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4 out of 5 Marketers Report Video Content has Positive Impact on Business

video play buttonThe 2013 Online Video Marketing Survey and Business Video Trends Report has been released by ReelSEO, the Web Marketing Council, and Flimp Media, and of the 600 marketers surveyed as part of the study, 93% of those marketers are using brand video content (up from 81% in 2012) with 82% reporting that video content has a positive effect on their businesses.

The most popular use of video content for marketers in 2013 is for website marketing (84%) followed by search marketing (80%) and email marketing (60%). Only 10% of survey respondents claimed that video had little effect on marketing return on investment, yet just 71% of marketers plan to increase their online video marketing budgets while 1% plan to cut their video marketing budgets this year.

While the benefits of brand video content continue to grow as consumers’ consumption rates increase, marketers continue to report barriers to entry that prevent them from creating more video content. Cost was the most frequently cited challenge to video production identified by 37% of marketers in this study. Video quality was the second most frequently cited challenge with 27% of marketers voicing concerns over producing video that is a high enough quality. Ranking as the third biggest barrier to video content entry was technical challenges, which was cited by 22% of marketers in this study.

Video content can help your business in a variety of ways as discussed in The Fundamentals of Global Video Marketing ebook from Lionbridge. The ebook shares a variety of research statistics to prove the value of video content marketing. For example, Cisco Visual Networking predicts that by 2017, online video will account for 69% of total consumer Internet traffic. Internet Retailer reports that 52% of consumers today say that watching product videos makes them feel more confident about their online purchases.

Still not sure about brand video marketing? Consider this—40% of the top 1,000 shared Instagram videos in September 2013 were published by brands according to research by Unruly Media. Furthermore, research by Pixability found that video content on YouTube has a long shelf-life that keeps on giving. In its analysis of the top 100 brands on YouTube, Pixability discovered that videos receive 40% of their lifetime views in the first three weeks after they’re published and another 30% of their lifetime views between four and 12 weeks after they’re published. During weeks 21-52, videos get another 30% of their lifetime views.

The allure of online video for consumers and marketers is one that is worth pursuing, because as the data shows, video content can have a real impact on brand-building and ROI.

Image: Ivan Prole

Mid-2013 Global Brand Rankings Revealed

2013 mid-year BrandIndex rankingsYouGov has released its BrandIndex Mid 2013 Global Rankings. The brand ranking is developed using a daily measurement process which includes thousands of brands evaluated across 16 individual metrics. Brands are ranked based on the positive and negative “Brand Buzz” that they receive.

The mid-year 2013 list shows technology, car manufacturer, and supermarket chain brands ranking high for global brand buzz. For example, Samsung appears in the top 10 brand buzz list in 11 out of 14 countries measured. This is the second year that Samsung has ranked as the strongest international performing brand overall. Part of that brand buzz came from the company’s June release of a variety of new products. Beauty brands and chocolate brands also ranked high globally.

However, global brands weren’t the only ones to perform well in the global rankings. “Homegrown” brands, particularly domestic supermarket chains, frequently appear in national top 10 lists. You can see that in the list of top U.K. Buzz Rankings below where Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, and Sainsbury’s all appear in the top 10.

The most buzzed about brands in the U.S. and U.K. according to the Mid-2013 BrandIndex Buzz Rankings are:

Top U.S. Buzz Rankings Mid-2013

  1. Ford
  2. Amazon.com
  3. Subway
  4. History Channel
  5. Lowe’s
  6. V8
  7. Walgreen’s
  8. YouTube
  9. Kindle
  10. Cheerios

Top U.K. Buzz Rankings Mid-2013

  1. BBC iPlayer
  2. Samsung
  3. John Lewis
  4. MoneySavingExpert.com
  5. Dyson
  6. BBC.co.uk
  7. YouTube
  8. Marks & Spencer
  9. Waitrose
  10. Sainsbury’s

The most improved brands in the U.S. and U.K. according to the Mid-2013 BrandIndex Buzz Rankings are:

Top U.S. Buzz Improvers Mid-2013

  1. Goldman Sachs
  2. Bank of America
  3. J.P. Morgan
  4. American Airlines
  5. BlackBerry
  6. Galaxy
  7. Morgan Stanley
  8. Kodak
  9. Bing
  10. Starbucks DoubleShot Energy+ Coffee

Top U.K. Buzz Improvers Mid-2013

  1. London Underground
  2. Royal Mail
  3. La Senza
  4. Santander
  5. Sky
  6. Samsung
  7. Goldman Sachs
  8. Little Chef
  9. Network Rail
  10. Ryanair

If you compare the Mid-2013 Brand Buzz rankings to the Mid-2012 Brand Buzz rankings, you won’t see a big change in the U.S. or U.K. lists. Noticeably absent from both lists is Google, which had already dropped significantly in the rankings in mid-year 2012 and at the end of 2011. Overall, Google performed well, making it onto the top 10 list for five countries. However, it fell off of the list in other countries (e.g., Sweden). On the other hand, Amazon.com continues to stay consistently strong in the brand buzz ranking year after year.

What do you think of the Brand Buzz Index? Any brands noticeably absent or surprising in their appearance on the list? Leave a comment and share your thoughts below.

Be sure to follow the link at the beginning of this article to get all of the details about the Mid-2013 Global BrandIndex, including lists by country, category, and more.

Image: BrandIndex.com

Report Calls for Brands to Give Consumers What They Want on Facebook

value money upIn the newest part of Syncapse’s Value of a Facebook Fan 2013 report (read about the first part here), you can learn Why Consumers Become Brand Fans. The 9-page report provides the results of Syncapse’s research into 20 major brands, which included putting each brand through its fan valuation model. The report delves deeper into the data released in April 2013, which revealed that the average value of a Facebook Like is $174 (up from $136 in 2010).

The new report explains that 78% of people who are fans of a brand on Facebook are also current users of the brand. With that information in hand, Syncapse advises brands to focus on converting existing customers to Facebook fans in order to build a community of loyal brand advocates before trying to bring new customers into the community. Syncapse notes that focusing on current customers first, “creates powerful opportunities for lookalike profile modeling,” which can help in all aspects of targeting.

It’s also interesting to note that the majority of brands chase consumers on Facebook by offering discounts in exchange for Likes, but Syncapse suggests that prioritizing emotional motivators will attract higher quality fans. Looking at the distribution of consumer survey respondents, the reasons why people become a fan of a brand on Facebook are as follows:

  • To support the brand I like = 49%
  • To get a coupon or discount = 42%
  • To receive regular updates from brands I like = 41%
  • To participate in contests = 35%
  • To share my personal good experiences = 31%
  • To share my interests and lifestyle with others = 27%
  • To research brands when I was looking for specific products or services = 21%
  • Seeing my friends are already a fan or Liked the brand page = 20%
  • A brand advertisement on television, online, or in a magazine led me to fan the brand = 18%
  • Someone recommended me to fan the brand = 15%

The research found that brands like Disney, Coca-Cola, and Nike are attracting a large number of fans who like the brand’s Facebook Page to support a brand that they like. These are great brands to benchmark as you develop your own Facebook fan acquisition strategy.

Bottom-line, Syncapse recommends that brands, “calibrate fan acquisition strategies based on the reasons consumers actually convert.” Don’t assume you know what those reasons are, because it’s very likely that you don’t.

The power of social media comes from building relationships. Relationship brands are the most powerful brands in the world. It makes sense to give consumers what they want if you want them to start a “relationship” with your brand by liking its Facebook Page.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts below.

Image: Laura Leavell

Measuring the Fragmented Brand Experience Across Multiple Devices

online advertising metricsPage views, clicks, conversions—they’re harder to track today than ever before despite the fact that brand marketers have more tools to do so. The problem is the fragmented brand experience that happens as consumers interact with branded content and communications across multiple devices in a single day, a single hour, and even in a single minute.

Consumer behavior has changed so much in the past few years with the maturation of the mobile device market. Today, consumers spend more time using their mobile devices than they spend watching television or using a computer. Not only do brand marketers have to connect with consumers based on the media channels they prefer and the specific types of content they consume, but brands also have to connect with them on specific devices.

The user experience on one device should rarely be the same as it is on another device. That means brand marketers have to develop more content than ever. Consumers demand personalization and user experiences that fit the media channel and the device. Once that content has been distributed and consumed, brand marketers still have to measure the ROI of their campaigns and efforts.

It wasn’t long ago that getting accurate metrics for online, social, and mobile audiences was challenging. Today, brand marketers have access to a massive amount of data, but the accuracy of that data leaves a lot to be desired. Not only are brand marketers challenged by distorted online advertising metrics due to traffic and click fraud, they’re also fighting against the overall degradation of data and the growing problems related to multi-screen consumers.

Today’s consumers have very fragmented experiences with brands. They’ll visit a brand website, interact with brand content, and see brand communications and ads from their work computers, home computers, smartphones, and tablets. How can brand marketers identify a single consumer who visits through these various devices using different IP addresses and in different locations as the same visitor? They can’t. Instead, the number of unique visitors is artificially inflated.

Similarly, brand marketers cannot accurately track conversions. How did a customer originally learn about a brand offer? It’s not necessarily from the link they followed to land on the brand’s offer page where conversions are tracked. They could have learned about the brand offer when they were using their smartphone and later visited the site from their home computer where they clicked on the link or took the action that put them on the “conversion” list. Brands are missing a huge piece of the buyer journey. As a result, future marketing campaigns could be created that rely on available data rather than “real” data, and those marketing campaigns will deliver poor results.

In short, brand marketers are tasked with delivering metrics, but until accurate metrics are available, particularly metrics that account for fragmented brand experiences across multiple devices, the struggle to calculate ROI continues.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Miguel Ugalde

Half of Online Display Ads Don’t Appear

stopwatchA recent study from comScore found that 54% of display ads were not seen, which as you can imagine, is bad news for advertisers trying to get their brands in front of online audiences. In fact, the results could be much worse for advertisers. The comScore study recorded any ad that was at least 50% on screen and visible on screen for at least one second. How many advertisers would be happy if consumers saw their ads for one second?

World News Publishing Focus reports that many advertisers are now requiring online publishers to include viewability clauses in their ad contracts to ensure that advertisers get the brand exposure they’re expecting.

The problem in low viewability for display ads happens for a few reasons. For example, both technical issues and human error could cause an ad not to render properly. Intentional publisher negligence could also cause ads to go unviewed. However, the statistics from the comScore report only tell part of the story. In reality, many of those ads that were reported as going unseen were actually included on publisher websites per the advertising agreement. However, for many reasons, including a visitor scrolling quickly past an ad as they scroll down the page, these ads were visible to visitors’ for less than one second.

As World News Publishing Focus reports, advertisers have to find ways to ensure that their ads are seen. New ad units are helping advertisers get noticed online, but the more intrusive display ads become, the more negative brand backlash they can create. Moving some ad budget dollars to online video advertising is another option that advertisers can take, but video advertising is also far from perfect.

At the very least, advertisers may start paying premium prices for online ad placement that not only ensures ads are seen but that those ads are seen for more than one second each. Native advertising is an alternative that recent research has shown to be very effective for advertisers, but investing in sponsored content has problems of its own.

How are you ensuring your online display ads are seen? Have you shifted any of your marketing budget away from display advertising due to lack of viewability? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on display ads, viewability clauses, and native advertising.

Image: Jean Scheijen