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Online Video Advertising Will Steal Significant Budget from TV and Display

For the third year in a row, BrightRoll (a leading online video advertising services provider) conducted an online video advertising study among ad agency executives. The report reveals significant shifts in advertising spending in 2011 particularly for online video advertising, which is growing faster than all other online advertising categories. In fact, budget shifts to online video advertising are coming primarily at the expense of television and online display advertising budgets.

Six out of ten ad agency executives who responded to the BrightRoll survey indicated that they believe the targeting capabilities of online video advertising makes it more effective than or as effective as television ads. 86% reported they are shifting investments in online display advertising to online video advertising in 2011, and 64% said they would shift at least part of their television advertising budgets to online video advertising. Search, social media, and direct response advertising budgets aren’t safe from the allure of online video advertising either. Nearly 30% of ad agency executives who responded to the BrightRoll survey indicated they planned to shift budgets from search, social media, and direct response advertising to online video advertising.

Overall, ad agency executives who responded to the survey indicated that the most common increases in ad spending in 2011 will be in online video advertising (28%), mobile media (27%), and social media (25%).

There are several reasons why ad agency executives and their clients are focusing on the potential for online video advertising and making the necessary investments to leverage the medium. The BrightRoll study revealed that behavioral targeting capabilities of online video advertising are what makes the medium so vital to their marketing plans with 41% of respondents citing this as the most valuable attribute of the medium. Reach (23%), ad unit format (19%), price relative to television (10%), and the ability to reuse creative (10%) were viewed as less valuable but still important.

It’s the behavioral targeting capabilities of online video advertising that has the advertising world so excited. The BrightRoll study reports that advertising executives believe behavioral targeting is most important for online video advertising success (28%) followed by contextual (24%), demographic (21%), and content (10%) targeting.

When it comes to purchasing online video advertising space, buying directly from online publishers is the most common method of purchasing inventory (52%), followed by buying from ad networks (31%), broadcasters (10%), portals (6%), and ad exchanges (2%).

Online video advertising is still a fairly new medium but it’s growing very quickly. It’s safe to assume that the online video advertising market will look very different in a couple of years. The question is whether or not your brand will be an early adopter and learn to leverage its capabilities now or if you’ll be trying to catch up later.

What is your company doing in the online video advertising space? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng

Fortune 500 Companies Active in Social Media in 2013

new_yorkFortune 500 companies are actively using social media more in 2013 than ever before. According to research from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, every form of social media activity tracked among Fortune 500 companies since the research was first conducted in 2008 grew this year, including the use of corporate blogs, Facebook Pages, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Fortune 500 companies are also active on Google+, Instagram, and Foursquare.

According to the research report authors, Twitter is used by the highest number of Fortune 500 companies (77%) and was also the social media site that saw the most growth since 2012 (7% in a tie with YouTube). Detailed results follow, and you can read the full report on The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Market Research website. It’s important to point out that the data collected in this study focused on corporate social media profiles and activities, not brand-specific activities. You can read about the methodology behind the study by visiting the website link above to access the full report.

Blogs

More than one out of three (34%) of Fortune 500 companies are publishing corporate blogs (a 6% increase from 2012), and 79% of those blogs are current, have RSS feeds, and allow comments, making them truly social. Believe it or not, three of the top five Fortune 500 companies don’t have blogs, but overall, 47% of all Fortune 500 blogs are published by the top 200 corporations. These blogs come from 171 corporations in 58 of the 75 industries represented in the Fortune 500.

Twitter

More than three out of four (77%) of companies in the Fortune 500 have corporate Twitter profiles with at least one tweet published within the past month (a 4% increase over 2012). Eight of the top 10 companies in the Fortune 500 have corporate Twitter accounts. Overall, 43% of all Fortune 500 corporate Twitter accounts are managed by the top 200 corporations. These Twitter accounts come from 387 companies in 72 of the 75 industries represented in the Fortune 500.

Facebook

Nearly three out of four (70%) of Fortune 500 companies have corporate Facebook Pages, which is a 4% increase over 2012. Overall, 41% of all Fortune 500 corporate Facebook Pages are published by the top 200 companies. The 348 companies that are active on corporate Facebook Pages come from 72 of the 75 industries represented in the Fortune 500.

YouTube

Nearly three out of four (69%) of companies in the Fortune 500 have corporate YouTube accounts, which is a 7% increase from 2012.

Pinterest

Nearly one out of ten (9%) of companies in the Fortune 500 have Pinterest boards, which is a 5% increase from 2012.

Google+

More than one out of three (35%) Fortune 500 companies have corporate Google+ accounts that are active. This is the first year that the research for this study included Google+.

Instagram

Nearly one in ten (9%) of Fortune 500 companies have corporate Instagram accounts. This is the first year that the study research included Instagram.

Foursquare

Nearly one out of ten (9%) of companies in the Fortune 500 have corporate Foursquare accounts). 2013 is the first year that Foursquare was included in the study research.

Final Thoughts

As the study authors explain, “Rank clearly impacts social media adoption.” The study found companies that rank higher in the 2013 Fortune 500 list are more likely to adopt and actively use social media than companies that rank lower on the list. This holds true for all social media sites analyzed in the study.

It’s also interesting to note that 59% of Fortune 500 companies that are using social media provide links to their social media profiles from their corporate website home pages, which makes their social content easily accessible to customers, investors, vendors, journalists, and more. Surprisingly, 41% of Fortune 500 companies make it a lot harder to find their corporate social media profiles. You’ll need to do some searching to find them.

What do you think of this study’s findings? Does your company maintain active corporate social media profiles? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Simona Dumitru

Pinterest Becomes More Personalized and Ad-Ready

push pins pinterestOn Friday, Pinterest announced the release of two new features that leverage the massive amount of data it has at its disposal about its growing user audience. By analyzing both the content users pin and like on Pinterest as well as sites they visit outside of Pinterest that have the Pin It button, Pinterest will provide more personalized recommendations for additional content that users might like.

According to an article on the Pinterest blog, a new Edit Your Home Feed button is available which enables users to edit the content they see online or on their mobile devices to get their feed the way they want it. Ke Chen, Pinterest Software Engineer, explains, “Go to Follow Boards to see stuff you might like based on what you’ve been pinning. Or go to Unfollow Boards to stop seeing stuff you’re not that into anymore.” The more you pin, the better Pinterest’s board recommendations will get.

Pinterest also announced that it will provide more suggestions for pins and boards users might want to follow based on the websites they visit that have the Pin It button on them. For example, Pinterest might suggest boards about weddings to a Pinterest user who is planning a wedding and visits a lot of wedding sites that have the Pin It button.

Pinterest does offer a way to turn off the tracking features within users’ account settings, but they’re turned on by default.

What Does This Mean for Brands?

People have been speculating for some time that Pinterest is preparing to follow in other social sites’ footsteps by rolling out advertising in order to bring in some revenue. Cotton Delo of AdAge speculates that the roll out of personalization features using the data Pinterest collects is a major step to bringing Pinterest advertising to life. Cotton suggests three ways Pinterest might turn this data into advertising opportunities:

  1. Selling promoted pins to brands.
  2. Building audience segments to sell to marketers who want to advertise on Pinterest.
  3. Starting an ad network.

The opportunities are huge. Brands want to connect with consumers on Pinterest. It’s a highly visual medium used primarily by women who, research shows, make or influence the vast majority of purchase decisions. Pinterest also has a highly engaged audience, so it’s critical that advertising which is introduced doesn’t damage the user experience. As more and more Facebook users express frustration with the growth of promoted posts and ads that clutter the content they actually want to see, Pinterest should be taking notes and applying the lessons learned to its own future advertising efforts.

What do you think of the future of Pinterest advertising and the company’s use of behavioral tracking? Would your brand be an early adopter of Pinterest advertising if the opportunity presented itself? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Image: Chris Cummings

Should Brand Marketers Worry about Gmail Tabs?

email marketing messageHundreds of millions of people around the world use Google’s email application, Gmail, to send and receive email messages each day. At the same time, brand marketers around the world are trying to connect with consumers through email marketing.

As a result, it’s safe to say that a large number of Gmail users receive email marketing messages, and until now, those marketing messages appeared in each user’s Gmail inbox mixed in with all of the other messages they got. That’s not necessarily the case anymore, and brand marketers who rely on email marketing are worried about it.

In simplest terms, the problem is this—Google launched Gmail tabs, which automatically categorizes users’ incoming email messages into separate tabs within the Gmail dashboard. The default tabs are:

  • Primary: Messages from friends and family, as well as any other messages that don’t appear in other tabs.
  • Promotions: Deals, offers, and other promotional emails.
  • Social: Messages from social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating services, gaming platforms, and other social websites.
  • Updates: Notifications such as confirmations, receipts, bills, and statements.
  • Forums: Messages from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists.

Users can choose which tabs they want to use and new message counts will appear in the header area of each tab making it easy for users to see when they have new messages in tabs they’re not currently viewing.

The goal of Gmail tabs is to streamline the process of reading your email messages by enabling you to see your most important messages first with less important messages categorized for viewing later. It’s a great idea for people who like to stay very organized and aren’t afraid that they’ll miss something important if all of their messages aren’t visible through a single view. However, the news isn’t as good for brand marketers.

The introduction of the Promotions tab in Gmail means that messages Google identifies as promotional in any way will go directly into that tab. It’s easier for users to delete them there, and it’s easier for users to forget to look for them there. This is particularly problematic for email marketers who send short-term deals and offers with quick expiration dates. Brand marketers have a reason to be worried. Open, click-through, and conversion rates are likely to drop among Gmail users if there is widespread adoption of Gmail tabs.

Of course, you can remind your Gmail audience to move your messages to the Primary tab so they don’t get lost in the Promotions Tab in the future (once a message is moved to the Primary tab, all similar messages should go to that tab in the future). However, the introduction of Gmail tabs creates an additional step that tired email users will have to take to receive information from your brand. Each additional step equates to lower response rates for brands.

The most important thing brand marketers can do is to make sure their email marketing messages and offers are better than ever. To motivate a consumer to move your brand email messages from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab in Gmail, you’ll need to up your game and send irresistible content that is worthy of appearing alongside of their most important messages in the Primary tab.

In other words, what can you do to make your email marketing messages Primary tab-worthy?

Image: Ilker

Rebranding HSN as the Brand Hero

credit card shoppingHSN has come a long way since the early days of home shopping and HSN.com, and the HSN marketing team wants to make sure women know it. With a complete rebranding, HSN will be positioned as the hero to women who think the brand is outdated. The HSN rebranding makes a specific effort to attract younger women through the use of updated packaging, taglines, fonts, television scripts, and more.

The new tagline simply states, “It’s fun here.” The marketing push focuses on building customer trust in the brand through mobile and digital where nearly half of HSN’s sales and new customers come from.

Rebranding HSN is a good move (albeit a bit late), and should help to position the brand for the evolving television commerce industry. With the growth in multiple display use and original programming online, the convergence of television, mobile, and commerce is poised to catalyze this type of shopping in new ways. Gone are the days of the HSN and television commerce of ten or twenty years ago. This type of shopping will look very different in just a few years.

Natalie Zmuda of Ad Age reports that HSN hopes to remove its reliance on celebrities selling their products to define its own brand. Instead, the rebranding will allow HSN to stand on its own as a relevant brand. Already, HSN is leveraging social media to support its rebranding strategy with Google+ Hangouts that don’t necessarily rely on celebrities.

Anytime a brand controls its own success rather than relying on third parties (including celebrities) is a smart move. If HSN continues to move in the right direction, it might start to carve out a larger market share against its top competitor, QVC, and it might be able to lead the next phase of the television commerce industry as online and what we’ve known as traditional television become more and more integrated in the coming years.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts on the HSN rebranding as well as the future of television commerce overall.

Image: Philippe Ramakers

The Evolution of Single Fathers and What Brand Marketers Need to Know

father_and_daughterA recent study from Pew Research found that the number of single fathers in the United States has risen by nine times since 1960. The evolution of the single father consumer demographic has significant effects for brand marketers.

It has long been known through numerous research results that women make or influence the vast majority of purchase decisions, and brands have changed their marketing strategies and tactics to better appeal to the influential mother demographic over the years. However, the growing number of single fathers and stay-at-home fathers is getting bigger every day. This is a market segment that brand marketers need to target with unique messages and campaigns.

According to the Pew Research study, in 1960, just 1% of households (300,000) with minor children in the United States were headed by a single father. In 2011, that number had grown to 8% to 2.6 million. Looking at the data from a different angle, just 14% of single parent households in the United States were headed by men. In 2011, that percentage was up to 24%.

In other words, nearly one in four single parent households in the United States are led by men. Clearly, this is a target audience that cannot be ignored. Ads, promotions, and messaging that cater to antiquated stereotypes of “traditional” families are not just missing an important audience but they’re also losing favor with two-parent households.

Pew Research also found that the role of fathers overall has changed. Today, Americans believe that fathers aren’t necessarily the family breadwinners alone. Gretchen Livingston of Pew Research writes, “Fathers are narrowing the still sizable gap with mothers in the amount of time they spend with their children. The public believes that a father’s greatest role is to provide values to his children, followed by emotional support, discipline, and income support. Public opinion ascribes roughly the same hierarchy of roles to mothers.”

Brands that market directly to the growing niche audience of single father heads of household and fathers who are primary caregivers are in a unique position to seize opportunities to build critical relationships with an audience that shows no signs of slowing down.

How is your brand connecting with this target market? Leave a comment and share your insights below.

Image: Glenda Otero