It turns out that social media marketers value certain types of user-generated content over others. What do they value most? Product reviews and ratings, revealed Beth Uyenco, director of research for Microsoft Digital, at OMMA Global this week. Of the high-spending social marketers surveyed by Microsoft, 27% said word of mouth was the most important reason for their investment, followed closely by 26% favoring brand considerations. Plus, direct response was most important for 21% and CRM for 18%; while 'inbound' or 'listening' was primary for only 6%. "However, among the many challenges to social-media efforts are ensuring the right targets are reached and determining the ROI of such campaigns," according to Uyenco. What does word of mouth mean for marketers? For the purposes of Microsoft's study, it means identifying and reaching influencers; generating word-of-mouth conversations about brand, products or deals, then rebroadcasting word of mouth to target audiences. The challenge, says Uyenco: "Our study found that leading social media marketers believe that almost two-thirds of the word of mouth they work so hard to generate doesn't reach their target audience." Microsoft also found that there are significant challenges to be solved in driving word of mouth and managing social communities. In particular, many social marketers face challenges in making sure their communities are target appropriate, in getting new fans and followers and preventing churn. Going forward, Uyenco suggests that the industry focus less on social as a "siloed" platform, and start leveraging it as a tool to help accomplish specific marketing objectives. Recent research published by Microsoft's Natasha Hritzuk last month found nearly 50% of consumers are likely to purchase products as a result of word of mouth, while 90% of consumer conversations happen offline. "This certainly backs up social marketers' desire to reach the right social audience for their brand," Uyenco said regarding Hritzuk's findings. "After all, not all audiences are equal."
Former Yahoo executive Ramsey McGrory just found a new home as CEO of social-media software company Clearspring. "Data and social are where incredible innovation is happening," McGrory said Monday in a nod to Clearspring's expertise. At Yahoo, McGrory led the Yahoo US data business and digital advertising exchange Right Media. McGrory replaces Clearspring founder Hooman Radfar, who will continue to drive the company's product and marketing in his new role as executive chairman. Current Chairman Ted Leonsis will remain on the board of directors. "Clearspring is at an inflection point," said Radfar. "Ramsey's operational expertise in scaling data-driven and large-platform businesses operations is just what we need to take our rapidly growing company to the next level." In May, Clearspring secured $20 million in new funding, with which it planned to consider acquisitions opportunities, along with other options to broaden its product portfolio. Founded in 2004, Clearspring has raised a total of $60 million to expand its Web presence, while managing to redefine its core business along the way. Currently, millions of Web sites rely on Clearspring's AddThis platform, where visitors can share articles, videos and other content across their social networks. Having accumulated ample consumer data in the process, Clearspring has built a business connecting major brands with millions of Web Internet users in real-time. With revenue on track to triple this year, according to Clearspring, the company recently said it was hiring a new employee nearly every week, which it expected to result in almost doubling its staff this year. Clearspring recently announced the integration of Audience Platform with major demand-side platforms, including WPP's Media Innovation Group, Invite Media, MediaMath, DataXu, Turn and Yahoo's Right Media Exchange. The platform taps into the company's real-time data processing engine to aggregate influence and intent data from across the AddThis platform, which now reaches 1 billion unique users monthly. AddThis, available on the Web and mobile, offers various marketing insights into consumers through social signals, such as Facebook "likes," interests and purchase intent. Along with Institutional Venture Partners, Clearspring investors including New Enterprise Associates, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, former AOL vice chair and president Ted Leonsis, AOL co-founder Steve Case, Capital One co-founder Nigel Morris and Silicon Valley super-angel Ron Conway.
It turns out that social media marketers value certain types of user-generated content over others. What do they value most? Product reviews and ratings, revealed Beth Uyenco, director of research for Microsoft Digital, at OMMA Global this week. Of the high-spending social marketers surveyed by Microsoft, 27% said word of mouth was the most important reason for their investment, followed closely by 26% favoring brand considerations. Plus, direct response was most important for 21% and CRM for 18%; while 'inbound' or 'listening' was primary for only 6%. "However, among the many challenges to social-media efforts are ensuring the right targets are reached and determining the ROI of such campaigns," according to Uyenco. What does word of mouth mean for marketers? For the purposes of Microsoft's study, it means identifying and reaching influencers; generating word-of-mouth conversations about brand, products or deals, then rebroadcasting word of mouth to target audiences. The challenge, says Uyenco: "Our study found that leading social media marketers believe that almost two-thirds of the word of mouth they work so hard to generate doesn't reach their target audience." Microsoft also found that there are significant challenges to be solved in driving word of mouth and managing social communities. In particular, many social marketers face challenges in making sure their communities are target appropriate, in getting new fans and followers and preventing churn. Going forward, Uyenco suggests that the industry focus less on social as a "siloed" platform, and start leveraging it as a tool to help accomplish specific marketing objectives. Recent research published by Microsoft's Natasha Hritzuk last month found nearly 50% of consumers are likely to purchase products as a result of word of mouth, while 90% of consumer conversations happen offline. "This certainly backs up social marketers' desire to reach the right social audience for their brand," Uyenco said regarding Hritzuk's findings. "After all, not all audiences are equal."
Facebook's f8 event last week will have lasting ramifications for the network's 800 million users. It will also have implications for brands, but the biggest takeaway should that if you're a marketer, Facebook was never about you, it's not about you, and it will never be about you. I'm sorry to the handful of laptops and iPhones that were just hurled across the room, but the truth hurts. In case you missed last week's news, f8 effectively changed the company's mission statement from "giving people the power to share and make the world more open and more connected" to "making it so easy to share stuff that your own mother will get tired of hearing from you." My agency described a lot of the changes in a report that includes what matters for brands. Until all of Facebook's changes roll out, it will be difficult to make definitive statements about which changes benefit marketers and which will make reaching consumers more difficult, but in the meantime marketers should be paying especially close attention to their Facebook page and campaign performance. Whenever Facebook announces a change, marketers get in a tizzy reading every tea leaf, wondering what every change means for them. That's a good thing. I cleared my schedule for f8 because these changes matter. Often, marketers feel neglected, as if Facebook is going ahead with all these changes and not considering what will happen to brands. The problem for marketers is that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg does not lie awake at night thinking about what will happen to brands. f8 is a conference for developers. I remember going to f8 in 2008, before Facebook recorded billions in advertising revenue, and I was a complete outcast. Facebook's user base and revenues have grown exponentially, but the attitude is largely the same. The point of f8 is "to bring together the developers, entrepreneurs and innovators who are building a more social web." Yes, some marketers count among those groups, but they're not the target, and they probably never will be. Instead, Zuckerberg and his colleagues used their f8 stage time to talk about changes for the network's users. These include changes to the homepage and profile layouts. Facebook even dared to change how users can post birthday greetings to their friends. In the process, Facebook created a lot of speculation for what will happen to brands. Will it still matter for marketers to amass large numbers of Facebook fans? Will posting more often lead to more engagement? Will every brand need an app to stay relevant? Will Facebook users flock to new features like Friend Lists, and will they embrace the new Timeline? Will Sponsored Story ads be the only way for marketers to truly stand out? There are lots of answers accordingly, but most of the answers depend on how consumer behavior changes on Facebook, what kind of brand and category you're working with, and how your brand has built its social marketing program so far. The fact that there aren't clear answers today underscores how these questions aren't the first priority for Facebook's executive team. If you read through Facebook's official four-page PDF called "f8 for Marketers," most of the answers end with two words: Sponsored Stories. Even the section on building applications recommends that 20% of your budget goes to building an app and 80% on promoting it. The cynic in me wondered whether all of Facebook's changes were designed to blunt the virality of branded content and require more of a reliance on advertising. That strikes me as too calculating for Zuckerberg. This is not someone who changes the interface in order to juice media spending. There are many easier and direct ways that he could do that. Instead, we're left with a lot of ambiguity, but a few things are perfectly clear. Facebook has more than 800 million users, and recently had half a billion people using the site in one day. The time spent on Facebook dwarfs the numbers for any other media property. The rate of Facebook's mobile usage is accelerating quickly, and soon more than half of its audience will be using its mobile properties. There is no question that marketers need Facebook more than Facebook needs marketers. What do you do about it? Be engaging. Be relevant. Figure out what's social about your brand. Set objectives. Measure results. Budget accordingly. Zuckerberg may not care about what you do, but you still should.
We've long heard about the sizable gap -- currently estimated at $60 billion -- between what marketers spend on brand advertising on the Web, and the amount of time and attention that has shifted to the Internet. And while the growth of both social media and online video advertising has quickly put a dent in this number, we've yet to see the watershed moment. Social video may prove to be the missing link. Social video advertising empowers brand marketers to deliver an unprecedented range of persuasive, entertaining video content (such as short films, webisodes and educational videos) in non-interruptive formats across the wWb. And because consumers not only choose to watch these brand videos at scale, but are also often motivated to share it with their friends, brands and agencies are now getting behind this approach in a big way. The growing budgets coming into social video will be a significant contributor to reducing the gap between the amount of time consumers spend online and the overall digital advertising spend. Here are five early indicators that this is already happening: 1. Big brands are making major investments in video content. You need look no further than Nike and Coca-Cola, two of the largest and most forward-thinking brands in the world, to see that digital content marketing is a huge growth area. Few brands have committed to content marketing more than Nike, which has replaced a large portion of its television advertising spending over the past decade with the sponsorship of a huge range of experiential marketing projects and the creation of over 10,000 pieces of original content. Nike will be the first to tell you that they don't just sell shoes; Nike is a digital media company that creates culture through content. Coca-Cola is also making bold moves in the direction of brand content. Coke recently spoke at the Cannes Festival about its "Liquid and Linked" content creation strategy, which places a new emphasis on dynamic storytelling to connect people with each other through shared content. 2. Top agencies are building dedicated practices around digital video. Brand-focused advertisers have always aspired to create and distribute shareable content, not just ads that interrupt. To this end, we're seeing agencies launch practices focused squarely on digital video. For example, Ogilvy & Mather just launched an Advanced Video Practice in July of this year. Led by industry luminary Robert Davis, Ogilvy's Advanced Video Practice works with brands to take video engagement beyond the "viral" view, targeting measureable engagements that place viewers directly into the sales funnel. Over the past two years the team has been developing strategic interactive video experiences for IBM, Nestle, DuPont and other global clients. 3. Agencies are hiring directors of "earned media." At both media and creative agencies around the world, Earned Media departments are now being created to ensure that brand content doesn't get lost in the din, but thrives as a positive and integral part of the web content ecosystem. Earned Media Director and Executive Producer Craig Batzofin at agency Evolution Bureau says, "My job is not about crossing our fingers and hoping for free earned media. Our job, as a department, and really collectively as an agency, is about strategically planning and executing integrated brand content programs that seamlessly tie together shareable content, thoughtful earned media and PR, and paid media that gets our content seen and socialized." 4. We're moving beyond the lonely click. These days, a 1% click-through rate on a traditional display ad buy would send a media planner cheering through the office. But not only does a 1% CTR mean that 99% of people did nothing, it's also limited to just a single, isolated visit to a site. We are now at the point where meaningful media metrics have been introduced for brand content that can reflect the endorsement potential of social media. Both sharethrough rate (the rate at which a video is shared, divided by the number of times it is viewed) and "social engagement" metrics such as Likes, tweets and shares, are becoming standardized metrics to gauge the performance of video campaigns. As social engagement rates become standardized across the industry, media planners will be able to more accurately compare performance across different vendors -- and in turn, confidently increase social video budgets to the best media performers. 5. The market is validating the approach. We are now starting to see investment in the kind of research and documentation necessary for large corporate agencies to feel comfortable moving significant budgets online. From Forrester Research helping to define and standardize paid vs. owned vs. earned media, to the launch of Nielsen's BuzzMetrics product, to comScore's recent study on "The Power of Like," big research companies are getting into the conversation by defining the value of online conversation about brands. On a campaign level, media buyers demand third-party research to validate their spending against social video content. Many survey-based research companies are adopting models to help measure social campaigns' ROI for brands, with positive results. For example, for social branded content specifically, Vizu's brand studies measuring awareness, favorability and/or purchase intent have yielded lifts of 20X higher than industry averages. While it's still early days for social video advertising, one look at the exciting progress happening with brand content strategies, video and earned media departments and third-party research and measurement tools, points to a big future for this new medium.
One proven way to increase effectiveness and lower your costs is earned media coupled with social optimization. With the social share button being one click away from spreading good content, the connection between "earned" and "paid" is undeniable. Intent is everything, if someone shares, tweets, comments, etc., it all hits the graph and spreads to friends. That's gold! Where brands fall short is the follow through engagement, re-posting the best-trending content means not just your super fans become your evangelists. Without good content the engagement that drives reach will not happen and social has become the best way to integrate "paid," "earned" and "owned" media (PEOM) like never before. Examples from a social perspective: Paid: Buying Facebook ads, Twitter promoted ads and display ads / TV spots Earned: Blog or news about your product, conversation on your social sites Owned: A brand's own social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and websites, all used to drive interaction The fact that consumers are connected and the social graph is melding paid, earned and owned media presents challenges in synthesizing and optimizing these three channels. Since social has truly leveled the playing field it takes work and here is where the "Earned" comes in. The majority of content is not being leveraged to its maximum due to poor tracking and the inability to be responsive. Creating more engagement on what's most relevant not only expands the brand's reach but also maximizes those paid assets. Earned media's biggest payoff is from behavioral shared connections compelled to create reviews, a blog post, a comment or a tweet, people sharing their thoughts on your brand with their social network. Understanding intent and behavior around all that content gives brands a competitive advantage. All content being shared is reduced to a link and with one click hitting one of the major social networks. Word-of-mouth marketing now spreads at the speed of a button click and that's why earned media has become so important to a marketing campaign. Social is a horizontal layer touching every part of your business, from customer service to customer acquisition, to customer retention. There are different performance metrics for each point along the marketing funnel. Now more pressure is on paid and owned media teams to streamline their coordination or lose the opportunity of momentum. As the barriers are being torn down and silos altered, a new form of media collaboration is being created. Chase McMichael, Co-Founder and CEO, InfiniGraph
Former Yahoo executive Ramsey McGrory just found a new home as CEO of social-media software company Clearspring. "Data and social are where incredible innovation is happening," McGrory said Monday in a nod to Clearspring's expertise. At Yahoo, McGrory led the Yahoo US data business and digital advertising exchange Right Media. McGrory replaces Clearspring founder Hooman Radfar, who will continue to drive the company's product and marketing in his new role as executive chairman. Current Chairman Ted Leonsis will remain on the board of directors. "Clearspring is at an inflection point," said Radfar. "Ramsey's operational expertise in scaling data-driven and large-platform businesses operations is just what we need to take our rapidly growing company to the next level." In May, Clearspring secured $20 million in new funding, with which it planned to consider acquisitions opportunities, along with other options to broaden its product portfolio. Founded in 2004, Clearspring has raised a total of $60 million to expand its Web presence, while managing to redefine its core business along the way. Currently, millions of Web sites rely on Clearspring's AddThis platform, where visitors can share articles, videos and other content across their social networks. Having accumulated ample consumer data in the process, Clearspring has built a business connecting major brands with millions of Web Internet users in real-time. With revenue on track to triple this year, according to Clearspring, the company recently said it was hiring a new employee nearly every week, which it expected to result in almost doubling its staff this year. Clearspring recently announced the integration of Audience Platform with major demand-side platforms, including WPP's Media Innovation Group, Invite Media, MediaMath, DataXu, Turn and Yahoo's Right Media Exchange. The platform taps into the company's real-time data processing engine to aggregate influence and intent data from across the AddThis platform, which now reaches 1 billion unique users monthly. AddThis, available on the Web and mobile, offers various marketing insights into consumers through social signals, such as Facebook "likes," interests and purchase intent. Along with Institutional Venture Partners, Clearspring investors including New Enterprise Associates, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, former AOL vice chair and president Ted Leonsis, AOL co-founder Steve Case, Capital One co-founder Nigel Morris and Silicon Valley super-angel Ron Conway.
The live music experience is proving to be an extremely sharable one, says Russell Wallach, President of Live Nation Network. By the numbers (the source of which Wallach didn’t make clear), 65% of consumers share live music experiences via social networks; 56% upload related photos; and 31% write reviews of their overall experience. The next step, according to Wallach, is figuring out how to bring brands into the picture in a way that feels organic and right. That’s how Tariq Hassan -- VP of Marketing of the Imaging & Printing Group at HP -- came into the picture. HP was looking for “digital tribalists,” and Live Nation said they could deliver them. The result was an immersive concert promotion, which HP tried to approach "organically." Said Hassan: “We viewed ourselves as integrating in a concert tour – not the other way around." Regarding the partnership, Wallach said: "The learning was the way you’re able to integrate a brand into in show that’s truly organic."
Is social media making individual editors obsolete? Well, MTV Networks doesn’t think so, and, according to its EVP of Digital Media Dermot McCormack, MTV is the most social brand online. That’s why they recently brought back Matt Pinfield, host of MTV’s alternative music program 120 Minutes from 1995 to 1999. He curated content then, and -- albeit with more help from social sharing platforms -- Pinfield is curating now. McCormack thinks Pinfield’s reemergence is a great example of a smart media company (again, MTV) repurposing old resources to new ends. Still, what does Pinfield have that a million tweeters and Facebook “likers” don’t? In a word, “authority,” says McCormack. Make no mistake, authority still has a huge role to play in media, McCormack says.