⟩ What have been your most striking findings? What data have really shocked you?
It is hard to say "striking". However we did have some valuable and interesting findings in our research.
For example, about one year ago, while very few large online companies promoted their businesses through offline ad media and while the online advertising community doubted about the effectiveness of offline promotion, our research, Online Promotion Strategy Study, shows that offline promotion (for web businesses) is one of the most effective promotion methods.
Another example is that when comparing CPM pricing model with CPC pricing model, we assumed that advertisers preferred the CPC model because the CPC model give advertisers guaranteed advertising results. However, in the research Understand Advertisers' Preferences, we found that advertisers don't prefer the CPC model. A further study shows that this is because advertisers expect higher than average click through rate.
Good marketing research provides useful information. But useful information does not necessarily need to be striking. Of course, I do hope our research yields "striking" results. But I don't intentionally to pursue "striking" effects. To make the research result useful to web marketers is our fundamental goal in the research.