Led by uber brands like Coke, Apple and Google, beverage, technology and restaurant brands are dominating social media conversations, according to a new monthly report tracking the social media “conversations” related to the top 100 consumer brands. The report, a collaboration of media industry economic tracker and forecaster PQ Media and social media audience measurement firm uberVU, found that Coke was the No. 1 brand in social media impressions by a margin of two-to-one over the next-most-mentioned brand, Apple, during the month of July, the first for which data is being reported. The report also shows that the top few brands also account for a disproportionate share of total brand mentions in social media. With 1.48 billion impressions, Coke, for example, accounted for nearly 14% of the 10.6 billion impressions generated by the top 100 brands. The report doesn’t yet provide any context for things like seasonality, year-over-year trending, or how the social media brand impressions compare with things like “paid” or “owned” brand impressions generated by brands, but it does provide an interesting insight about the geographic composition of social media as it relates to brands: its global nature. While the U.S. remains the world’s largest advertising marketplace, accounting for nearly half of worldwide ad spending, it only generated 44% of the social media brand impressions in July, according to the report. And for leading brands like Coke and Apple, the social media effect is even more pronounced overseas. Coke generated 87% of its social media impressions, and Apple got 72% of its impressions, outside the U.S. Top 10 Social Media Brands Rank CategoryJuly 2012 IMPs (000) 1 Coke Beverages 1,479,716 2 Apple Consumer Tech 761,162 3 Google Consumer Tech 606,805 4 Amazon Retail 555,513 5 Samsung Consumer Tech 469,327 6 Starbucks Restaurants 382,215 7 Burger King Restaurants 316,636 8 Sprite Beverages 302,821 9 Microsoft Consumer Tech 284,681 10 McDonald’s Restaurants 271,572 Note: Data based on full month period Source: PQ Media, uberVU
A federal judge has dismissed a privacy lawsuit by consumers against 17 tech companies on the grounds that the consumers' written complaint -- which is supposed to outline their allegations and legal theories -- is too unwieldy for them to proceed. "The court is not sure who these voluminous screeds are addressed to," U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks in Austin, Texas wrote in an order throwing out the 343-page complaint. "Certainly, they are not written with an eye toward this court's busy docket. Perhaps, plaintiffs had the court of public opinion in mind when they drafted them." The lawsuit dates to March, when a group of consumers sued Path, Hipster, Twitter, Facebook and other tech companies for allegedly collecting or storing users' address books without their consent. Sparks said he found that allegation "simple enough." But he blasted the legal papers as "wholly deficient," writing that the complaint was "laced with exhibits of dubious value, irrelevant and inappropriate editorializing, needless repetition, paragraphs which are 'intentionally' left blank, and a general attitude of smug pomposity." He gave the consumers until Sept. 12 to file amended papers, and added that any new complaint "must thoroughly comply with both the letter and spirit of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, this order, and the dictates of legal professionalism." Federal rules specify that complaints must contain a "short and plain statement" of the allegations. The litigation was sparked by a series of reports about privacy and mobile apps. The first report, in early February, came from developer Arun Thampi, who blogged that the mobile social network Path collected users' contacts without informing them. Around the same time, a different developer reported that the mobile app Hipster downloaded users' contacts without their permission. Shortly afterward, reports emerged that a host of mobile companies, including Twitter, were downloading and storing users' address books. In some cases, the companies reportedly asked users for permission to access their contacts, but did not specify that the data would be stored. The consumers originally sued 17 app developers: Path, Twitter, Facebook, Beluga, Yelp, Burbn, Instagram, Foursquare Labs, Gowalla, Foodspotting, Hipster, LinkedIn, Kirk Interactive, Rovio (which distributes "Angry Birds"), and "Cut the Rope" developers ZeptoLab, Chillingo and Electronic Arts. The consumers later withdrew the complaint against LinkedIn. The users also sued Apple for allegedly enabling app developers to scoop up users' address books.
Ask.com plans to step up branding efforts for the newly acquired About.com to squash any myths about it being a content farm. "We're going to get tactical for the next couple of quarters," said Doug Leeds, Ask.com CEO, as the company informs consumers that About.com will strengthen its core publishing model. Most hired writers for the site cull content from professional experiences and knowledge. The message will become one in many topics explored for a forthcoming online branding campaign that could move to television next year. Ask.com ran several promotions this year to market its brand. The company ran a 15-second spot, "Mirror," in U.S. cinemas as a pre-trailer this year, but also spent time and money rebranding the Q&A site. Leeds said The New York Times Co. failed to invest in the consumer About.com brand. Now Barry Diller's IAC/InteractiveCorp $300 million cash deal to buy About.com gives Ask.com the necessary content to build out the question-and-answer site supported by content. The brands will remain separate, but will integrate some of the technology. Ask.com will also integrate the technology from its recent nRelate acquisition. While putting together the deal, it became clear that the combination of traffic and content from Ask.com and About.com would create a bridge to support the more than 100 million monthly visitors. About.com publishes 930 guides, with each writer vetted through a multi-step process. Less than 1% of those who apply to write for the network are accepted. Those who do stick around on average for 11 years. Writers get paid based on page views, encouraging engagement. The site has about 650 million page views monthly, according to Leeds. The strategy will work similarly on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Both sites experience more than 100% year-on-year growth. Google powers Ask.com search. Industry experts speculate About.com relies on on-site Google's search engine. Leeds said more than 80% of About.com's traffic comes from search engines. The site took a hit from Panda, but search engine optimization efforts have revived traffic to pre-Panda days.
Joe Jaffe is back. Jaffe, who began his career in the post-digital advertising and marketing scene as a columnist for MediaPost before launching his own, next-generation agency, Crayon, returns as a regular MediaPost contributor beginning with his new op-ed column, which will appear weekly in Online Media Daily. The column, which will focus on the intersection of the advertising, branding and technology start-up worlds, is described by Jaffe as “Madison & Mountain View,” but its ultimate focus will be to explore the innovation taking place in both industries and where they can benefit a brand and its consumers. “I’m still an antagonist,” says Jaffe, who also returned to an official business role earlier this year with the launch of Evol8tion, a new age agency of sorts created to match consumer brands with promising technology start-ups. It is Jaffe’s first start-up since launching Crayon in 2006 with its focus on the “conversation,” or the emerging practice of social media and conversational marketing. He sold Crayon to Powered in 2009, and remained an advisor through 2011. Jaffe, who is also the author of three books that define major shifts in the advertising business, including “Life After The 30-Second Spot,” “Join The Conversation,” and “Flip The Funnel,” says he’s also working on a new one, which will explore how technological innovation is transforming brands and consumer relationships. Jaffe currently is a personal embodiment of such changes, having lost 40 pounds and gotten himself back down to fighting, start-up weight, thanks to his use of Nike’s Fuel Band technology and a Weight Watchers program. He even utilized social media -- blogging about his personal weight loss challenge -- to motivate and reinforce his efforts. The resumption of his column on MediaPost, he says, is an extension of that logic, and his goal is to lay out his vision and observations so that they can be publicly vetted, commented on, and tried by fire, because he doesn’t simply want to be an “antagonist,” but also a “catalyst” to help marketers, tech firms and agencies transition. The model for Evol8tion is actually pretty simple, and more akin to a classic Hollywood talent agency than a Madison Avenue creative, branding or media services shop. The business model is based on a view of start-ups and tech firms as potential “talent” that can be matched with brands to achieve their consumer marketing and/or service goals. Sometimes those relationships will lead to branding campaigns and/or executions. In other cases, he says, they will lead to new business models, services, product offerings, and even equity investments and outright acquisitions of tech firms by consumer brand marketers. Jaffe says he’s already “piloted” a handful of such deals, and today is publicly announcing a new one: a deal matching Anheuser-Busch’s Brazilian beer brand Skol with San Francisco start-up Switchcam, which has developed a patented video and Web-crawling technology that identifies user uploaded video from live events. The technology enables users to connect the footage to create a “seamless viewing experience where users can control multiple camera angles and jump through set lists.” Jaffe says the pilot yielded positive results and “social and consumer KPIs,” or key performance indicators for the Skol brand, and was deemed a success. He says he hopes to have “seven or eight” similar pilot tests implemented by the end of the year, with plans to accelerate Evol8tion’s match-making next year. The core of his model, he says is a MatchMaker, a proprietary database of start-up technologies and business models, which are matched to brand goals and attributes. He says the database currently includes more than 400 start-ups, and will grow into the thousands early next year. “Start-ups are technology-centric, but brand ignorant,” Jaffe explains, adding: “Brands are idea-centric, and brand health-centric, but they are technology ignorant, or technology challenged. But what do they have in common? The consumer.”
In an effort to shore up its online sales staff, The Los Angeles Times Media Group on Monday named Brad Agens as its new senior vice president of digital sales. Agens was most recently senior vice president of national sales for Gorilla Nation Media, a division of Evolve Media Corp., where he oversaw all domestic sales. In his new role, Agens will report to Michael Tannourji -- who was just recently named executive vice president of advertising at LATMG. For the entire sales team, the top priority is to “better capitalize on digital revenue and opportunities,” said Tannourji, who joined LATMG from Ernst & Young, where he served as a director of business development. The company’s crown jewel, LATimes.com, currently boasts more than 16 million monthly unique visitors. Among other opportunities going forward, Agens is particularly excited about mobile and other forms of new media. Regarding the LA Times audience, Agens said: “They consume news on the go and embrace new technologies, which presents all sorts of interesting opportunities to create multiple screen-advertising solutions and to monetize mobile and social in new ways.” Following similar efforts by The New York Times and other publishers, the Los Angeles Times rolled out a ‘metered” paywall earlier this year, which limits readers to 15 stories a month unless they shell out for a subscription. In 2000, the Los Angeles Times was acquired by the Tribune Company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Tribute Co. has recently sought to re-emerge bankruptcy, but remains bogged down in court battles.
The Shack is getting its own phone. Electronics retailer RadioShack is rolling out a branded, prepaid wireless service powered by mobile provider Cricket Communications.The new line of no-contract smartphones and feature phones will be available at RadioShack stores nationwide starting Wednesday. The new service, dubbed RadioShack No-Contract Wireless, will launch with a pair of devices from China's Huawei Technologies -- the Android-based Mercury Ice, selling for $149, and the $39.99 Pillar cell phone.The market for prepaid phones has expanded in recent years as consumers have turned to simpler, lower-cost mobile options in a weak economy. Sales of prepaid phones, for example, increased 12% in the second quarter, while those for phones requiring contracts were flat, according to mobile consulting firm Chetan Sharma.By getting directly into the growing no-contract phone business, RadioShack aims to help reverse worsening financial results and better compete with online retailers like Amazon, which are making inroads on brick-and-mortar businesses. RadioShack reported an unexpected second-quarter loss of 21 cents a share and suspended its dividend after 25 years of payouts.As part of its increased focus on selling wireless phones and calling plans, RadioShack already sells prepaid phones from the major U.S. carriers, including Sprint, Verizon and AT&T.For its own branded devices, the retailer will offer a $25 plan with 300 voice minutes and unlimited text messaging and Web access for feature phones. The cost rises to $35 for a 1,000-minute plan.Smartphone plans start at $50 a month and includes unlimited voice and data (up to 1GB before download speed is throttled), Cricket's Muve Music service and unlimited U.S. texting. A $60 plan offers the same, but with unlimited international texting and data at full speed up to 2.5GB.Cricket owner Leap Wireless, which also struggled in the second quarter, gains a foothold in RadioShack's more than 4,400 stores through the deal. Guggenheim Partners analyst Shing Yin said the deal was structured to avoid riling the retailer's existing prepaid carrier partners by using RadioShack's brand instead of Cricket's, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A new study says social media "disproportionately impacts the viewing behaviors of younger consumers," according to Horowitz Associates.The study says 24% of 18- to-34-year-old adults and 30% of 15- to-17-year-olds have started watching a show on TV because of something they saw online or through social media. All this compares to a 16% for all adult viewers 18 years and older.What about tune in? Some 14% of social media users say it helps remind them to tune into shows. This trend is the highest among 15-to-17-year-olds where the number is 28%. It is 19% among 18- to-34-year-olds.Deeper engagement comes to a narrower group of social media users -- just 11% of consumers say they interact on social media, or other sites or apps, when it comes to content they are watching on TV. Ten percent like posting to social media sites or other Web sites about shows they watch.Sounds like everyone should jump in. But they need to do it carefully.Adriana Waterston, vice presient of marketing and business development for Horowitz Associates, says that in the social media environment, "consumers do not want to feel 'marketed to' or manipulated. A successful social media or interactive strategy must feel genuine, not fabricated."
We are used to seeing triple-digit growth rates associated with mobile and tablet traffic increases over the last year or so. But slice the demographics even more finely and you start seeing some serious quadruple increases. To wit: Moguldom Media, which publishes Madame Noir, StyleBlazer, Bossip and HipHopWired brands online, says it has seen tablet access to its sites grow 6000% between November 2011 and June 2012. In fact, fashion site StyleBlazer is seeing 3.5 million page views (June 2012) now coming to its site just from iPads each month, approaching 10% of its 48 million monthly impressions. The platform Moguldom uses to publish tablet-specific Web output is the hot New York startup OnSwipe, which typically has been seeing rates of tablet traffic growth between 300% and 800%. But the Moguldom sites and the explosion of use in this demographic segment is on another level. HipHopWorld has seen an increase of 1,069% in page views and 1,160% in uniques from tablets since November, MadameNoire.com has seen a 669% page-view increase and about the same growth in visitors. “The African American audiences are the most engaged,” says OnSwipe founder Jason Baptiste. Moguldom Media Group Chairman and CEO Jamarlin Martin says that the rapid adoption of tablets and strong usage patterns among African American audiences extends the trends already evident in smartphone use. "It is a known trend that African-American demographic has proven to be the early adopters of mobile, and have a strong appetite to share and consume multimedia content on a mobile device," he tells Mobile Marketing Daily. "The African-American demographic is known to adopt technologies that are inherently social and improve the efficiency of life day to day." Citing Nielsen, Martin says that African-American mobile device users have a higher-than-average use of mobile for emailing, accessing the Internet and engaging social network sites. "With a tablet device, there is a larger screen, an improved user experience for most completed mobile activities and makes the content easily accessible," he says. OnSwipe started over a year ago offering publishers a way to reformat their Web content in ways that were touch-friendly and more attractive on tablets. In the beginning, they offered a series of templates to early partners like Ziff Davis and Bonnier. In the past year they have introduced a tool set that gives publishers like Moguldom greater control of the layout and look and feel. According to Baptiste, designing Web sites specifically for tablets has a dramatic effect on their use. “We call it the ‘Angry Birds effect,’” says Baptiste. “People love to swipe and love to interact if you make the content into something they enjoy interacting with.” He says that his network of over 200 premium publishers and thousands of small sites and bloggers using OnSwipe now generate over 150 million “touches” a month. Page views have grown over 344% since January, and uniques are up 300%. While a great deal of attention is being paid to responsive design, where the same content pours into any screen size, Baptiste calls that approach a bit “lazy.” “Every screen deserves its own touch experience,” he argues. OnSwipe is starting to ramp up an ad sales program for later this year and into 2013. In its first stages the company allowed the publishers to handle their own ad sales into the tablet. But Baptiste says demand for tablet advertising is increasing quickly, and his platform -- which controls the user experience -- is in a position o deliver unique ad formats and experiences. They have already developed an interstitial ad unit that resembles a hi-res full-page magazine ad, dubbed “Glossies.” While many publishers still dote over perfecting their app strategy, Baptiste says his company is glad that it placed its bets on optimizing for the tablet-based Web. “People use tablets most to browse. Publishers’ scale comes through search and sharing and going to links in emails, and that is still true on the tablet.” When he goes into meetings with publishers, talk about apps just doesn’t come up as much anymore. In the end, the secret sauce of the Post-PC age is not merely portability. “It isn’t about mobile,” he says. “It is about touch.”
A war is being waged. Its crusaders are the passionate pioneers that represent a new marketing reality never seen before in history. This is the story of the evolution of the Internet -- and its progression from a superficial flavor of the month to quite possibly, the most profound weapon ever presented to the treasure-chest of the marketing community.The war in question is a war against ignorance and those who resist change. It is being fought on two playing fields, by two very different armies. Their insignias are the head and the heart. Progress has been varied.The infantry of the head, earmarked by research, data, metrics and media has emerged victorious.The warriors of the heart, however, have not fared as well. Along the way, there have been many casualties, but when the dust settled, the brave and the dedicated creative community stood firm, supremely focused on their prime directive: to win the battle for the heart.I wrote that blurb in 2004 when I put together a roadshow called “The Battle for the HeArt”. You’ll notice that I capitalized the A in Heart, as this was about art; the right brain; creativity…or the lack thereof in the online space. My position was that online was dominated by science; the left brain; analytics; metrics. And in the vacuum, was an infinite void of desolate inspiration. Battle for the HeArt was a Creative Roadshow, designed to celebrate, uplift and showcase the best online creative you’d never seen or perhaps had, but you couldn’t quite articulate or put your finger on exactly what made it unique or special. The show lasted two years and save for the fact I founded my first company, crayon, it would have continued. Interestingly enough, 2006’s Battle (the third year) would have been sub-branded as Madison + Mountain View (I even registered the URL www.madisonandmountainview.com, with a positioning that the future of advertising lay in technology.)It’s kind of sad and even pathetic that we’re asking the same questions today. We're questioning the lack of creativity and innovation in the online space. It’s not too late for an intervention though, but I fear that soon enough, it will be unless we inject a good dose of truly game-changing digital whoopass into the mix.My antidote is the intersection of technology and advertising; Mountain View meets Madison Avenue. I’ll use Albert Einstein's famous quote to illustrate my point: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."Dictionary.com defines creativity as “productive originality.”Originality = Doing things DifferentlyProductive = Getting a Result“Doing things differently to get a result” is, in fact, the exact opposite of doing the same thing over and over again to get a different result. So it hit me: Creativity is the solution to insanity; the remedy to mediocrity and status quo. Similarly, the dictionary defines innovation as new approaches that achieve positive outcomes. Is it coincidence that this is a synonym for creativity? I think not.I think this underscores that the future of marketing is a digital one, a tech-laden one. Brands have got to innovate in order to evolve and arguably, survive. I believe that the intersection between marketing and start-ups is one way to mix together creativity and innovation into a powerful cocktail.The catch perhaps is that innovation is typically associated with product or packaging R&D, as opposed to marketing itself. It’s time to change that.I always like to quote photographer Diane Arbus who said: “It's what I've never seen before that I recognize." Our consumers are the same. They ignore what they’ve seen before time and time again. And they notice the unanticipated. They crave the unexpected, the unpredictable, the surprise and delight. They long for the intellectual sparring that comes with an idea that provokes, irks, challenges or dares them to think or act different.And they’re not insane, although we might be if we don’t rethink the way we go to market, or the way we utilize the full potential of the Internet and its social portfolio of gizmos and gadgets. The way we partner with our consumers -- and the way we combine what we do best (creativity) in a form, function and utility-laded service that truly delivers transformational (innovation) value.
Our sense of touch is perhaps the most intimate of all our senses. Not only is it part of how we remain safe from excessive heat and cold, it alerts us instantaneously to wounds large and small. That way, we make take whatever action is necessary to avert further injury.But beyond safety, touch is a major part of how we acquaint ourselves with the world around us and how we express -– and experience -– affection. Whether stroking and nuzzling with a pet, cuddling a soft toy as a child or reaching out tocaress a loved one, the ability to feel and differentiate every kind of texture and surface is elemental to being alive. And this aspect of expressing ntimacy is similarly fundamental to our relationships with those around us.How does touch translate to our relationships with the media devices we use daily? Increasingly, they are navigated not just by pressing buttons, but by tapping and stroking screens and a host of other tactile gestures?I’ve always felt that a product that consumers instinctively want to reach out and touch as soon as they see it is well on it’s way to success. The hurdle of desirability has been overcome. From there, it’s about user experience and utility. Iremember conducting some out-of-the-box user experience work with the Sony PSP when it was first launched and participants couldn’t wait to cradle the device in their hands -- even though it wasn’t a touchscreen device.The same was true of similar research on the iPad when it launched. The look and -- critically -- the feel of the device made participants want to use it / touch it more.Does a tablet that delivers a good touch-based user experience and which is pleasing on the eye have an effect on how we feel emotionally when using it? Does our elemental relationship with our sense of touch translate to a strongersense of well-being while using a tablet?I’ve not seen any research on the subject from other sources to date, but an analysis of USA TouchPoints 2012.1 reveals that while interacting with a tablet, 83% of users claim to be in a good mood. (This definition is a composite of a number of positive emotions on a 17- point scale, including things like confident, happy, hopeful, etc.)Similarly, we see that tablet users are 22% less likely to be overwhelmed than the general adult population, as well as less likely to be worried, sad or bored.Of course, it would be stretching the point to an absurd extent to suggest that all this was down to the extent to which touch is a factor of tablet use. The contexts in which tablets are used (very often at home, with partner and children in a relaxed state, leisure-based content – be it reading an electronic magazine or watching a video) will inevitably have an effect.But it’s a question worth asking and understanding if we are to make the most of the contextual opportunities uniquely presented by different media.After all, it isn’t just when and via which medium one is exposed to a message that determines one’s receptiveness. Mood and emotion are important, too.