Consumers spend 4.4 hours of leisure time in front of multiple screens daily, according to a Google study. The findings released Wednesday reveal that consumers spend an average of 17 minutes per interaction on a smartphone screen compared with 30 minutes on a tablet; 39 minutes, a PC or a laptop; and 43 minutes, a television. Google identifies two types of screen use: sequential and simultaneous. The former, more common, typically occurs over the same day. Some 98% of people move between devices in the same day to accomplish a task. Search connects consumer experiences across screens. Some 78% of consumers simultaneously multi-task using several devices. The study reveals that 92% use PC and smartphone or TV and PC, where as 90% use the TV and smartphone, and 89% prefer TV and tablet. Brands should start targeting ads on multiple devices simultaneously to make the most of advertising budgets. The change in consumer behavior suggests a need for brands to consider retargeting across multiple devices, as well as an attribution strategy to determine paths to conversion based on the devices that specific types of consumers might use. Google's study suggests that 67% of shoppers move from one screen to another, taking multiple-device paths to purchase. While 65% start on a smartphone, 61% continue on a PC or laptop and 4% with a tablet. Smartphones are the most common starting place, but PCs are the starting point for complex activities, and tablets are the starting place for shopping and planning trips. Of the 25% of consumers who start on a PC or laptop, 19% continue on to a smartphone and 5% on to a tablet. For the 11% who start on a tablet, 10% continue on to a PC or laptop. Smartphones attract spontaneity with 81% admitting to being grabbed by a purchase in the spur of the moment versus 19% planned. About 59% of people that will particpate in any part of the shopping process on a smartphone while in the home versus 41% out of the home. Some 84% of consumers on a PC or a laptop will shop while in the home versus 16% out of the home. Even before the purchase, Google's research shows that more consumers search for information about products and services across devices. Those with mobile devices search for information triggered by events, locations and physical items, but Google's study suggests that consumers search more often for things seen on TV. Respondents could choose mroe than one option when asked what prompted them to do a search. The net number, 22%, of people said television prompted a search on smartphones compared with 17% seeing a commercial on TV, and 7% seeing a TV program. When it comes to searches on PC and laptops, TV contributed 10%, whereas TV commercials and programs each contributed 6%. Most consumers accomplish goals through "spontaneous vs. planned search" activities. On a smartphone, 20% of searches are planned versus 80% that are spontaneous. On a PC or laptop that percentage changes to 48% and 52%, respectively.
WPP, the largest marketing services holding company by revenue, posted a nearly 6% revenue gain for the first half of the year to just under $8 billion -- a 17% gain in profits to almost $490 million. The company released the numbers early Thursday.Organic revenue growth (ORG), which excludes the impact of acquisitions, asset sales and currency fluctuations and a key performance metric for the industry, was 3.6%. That was in the middle of the pack, versus other ad marketing holding companies.Omnicom, the second-ranked holding company, for example, reported first-half ORG of 5.1%. Media specialist Aegis Group posted 8.6% ORG for the period, while MDC Partners reported 7% growth. Publicis and Interpublic reported first-half ORG of 2.8% and 1.7%, respectively.In March, WPP said the outlook for full-year 2012 ORG was 4%. Now the company believes full-year ORG will be a slightly lower 3.5%. For the remainder of this year and beyond, WPP said it would focus on margin growth by improving its staff-cost-to-revenue ratio.WPP said its data showed “increased advertising and promotional spending…across most of the Group’s geographical and functional sectors.” The company noted that the rapidly moving consumer goods category was particularly robust from a spending standpoint.While corporate balance sheets are “much stronger” than they had been even prior to the last recession, the company stressed that Euro Zone economic woes, a softening economy in China and the looming U.S. deficit uncertainties “demand caution.”By region, WPP’s fastest-growing cluster was Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe, which posted combined revenue growth of 8.5% to more than $2.2 billion.North American revenues were up 6% to $2.7 billion, although the company said growth slowed in the second quarter, due to reduced client spending in parts of its healthcare business, custom research operation and other units.Revenues in the UK were up nearly 6% to $937 million. Western Europe revenues were up 1% to $1.9 billion.WPP said its media operations, overseen by GroupM were “consistently strong” in the first half of the year, with revenue growth of 14% and organic growth of 12%.First-half net new business (by billings) for the advertising and media division totaled nearly $4 billion in the first half versus close to $2 billion for the same period in 2011.Acquisitions were highlighted by the $540 million purchase of independent digital shop AKQA. That deal was completed in July. WPP also said it gained $50 million on its equity in Buddy Media, which was sold earlier this year to Salesforce.com.
When Yahoo pegged Marissa Mayer as its latest CEO, analysts predicted that the portal would immediately prioritize products and technology over media and content. As yet, however, Mayer’s arrival hasn’t slowed Yahoo’s affection for pricey original online content. Its latest foray into the field is “Suit Up” -- a new eight-episode digital series produced by Fox Digital Studio, in association with DirecTV, which is slated to debut on Yahoo Screen on Sept. 12. Oddly enough, Yahoo’s popularity as a source for sports news helped seal the deal for Fox Digital. "Yahoo's huge reach in the sports category and its increasing focus on scripted entertainment make it the perfect distribution partner," said Matthew Glotzer, senior vice president of Fox Digital Entertainment. Under the terms of the distribution deal, all eight episodes will be available at launch exclusively within Yahoo for two weeks. After that, they will be accessible through additional channels. The fictional series follows crisis manager Jim Dunnigan -- played by Marc Evan Jackson -- who takes the helm of a scandal-laden athletic department at Glory University. "Suit Up" is just the latest big-budget project to premier on Yahoo Screen. Last month, Yahoo, along with Tom Hanks’ Playtone production company and Reliance Entertainment, debuted “Electric City," a new animated series. Beginning in January 2013, "Suit Up" will make its broadcast premiere on DirecTV's Audience Network. The broadcast debut of the series will include bonus content, such as behind-the-scenes features and outtakes. Late last year, Forrester credited Yahoo with helping to grow domestic digital video ad spend. Alongside content hubs like Hulu and Google, Forrester said Yahoo was giving advertisers more reason to realign their TV budgets. Partly as a result, by 2016, domestic digital video ad spending will explode by more than 250% -- from $2 billion in 2011 to $5.4 billion, Forrester predicted.
Ford is launching new TV ads and a web-centric comedy series that extends its campaign for the 2013 Escape compact crossover, which the company says is the fastest-selling vehicle on Ford dealer lots. The TV campaign, under the “Go Further” brand banner, continues Ford's tactic of using real people in testimonial style, but this time the real people are engineers and designers who were involved in the Escape development process. The ads show how Ford employees are "going further" in the features they developed for the vehicle and how their own life experiences inspired features like Escape's hands-free liftgate, the Eco-Boost engine and MyFord telematics. The ads feature: Scott Makowski, a powertrain engineer who worked on Escape’s two available EcoBoost engines; Erika Tsubaki, design supervisor for Ford of Europe, who was involved in exterior and interior design; Vince Mahe, the engineer behind the hands-free liftgate (the ad shows how Mahe noticed people often have their hands full when they are trying to open a vehicle's rear liftgate); and interface engineer Jennifer Brace, who works on the Sync and MyFord Touch systems. The humorous web series,"Escape My Life," stars stand-up comedian Natasha Leggero, and actor Jo Truglio ("Superbad" and "Pineapple Express"). The show, directed by Zombieland and upcoming film “Gangster Squad” director Ruben Fleisher, follows Hollywood wardrobe designer Skylar Browning (Leggero), who needs a vehicle, and gets an Escape. The vehicle arrives with Barry Gruber (Truglio), a product specialist. “Escape My Life is a thoughtful and respectful approach in the way Ford, and the Escape, is engaging with the consumer–- we are not talking at them, we are showing them the Escape and how it is used in daily life,” said Brock Winger, digital marketing manager for Ford, in a statement. The Escape vehicle is central to various hijinks involving Browning and Gruber. The automaker says the idea was to jettison the traditional online banner ads and feature-benefit commercials and spotlight the vehicle in the context of everyday life. The series will run for eight episodes on its own YouTube channel as well as Hulu, AOL, MSN/Wonderwall, GlamMedia, Tumblr, Facebook and other online outlets, per the automaker. “The series reaches out to consumers where they are at in their media consumption behaviors – we are not interrupting them and forcing them to go somewhere else or stop what they are doing in order to watch and enjoy the content,” Winger noted.
For anyone who thinks Disney’s Electrical Parade and haute couture could never be found in the same sentence, Santa has another thing coming. Barneys New York is teaming up with the Walt Disney Co. for its holiday campaign, promising to “merge the creativity and magic of Disney with the wit and surprise of the legendary Barneys New York,” the retailer says in its release. The resulting holiday campaign, it says, will “create a celebration of festive modern electric lights, music and fashion.” AirFrance is sponsoring the effort, and will run an integrated campaign around it. Kicking off in mid-November, the company says the campaign will include an art film, shot by Disney and starring insiders from throughout the fashion world, which will air in its windows. A three-dimensional light show will surround its Madison Avenue entrance. There will even be an original score for the spectacle, penned by composer Michael Giacchino. Look for fierce versions of Minnie, Mickey, Goofy, Daisy Duck, Snow White, Princess Tiana, and Cruella de Vil to strut in Paris runway show, each dressed in a one-of-a-kind costume created by Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga, Oliver Rousteing for Balmain, Dolce & Gabbana, Alber Elbaz for Lanvin, Peter Copping for Nina Ricci, Proenza Schouler, and Rick Owens. The store says it will also sell limited-edition gifts, available in stores and online, including Disney's Vinylmation figures designed by Paul Smith and Diane von Furstenberg, Mickey Mouse ears designed by Rag & Bone and L'Wren Scott, as well as holiday ornaments, sweets, and toys. Electric Holiday art work will also be used on shopping bags. The retailer will donate 25% of the sales from Electric Holiday products to a charity. Last year, its holiday campaign, showcasing Lady Gaga’s Workshop, donated proceeds to the singer’s Born This Way Foundation.
With the Republican National Convention in full swing in Tampa, the news media and general public are captivated with the storylines of the upcoming election. The story is extending into online video this year, where campaigns and causes on the national, state and local level are already spending more than ever before on video advertising. There are certainly big months ahead, but political advertisers have to be smart about how they spend their money on video. They should be prepared to answer looming questions about supply, competition, and how much messaging consumers can withstand during election season. What should be at the front of every political advertiser’s mind is that geo-focused demand from the political sector could be too significant for the current video supply. I’ve discussed this in previous columns, but suffice it to say that advertisers are mostly interested in quality programming that guarantees audience and certain markets of the country. The major parties and PACs are all competing with traditional brand advertisers for that same inventory, and many politically focused agencies are pre-buying inventory, where possible, securing their proverbial seat at the table for the September and October run. While the focus thus far has been swing-state inventory in addition to maintaining national messaging, this inventory will be even scarcer, unless we can substantially increase the available video impressions over the next two months. Another issue relates to messaging. As consumers, we all know that come October in an election year, it feels like every commercial on broadcast TV is an attack ad. In the past, TV viewers sat through these commercials to get to the programming. Today, they can simply fast-forward on the DVR (which is why the majority of buying focus has been around local news on television, which is still considered appointment viewing). But most online video content owners do not offer DVR functionality to their viewers, and one has to wonder if viewers will even sit through a 15- or 30-second political pre-roll advertisement to get to the video payoff, especially if they do not agree with the message or are not politically minded. For political advertising to be effective, politicians need their ad message to appear in front of premium, desirable video content. Finding the delicate balance between each political ad message and the number of video minutes consumed will be a key metric over the next two months. Challenges for the political landscape lie not only in targeting viewers according to their audience profile and location, but also based on content and even political party preference. Each of these key factors should be weighed heavily. We will know the election results on Nov. 6, but we will still be learning from these ad experiences long into the future.
The ongoing conflict between satellite provider Dish Network and the basic cable giant AMC Networks has been dragging on for weeks now and, as is common in such disputes, it’s the consumers who are getting stomped on. Imagine not having been able to enjoy television’s best drama – AMC’s “Breaking Bad” -- these last few weeks. There ought to be a law … If I’m a little more sensitive to this issue at present than I might usually be, it’s because my programming provider, Cablevision, is currently in a tussle with Tribune Broadcasting, and until executives on both sides of the argument figure out a way to settle their differences I’m being deprived of my local Fox and CW affiliates, not to mention one of my retro television favorites, Antenna TV. I can deal with this problem now, during the dog days of August when there is little to watch, but I’ll be really pissed if everything isn’t put back together by the official start of the 2012-13 television season. I’d be even more worked up if Cablevision was in an extended stand-off with AMC Networks, rather than Tribune, because if I had to I could live without The CW’s “The Vampire Diaries” and Fox’s “The X Factor,” at least for a little while, but the thought of not being able to watch AMC’s “The Walking Dead” when its third season begins October 14 is too terrible to contemplate. That’s the situation Dish subscribers may find themselves in -- and that’s what brings me to the viral video created by the clever folks at thinkmodo that caught my attention this week. It’s titled “Zombie Experiment NYC,” and it asks the question, could zombies live among us (said zombies being those potentially displaced by Dish)? Like the creatures it features, the video stumbles for a few seconds before it gets moving. An opening graphic informs us that a few New Yorkers have been transformed into zombies in order to execute this “experiment.” We then see monster make up being applied to several people. Why bother to state and show the obvious, and why distract from the initial impact of rotting zombies mixing it up with the people of New York by showing how actors were made to look like ghouls? Why not jump right into the deep end and pretend the zombies in action are the “real” deal? (This complaint aside, the brief intro doesn’t seem to have compromised the video’s impact, so it appears that the thinkmodo think tank knew exactly what it was doing when the decision was made to structure the video in this way.) One look at the makeup artistry on vivid display, as in the startling shot of a zombie preparing to eat a hot dog even as the lower part of its face is falling away, and it’s clear that “Zombie Experiment NYC” was as lovingly executed as an episode of “The Walking Dead.” Wisely it is way more upbeat than the show, which for all of its accolades is likely the most depressing scripted television series ever made. “Zombie” is often as stimulating and amusing as “Dead” is downbeat and frightening. We see zombie first responders, zombie businessmen, zombie shoppers, zombie traffic cops and zombie utility workers, among others, going about their business and interacting with New Yorkers, a few of whom are taken aback, but most of whom are either very amused or not at all impressed, just as one might expect. “Zombie Experiment NYC” was released earlier in August, but its online popularity is still growing, and it’s easy to see why. This video is as smartly subtle as an ostensibly confrontational video can be. At first view it might appear to be a Funny or Die clip about zombies in the big city. There’s nothing argumentative, manipulative or demonstrative about it. It engages, seemingly without a specific message and intent on entertaining only, until the very end, when we suddenly see a zombie shuffling along a sidewalk, dragging a Dish satellite saucer behind it. Then these words fill the screen: “Zombies Don’t Belong Here. Put Them Back on TV.” They are followed by an address to the Web site, putzombiesback.com. As it happens, the site is far more overt and dramatic than the video. It offers the visitor assistance in finding alternate service providers that carry AMC, and it includes a contest (with significant prizes including exposure on AMC-owned social media channels) that encourages people to submit 30- or 90-second videos revealing what they would do if they were Dish subscribers who lost AMC and could no longer watch one or more of their favorite programs – especially “The Walking Dead.” There is nothing amusing about corporate disputes that leave consumers in the lurch, but at least in this case one of the participants has made an effort to address the situation in a humorous and engaging manner. As an extra bonus, “Zombie Experiment NYC” would double as a fine promotional video for “The Walking Dead” even without a connection to the Dish-AMC problem.