ADOTAS

The big reveal is in the specific numbers — especially the mobile stats. According to the report (which was compiled from fourth-quarter 2011 data and compared to past data gathered by IgnitionOne — the company’s tracked over 49 billion impressions and 1.7 billion clicks over major search and display networks since 2006), mobile search ad impressions are up 317 percent and ad spend is up 269 percent, year-over-year. Among retailers, mobile search ad spend in 2010 accounted for 5.2 percent of total paid search budgets, and that percentage spiked to 14.2 percent in 2011. Retail search ad spend peaked on Black Friday — 24 percent of spend went to mobile queries that day.

The report also declared the fourth quarter of 2011 the “best quarter ever” for search advertising, with search ad spend up 22 percent year-over-year (26 percent for retailers), and an increase of 42 percent for impressions and clicks and 67 for transactions. Cost per click decreased 8.6 year-over-year — though CPC actually increased 6.4 percent for Yahoo!/Bing. That demonstrates, the report’s abstract pointed out, Google’s success drove the trends in decreasing CPC.  Google also commanded an 81.8 percent market share, and its DoubleClick AdExchange posted a 105.5 percent increase in spend.

The full report, issued today, can be found at IgnitionOne’s website.

ADOTAS

Unruly plans to use the funds to expand globally — it already has offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Sydney, and in a phone conversation today, CEO Scott Button cited Miami and Toronto as a couple of other cities the company’s eyeing. In general, he said, Unruly’s looking to reach into continents it hasn’t reached before. The company has “great relationships in North America and Europe, but not [Asia-Pacific],” he explained. “It looks very different over there,” because of a social media landscape that isn’t dominated by Facebook hegemony. Being present in varied geographical locations is important, he said, because “we’ll build up local media relationships on the ground. Our model is to hire teams that are embedded locally.”

Founded in 2006, Unruly Media has executed over 1,400 video ad campaigns, and its “greatest hits” roll boasts the Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like,”  the T-Mobile “Life’s for Sharing,” the Coca-Cola “Happiness Factory” and the Evian “Roller Babies” campaigns. The company claims 2.7 billion views in 2o10 and over 8 billion in 2011, and it projects 20 billion in 2012. That’s a lot of visibility, but because of the nature of its business, a lot of people probably didn’t hear the company’s name at all until earlier this week, when it was implicated in what we could call the Google Chrometroversy. In a sentence or two, it’s like this: On Monday, while most nine-to-fivers were out of the office, SEO Book and Search Engine Land pointed out a Google search for “Google Chrome” pulled up over 400 pages of content bearing the phrase “this post is sponsored by Google” — disclosure that Google requires for any sponsored posts — and that one of them failed to include a required “do not follow” link back to Google Chrome. Turns out digital media agency Essence Digital was working with Google on a Chrome video ad, and Essence brought in Unruly to carry out the campaign. The whole Chrometroversy hinged on the fact that Google had penalized other companies — including J.C. Penney, Forbes, Overstock and BeatThatQuote.com, a company Google owned and subsequently banned – for improper disclosure. And Unruly naturally caught some of the heat. It wasn’t the best timing for a black eye, as today’s funding announcement demonstrated. But Button was adamant that Google had acted properly, Unruly had acted properly and that the rumblings would die down shortly. “If it were any other brand, there would be no story here,” Button said. “The narrative is, ‘Will they, won’t they?’ Well, they have. Google’s behavior here has been exemplary.” In fact, Google went ahead and demoted Chrome’s PageRank for 60 days. And criticism of any links in the video ads, Button said, is unwarranted. “Because [the video] is embedded in Javascript, it’s completely benign.

“It’s really unfortunate,” Button said of the rogue blogger’s failure to insert a “do not follow” link. “We should have caught it through manual vetting.” As it is, he said, Unruly’s platform is set to scan websites for these kinds of issues. “That’s one of the reasons our platform is so strong and so safe,” he said. “We’ve always been on the leading edge of best practice, and best practice evolves constantly.”

In retrospect, it appears the Chrome blog flap didn’t indicate a broader, systemic issue, and as we’d mentioned earlier, it’s crummy timing for Unruly to implicated just as the company was set to announce its plans for global expansion. In this case, the only thing unruly about the video ad platform was its name.

• Denver, Colo. pay-per-click advertising marketplace Trada has evidently raised $9 million in funding. While Trada hasn’t announced yet, Colorado publication Daily Camera said it had gleaned that figure from documents the company had filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Mashable and Global Point Research are using Twitter to try to predict the outcome of the Iowa Republican caucus. Looking at data collected from “positive sentiment on Twitter” last week, the study points to a huge surge in Rick Santorum support… kind of like the one the media’s talking about right now. Hmm…

• According to a recent survey from Poll Position, 56 percent of Americans don’t think we’ll ever have a paperless society. However, 20 percent were either undecided or had no opinion, which seems like a strangely large slice of the pie…  Perhaps we’re biased, but does 56 percent seem a little high to all of you?

ADOTAS

• In other news of things that make sense, Facebook‘s blog today mentions a Journal of Consumer Research study that says people identify more personally with brands whose ads pop up on their own Facebook pages than they do with brands whose ads appear on strangers’ pages. To take it a step farther, the higher a person’s self esteem, the more they’ll identify with those brands advertised on their own pages. The concept this hinges on is implicit self-referencing, and the premise goes like this: If you have healthy self esteem, you’ll feel positive emotions when you look at your own Facebook profile. That lends itself to a positive association with the brands whose ads show on up your profile, especially if those brands have some connection to your self-identity.

• Google’s being sued for patent infringement, and the way buySAFE, the company bringing the suit, puts it, it sounds strikingly personal. Here’s the gist: buySAFE offers a secure online shopping service, which the company says is unique and protected by patent law. Since 2006, the lawsuit says, Google had tried to partner with buySAFE. buySAFE eventually shelved those talks, but, says the suit, those discussions plus Google’s 2010 recruitment of the then-COO of a buySAFE client company granted Google enough proprietary information to launch its own copycat service. You know it as Google Trusted Stores. Or maybe you don’t — Google Trusted Stores just launched in October. And yet, the lawsuit goes on to accuse Google of timing its launch of Trusted Stores to “impede buySAFE’s effort to raise additional capital,” as well as giving retailers that participate in Trusted Stores a higher search ranking and telling retailers they could use either Trusted Stores or buySAFE, but not both. Here’s a copy of the lawsuit. If buySAFE is right about this, Google pulled a few pretty brazen maneuvers. And if buySAFE isn’t right, it at least put in a good hustle: They’re laying the smack down on Google Trusted Sites before the latter is even remotely a household name.

In his statement, Allen explains the flush of new users by citing “the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouth, or a combination of all these factors.” (Those are all factors that credit simple visibility, rather than anything Google+ happens to be doing now to set it apart from that other social network.) Nonetheless, he said he expects the rate of new signups — currently 625,000 a day — to continue past the end of December, and he projects Google+ will hit 100 million users by Feb. 25, 2012, and 200 million by Aug. 3. Meanwhile, Facebook cites more than 800 million active users right now.

“Active” is a key word in that last sentence. While Google+ user numbers may be climbing rapidly — in a kind of exponential growth that only makes sense if that growth is fueled by people noticing their friends and acquaintances are on and deciding it might as well be a good time to jump on that bandwagon — but these figures don’t say anything about the degree to which people are engaging with each other, or with organizations and brands, and they don’t say anything about how much time people are spending on Google+, or how frequently they’re logging in. We’re going to need a fresh study to contextualize these new stats, but back in July, Experian Hitwise already noted a drop-off in users’ repeat visits to Google+.

Allen wrote in his post that “as more users sign up, the value of the network will increase for everyone… It won’t be long before new users start encountering family and friends as well as the thriving tech and media sharing community that embraced Google+ early on.” But in order for that to happen, people are going to have to keep logging in after creating an account.

Google finished November with 65.4 percent of explicit core search queries in the U.S. in November, according to comScore. This was a 0.2 point drop from its 65.6 percent share in October. Yahoo finished with 15.1 percent of the market, down 0.1 percentage point from its 15.2 percent share in October. Microsoft Sites handled 15.0 percent of search queries in November, up 0.2 percentage points from its 14.8 percent share in the previous month.

Combined, Yahoo and Microsoft (i.e., Yahoo-Bing) accounted for 30.1 percent of the U.S. explicit core search market in November, up from 30.0 percent in October. Ask Network finished November with 2.9 percent of the search market, unchanged from its share in October. Meanwhile, AOL Inc. finished with 1.6 percent of the market in November, up 0.1 percentage point from its 1.5 percent share in October.

comScore notes that “Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.”

In November, U.S. searchers conducted 17.9 billion explicit core searches, down about 1 percent from the 18.1 billion searches conducted in October. Google accounted for 11.7 billion of these searches. comScore also shared its “Powered By” numbers, which found that 67.6 percent of searches in November carried organic search results from Google, down 67.7 percent in October. Meanwhile, 26.7 percent of searches were powered by Bing, up from 26.1 percent in October.

According to separate numbers from Experian Hitwise, “facebook” was the top overall search term during the four weeks ending Dec. 10, with 3.59 percent of search clicks. “Youtube” was second with 1.14 percent of search clicks, followed by “craigslist” with 0.59 percent, “facebook.com” with 0.46 percent and “ebay” with 0.42 percent.

According to Google Zeitgeist 2011, Rebecca Black was the fastest-rising global query in 2011, followed by Google+, Ryan Dunn, Casey Anthony, “Battlefield 3,” iPhone 5, Adele, Tepco, Steve Jobs and iPad 2.

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• The resolution of the patent dispute between competing audience measurement firms comScore and Nielsen brings the two leviathans to a curious impasse, but reportedly Deutsche Bank securities analyst Matt Chesler has said the decision will be good for the online ad industry. “In reality, this may also create more of a two-horse race in digital measurement,” he claimed, “which could have ramifications for the balance of power across the [ad] industry and with customers.” What do you think? What are the implications for advertisers?

• Video content distribution start-up Contendo has been acquired by Akamai, a competing company, for $268 million. Before the deal, rumors pegged the going rate at $350 million, but hey, you take what you can.

• Check this out: Better than an infographic, it’s Unruly Media’s Viral Spiral, showing “the exponential growth of social video sharing” for ads between 2006 and 2011. Wow, four years go by fast… and 4.9 million shares for a Volkswagen ad is a ton of shares.

• We’ve been posting a lot about the cloud lately, but for a contrarian view, there’s a story on GigaOM today about how the cloud is over and collaboration is where it’s at.

• Meanwhile, back in the States, AOL has merged three sets of its hyperlocal Patch news sites: Franklin Lakes and Wyckoff, N.J.; Glen Rock and Ridgewoo, N.J., and Clayton and Concord, Calif. Ad Age cites an unspecified source as saying that if these mergers provide similarly unspecified desired results, AOL will execute more Patch mergers in the first quarter of 2012. Patch spokesperson Janine Iamunno said the decisions actually came from the editors of the sites in question, who had noted overlap in their respective beats. Patch had formerly projected 1,000 hyperlocal sites by the end of 1,000; currently, it has 860.

• Ad Age also published a chart today running down Google’s top advertising spenders for 2011, as estimated by Kantar Media. At the number one spot, spending over $174 million, is IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns, among other companies, Ask.com, Match.com, and Citysearch. Amazon and A&T each spent over $100 million ($118.5 million and $115.6 million, respectively).

Television continues to trump the internet in ad revenue, though: The former holds a 40 percent overall market share, the latter 16 percent. That helps to illustrate what Google stands to gain from positioning YouTube as an alternative to TV, as suggested earlier today by Search Engine Land, which also pointed out that Google’s tremendous dominance in the market might be troublesome as the company faces antitrust investigations here and in Europe. And yet, other reports say Google is barreling forward without repentance: Business Insider today cites sources close to both Google and Yahoo say Google is looking to create an on-domain display advertising service, presumably for Google+ and Gmail.

Google’s not looking explicitly to become a retailer, or to build stores or warehouses, according to those sources. The new service would lean on Google’s product search feature, and a partnering company or companies would handle shipping. The idea is that the service would provide incentive for customers to use Google’s product search. Amazon right now is the reigning go-to spot for online shopping — according to ComScore statistics, Amazon’s website has handled three to four times as many product-related searches as Google’s product search has over the past year. Amazon has reported a 42 percent increase in sales for the first nine months of 2011, compared to 2010, and Amazon Prime certainly had something to do with that. Google obviously has a lot to gain by honing in on the action, or at least it would be well served to strike back and protect its position as the web’s top seller of online advertising. Google’s made some inroads towards a burlier product search function lately, launching Google Trusted Stores in October for retailers that meet certain customer service standards (and share shipping and customer service data with Google) and offering customer ratings and reviews (a la Amazon). Today’s reports indicate more clearly where Google is going with this.