• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 26, 2010

According to the Unica State of Marketing 2010 study, video is the most adopted rich media marketing tactic today. Videos, created by marketing, rank first followed by streaming media, YouTube, podcasts, and ads within online videos represent the rich media tactics expected to be used most in the coming year. Year?over?year growth in the next 12 months for all these tactics is expected to be in the 20% range.

Expected use in the next 12 months is significantly lower for in?game ads/product placements, virtual worlds, and advergames. Year?over-year growth in these tactics is only in the 10% range.

Marketers Use of Specific Rich Media Channels (Base: Sample; % of Respondents)
Channel	Current Activity	Planned (next 12 mos)	Planned (>12 mos)	No Plans	Don't Know/Unsure
Video created by marketing	55%	20%	8%	11%	8%
Streaming media	41	20	7	15	17
YouTube	41	20	6	18	16
Podcasts	32	23	11	18	17
Ads within Online video	29	19	10	24	17
In-game ads/product placements	18	10	15	38	19
Virtual worlds	14	12	15	39	19
Advergames	15	11	15	38	22
Source: Unica, March 2010

The popularity of online video as a rich media marketing tactic makes sense considering that US internet users watched 32.4 billion videos in January 2010, according to the comScore Video Metrix service. Google Sites ranking as the top US video property with 12.8 billion videos, or 39.5% of total online videos viewed. YouTube.com accounted for nearly 99% of all videos viewed at the property. More than 173 million viewers watched an average of 187 videos per viewer during the month of January 2010.

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have had a meteoric rise, used by  hundreds of millions of people putting immense power in the hands of consumers. Blogs, product reviews, and other social media are mixed with marketing messages to shape consumers' perceptions of the brand. The mass adoption of social media has created anguish for most marketers, but despite this   distress, almost half of the marketers surveyed currently use social media for marketing, and nearly another quarter plan to use it in the next 12 months.

Current and Planned Usage of Social Media Marketing  (e.g., Blogs, Facebook, User Communities
	% of Respondents
Usage	All	North America	Europe
Currently use	47%	58%	34%
Plan to use (<12 months)	23	18	30
Plan to uer (>12 months)	10	11	10
No plans	11	4	20
Don't know/unsure	9	10	7
Source: Unica  Corporation, March 2010

However, the adoption differs dramatically by geography. Europeans appear more tentative than marketers in North America than Europe in their current use of social media marketing. Europeans are expected to catch up as their adoption speeds up this year, with 30% expected growth versus North America's 18%. Nevertheless, many more in Europe remain on the sidelines altogether with no plans to use social media.

Often emerging channels are not well integrated with existing marketing campaigns, says the report. Surprisingly, more marketers say they are trying to integrate these campaigns with other marketing campaigns/programs, although this does vary significantly by channel. The most widely integrated tactics are voting features/product reviews, user?generated content, and RSS feeds.

Marketers are primarily integrating social campaigns in terms of timing, creative themes and branding. As marketers expand their efforts to promote their brands, they will start to leverage integrated analysis and customer awareness, campaign decisioning, and marketing execution to make the most effective use of social media.

Social Media Tactics that Marketers Integrate with Other Marketing Campaigns/Programs (% of Respondents; 54% NA, 46% Europe)
Social Media Program	Currently Integrated	Currently discrete	Ad-hoc	Don't know
3rd party social networking sites	41%	35%	17%	7%
Blogs	39	38	16
Viral/word of mouth	46	26	17	11
Microblogging	42	32	19	8
Co-hosted online community	45	36	11	9
RSS feeds	54	30	11	4
User-generated content	56	28	9	7
Voting/product reviews	70	15	10	5
Syndicated content	44	36	11	8
Source: Unica  Corporation, March 2010

To view more details, charts and graphs, and to access the complete report in PDF format, please visit Unica here.