly any, if at all, engineering at this point.

One, if one is very skeptical indeed, may have thought that the scenario was like in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Google Godot. The Long-long-long tail is waiting for the Head to have a look at the tail. Hungary with its 2-3 million users waiting for Google Kft. to get a real face, and become a source of communication – in Hungarian of course, as sadly enough, we are still struggling with the long-lasting language use effects of the post-iron curtain era where learning western languages was not really encouraged and facilitated. So, yes, it means a lot, an awful lot for companies interested in Hungary if they are able to communicate in Hungarian or not (including search marketers). For another 10 years maybe.

Google Kft. (Google Hungary Ltd.) got a head to its body at last. The single staff member and head  of all staff members is Zoltán Peresztegi. There are already several positions advertised for the Hungarian exploratory crew, so the Hungarian division will soon get bigger.

What Zoltán is doing currently is studying the country and making a report for Google on the Hungarian market relevant for Google’s strategies (similarly to what took place as an initial step in other emerging markets like Egypt). And, needless to say, he is also working on strengthening Google’s brand in Hungary (see his previous work experience at Hungarian T-Mobile brand building), and attracting more potential customers for Google AdWords and AdSense programs. (I also hope that there will be excellent educational programs, and kids as well as (young) adults will be more search-savvy through such projects). In short, the mission for the first part of the year appears to be quite complex in itself, the focus being on mapping Hungary from primarily a technological-business aspect, and also from a cultural one.

Zoltán’s reply to the question ‘Why did Google decide to come to Hungary?’ was the following:

• the internet penetration has reached the threshold level of 30% in Hungary
• broad band access is extraordinarily high in Hungary
• besides using the web for searching, the internet is a medium of entertainment (according to the stats used by Google Hungary Kft.  approx. 80% of users use the internet for search, while about 70% for e-mail communication and for reading news)

When the conversation turned to the online media and marketing chapter (how much is the market share of search marketing within online marketing), Zoltán said that we do not have precise data for that, and referred to the stats of the TNS Market Intelligence, which concludes that advertising on the internet is the most dynamically growing sector within advertising with 70% in Hungary, and according to Google’s estimates, its share from the total is between 2-4%.

(Now add that the share of search marketing spend from the total internet ad spend is estimated by major market players at about 5-8%. No official data yet.)

More about the press conference in my Hungarian webtrends blog (feel free to ask in the comments if you wish to know more)

ps: There is a great interest (from the public, not only from journalists and professionals) on Google statistics concerning the Hungarian search/ paid search landscape. However, such statistics seem to come later on, when the market becomes even more mature and self-reflective – on a consensual basis on behalf of all market players concerned.

Google Hungary Ltd since then has moved to its new office on the beautiful riverbank of the Buda side in Budapest, Hungary.

Erick Schonfeld from Business 2.0 has recently written an article on Numenta made by Jeff Hawkins (PalmPilot, Treo), whose vision is ‘hacking the human brain’ i.e. making a computer software that imitates a child’s trial and error learning style based upon the actual ways human use a computer: each interaction serves as an input in the database and the algorithm to be developed. My question on Erick’s blog:

Google is also using search patterns to learn from users and they have an enormous database daily expanding on the largest scale at present. And as Marissa Mayer said at DLD07 conference, the future, Google’s future, is personalized search – but I think we all expect the future to be personalized + online + bionic everything.
So Numenta could logically be a start-up potentially bought up by Google, if the software is learning quickly enough and has a large enough database for that + plus a business model to monetize on building that database (as Google’s AdWords is).
How is Numenta going to solve that very challenging task (i.e. building world-scale database _while_ generating revenue)?

One more thing, to quote from the full article the part that deals with Numenta’s financial aspects:
‘Targeted at research scientists and hard-core programmers, the license will allow people to play around with the software for free until they’re ready to create a commercial product. “We want as many people experimenting with the technology as possible,” Hawkins says’ and ‘He knows that he needs to build a community of developers around Numenta with financial incentives to help his technology succeed,’

a, I don’t think that people would play around for free, if they do not get sth very very useful in exchange (Google search works, Google Maps work, so people ‘play around with it’)
b, ‘building a community of developers’ is essential, but ‘building a community of developers’ where developers is defined as all people who contribute with their patterns of use is equally important.

To continue the series of top moments at Digital Life Design conference, Munich, here’s Linda’s choice:

1. Sitting next to Jeff Pulver while Pablos (the hacker) was hacking his phone.  Listening to Jeff say, “Oh my G-d,” over and over and sweating as Pablos played his voicemail.  Since Pablos had tried (and FAILED!) to hack into my voicemail earlier that morning, I was both relieved and sympathetic.
2. Wonderful talks and times with Yossi Vardi, Walt Mossberg, John Naisbitt, Caterina Fake, Jean-Paul Schmetz and many others…
3. It was an honor to be the opening keynote. (watch Linda’s presentation on video at the DLD site).

my comment: I must conclude that Master Pablos seems to have made a long-lasting impression on many of us. I wonder when Pixar is coming out with a cartoon about a hacker dual – see magician dual in Prestige.

Growing free information – less and less physical, but there is a scarcity of attention. “Figuring out how to capture the attention of the right people and focus them on important information is extremely viable and only getting more so.”

Fred Wilson’s opening keynote at the Software and Information Industry’s January 2007 summit in New York City can be watched at ScribeMedia.

I strongly suggest his keynote focusing on the question ‘Where are the places where you can make money?’

• What are critical points? Discovery, navigation, trust etc.
• The key: the data about data.
• Future: micro-chunking the content, freeing it (I want you to have it), syndicating it, and then monetizing it.
• And the most important part for me from the keynote: “I want to know how my info is consumed.” and “All through RSS”

PS: Fred is a fan of Umair Haque.

A mini interview with Jeff asking what his top 3 moments were at DLD07.

What would be your choice for the top 3 moments?

1. The Hacker, Inc. Presentation when Pablos Holman announced and demonstrated to everyone in the room that he was able to hack into my mobile phone. [lots of witnesses, no exaggeration]
2. Swimming in the pool and playing Water Polo during the BUNTE DLD NIGHTCAP. [need for proof and illustration]
3. Playing Poker during the BUNTE DLD NIGHTCAP Afterparty. Also – meeting some of the people whom I’ve had an email relationship with over the years but never before met in person. [so typical of web-based friendships. I wonder when we will first read about a Second Life virtual friendship getting 'real' in this way and conveyed in a Finnish SMS novel] Together with sitting in the sessions and being inspired by the talks and the opportunities and the collective vision. [I simply needed to put this in bold]

What comes into your mind first?

Amazing people. A “Pre-Davos Gathering of Leaders effecting the worlds of Digital, Life and Design.

…and at the same time has a long lasting effect on you?

The relationships and bonding that took place during the various ad hoc meetings. [likewise, compulsion to highlight them in bold]

I’m happy to post this but please feel free to. I blogged a lot about
DLD07 during the past week.

Thanks, Jeff. Great replies. I am sorry I have missed the pool scene… Next time.

No 1: That’s easy. Brainstorming with Tariq [Krim, founder and CEO of Netvibes] about cool new features for netvibes. Really funny.

No 2: Ranting with Martin about hip and crazy people. Trying to feel much more morally straight. Kind of failed.

No 3: Anshe Chung real life husband talking about how the character developed and got a life of its own. Cute and amazing at the same time.

[Wow, I would be pretty interested in hearing more about it, Magdalena!]

[And about networking:]

I also felt that newcomers who knew noone would have a hard time. People seemed just to be talking to people they already knew. Fortunately there was a very down-to-earth but equally crowded blogger meeting on sunday evening. There you could really get in touch with new people.

[note: blogger meeting was primarily for German bloggers but anyone could attend the pub-conference. Does anybody have an English summary of the meet-up?]

Goo(g)d news. Soon you will start generating money on YouTube.

How soon? We don’t know. But Chad Hurley announced at World Economic Forum, Davos on 27 Jan that they would reward users for self-generated content, saying “We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users.”

The idea is great, and I think it is a strong response to video sharing site Metacafé’s challenge, where revenue sharing already started 3 months ago. Eyal Herzog, co-founder talked about it Digital Life Design conference (DLD07) on Jan 22, so it was only 5 days ago that I aired my criticism “How come YouTube seems to be unresponsive? Can they really be that comfortable in the stregthening competition? Lots of national video sites are mushrooming suddenly. Not only is GooTube lagging behind in building communities, and financially rewarding producers, it is also painfully low-performer regarding technology.”

Of course, it may have been originally timed to be announced at Davos forum, but it may also have been that many of the people at DLD07 in Munich also participated in Davos, and realized that Metacafé is very competitive, and is threatening to take away those precious eyeballs (already boasting 500.000.000 video downloads a month!)

How are they going to define self-generated? What will be the business model?

Will they copy Metacafé in the CPM based earnings? (5 USD/ thousand views) or will it be a more complex calculation including (on top of CPM or CPC)

• viral effect: loads of inbound links from other blogs, and web pages
• number of comments
• number of video responses
• number of shares (CPA)
• number of times favorited
• number of subscriptions, or the monthly growth on it

There are several factors that could be included potentially. How to make it simple?

Metacafé simplified it in the following way:

“Producers get 5 USD/ CPM (a thousand views) if the total number of views go over 20.000 (Are you a producer? Just log in, and see how much you have earned. ” (Eyal Hertzog)

For YouTube, the good news is that Google AdSense payment model makes it easier to switch into the new business model and send money to content providers. Or even better, that they can count on the excellent technology of YouTube, (pardon my French) Google.

PS: the top earner on Metacafé, is not a simple user but a company: Reel Stunts Action Team, with several candidate films, but only one that generated all that 25.000 USD.

Update: Thanks to Philipp Lenssen and Tony Ruscoe for posting it on Google Blogoscoped.