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Archives for 2012

Research Shows Consumers Want Online Video from Brands

online video brandNew research from Digitas and Harris Interactive reveals that 46% of U.S. online video viewers are at least somewhat likely to look up a brand or product when it’s mentioned in an online video they’re viewing. Similarly, 49% of people who follow brands on social networks are at least somewhat likely to watch videos published by those brands to learn more.

According to Stephanie Sarofian, managing director of Digitas’ brand content unit, Third Act, “Investing in online video is no longer optional. Consumers are hungry for online content and ready to take this journey with brands. Today’s viewer isn’t just passively sitting and watching — they’re sharing, talking, clicking, and testing.”

The March 2012 survey of 2,211 Americans 18 years and older also revealed that 63% of respondents have viewed online content while they’re watching television. However, just 27% have actually looked at online content related to a show they were watching while they were watching it.

Still, that’s nearly one out of every three respondents and reflects a growing trend in viewing diverse content on multiple screens simultaneously. For example, consumers watch television while using their smartphones or tablet devices. Just last week, I published an article here on the Corporate Eye blog that discussed results from a recent Nielsen study that showed just how far this trend has already grown in terms of stealing eyes from television commercials.

Despite the willingness to watch online video from brands that consumers have demonstrated, brands are still struggling to create the right kind of video content. The Digitas survey found that consumers are looking for entertaining and informative online video content. One out of two respondents to the survey claimed that they usually share online videos that they like with at least three of their friends and online connections. This is a powerful word-of-mouth marketing opportunity that brands which are creating online video content that adds value to consumers’ lives are seizing.

The study also found that while online video viewing and sharing is still more common among younger audiences, the 55+ audience is not lagging as far behind as you might think. However, women in the 55+ demographic are far more likely to watch and share branded online video content then men in the same age range.

It’s safe to assume that these statistics will continue to increase. Has your brand leveraged online video content to connect with consumers yet? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Digitas Photos

Facebook Acquires Instagram – The Value of Photos in Social Media

instagramFacebook has acquired Instagram for $1 billion — a number that few people predicted the company’s valuation would come close to reaching. At just two years old, Instagram is a mobile app that makes it easy for people to share photos with friends and families from their mobile devices when they’re on the go.

Now, those images and user information and behaviors will become part of the Facebook data mine. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained in a post announcing the Instagram acquisition, “For years, we’ve focused on building the best experiences for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

One might wonder why Facebook didn’t simply create its own tool to compete with Instagram, but with an estimated 25 million users, the value of Instagram comes more from the content and information that can be extracted from user behaviors than the technology. The race for social search supremacy is on and Facebook and Google are in the lead right now. Simply recreating Instagram wouldn’t help Facebook reach its goals as effectively as acquiring Instagram’s users and existing content can.

One might argue that many Instagram users are probably also Facebook users, but there is a reason why those people turned to Instagram for mobile photo sharing. Facebook doesn’t want to lose those users or the activities those users participate in on Facebook related to photo sharing. The acquisition eliminates the threat that Instagram poses.

At the same time, Facebook made an offer that Instagram couldn’t refuse. Again, the company is making a clear statement that competitors are sure to understand. After all, Facebook leaders don’t even call Facebook a social network anymore. Instead, they favor the term “social graph,” and Instagram content and user behavior are perfect additions to creating the ultimate social graph.

Of course, Zuckerberg is quick to point out in his announcement that there are no plans to make any changes to Instagram. Losing Instagram users would defeat the purpose of the acquisition. For now, enhancements will be made to integrate Instagram more seamlessly with Facebook but other changes should be minimal.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg wrote, “[Existing] features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.”

No matter how the Instagram acquisition by Facebook story evolves, one thing is for certain — photos are valuable property for brands in social media. People like to publish them, share them, and talk about them. Think about how you can integrate photos into your brand’s social media marketing strategy. How can you use tools like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Flicker, and so on to do it?

The old saying tells us that a picture is worth a thousand words. Let the power of photos work for your brand by integrating them into your social media strategy right now.

Spotify Turns Facebook Timeline into History of Music

spotify facebook timelineEver since Facebook launched its new Timeline to Facebook Pages, brands have been trying to figure out how to use it to their advantage. The Timeline offers a new view of a brand’s history that Facebook users have yet to completely accept, so brands have to tread carefully.

However, finding the right ways to turn a feature that users don’t instantly accept, understand, or like into something that they love is what brands do best, so it seems like a great opportunity. At least that’s what Spotify saw when it turned its Facebook Page Timeline into an ongoing history of music.

Spotify sees the Facebook Timeline as a perfect story-telling device. Not only can brands tell their own stories using the Facebook Timeline, but people can join in by sharing their own stories, too. What better way to create an emotional connection with consumers and build a brand?

While Spotify’s Timeline is still a work in progress, a quick perusal gives you an idea of what it could become — a one-stop destination for everything and anything related to music history. Right now, Spotify is focusing on adding “huge historical landmarks” to its Facebook Timeline while keeping its Facebook content fresh with current music news. Adding an interactive crowdsourcing element to its Facebook Timeline, Spotify is asking visitors to share dates in music history that they think are significant but still missing from the timeline.

The lesson to learn from Spotify’s Facebook Timeline is simple. As new tools are launched and features are added, don’t just think about all the new content you need to create to build your brand presence. Instead, think about how you can repurpose existing content and couple it with fresh content to build a branded experience that adds value to consumers’ lives. Spotify is doing it by repurposing content from the pages of music history, and you can do it, too. That’s one of the key lessons I discuss in Content Marketing for Dummies, and it applies to both online and offline marketing as well as traditional marketing tactics and new media marketing tactics. Don’t be afraid to get creative!

Tablets and Smartphones Stealing Eyes from TV Ads

Remember when the big problem for television advertisers shifted from consumers leaving the room during commercials to fast forwarding over them when they recorded the programs they watched? Next, the proliferation of DVRs made it easier than ever for people to skip commercials. Now, consumers have added another way to ignore commercials and it’s growing in popularity very quickly — simultaneously using tablet and smartphone devices while watching television.

However, all hope isn’t lost for commercials. In fact, new opportunities are being discovered to engage with consumers in new ways through television ads.

In a Nielsen study of connected device owners in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany during the fourth quarter of 2011, it was discovered that the majority of connected device owners are watching television and using their smartphones or tablet devices at the same time. Following are some of the statistics from the study.

United States

  • 88% of tablet owners and 86% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television at least during a 30-day period.
  • 45% of tablet owners and 41% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television at least once every day.
  • 26% of tablet owners and 27% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television several times a day.

United Kingdom

  • 80% of tablet owners and 78% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television at least once during a 30-day period.
  • 41% of tablet owners and 40% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television every day.
  • 24% of tablet owners and 24% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television several times a day.

Germany

  • 71% of tablet owners and 65% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television at least once during a 30-day period.
  • 28% of tablet owners and 20% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television every day.
  • 12% of tablet owners and 9% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television several times a day.

Italy

  • 71% of tablet owners and 66% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television at least once during a 30-day period.
  • 29% of tablet owners and 30% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television every day.
  • 15% of tablet owners and 13% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching television several times a day.

Survey respondents in all four countries agreed on one thing — the activity that they do the most on their tablet and smartphone devices while watching television is checking email. This is an activity that they’re likely to do both during commercials and during programs.

Here is where the data gets interesting. Consumers are using their mobile devices while watching television to not only look up information about programs but also to look up information about products advertised on television and search for deals on those products.

Brand marketers should take note of two important findings. First, consumers are looking for product-related information on their mobile devices while watching television and often commercials are catalysts to those searches. If you thought television advertising was dead — think again. It’s more important than ever to integrate your marketing efforts and include online and mobile elements, even in your television ads.

Second, tablet owners are slightly more likely to use their devices while watching television than smartphone owners. It’s worth considering how to integrate mobile elements for specific devices (e.g., tablet vs. smartphone) into your various marketing initiatives, including television ads.

Image: Veronica Belmont

Google Consumer Surveys Add Monetization Options to Websites

Google Consumer Surveys were launched last week, and the media world took notice. Could there be another way to monetize websites other than ads and paywalls? At a time when major news organizations like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are bringing paywalls back to life, Google wants to make sure the best content is available through its search engine and to all Internet users. That’s where Google Consumer Surveys come into the picture.

The new tool is actually very simple in concept. Advertisers create the surveys. When people visit websites that sign up to publish Google Consumer Surveys, a survey is shown, which people must complete in order to view the page content. Publishers can choose to display surveys on as many pages as they want, and they’re paid $0.05 per completed survey.

For publishers, Google Consumer Surveys enables them to generate revenue from their content. For advertisers, Google Consumer Surveys enables them to affordably gather market research data using self-service tools similar to buying ad space through Google AdWords. While Google expects the new product to be most attractive to small- and mid-size businesses, large brand advertisers and publishers are key targets, too.

Watch the video from Google that explains how Google Consumer Surveys work:

Surveys should be quick. As Google product manager Paul McDonald told Adweek, “We feel like spending six to eight seconds on a survey is a good trade-off compared to watching a 30-second ad.” I think it’s safe to assume most web surfers would agree with that.

However, the problem comes with the accuracy of the data collected through these surveys. Is it also safe to assume that once people get used to these surveys, they’ll just click any response to pass the roadblock and get to the content they want quickly? Google claims to have built some safeguards against this within the survey tool, but the problem is nearly impossible to mitigate completely.

Bottom-line, Google Consumer Surveys offers great opportunities for publisher to monetize their content and for advertisers to gather market intelligence. However, until we learn more about Google’s methods for ensuring results are reliable, those advertisers need to use the data collected through these surveys for exploratory and directional purposes only.

What do you think of Google Consumer Surveys? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Three golden rules of employee engagement

One of my great interests is how western capitalism (as focused through broad based consumerism) impacts those cultures and economies which don’t necessarily share such values.

This inevitably ends up as being a discussion about human and indigenous rights.  How the Bushmen are pushed off their mineral rich land, for instance, or how Apple’s i- revolution appears to have been underpinned by regular suicides.

I firmly believe that if western consumers knew of such tragedies they would think again about buying the goods they take for granted.  Who wants to know that their mobile phone has perpetuated civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or that the cheap fashion they just bought may have just condemned another child to starvation?

There are many NGOs out there who seek to remedy this deplorable situation, and one of those who have my profound respect is Impactt.

Impactt are currently celebrating 15 years since their foundation.  As part of this they’ve released a report, entitled “Finding the Sweet Spot: Smarter Ethical Trade That Delivers More For All”, and will be hosting their first ever conference on the same subject in May. [Read more…] about Three golden rules of employee engagement