- Internet usage in the U.S. dipped about 20% during the Sunday night Super Bowl broadcast, reports Multichannel News. That compared with an average Sunday, and despite the "Social Super Bowl" hype. NBC’s online video feed of the game took 6.2% of all downstream broadband traffic at 9 p.m.
- Google Offers, the Internet giant’s answer to Groupon, has just launched in its 40th major city. With this week’s launch in Oklahoma City, Okla., and Omaha, Neb., plus ten cities in the two weeks prior (including Boston and Washington, DC), Google Offers has aggressively expanded in just six months. As WebProNews describes, Groupon turned down an acquisition offer from Google.
- Barclays Capital is guessing that an Apple HDTV, priced at $1,500, could quickly take 5% of the HDTV market—bringing with it the accompanying Apple ad platform. As MobileMarketingWatch describes, the Apple TV would be less of a television, than a delivery vehicle for gaming, video, content delivery and apps, all of which presumably will be funded in part by iAds.
- The Washington Post yesterday launched free iPhone and apps for its Facebook-powered Social Reader app, reports the Poynter Institute. With the apps, users have “mobile-optimized access” to articles that participating Facebook friends have read, not just from the Post but from more than 30 participating publications. The Post claims 11 million people are using the app on Facebook.com.
- Digital magazine publishers may see a plateau on eReaders, eMarketer forecasts, and based on stats from Verso Advertising and Burst Media. While almost 16% of U.S. Internet users surveyed in December, 2011, owned an eReader, those who plan to buy one is declining. The good news—for marketers anyway—is that eReaders are losing ground to tablet computers, with their larger screens and higher processing capacity. Tablets are expected to see double-digit growth, reaching 89.5 million users in 2014. However the eReader/tablet horserace ends, the mobile ad opportunity is still a powerful one.
Facebook Releases Ad Revenue: Huge and Growing, Arguably Justified
As required in its IPO filing, Facebook has released its ad revenue, for 2009-2011. Ads brought in $3.2 billion in 2011, a year-over-year (YOY) growth of 69% from $1.9 billion in 2010, leading Business Insider’s Jim Edwards to declare, “Wow. This is a massive ad sales business.”
In terms of volume, there was a 42% increase in the number of ads delivered in 2011, and, an 18% increase in the price of ads.
In its prospectus, Facebook described its value to advertisers: “Advertisers can engage with more than 800 million monthly active users (MAUs) on Facebook or subsets of our users based on information they have chosen to share with us such as their age, location, gender, or interests. We offer advertisers a unique combination of reach, relevance, social context, and engagement to enhance the value of their ads.” In terms of growth, Facebook claims those 845 million MAUs as of December 31, 2011, is a YOY increase of 39% as compared 2010. Facebook went on to describe how it creates value for advertisers, with—
- Relevance, as ”Advertisers can specify [user subsets by] demographic factors and specific interests that they have chosen to share with us on Facebook or by using the Like button around the web.”
- Social Context, which highlights a user’s friends’ connections with a particular brand or business (e.g., that a friend Liked a product or checked in at a restaurant). We believe that users find marketing messages more engaging when they include social context."
- Engagement, as the shift to the more social web “creates new opportunities for businesses to engage with interested customers. Any brand or business can create a Facebook Page to stimulate an ongoing dialog with our users.”
The Economist summed it up this way in a poll: “It collects huge amounts of data about its 800m plus users, can serve up creepily well-targeted ads.”
But does it work?
Advertisers use Likes as a kind of social media “Nielsen rating,” but the ratings can be disappointing. In terms of engagement, only slightly more than 1% of Facebook users who “Like” brands like Procter & Gamble or Coca-Cola actually engage with the brands, according to research. And engagement can include reposting a clever ad from YouTube—good for branding, but without measurable sales.
Earlier this month, TBG Digital (TBG) in its Global Facebook Advertising Report observed “considerable savings” were possible in cost-per-clicks (CPCs), up 45%, for advertisers on Facebook. But, those advertisers must keep the clicker within Facebook: directing a visitor away from Facebook and onto the advertiser’s own website drives up the CPC.
So the ad revenue is impressive, as are the claims. But as an effective ad platform, Facebook still defies analysis. Likely it will have to come up with more solid figures for its annual investor calls.
Advertising to Millennials? Do It Digitally and Keep It Short, Says Study
“The 79 million Millennials in the U.S. have an estimated purchasing power of $170 billion dollars per year," said comScore Vice President Bert Miklosi. "Their comfort-level with the Internet and technology in general makes the digital medium an ideal platform for reaching these individuals.”
The digital market research firm has released its report Next-Generation Strategies for Advertising to Millennials. The report highlights results from the company’s study that identifies unique characteristics of the “Millennial generation” (persons born between 1981 and 2000, thus, 12-31 years of age). comScore examined Millennials’ responses to different types of advertising, including TV and digital, compared to older generations, and how marketers can most effectively target this demographic segment.
The medium is ideal, but the Millenial is generally more difficult to persuade via advertising than their older counterparts. This said Miklosi underscores “the importance of creative and messaging optimization in driving worthwhile returns from an investment in advertising to this segment.” Also true, to quote the report, “It is harder for advertising to achieve breakthrough and catch the attention of Millennials, who are notorious for multitasking and short attention spans.” In fact, their immediate recall is the lowest of any age group—at 43%, 9% lower than that of seniors. Still, their delayed recall was strongest among age groups, at 24%.
Courtesy comScore, Inc.
Other key findings:
- The defining characteristics of Millennials include their comfort-level with new technologies and cultural diversity, as well as being accustomed to on-demand access to entertainment, continual stimulation and extreme multitasking.
- Millennials tend to be less interested and more difficult to connect with, capture attention, impress, convince and entertain. Millennials also appear to be more price-sensitive, perhaps due to lower disposable incomes.
- Digital advertising performs better in relative terms among Millennials than does television advertising.
- Across generations including Millennials, the presence of key creative elements in advertising, coined by comScore as the Validated Drivers, were shown to relate strongly to successful advertising.
- Millennials are highly engaged with the content that they choose to view, within both television and digital environments. Engagement has been shown to amplify the effectiveness of advertising, so when targeting Millennials, it is important to utilize engaging content to help boost returns from investments in advertising.
comScore Introduces a “Holistic Measurement Solution” for Digital Ad Campaigns
comScore, Inc., the digital analytics provider, has today announced its Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) measurement solution for validating digital ad delivery. comScore claims that vCE “enables a holistic view of campaign delivery and a verified assessment of ad-exposed audiences via a single, third-party source.”
vCE is designed to combat misfires in ad impressions. “The display advertising market today is characterized by an overabundance of inventory, often residing on parts of a web page that are never viewed by the user. This dilutes the impact of campaigns for advertisers and represents a drag on prices to publishers,” said Dr. Magid Abraham, President and CEO of comScore. “Conversely, some ads below the fold are quite visible and deserve more credit.” vCE uses a measure called ‘validated gross rating points’, or vGRPs. This new metric reflects measurement of ads that were not only delivered, but that had an opportunity to have an impact on consumers.
In preparation for the vCE launch, comScore conducted a U.S.-based vCE Charter Study of 12 national brands, 3,000 placements, 381,000 site domains and 1.7 billion ad impressions. The advertisers included Allstate, Chrysler, Discover, E*TRADE Financial, Ford, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kimberly Clark, Kraft, and Sprint. comScore found that:
- 69 percent of the ad impressions were classified as being ‘in-view,’ being visible for 1 second or more. The remaining 31 percent were delivered but never seen by a consumer, likely because of scrolling past or never scrolling onto the ads.
- 4 percent of ad impressions were delivered outside of a desired geography, and individual campaigns ran as high as 15 percent. So, localized ads were served in markets where the advertised product is not sold.
- 72 percent of Charter Study campaigns had at least some ads running next to content deemed “not brand safe,” by the advertiser, meaning that the content is deemed objectionable by the brand.
“Discrepancies” Abound in Media Impressions say Publishers, Advertisers, Agencies
Ask a publisher, ad agency or third-party measurement service for a tally of impressions, and chances are the numbers will not match. The discrepancy boils down to the ad server and measurements the organization uses, a panel of experts told AdExchanger.com. Even if they are within 5%, “I’m not willing to lose 5% extra revenue because of the agency’s choice of ad server,” said Jay Wright, Yield Management Group Leader at Cars.com, an online marketplace. AdExchanger posed the question "What's your take on trends you're seeing with discrepancies in ad delivery reporting today?" the responses boiled down, largely, to “Who is measuring?”
Mitchell Weinstein, director of ad operations at media agency Universal McCann, believes discrepancies stem from using multiple ad servers on a single campaign; one server handles rich media while another handles video, for example. So, “It’s important to identify up front where…billing numbers will come from.” Weinstein hastens to add that revised Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) guidelines of December 2009 did away with far greater discrepancies.
Wright of Cars.com also observes improvement, but still a lack of precision, which can cost a publisher. Cars.com found that some 3rd party servers can routinely return discrepancies of up to 7% between the publisher and ad advertisers’ measurements. Wright is in favor of paying on first-party numbers—picking one measure (perhaps the publisher’s or the advertiser’s) and paying on it; or, have a rate card based on an agency’s choice of server.
While discrepancies are improving with technology, “There still exists a fundamental difference in who’s counting an impression when,” said Daniel Davies, director, US ad operations for Adnetik. The Adnetik technology compiles and resolves data between exchanges, ad networks and publisher sites. “What we sometimes end up with is a handful of varying snapshots, all taken of the same thing, but at slightly different times,” and the number of entities making those measurements grows yearly. Davies sums up the solution very well for most of the panelists: technology and standardization have to keep pace. Davies observes that “computing muscle and stamina backing digital advertising” is keeping the discrepancies from growing in pace with the number of digital ad outlets . That number will not keep growing; it is the responsibility of the industry to find technology that keeps pace.
Search Engine Ad Spend Up 14%, Mobile Up 7%
U.S. marketers spent 14% more on search engine ads, and 7-8% more on mobile ads in Q4 2011 over Q4 2010.
The search ad spend was “bolstered by aggressive spending by retailers,” observes Efficient Frontier, the Adobe-owned digital marketing company that compiled the data. While search spend grew 14%, retail specifically grew by 18% and 40% in Q4 over Q3. Meanwhile, cost-per-clicks (CPCs) dropped 5% due to a rise in mobile advertising where clicks are less costly.
“Facebook continues to be where marketers are placing new bets by adding advertising spend with a focus on fan acquisition,” observed President and CEO David Karnstedt of Efficient Frontier. The company expects Facebook to account for 5% of online advertising spend by the close of 2012. As marketers improve their ability to acquire and engage Facebook fans, brands will continue to pump incremental spend into Facebook.
Mobile ad spends are significantly boosted by tablets, which accounted for 50% of mobile search spend and 50% of click share.
However powerful Facebook will be, Google remains king of the hill. Google took an 80% spend share in Q4. But, Bing/Yahoo clicks yielded 14% more revenue per click, and offered 9% higher return on investment.
Among other predictions for 2012:
- Mobile search spend will comprise 16-22% of paid clicks by close of 2012. More plentiful mobile devices will mean a more robust user experience, pushing both users and advertisers to the platform.
- Search spend will increase 15-20% in 2012 in the U.S.
- Search CPCs will drop by 4%, driven down by the increased use of mobile advertising.
- Developments in social platforms other than Facebook (including Google+ and LinkedIn) will also drive up the social spend, though Facebook will remain the dominant social ad platform for 2012.
Audit Bureau Debuts Standalone Mobile Audit
ABC Interactive, an arm of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, has released the first mobile audit or m.Audit report. The m.Audit provides key metrics covering a publication’s app and mobile websites. ABC Interactive took this maiden voyage with the Orange County Register, and reported that the newspaper’s mobile website averaged more than 4.5 million monthly page impressions in the three-month period of July to September 2011; and that the paper’s mobile app garnered 2 million stories read monthly.
The m.Audit is a “standalone report for publishers to present audited mobile usage data and is the first of its kind in the industry,” claims ABCi. The Bureau is aiming for rich analytics, and used Adobe’s Omniture SiteCatalyst analytics tool to monitor Register websites. To audit the app, ABCi reviewed the systems and processes of FreeRange 360, a mobile publishing vendor that manages the Register’s news app.
ABC tailors m.Audit reports to fit individual publishers’ needs, and can include such analytics as audience by day or time of day; most-visited pages; app downloads and text alerts. ABC created the mobile audit “in response to the growing need for trusted, transparent data surrounding mobile metrics.” ABC/ABCi’s 2011 mobile survey revealed that 70% of publishers expect advertisers to ask for more insight into mobile offerings.
ABCi has yet to name any further clients, but The Register is pleased with the results. Orange County Register Communications began selling mobile ads in 2009, including text alerts, mobile-optimized websites and banner ads. “It has become increasingly important to provide verifiable data to advertisers about our mobile audience share and usage patterns,” said Michael Henry, interim publisher at The Orange County Register. “The m.Audit will facilitate the media buying and selling process, as investing in the mobile medium and its highly targeted advertising vehicles becomes an integral part of overall marketing budgets.”
Media Measurement an Illusion, Says Ad Research Foundation CEO
“What does it mean that Coke has 36 million Facebook followers?” blogged Advertising Research Foundation CEO Bob Barocci on the AdAge site. Barocci described the oft-heard complaint that digital metrics are hard to quantify; but he called the simpler days of ad metrics a myth. Twenty years ago, “a brand looked bigger to the consumer if you were in two media.” A company then might enjoy a good score on 24-hour aided recall, but even then, major advertisers were reluctant to trace market share gains to that recall. “No cause and effect then…as now.”
Now the CMO is tasked with dividing ad spend among far more numerous platforms, and dealing with their complexities. The global research director of Kraft Foods described the dilemma to brand advertisers as this: which five of 100 or more touch points that influence consumers should he buy? Mobile phones promise more exposures, but are also driving discounting; should a CMO thus avoid the burgeoning platform? In social media, is recall more or less valuable than likability? “With all the data we have these days, I think we should be finding answers to some of these questions,” wrote Barocci, “But we're not.”
Barocci credits Google with putting significant resources toward analytics, with initiatives like its Advertising Format Impact project to measure the impact of multiple video formats on multiple platforms. Barocci described the Foundation’s multisponsor Arrowhead Project, with a mission to answer the question “What ideas do people get from digital/social media when making a purchase?” The project focuses upon three test categories which vary in length of the consumer purchase process; consumer packaged goods, which are short-term; smart phones, being mid-term; and automobiles, a long-term decision. ARF will present its findings at its March Re:think conference.
BPA Amends Rules for Print and Digital Tallies
Ad buyers and planners can expect more precise circulation figures, beginning in 2012. Folio reports that media auditor BPA Worldwide has approved several new and amended rules, some aimed at better segmenting print and digital readerships. All were member-requested changes.
Old rules assigned three categories of readership, “print,” “digital” and “both,” for a total of 100%; someone who read “both” was not counted as a print or digital reader. New measures will roll “both” readers into the “print” and “digital” categories, for higher figures.
The BPA board approved “downloaded apps” by month as a measure in a BPA Brand Report, versus a standard BPA report; but the measure must include verbiage “disclosing the limitations of the figures,” says Folio. App copies cannot be reported as qualified circulation, as are downloaded issues, or email deliveries.
Also true, subscriber access to digital copies will be used as a measure of renewals in some cases, such as when 1) a weekly is accessed nine times in six months; 2) a monthly is been accessed twice in six months; and 3) a quarterly publication is accessed every six months.
Chart: Retail Search Sector Data, Q2 2011
About this chart: Source: Efficient Frontier / Context Optional, "Global Digital Marketing Performance Report," July 2011. The analysis was completed based on data from Efficient Frontier search engine marketing customers and the resulting Efficient Frontier’s Customer Index. The Efficient Frontier Customer Index represents a subset of Efficient Frontier clients who have spend data for six consecutive quarters or more whose resulting SEM metrics are then normalized to average industry category contributions established by multiple third party data providers.