ECU international students score well in Google Challenge

Three teams of international students have come out tops among ten ECU teams participating in the 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge. The three teams achieved a total of 2,527 clicks for their campaigns, accounting for 56% of the 4,496 clicks generated for the campaigns of the ten teams.

The top three teams are a German girls team that worked with Tribal Travel, an adventure travel agency headquartered in Brisbane (981 clicks); a diverse group of students from China, France, and India consulting for Western Australia’s Kitchen at Quality (776 clicks); and a Swedish team called Rajo with its Swedish-based e-commerce vintage fashion client Got To Get (770 clicks).

The Kitchen team had the best-performing advertising group through its Kitchen-makeover campaign with 424 clicks while the Got To Get team had the best click-through-rate of 13.94%. Click-through-rates are the number of times the advertisements are clicked by online surfers after the number of exposures for the advertisements. Professor Jim Jansen commented on the blog of Peter Ling on the Google Online Marketing Challenge Network: “Interesting that the fashion campaign CTR were so high”.

Altogether, 35 ECU students took part in the Google Challenge, with international students forming 60%. The teams made a huge impact on their clients’ website traffic, customer queries, and increased business. Many teams and individuals also created their blogs and Facebook accounts to write about their learning journey, resulting in lots of discussion among friends and family members, buzz on campus (even discussion at bus stops) and global publicity for ECU throughout the semester. Some students and businesses have already registered their interest in Google Challenge 2010.