Social media has surpassed search, and is poised to overtake online display advertising as the No. 1 source of digital media planning and buying, according to the latest edition of a quarterly survey of U.S. advertising agencies. The survey, conducted by Strata, the agency media software and processing firm owned by Comcast, found that 69% of agency executives now consider social the “focus” of their digital ad spending -- up 32% over the past year, and now a close second behind display (71%) as the dominant digital media-buying platform in the minds of agency executives. “The survey demonstrates that there has been a shift from search -– which has dominated the digital part of the business for the last five to 10 years -– to social,” says Strata CEO and President John Shelton. Shelton said that view was affirmed to him this week while he was attending a technology conference of executives from small and mid-size agencies in New York City this week in which social was the main topic of discussion and nary a word was mentioned about either display or search. “I did not hear the word ‘search’ once,” he said, “ and maybe two out of three of the vendors [presentations] and three out of four of the [agency executives’] questions were about social. Social media is absolutely their main focus right now.” The Strata survey is based on an informal quarterly poll of its agency clients, which Shelton says is more of a cross-section of the U.S. agency scene, and therefore more representative than typical agency surveys that focus on the major agency holding companies. Strata services more than 1,000 agencies, processing more than $50 billion in media each year, and they range from shops billing $3 billion to “just under $1 million.” He said they are also geographically dispersed and include agencies based in the American heartland, as well as the major media markets. The survey found that mobile is also gaining steam, and is now seen as the No. 1 source of digital buying among 29.9% of the agency respondents. The iPhone continues to be the dominant device targeted in campaigns for eight straight quarters, with 75% of the executives citing it. Android came in second at 57% and the iPad was third at 44%. Interestingly, Android has fluctuated between 46% and 70% over the last eight quarters and “continues to look for stability in the mobile arena,” according to Strata. Not surprisingly, Facebook dominates the social media mindset, with 85% of the Strata respondents citing the social network. Interestingly, Google’s Facebook overtook Twitter as the next most dominant social media platform, and Google+ has moved up as a close fourth-place consideration behind Twitter. But Strata said Facebook has reigned supreme over the span of its surveys, scoring top consideration among 80% or more of the respondents for seven of the last nine quarters that it has been conducting the survey. Shelton said TV remains the No. 1 medium of focus among its agency clients, but that digital overall is beginning to close in on its dominance. He also noted that much of TV’s current stature has to do with the cyclical timing of the television marketplace, and especially the fact that we are in a “pre-upfront” buying period, and that we are also in a so-called quadrennial year in which the Summer Olympics and Presidential campaigns place a disproportionate share of attention on television in the ad industry. Shelton said the agency mindset shift mirrors Strata’s own development process, which has shifted significantly toward software and data processing systems earmarked for digital, which has been true of its major rivals – Donovan Data Systems and MediaBank, which recently merged into MediaOcean, and have put most of their focus on digital media processing. Shelton said about two-thirds of Strata’s development investments surrounding its ad agency products has been spent on digital media processing, and he says the company has experienced a 73% growth in usage of its digital products vs. only “single digit” growth of its traditional media products in the past two years.
Visibility to actually view where ads serve up on Web sites has been an issue for publishers and advertisers trying to keep track of performance. GeoEdge has developed an analytics platform giving publishers, ad networks and media buyers a tool to capture and analyze any ad displayed on Web sites around the world. It provides a thumbnail image, regardless of location. The platform, GeoEdge Analytics, captures images of ads as users view them and sends to advertisers. It also analyzes the same Web page from many different locations and tracks changes of how the page and ads appear for various viewers. Any banner ad automatically gets categorized to ensure quality. Once a malicious ad is identified, an alert is generated with the ad's data and screenshots. Also, American advertisers running spots on publisher sites in Europe can capture a view of how campaigns perform to ensure compliance, explains Amnon Siev, vice president of products at GeoEdge, which manages a network of servers in more than 100 locations. Siev said the platform collects information about the advertiser, ad network, placement on the page, and performance and vertical segmentation of the ad. For example, the ad served up about 20% of the time in a specific geographic location, he said. Advertisers and publishers can link visibility to ROI, as well as monitor competitor strategies, according to Siev. Publishers also can run analysis on their competition. For example, The Wall Street Journal can run analysis on ads appearing on The New York Times to identify the top performing ads in specific segments. "U.S. companies can run analysis on sites running ads for online gambling, which is all about acquiring users," he said. "Let's say you're a big online casino and your competition launched a campaign for poker in the Philippines. Typically, companies in the U.S. or Europe cannot see the creatives, but through GeoEdge Analytics they can."
Google is making a big bet on original video content, unveiling a plan to back its YouTube channels initiative with $200 million in marketing support. The announcement, which was made Wednesday during its digital “NewFront” presentation, will support an initiative that Google’s YouTube began last fall with the rollout of 50 niche content channels, and more than 50 new channels will be added soon. According to Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s head of global content, the video-sharing giant will spend the $200 million across Google sites and its advertising network to promote the channels. In a call with reporters, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt explained why Google is placing such a big bet on original video content. “We’re about to see another large explosion in the use of video,” he said, adding that the video industry is in what he described as a “third wave” of transformation. The first wave was broadcast to cable, he said, while the second was cable to the Web. Google’s plans were unveiled Wednesday night at New York’s Beacon Theatre during YouTube’s first-ever “upfront,” which refers to the annual television tradition in which media companies present their new programming lineups to advertisers in the hope that they will purchase ads. YouTube’s presentation marked the end of the two-week series of so-called digital content “NewFronts,” or upfront sales pitches, from Web giants Hulu, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, YouTube and even a few traditional media companies like NBCUniversal and The Walt Disney Co. During its presentation, YouTube featured three new channels that are part of the YouTube expansion: one about the lives of women, another about U.S. Olympians, and a third from Tribeca Film Enterprises. The channel about the lives of women, called “WIGS,” will be comprised of series, documentaries, and other content. It comes from producer Jon Avnet (“Black Swan,” “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “Risky Business”), and director Rodrigo Garcia (“Albert Nobbs,” “In Treatment,” “Mother and Child”). Some big Hollywood names are being linked to series on the channel, including Jennifer Garner, Virginia Madsen, Julia Stiles, Alison Janney, Caitlin Gerard, America Ferrera, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Beals, Michael C. Hall, Stephen Moyer and Alfred Molina. In conjunction with the U.S. Olympic Committee, the “Team USA” channel, which AT&T is sponsoring, will feature content about present and past Olympians, and instruction from Olympic sport coaches, in addition to classic Olympics footage. “The Picture Show” channel from Tribeca Enterprises, which produces the Tribeca Film Festival, and Maker Studios, will be a hub for online series, behind-the-scenes footage and short films. It will not show feature-length movies.
With more people using smartphones while shopping for homes, Trulia is launching a mobile ad platform to help real estate agents reach in-market home buyers on their devices. Trulia Mobile Ads will allow agents to buy display advertising within a particular Zip code -- even on an exclusive basis -- to generate leads through a click-to-call feature within ads. The ads will appear in Trulia’s iPhone and Android apps as well as its mobile site. The company says its mobile traffic has increased 250% in the last year, with about one-third of its overall online traffic coming from the mobile side. On weekends, when people are most likely to be out house-hunting, mobile traffic sometimes even surpasses desktop visits. In addition, Trulia has found that people using mobile phones to search for homes are 60% more likely to contact a real estate agent. Now the company is capitalizing on those trends with its new ad offering. “Because this consumer audience is at that stage where they’re out looking at homes, visiting listings, going to open houses, and driving through neighborhoods, it made sense to offer advertising to real estate agents who want to reach those consumers in the moment,” said Stephen Rossi, director of business services marketing at Trulia. The new mobile ad system essentially extends Trulia’s existing Local Ads product to phones. Agents are able to buy up to five blocks of impressions for a given ZIP code, with each block equal to 20% of the available impressions on map search results pages for that location. That would potentially allow an agent to buy up all the impressions for a ZIP code for up to a year. The ad units themselves take the form of drop-down banners that include an agent’s photo, name and number. Unless the agent had bought all the advertising for that ZIP code, the image and information for competing agents might also appear in that banner. The ads automatically minimize after five seconds. If someone clicks on the ad, however, it expands to full-screen, with the agent’s contact details and brokerage along with a “Call Now” button and lead form. Ads will appear after a certain number of touches on the map view, but are frequency-capped per each mobile session. Ad pricing will vary by location depending on factors such as demand for homes or property valuations in a given area. Rossi added that mobile ad slots are being offered on a first-come, first-serve basis, but that the platform would only be open to agents already advertising on Trulia for the first few weeks before being opened up more widely. He also noted that the mobile ad service doesn’t involve any bidding process. “We’ve thought about an auction process, but what we do as a service to our (real estate agent) customers is give them the opportunity to lock in rates for a certain period of time, and when we do adjust rates, we do it based on demand in the marketplace,” he said. Mobile ads will not initially be available for Trulia on tablets, but the company plans to add that capability. Trulia currently offers apps for the iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire.
Fresh off its first “upfront,” AOL has named Brad Elders as senior vice president of East Coast sales. Beginning Monday, May 14, Elders will oversee sales, account management and marketing in and around New York, Boston, Atlanta, and the entire Eastern Seaboard. Yet, Elders, who most recently served as SVP sales at app maker Function(x), isn’t new to AOL. Elders first joined the Web company in late 2010 through its acquisition of online video distribution company 5min Media, and ultimately served as vice president, video sales for AOL. Elders will report to Jim Norton, head of sales at AOL, and a big proponent of video advertising at the company. “Brad has deep industry knowledge and expertise in the marketplace -- particularly in video -- a strategic focus for AOL,” Norton said. At Function(x) -- the company behind Viggle -- Elders was responsible for developing the go-to-market strategy and building a national sales team to support Viggle, the company’s recently launched “social television platform.” Also described as a “loyalty program for TV,” the free iOS app rewards users for watching TV with points toward, say, a $5 Starbucks card, or a $10 Banana Republic eGift. Regarding AOL, Elders said: "No company is more focused on content creation and distribution across platforms.” Last week, AOL head Tim Armstrong made a similar point upon the debut of the AOL On Network, which brings the company’s entire video offering under one umbrella, including a curated video experience with 14 content channels reaching nearly 60 million viewers across multiple sites and connected TV devices. Earlier in his career, Elders served as COO of TidalTV, a video advertising start-up, as well as doing a stint as SVP of North American sales for IPTV provider Joost.
A federal judge has rejected a request by Google to delay a potential class-action lawsuit alleging that its social apps company Slide violated a consumer protection law by sending SMS messages without the recipients' consent. Google had asked U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, Calif. to stay the lawsuit pending a decision by the Federal Communications Commission about how to interpret the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Rogers said in a written opinion that delaying the lawsuit against Google was not appropriate. "The court is not convinced that the FCC has agreed to issue a ruling, let alone issue a ruling on an expedited basis." The lawsuit -- brought by Nicole Pimental and Jessica Franklin -- alleges that Disco (Slide's group messaging app) violates the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by using an automated dialing service to send SMS messages to people without first obtaining their consent. Disco allows individuals to send group texts to up to 99 people at one time. Recipients can opt out, but can't prevent the initial message from arriving. The service also allegedly sends recipients an introductory ad informing them that they can avoid text-message charges by downloading an app. Google earlier asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed because Slide's app was not covered by the statute on the grounds that the app doesn't fit within the definition of an "automated dialing service." Google also argued that the messages were protected free speech. Rogers rejected both of those arguments in March. Several weeks after that ruling, Google asked to delay the case pending an FCC review of how to apply the TCPA to text messaging. That review came about after Skype's GroupMe sought a ruling from regulators that its texting app shouldn't be considered an automated dialing service. GroupMe also argues that intermediaries such as itself should be able to rely on users' statements that the people they text have consented to receiving messages. But Pimental and Franklin successfully opposed that request, arguing that a delay would only provide Google with "a means of prolonging this litigation endlessly."
Some 19 million males with a household income of more than $100,000 spend twice as much when shopping online compared with their female counterparts, according to a report released this week. It turns out that men outpace spending for luxury items online compared with women, according to the iProspect study "The Affluent Male: What His Online Behavior Can Teach Luxury Brand Marketers." The survey included 26 questions. Some 40% of respondents shop online at least twice weekly, and those who shop multiple times spend in excess of $30,000 annually. The findings identify behavior and trends related to online research and shopping habits of affluent males with salaries of more than $100,000 annually. "About half spend $4,000 per year -- but they buy monthly -- about 13% of respondents," said Andrea Wilson, luxury practice lead at iProspect. "The next-biggest group spends more than $30,000 online annually. Four out of 10 who shop online do so more than twice weekly." Top sites visited frequently include Amazon, Yahoo, Google, eBay, MSN, Bing and AOL. But most affluent males want detailed product information and simpler, yet more focused messages, according to the study. While the majority of purchases are made on PCs, affluent males do more than research products on mobile devices. Findings from the study reveal a multichannel approach to buying. More engaged with search than the general public, 96% use search to learn more about products. Search ads -- especially those on mobile devices -- appear to be effective. About 71% report clicking on sponsored search links either sometimes, usually or always. Some 91% access a PC at least once daily, while 77% have a mobile smartphone and 50% have a tablet. Affluent males with daily access to tablets are 32% more likely to make a purchase on the device. About 71% have seen ads on a PC, while one in three have seen ads on a mobile phone or tablet. The study also provides tips on setting expectations and questions to consider before designing strategies and building apps, such as what content and features the brand can include to encourage consistent use, what the goals of the app are, what platforms the brand will support, and the best ways to collect and process feedback from customer satisfaction from the apps.
More than three quarters (79%) of U.S. smartphone and tablet owners have used their devices for shopping-related activities, according to a first-quarter survey by Nielsen. The study showed smartphones are used more often than tablets for “on-the-go” activities. The difference was most pronounced when it came to locating a store, with 73% using phones compared to 42% on tablets. Handsets were also preferred for using a shopping list, while shopping, (42% versus 16%) and redeeming a mobile coupon (36% to 11%). However, tablet owners are more likely to use their devices for making purchases, at 42% versus 29% of smartphone users. The findings suggest the smartphone is the go-to research tool while out shopping, but the tablet is where the deal gets closed. If that’s the case, it likely has to do with the tablet lending itself more to making online purchases while relaxing at home and on a larger screen. And as tablets increasingly eat into time spent on desktop PCs and laptops, it makes sense that at least some e-commerce activity would shift to tablets as well. While smartphones may be more popular when people are out and about, a majority of both phone (57%) and tablet users (66%) use their devices to research items before purchase. Mobile payments, however, haven’t really caught on with either group yet, with less than 30% of smartphone and tablet owners using their devices to pay for things at checkout. A separate survey released Thursday by location-based marketing firm Placecast focused on comparing smatphones and feature phones in relation to m-commerce. It found that about 20% of all adult mobile phone users, equal to about 39 million Americans -- had used their handset to make an online purchase in the past year. That proportion rose to 34% among smartphone owners, somewhat higher than the 29% cited in the Nielsen research. Placecast said overall interest in using phones for purchases has grown by eight percentage points in the past two years, with 38% of all mobile phone owners saying it’s at least somewhat important to be able to do so. That rate was again higher for smartphone users, at 59%. The study also offered other stats on smartphone-wielding shoppers: 50% use a GPS/mapping app to find a retail location; 44% accessed the site of a retailer where they typically shop; 34% had downloaded a retailer’s app; and an equal number (24%) had either searched for a coupon to use at checkout or used a barcode-scanning app to comparison shop. The Placecast research also indicated that people have become a bit more receptive to text-message marketing. About a third of mobile users (31%) who don’t already receive text ads said they are at least somewhat interested in such messages, provided they gave permission. That figure, equating to about 64 million consumers, is up from 28% in 2010. Currently, only 4% of mobile users get text promotions. Within that group, however, nearly one in three said they are more likely to visit the store as a result, while a quarter are more likely to buy the product advertised. Smartphone users said texting generally is very important to them, compared to 35% of regular phone users. The Placecast study results were based on a survey conducted by Harris Interactive in February among 2,262 adults from a nationally representative survey. It is the third in a series of studies called “The Alert Shopper,” conducted previously in the summer of 2009 and 2010.
For consumers, the golden rule is “buyer beware.” For marketers, it should perhaps be: “beware of socially adept consumers.” New research indicates that consumers who have used social media for service wield far greater influence among their peers. Specifically, they tell significantly more people about their service experiences, and say they’ would spend 21% more with companies that deliver great service -- compared to 13% on average, according to the 2012 American Express “Global Customer Service Barometer.” This relatively small group of consumers is extremely engaged and vocal, according to Jim Bush, EVP of World Service at American Express. “They … tell three times as many people about positive service experiences compared to the general population,” he said of social media users. “Ultimately, getting service right with these social media-savvy consumers can help a business grow.” Unfortunately for many marketers, the survey -- conducted in the U.S. and 10 other countries -- also reveals a sorry state of service in general. Nine in 10 Americans surveyed (93%) said that companies fail to exceed their service expectations, while one out of two respondents (55%) reported walking away from an intended purchase in the past year because of a poor customer service experience. Ahead of social networking, the most popular way that consumers address service inquiries continues to be speaking to a live representative -- either on the phone or face-to-face -- and through company Web site or e-mail. That said, one in five consumers (17%) say they have used social media at least once in the last year to obtain a customer service response, the survey finds. Social users are also far more vocal about service experiences, both good and bad. In addition, more than 80% of these consumers say they have bailed on a purchase because of a poor service experience, compared to 55% overall. Domestically, American Express’ survey was completed online among a random sample of 1,000 adult consumers. The actual interviews were conducted by Echo Research on behalf of AmEx in late February.
It is more likely that you know what car your neighbor drives, or even what they call their pet, than it is for you to know the name of that person who lives down the street. According to a Harris survey done last year for WhitePages.com, our degree of obliviousness to our own neighborhood is astonishing. While the personal and business listings company has been allowing you to search your neighborhood from WhitePages.com for the past year, the tool comes to mobile in a refresh of the company’s very popular iOS app. “It is a people discovery experience,” says Bret Moore, general manager mobile, WhitePages.com. While many startups in the social media space struggle to get scale through user check-ins and the like, WhitePages already knows who lives where. “We have 200 million people already listed," Moore boasts. The secret sauce is what you do with that kind of built-in scale. The new app allows the user to combine new and old contacts in interesting ways. When you find people in a given area, they can be saved to your address book. Listings can be shared via a unique Facebook and Twitter integration that allows you to choose specific people from your networks with whom to share and perhaps arrange meetings at a given spot. The app has comprehensive local business and service listings as well. With the radically revised listings app, WhitePages.com is trying to build on considerable success in the mobile space. According to Moore, the iOS app alone has been downloaded 17 million times, and the brand is present across all of the major mobile platforms, including an active mobile Web site. Of the 30 million total unique visitors WhitePages.com sees from all sources each month, 7 million are from mobile devices. WhitePages.com is already the top-grossing app in the iTunes App Store and enjoys a remarkably strong 4.5-star rating after thousands of user votes. While the download and basic service is free, the app makes most of its revenue from upselling specific services like reverse lookups of cell phone numbers. In fact, user revenue has been the only monetization for the past year, since WhitePages turned off the ad spigot and began working on a new suite of ad products with ad server AdMarvel. Moore says that big brand advertisers are getting in line, as the app offers both scale and highly targeted opportunities. In the year or so since the neighborhood personal search, users have not raised any privacy concerns, Moore says. The site allows anyone to modify or hide their listing to thwart snoops, or perhaps traveling salesmen. Moore says that in most cases people come into the system not to unlist themselves, but to add to their profile and make it more accurate and up to date.
Life in the digital 21st century is really a function of euphemizing ourselves from cradle to grave. Maybe that’s always been the case, but today’s spinmeisters seem especially adroit at squeezing majesty from mendacity (or mundacity) and snatching pyrrhic victory from the jaws of defeat. Consider just a few of today’s better examples: Friend A friend used to be the recipient of your purest love. Nowadays, a friend is someone to click on once and forget entirely, with no requisite love/hate investment of any sort. Thanks to Facebook, today’s friends are to yesterday’s friends what yesterday’s dollar is to today’s two bits (on a good day). Don’t be surprised to see Mark Zuckerberg take over for Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve (or vice versa) in the near future. They’re both in the same business with the same cheap currency and the same borrowed slogan: eat all you want, we’ll make more. Quality Time Quality time is a euphemism for no time at all, mostly because we spend all of our time (quality or otherwise) attending to all of our time-saving digital devices. Relevance and Metrics Digital marketers often use the word relevance in broad association with the word metrics. Of course, neither describes anything that actually works. Rather, they describe things that can be sold, and are therefore, most effective when used in the same sentence, as in: “We need a new suite of metrics to ensure relevance.” Translation: “We can’t sell the old metrics anymore.” That’s why everyone in online advertising is on the hunt now for a more relevant metric to replace the CTR: apparently, no one can sell statistical zero. Usually, those marketers that use the word relevance as a metric to describe ads are their own best customers: They’ll buy anything. (Please see Optimization and Performance below.) Optimization and Performance (Please see Relevance and Metrics above.) Optimization and performance are what we sell when nothing works at all, as in: “We need to optimize congressional performance and the Boston Red Sox bullpen.” Or, “The ad campaign was optimized to elevate performance to statistical zero.” Artificial Intelligence AI is where we currently deposit all of our hopes for a better future through digital technology -- largely because we have no faith in our own intelligence anymore (for obvious reasons). But beware of false gods: As my brother Mike says: “If my phone is so smart, why can’t I reach anyone with it?” Communicate and Communications There’s a reason why we never see the verb communicate in the same sentence with the noun communications: No one can actually communicate in today’s world of instant communications. (Please see the smartphone reference under Artificial Intelligence above.) Transparency and Accountability Typically, those who demand the most transparency and accountability in others are those who are least transparent and accountable themselves. Demands for transparency and accountability are theatrically most effective as congressional committee opportunities to display righteous indignation and shock in response to the sudden and inexplicable loss of billions of taxpayer dollars -- most of which gets pumped back into political and special-interest campaigns for more transparency and accountability. Artisan I tossed this one into the mix because I suddenly see it everywhere. For instance, the bread aisle of my supermarket now sells artisan baguettes. But it’s the same old baguette with a new artisan bag. Meanwhile, Duncan Donuts is now running an ad campaign for artisan bagels. Significantly, no one in the ads seems to know what the word artisan means. I rest my case. What are some of your favorite euphemisms for life and work in the digital 21st century?