Corporate Eye

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Archives for December 2013

Investor: Shareholder Support

bt-cd
British Telecommunications (BT plc) has made CDs available for the blind and partially-sighted shareholders. Every June, a CD is released, containing extracts from summary financial statements and notice of meeting.

These CDs show that BT cares about each of its shareholders, and goes to great lengths to make sure that even those with a disability are able to stay up to date on the events that take place within the company. This level of dedication to shareholders is not often seen, and is very beneficial to BT, and its shareholders.

Video Ad Sharing Has Increased 50 Times in Eight Years

video spiral film stripGood news for brand marketers—a new “Viral Spiral” interactive infographic from Unruly Media reports that sharing of video ads via social media has grown nearly 50 times in the past eight years. This is a trend that shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, the top 10 ads in 2013 were shared 28.8 million times, which is an increase of over 52% since 2012, and Unruly Media is currently tracking 500,000 shares of brand video content each day.

Unruly Media recognizes the 2010 Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Be” ad as “the game-changer.” Since that ad debuted, shares of the top three branded videos have grown seven-fold. However, that Old Spice ad is not the most shared branded video of all time. That honor goes to Volkswagen’s “The Force” ad with 5.58 million shares, which debuted during the 2011 Super Bowl.

The growth in brand video sharing has changed the way advertisers do their jobs. In 2006, the “Evolution” ad from Dove was the third most shared ad of the year with 60,954 shares during that year. In 2013, the Dove “Real Beauty Sketches” ad was the most shared brand video of the year with 4.24 million shares (it’s also the third most shared video of all time). Combine those shares with the second and third most shared video ads in 2013 (“Hump Day” from GEICO and “Baby & Me” from Evian), and those three ads have been shared nearly 50 times more than the top three ads shared in 2006 (from 244,035 shares in 2006 to 11.6 million shares in 2013). In total, eight out of the top 20 most shared video ads of all time debuted in 2013 (40%).

Advertisers have learned a lot about creating videos that people want to share via social media in the past eight years. For example, Unruly Media reports that the average length for the top three most shared brand videos has increased by 178% since 2006 (from 35 seconds to 96 seconds).

Unruly Media has tracked 365 billion brand videos since 2006 using a combination of its own proprietary technology and social media APIs and used that data as the basis for its infographic. You can view the Viral Spiral below. Not only can you filter the results by year, number of shares, sector, and more, but you can also watch all of the video ads without leaving the interactive infographic.


Are you creating brand videos that people want to share with family and friends across the social web?

Image: Malgorzata Gluchowska

Tumblr Launches New Mobile Advertising Opportunity for Brands

Tumblr adsSince Yahoo! purchased Tumblr, there has been a big focus on monetizing the popular blogging platform. Earlier this year, Tumblr launched its first mobile advertising unit, Sponsored Mobile Posts, and now, brands can also purchase space through the new Sponsored Trending Blogs unit.

The new Sponsored Trending Blogs ad unit will appear in a popular area for mobile Tumblr users. CNET explains that Sponsored Trending Blogs, “will push advertisers’ Tumblr blogs in front of people checking out the Explore tab in the Tumblr for iOS and Android application.”

The Trending Blogs section of Tumblr debuted in July of this year and is a quick place for users to find popular, curated content from Tumblr’s editors. The Sponsored Trending Blogs will look just like non-sponsored content in the Explore tab of the Tumblr mobile app except for a dollar sign icon that will be used to disclose content has been paid for by a brand advertiser. Tumblr already uses this symbol to distinguish paid content, so the new native advertising of Sponsored Trending Blogs will be flagged similarly.

While Sponsored Trending Blogs won’t fully debut until January 2014, Tumblr has rolled out a soft launch with beta advertisers including Calvin Klein, Turner Broadcasting, Delta, Twentieth Century Fox, and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Currently, Sponsored Trending Blog ad units are being sold at a flat fee, and according to Mashable, they will be targeted geographically but not demographically or behaviorally.

Tumblr’s focus on monetizing its mobile traffic shouldn’t come as a surprise. In February, Tumblr CEO David Karp told Mashable that mobile traffic was expected to overtake desktop traffic before the end of 2013. The company has come a long way since 2010 when Karp told The L.A. Times that Tumblr was “opposed to advertising” because it “turns our stomachs.”

Taking a look at the story from Yahoo’s perspective, Tumblr was a huge acquisition that cost a lot of money. Tumblr needs to bring in big revenue. For Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, failure is not an option.

Only time will tell if Tumblr users are willing to accept the various advertising units being rolled out. So far, results seem to be positive with ad units released previously. With over 153 million Tumblr blogs and over 100 million posts published on Tumblr each day, according to Venture Beat, Tumblr is certainly a place brands need to be.

Image: Josh James

Careers: Interactive Games

allianz-games-sAllianz, an insurance and asset-management provider, offers an interesting games section on their website. Located under the careers tab, the section features a variety of interactive games. These games aim to help potential employees, or even potential customers, learn more about how the company operates.

The games are especially effective because they engage visitors, and help them to understand more about working with the company.