A drop in mobile phone sales may be the latest sign that the stumbling economy is taking a toll on consumers. Unit sales of mobile handsets in the U.S. fell 13% to 28 million in the second quarter compared to the year-earlier period, according to market research firm NPD Group. That marks the lowest quarterly total since NPD began tracking the category in 2005. "That lends credibility to the argument that the economy appears to be more of a factor than anything transpiring in the industry," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD. Handset unit sales totaled $2.4 billion, a 2% drop from a year ago. Average handset prices have increased 14% over the last year to $84, but fell by $3 since the first quarter because of lower prices on brands such as LG, Motorola, Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM). Despite slipping sales overall, smartphones such as RIM's BlackBerry and the iPhone continue to make up a growing proportion of handset sales at 19% compared to 9% a year ago. "That may indicate there's a group of consumers that see value in wireless data and media and are willing to upgrade their phones to take better advantage of those capabilities," Rubin said. "But there's still a large segment of consumers that can't justify the value in it." In addition to carrying a higher retail price, feature-laden smartphones also typically require the additional cost of a one- or two-year data plan. Rubin said phones with QWERTY keyboards--which do not necessarily qualify as true smartphones--saw the biggest gains, jumping from 12% to 28% of handset sales (think text-messaging teens). Further signaling the spread of media-centric phones, 65% of phones purchased had music players--up from 45% a year ago--while 81% were Bluetooth-enabled, up from 69%. Among device manufacturers, struggling Motorola managed to maintain its U.S. market share lead during the quarter, but only barely. With its share sliding from 32% to 21%, competitors such as Samsung and LG each claimed 20%, while Nokia had 9% and RIM, 7%. Motorola plans to sell or spin off its phone unit in 2009 to focus on its profitable business selling set-top boxes, radios and networking equipment. Rubin said iPhone sales slowed in the quarter because of a shortage of inventory and consumers holding back from buying in anticipation of the release of the iPhone 3G in July. While the new, more affordable model has been selling briskly, Rubin said Apple still does not have the distribution to match the sales of competing smartphones. "One model offered by one carrier (AT&T) is going to have a hard time competing in value, say, against a BlackBerry Curve or Palm Centro, which is a much lower priced device now," he said. Even so, AT&T managed to increase its market lead in handset sales to 29%, followed by Verizon Wireless at 26% and both T-Mobile and Sprint at 11%.
Several search marketing tech and services firms rolled out upgrades to their product suites at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose conference on Tuesday. SearchIgnite has released Version 3.0 of its campaign management platform, while Adgooroo launched the "Top Ad Copy Report," a tool that allows advertisers to see examples of top-performing paid search ads on a by-keyword basis. "The latest platform now provides the most comprehensive and actionable reporting available within the industry for measuring campaign performance across all major online media," said Roger Barnette, president of Atlanta-based SearchIgnite. "For marketers with large or complex search campaigns, SearchIgnite offers unmatched algorithmic, manual and rules based optimization to save time and improve ROI." Search marketers also have their choice of 44 new reports, including creative and landing page testing analysis, as well as assist reports that examine the roles of various keywords throughout the customer search cycle. Finally, Version 3.0 features a central dashboard that pulls all the data into one screen, with options for both graphical and data-based views. SearchIgnite manages more than $350 million in search marketing spend annually, for both brands like E*TRADE Financial and agencies like LM&O Advertising. Version 3.0 of its campaign management and optimization platform includes more robust analytics, with tracking and reporting available for paid and organic search, paid inclusion, email and display campaigns. Meanwhile, Chicago-based AdGooroo unveiled the Top Ad Copy Report, which gives advertisers examples of the industry's most effective paid search ads--including those of their competitors. The company powers competitive intelligence and keyword research tools for agencies like Digitas and brands like Target. The Top Ad Copy Report has been bundled into the company's SEM Insight tool, and compares the effectiveness of paid search ads based on various factors, including their position and the amount of coverage, as well as their duration. Search marketers can then develop their own copywriting strategy based on examples that have already proven successful for their targets. "For the first time ever, advertisers have a reliable tool to help them discover the most powerful online ad copy," said AdGooroo Founder Rich Stokes. "With the Top Ad Copy Report, SEM Insight users can see what's working and what's not in any given space. The report is easy to use, and automatically finds the best ad copy in the keywords any particular user has chosen to track."
More than 80% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) surveyed said they plan to maintain or increase ad spending over the next 12 months despite a troubled economy--and they plan to spend slightly more of those dollars online. That's according to the latest findings from The Kelsey Group's Local Commerce Monitor, an ongoing study of SMBs that the research firm conducts in conjunction with ConStat. About 300 SMBs from around the nation in first- and second-tier markets responded to the 50-question online survey aimed at measuring where and how these business owners are spending their ad budgets, as well as how their media usage is evolving. Respondents said they planned to spend just over 28% of their entire ad budget online in the next year--up 3% from what they spent in the previous 12 months. "Though the percentage increase is slight, it represents a significant rise in the amount they'll actually be spending," said Steve Marshall, research director at The Kelsey Group. "The data reveal a remarkable resilience of the SMB advertising segment in the face of economic pressures on local consumers and businesses." The shift to online ads--including email, paid search and Internet Yellow Pages--is driven by an increased reliance on campaign performance and return on investment (ROI) data. For instance, just over 30% of SMBs surveyed said that campaign performance and ROI was the primary influence on their advertising spending decisions, ahead of the input/actions of a business partner or competitor (25%) and information from media such as newspapers, TV and trade publications (14%). "There's an opportunity for media that can demonstrate ROI to tap into SMBs' future advertising plans," Marshall said. With paid search, for example, 27% of respondents who had purchased search ads in the past 12 months said that the ROI was either "extraordinary" (or over 20 times their spending) or "excellent" (between 10-20 times their spending). The SMBs also are also increasingly incorporating new media platforms into their marketing mix. For example, 40% plan to add customer reviews to their own Web sites, and 26% will incorporate video. Meanwhile, 30% will tap social media by adding links or placing ads on social networking sites or blogs.
Some brands attempt to engage the blogosphere by targeting the top 30 blogs in their industry. By contrast, Graco has pursued a more long-term, community-building approach in an effort to establish more meaningful relationships with the tech-savvy mothers of today. Converseon, Graco's marketing agency, was tasked with figuring out how to connect this 66-year-old maker of car seats, strollers and other products for babies and infants in a tightly regulated environment with this highly interconnected online community of "influentials" with a proven skepticism toward brands. "The 34 million moms online in the U.S. are among the savviest consumers online," said Paull Young, a senior account executive and social media strategist at New York-based Converseon. So, 18 months, ago, Converseon and Graco Baby first begin "listening" to the conversation--for several months before proactively doing anything--to develop a clear understanding of the landscape in the parenting category. Based on the information they gathered, the agency and clients formed a strategy to make Graco an accepted and welcomed brand in the online parenting conversation. They also attempted to "humanize" the Graco brand, and to build lasting relationships with the community by demonstrating that behind the brand are concerned and engaged parents. "We work closely with Graco's marketing team, their legal team, and even their product team to formulate the best strategy for the brand," Young said. Additional "conversation mining" found a robust, active parenting group that was largely resistant to commercial efforts to engage them. A core thrust of Graco's strategy was, thus, not to force the brand into the conversations, but instead create and foster environments to facilitate relationships between influentials, and then get invited to the conversation. The core components of that campaign included a series of Graco blogger "Get-Together" events across the country to lay the groundwork for the launch of a corporate Graco parenting blog authored by a team of Graco employees. The blog was designed to focus on "parent first" issues, stories, advice. The blogging effort was supported with the complementary use of other social media tools, including Flickr, YouTube and Twitter. As a result of these efforts, online chatter about Graco nearly doubled and positive sentiment increased 15%--68% positive in 2007 to 83% positive this year. Also, the blog now regularly attracts thousands of unique visitors. The company plans to launch a Graco-branded Twitter profile to complement several existing Graco employees/bloggers who already use Twitter--as well as a new parenting and travel blog that launches in beta this week--at www.readyfortheroadahead.com, among other social media initiatives that employ a number of mediums. "Converseon's end-to-end social media approach has been a game-changer for Graco," said Pancho Gutstein, Graco's director of brand marketing. Whether Graco can retain its popularity among bloggers, and just how well it manages issues in the future, remain to be seen. This week, when one searched for "Graco" and "children" on Google News, the first search result was a story by ABC News about new child safety standards becoming law--partly because of a Graco play yard killing a 13-month-old girl back in 2002. Young, for his part, had no comment on this specific story, only saying that he planned to continue working closely with Graco's legal team to map out an online strategy. "Graco has made it very clear that they plan to invest significantly more in social media marketing in the future," Young said.
The Olympic Web sites of NBC and Yahoo have gotten their share of attention for garnering strong ratings so far during the Games. But what about Beijing2008.cn, the official site of the Summer Olympics? Traffic from 10 major countries outside China averaged 930,000 daily visitors to the site from Aug. 9 to 15, with the U.S. accounting for more than half the audience at 554,800. The audience within China isn't that much bigger--a daily average 1.5 million, according to ChinaRank, a large-scale Web site ranking platform hosted by the Internet Society of China. But a total of 65.8 million are visiting Olympics-related content online. Nielsen also released ratings for the video sections of NBCOlympics.com and Brazilian partner site Terra.com. NBC's Olympics video site averaged 1.5 million visitors during the first week, while Terra's video offering had 119,000 daily users. The Nielsen data did not include information on the number of streams viewed. Yahoo cited comScore data last week showing that its Olympic site had drawn more than 8 million visitors compared to 6.7 for NBCOlympics.com and 1.7 for Beijing2008.cn for the week ending Aug. 10. NBC has developed the Total Audience Measurement Index (TAMI) to determine the reach of its coverage across TV, online, mobile and VOD. The tool shows that online and mobile ratings have generally been climbing steadily during the Games. For the week ending Aug. 16, traffic to NBCOlympics.com peaked at nearly 8 million last Friday when U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps won his sixth gold medal, according to the TAMI data. NBC's mobile coverage reached a high of 667,876 on Saturday, when Phelps won his seventh and record eighth gold medals. NBC total audience for the Olympics that day also hit a high of 107.8 million. With Phelps now out of the pool, NBC can only hope ratings for the rest of the Games don't take a dive.
MediaPost has selected its 2008 Online All Stars in the Media, Marketing and Creative categories. They are: Media Sarah Fay, CEO, Aegis North America Jeff Marshall, SVP/Managing Director, Starcom's Pixel Jonathan Haber, U.S. Director, OMD's Ignition Factory Marketing Bob Pearson, VP-Communities & Conversations, Dell Edward C. Gold, Advertising Director, State Farm Babs Rangaiah, Global Director, Communications Planning, Unilever Creative Lars Bastholm, Co-Chief Creative Officer, AKQA Michael Lebowitz, Founder & CEO, Big Spaceship Tommy Means, Creative Director/Director, Mekanism Profiles of the 2008 All Stars will be featured in a special October issue of OMMA magazine, and in upcoming editions of Online Media Daily, and they will be honored during a luncheon at the OMMA Global New York conference on Sept. 19th in New York City.
To date, engagement has largely been used as a measure of success for social media marketing. Defining what engagement means in this context has been difficult and many people disagree on setting standards. What qualifies as engagement? What doesn't? Can engagement really even be a measure of campaign success? When we get into subjective views and analysis of engagement, the value of what's really going on becomes fuzzy and more difficult to understand. But if we go back a few steps in the social media marketing process to the point of customer intelligence gathering, it's here that engagement delivers clear value before marketers even spend a dime. What is engagement? It's a combination of two things: What/how people interact with each other and the content (viewing, posting, inviting, rating, etc.) and who/what causes people to change or define their behavior (how influential people and content are). Engagement can clearly tell us where people are spending their time, how they are communicating and sharing with other people, and what topics they are talking about most. This is objective information that gives advertisers and publishers the facts about their audience. Knowing this kind of information, based on various levels of engagement, before spending money on social media marketing is a huge benefit to marketers. Analyzing engagement provides guidance and intelligence on where marketing dollars should be spent. If Kellogg's notices that a large number of users on MySpace are engaging around their favorite cereal and that very few people are doing so on Facebook, it would make a lot more sense to spend more heavily on MySpace and know exactly where to place and direct that spend. This tactic uses engagement to ensure results, not just to measure them. Advertisers have historically guessed, based on traffic numbers and click-through rates, how effective their campaign would be. Using a method centered around engagement takes the guesswork out of the process and gives detailed guidance for all of the elements that go into a campaign. Marketers can also more effectively join the conversation this way. Let's say a large group of people on MySpace are discussing the nutritional merits of sweet-cereals with a generally negative sentiment. Based on this customer intelligence, Kellogg's could easily update their creative and message to address the specific issues their customers and potential customers are engaging around--perhaps highlighting the health benefits of Raisin Bran. It's not just about targeting the right people, it's about getting to the right people with the right message at the right time, and the customer intelligence gained through their engagement can help advertisers identify these key factors far more accurately. After the fact, these sentiment metrics can be revisited to gauge the effectiveness of the campaign - this is especially valuable for brand marketers. Marketers all acknowledge the importance of engagement but until the subjective aspects of the metric can be defined, it's the factual elements we can glean from customer engagement that will provide real value. Using engagement as a way to guide and predict your ad buy or marketing spend is a clear and simple method that leverages the customer intelligence that can be gained from engagement metrics. This intelligence can also help accurately inform the content and message of the resulting marketing collateral to ensure it resonates with the target audience. Engagement is here to stay. Just like any new metric, it will take some time to take-hold and become fully standardized, but it is undeniably a multifaceted and powerful metric that can provide value to marketers throughout the marketing process--especially before it even starts.