Results from a survey conducted by the Rival Research Group shows that only 8% of portfolio managers and buy-side analysts expect to see Facebook valued above its offering price six months after going public. However, enthusiasm among ordinary investors for the IPO continues to propel unprecedented interest in the company, which, although just eight-years old, is projected to see a market capitalization of $100 billion.

Chitika Insights wanted to see how the fervor surrounding this IPO corresponds to Web activity – a good indicator of consumer interest rather than activity from traders in brokerages and investment firms. Specifically, the Insights team constructed a live tracker with the following indices in a line graph, to give a real-time visualization of Facebook IPO-related activity on the Web:

• Facebook’s current stock market price
• Search queries related to the Facebook IPO

The Insights team will be keeping an eye on the tracker throughout the day, pulling out the unique and interesting trends for a full roundup to be posted directly after the 4:00p.m. NASDAQ closing bell. In the meantime, check out the tracker and the accompanying methodology.

Today should be a fun, interesting day for the tech and business communities! Stay tuned!

• Facebook’s current stock market price via a Yahoo! Finance API
• Queries for Facebook IPO and related searches on North American search engines

The following paragraphs detail the methodology behind the Facebook IPO Tracker coming out of Chitika Insights.

Data Collection

Data for this tracker is collected in real time, and updated on minute-by-minute basis. Facebook’s current stock price is provided every minute via the Yahoo! Finance API. To determine the level of search share generated by the company, Chitika Insights used a proprietary algorithm tracking search engine queries relevant to the Facebook IPO. The level of search share is then represented using a 15 minute rolling average to allow the best possible visualization of the behavioral relationship between stock price and search interest.

Reporting

Line Chart: The line chart overlays current data of each of the elements listed above on an hourly basis in a time series. For example, if the Facebook share price rose from $39.90 at noon to $44.75 at 4:00p.m., the chart would highlight this growth (and show all of the hours in between). This type of quantitative representation is constant across each metric used within the graph, each with its own unique color for ease of viewing.

In early April, The new iPad accounted for between 9% and 10% of all iPad traffic.  This figure has now grown to just over 13.5% – an impressive number, especially considering  our recent report confirming the iPad’s domination within the tablet ecosystem for much longer than the device’s two-month lifespan. Even the Samsung Galaxy tablet, the strongest tablet competitor in terms of usage, only has Web traffic equal to about 1/100^th the rate of iPad owners.

These latest figures become even more dynamic when you consider how this device is distributed across the nation. Let’s examine the states with the highest rates of new iPad adoption:

• Hawaii
  • Our earlier study showed that early adopters tend to reside in coastal states, and Hawaii remains a hot bed of new iPad usage. A contributing factor could be the state’s large tourism industry, as luxury hotels and restaurants are utilizing iPads as a customer service tool.
• California
  • No big surprise here – Californians are renowned for their quick adoption of new technology, at least partially driven by the state housing some of the biggest Internet companies in the world.
• Nebraska
  • Nebraska’s number three position is undoubtedly the biggest shocker amongst the top five. Looking at developments within the state, this number three position is not quite as surprising.  A Nebraska school district recently approved a 1-to-1 iPad program for its students, and a Nebraska Chamber of Commerce spokesperson told Chitika Insights that the state’s cellular and broadband communications networks have seen tremendous growth over the past several years.
• Washington DC
  • As a large, coastal city, our nation’s capital is a big consumer of new technology. Additionally, government usage is growing – Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs of Staff uses an iPad daily, and the Air Force recently agreed to purchase up to 18,000 iPads for use in cargo aircraft.
• Delaware
  • Notably, the University of Delaware, the state’s largest learning institution, introduced an entire iPad-focused course load to prepare educators to comprehensively teach using the devices.

Nebraska’s adoption numbers in this second month, in addition to high adoption rates in states like Virginia, West Virginia and Alabama, indicate that rural states cannot be broadly labeled as technology laggards. Those residents are now pushing technology trends, often in greater numbers than their East and West-coast counterparts, rather than following them.

Stay tuned to Chitika Insights as we continue to monitor the progress of mobile technology products and how they are being used by the public at large.

The most important fix addressed an issue surrounding Mobile Safari.  More specifically, users were susceptible to a potential attacker deceiving them and directing them to a malicious site, among other serious vulnerabilities.  This presented a tremendous threat to iOS 5.1 users, as security experts believe that users could have unwittingly supplied private information, their Apple ID, or even credit card information to attackers.  Other fixes with the upgrade simply increased usability of the device.  Experts warn that it is imperative to upgrade your device as soon as you have a chance.

Here at Chitika Insights our team was interested in seeing just how adamant iOS users were in their quest for secure browsing.  We combed through tens of millions of ad impressions across our network, looking for devices that were utilizing any sort of iOS based software.  From there we refined our results by breaking out iOS 5.1.1 devices and took a 24-hour rolling average in order to determine usage rates.  Our data paints an interesting picture.

According to our network data, Apple users (being the early adopters that they are) heeded experts’ warnings.  Our network started to demonstrate a spike in iOS 5.1.1 traffic around 5:00 PM EST on May 7, trending upward to a high of 12.3% of all iOS traffic by May 10.  This preliminary report shows a somewhat rapid pace of adoption, a trend that should persist, given the popularity of the iPad and iPhone devices.

However, in comparison to an earlier study done by Chitika Insights, the iOS 5.1.1 release showed a somewhat less enthused consumer in terms of adoption rate.  We attribute this primarily to the fact that the iOS 5.1 release had a number of user interface upgrades, which could be perceived as more exciting compared to the more recent release of iOS 5.1.1, which dealt primarily with the aforementioned security update.

Additionally, to learn more about why we calculated these numbers, be sure to check out our report on the first week’s worth of data.

Impressions

Determination: The browser/browser version of an impression can be determined through analysis of the user agent. All user agents pass a string similar to this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0

Reporting

Pie Chart: The percentage reported in the pie chart represents a rolling twenty-four hour average of Firefox traffic, with a six hour delay to ensure maximum continuity within the data. These percentages are simply the count of each particular Firefox version divided by a total count of all Firefox traffic observed.

Line Chart: The line chart highlights the use of each Firefox version on an hourly basis. For each hour, the methodology is the same as in the pie chart, except shown using a time series. For example, if Firefox 11 impressions made up 15% of all Firefox impressions on April 19 at midnight, and 16% at April 20 at midnight, the chart would highlight this growth (and show all of the hours in between).

Being the default browser for Windows, Internet Explorer (IE) is the software through which the majority of North American Web users view the Internet (we counted close to 123 million impressions in one week for our sample). Interestingly, there was a near-direct relationship between CTR and version number, with users of the latest IE versions clicking at significantly higher rates than users of older versions. Why could this be the case?

• The latest version of IE ships with new Windows machines

• Heavier Internet users (much less likely to click on ads as a whole) are likely to seek out alternative options for Web browsing like Chrome or Firefox

Despite the rise of non-IE browsing options, these statistics show that marketers should have IE firmly in mind when optimizing websites and ads in order to maximize CTR and get the “most bang for their buck” online.

Stay tuned to future reports from Chitika Insights where we’ll continue to examine what impacts CTR across the Web.

Given that the Internet is the job-search method of choice for those seeking employment, Chitika Insights wanted to see how unemployment rates affect internet users search behavior.  Specifically, we wanted to see if states with higher unemployment rates boasted a higher percentage of search queries that we job related.

To test this hypothesis, we conducted a study using a sample of hundreds of millions of impressions coming through the Chitika network between February 9 and February 15, 2012.  Chitika chose two keywords that are closely related to employment (“Resume” and “Employment”) and determined the prevalence of these terms on a state-by-state basis.  We then correlated these numbers to each state’s unemployment rate (pulled from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for December 2011) and graphed the data below:

As can be seen above, queries containing the words “employment” revealed positive correlation when graphed against unemployment rates by state, yielding an R-squared value of 0.48.  The prevalence of the word “Resume” was far less connected to state unemployment rates, producing a far weaker positive correlation with an R-squared value of only 0.12.

Nevada, which has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 13%, also showed the fourth-highest rate of “employment” search queries, with 0.095% of all searches containing the term.  Similarly, on the low end, the state with the lowest unemployment rate, North Dakota, also showed the lowest prevalence of “employment” in search queries (only 0.042%).

So how can this information be used to positive effect? This could be interesting data for job recruiters, who can use this study learn how and where to better target their recruitment efforts and more importantly, online ad campaigns. To more effectively engage with job searchers, understanding which terms they are searching for will maximize the “bang-for-the-buck” in any campaign.  Educational institutions might also benefit from these correlations to ensure they are using the right keywords to reach their intended market

We also decided to take a look at how job searches compare when it comes to using your mobile phone vs. using your PC. To do so, we looked at a sample of millions of impressions between April 5, 2012 and April 7, 2012. We used the same keywords, “employment” and “resume”, to track job search interest on mobile devices and PCs. What we found is that employment related searches are more prevalent on mobile devices, while resume related searches are more prevalent on PCs. On mobile devices, about 1 of every 1,000 searches were employment related. On PCs, about 1 of every 1,000 impressions were resume related.

With promising numbers, such as the recent gains in available positions, we can hope that the slow recovery process will start to pick up. Chitika Insights will continue reporting on topics of interest as it relates to the 2012 election and trends we are seeing across our network.

Some unique findings:

• The adoption rate of the latest Firefox version has made it the second-most popular version of Firefox (24% share) only 4 days after its release.
• The significant day-to-day percentage increases indicate more willingness from users to utilize the auto-update feature, and is in stark contrast to the low degree of adoption of Firefox 9 back in January.

Our data confirms that users of Firefox 11 were the most likely to switch to version 12, with percentages remaining relatively constant for Firefox 3 (18%), Firefox 10 (4%) and all other versions (16%).

• The phenomena of stalwart users not updating their software is very much a force within the Firefox user community, with 38% of Firefox users browsing with pre-version 11 software.

While the level of version 11 to version 12 adoption is promising, it is troubling from a functionality standpoint that more than a third of users still browse using old software. With inherent compatibility issues, the Web experience can be impacted and cause users to switch browsers, which could be partially responsible for Firefox’s loss in market share and rank as the second-most popular browser in the U.S. and Canada (Google Chrome now controls 20% as compared to Firefox’s 15%).

Since the initial period of observation, version 11 usage has dropped to just over 9%, with version 12 now accounting for nearly 57% of all Firefox traffic – more than double its share in the first week. For a look into this evolving distribution of Firefox version usage, be sure to check out our live tracker at http://labs.chitika.com/firefox12.

Stay tuned to Chitika Insights as we track the progress of Web browsers as new versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome, and others are introduced over the year.

While it is a widely known fact that the iPad (one, two, or “new”) is immensely popular, we here at Chitika Insights wondered how we could quantify just how popular these tablets are by digging into our network data. Our results were quite interesting, though not very surprising.

In conducting this analysis, we queried our vast ad network for impressions stemming from a tablet of any sort.  From there we sorted our data into categories of the various tablet devices.  As we had hypothesized, the iPad was overwhelmingly dominant versus the competition.

Based off of impressions across our network, the iPad accounted for 94.64% of all tablet based traffic.  This is impressive in and of itself but to put this number into perspective, the next closest competitor, the Samsung Galaxy tablet, boasts a lack luster market share of 1.22%.  Coming in last, in respect to traffic share, was the Barnes and Noble Nook with a meager 0.53% traffic share.  In defense of the Nook, it is used primarily as an e-reader, with the capabilities of a tablet.

Going forward the competition is going to be hard pressed to find a way to overthrow the seemingly omnipotent Apple.  Not only do they offer a great product they have the undying devotion of their enthusiasts.  Thus far Apple’s iPad offering has been able to thwart any attempt by competitors to develop a rival (or even equivalent product).  Apple produces a product that is both aesthetically pleasing and technologically robust.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for both Apple and the other market players.  Historically speaking, new tablet products have yet to be a panacea.  Increasing market share will be imperative for all tablet producers in the future if they want to remain competitive.  The tablet has become an increasingly popular computing device and it seems evident that this trend will be persistent in the future.

With a flourishing middle class in China and an increasing appetite for quasi-luxury goods overall in the region, Asia will be a hot market for tablets in the future.  Last year tablet sales in six South East Asian countries were $962 million.  What is more, that same region has a penchant for Android operating systems; this could be big for tablet producers (sans Apple), though the iPad remains immensely popular across all corners of the globe.  Experts at research group Gartner believe that Apple will sell 148m iPad’s in the year 2015.