"This research demonstrates that social video significantly increases brand attention," claims London-based Unruly Media. Unruly offers a global platform for social video advertising, has three US offices, and delivered such video campaigns as Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign and Coke’s “Happiness” series. Unruly commissioned research firm Decipher to study results across such consumer brands as Heineken, Coca-Cola and Energizer Batteries. The survey among 18-34 year olds investigated the impact of recommendation on brand metrics to determine social ad effectiveness.
Among the findings:
- Viewers are more likely to enjoy a video when it has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (14% higher enjoyment)
- Viewers are more likely to recall a brand name when the social video has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (7% higher recall)
- Viewers are more likely to engage with an ad’s messages when the social has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (10% higher brand association)
Who does the recommending? Certainly, peers in social media environments, but also authoritative bloggers and and news sources who covering advertiser content editorially: consider that all of that Super Bowl ad coverage by the news media (e.g., by CNN, which reported on Honda’s leaking its Ferris Beueller-themed ad).
Of course, what viewers do next after a recommendation is of key importance to advertisers. Decipher found that within three days of viewing social video—
- 49% purchased the advertised product
- 38% spoke to someone in person about the video
- 9% searched for the brand
- 4% searched for products of that type
If this sounds easy, recall that these results are based on videos that the viewers enjoyed, and which were recommended to the viewer. The source of brand awareness and purchasing influence is not on YouTube, rather, it rests where it always has: in an ad agency's creative department.
Digital Ads: Affluent Buyers Highly Mobile, Digital, But Penny Wise
“Affluents” with a minimum $100,000 in yearly household income spend far more time online than the general population, reports eMarketer. They spend 26.2 hours online per week, versus 21.7 for the population overall. But they watch far less television, at 17.6 hours per week versus the 34 for the average American.
Affluents number 58.5 million, and 33% owns smartphones. Research suggests that the digital ads that reach affluents are—
- Opt-in email ads
- Sponsored websites from search results
- Targeted ads, relevant to what the affluent is doing or searching in the moment
- Ads tied to demographics (e.g., local restaurants, gyms, grocery stores).
On the downside, affluents have money because they don’t throw it away. “The vast majority…do not regard themselves as rich, however, and don’t spend as if they were,” said eMarketer Analyst Mark Dolliver. Of those 58.5 million, only 11% has a household income of more than $250,000. Affluents are in fact cutting back. So, ads for luxury goods and destinations are less likely to reach the affluent than ads for consumer goods and deals on dining and entertainment.
Study: Facebook “Likes” Weak on Brand Engagement
Advertisers use Facebook Likes as a kind of social media “Nielsen rating,” but the ratings are disappointing. Only slightly more than 1% of Facebook users who “Like” brands like Procter & Gamble or Coca-Cola actually engage with the brands, finds marketing researchers Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Engagement can include viral marketing, like posting a clever ad from YouTube.
As AdAge describes, the Institute used one of Facebook’s metrics, “People Talking About This,” to track likes, posts, comments and so forth about the brands. The Institute tracked the metric for 200 top brands over six weeks. What they found is that 1.3% of those who like a brand bother to discuss, share or otherwise engage with the brand. They click the Like button for the brand, then largely forget it.
The numbers get worse. Subtract new Likes from the figures, and only .45% of those who Like a brand actively engage with it.
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute concluded that Facebook engagement preaches to the choir; those users who do engage were largely sold on a brand to begin with. Facebook branding is poor at converting light buyers into loyal fans. The Institute cautions against "putting a disproportionate amount of effort into engagement and strategies to get people to talk about a brand, when you should be spending more time getting more light buyers."
Perhaps a better use of Facebook is its "Featured" advertisements, that sit above the right-column ticker. The ads use polls, videos and so forth for immediate, opt-in engagement.
Interestingly, eMarketer reported today that 97% of marketers agree that social media provide value and benefits to their businesses. “We’re trying to get people out of the mindset that social media is just for pushing your messages out," said a spokesperson, "It is about communicating, but it’s also about listening.” With financial services, a Charles Schwab engagement is far more high-touch than is a retail engagement. In sharp contrast to the Ehrenberg-Bass findings, 44% of marketers in the eMarketer report find Facebook fans valuable in recruiting other customers, and 18% said Facebook fans have higher conversion rates and make more frequent purchases.
“Singletons” Ignored by Advertisers, But Spend $1.9 Trillion a Year
Advertisers are just waking up to unmarried adult “singletons,” according to a Fortune story. Despite the perception of miserable loners sitting at home, they socialize up to five nights a week, and spend more than $10,000 per person per year more than married counterparts with children.
The Fortune story was adapted from the book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, by New York University sociology professor Eric Klinenberg. Among Klinenberg’s findings:
- 28% of U.S. households now consist of one person, 40% of city households
- Average per capita annual expenditure was $34,471 in 2010, versus $23,179 per person in high-income households with children
- The majority of singletons is female, at 18 million versus 14 million men
- 18-34 year olds are the smallest but fastest growing demographic
Singletons spend their discretionary income largely on socializing several nights a week at bars and restaurants, in special-interest clubs and joining gyms. This, speculated CEO David Eastman of advertising giant JWT, is why alcohol advertisers like Smirnoff now favor images of friends at communal tables, versus couples. Elsewhere, Nestlé reported that 90% of its Lean Cuisine meals are eaten alone, and failed when it attempted to market double-serving meals.
Still, the singleton demographic is largely untapped. Only a handful of big-ticket advertisers, including Norwegian Cruise Lines, Coldwell Banker, Lowe’s, Chevrolet and DeBeers have targeted singles. DeBeers now offers a “right-hand ring,” a diamond designed for single women, and Norwegian Cruise Lines offers “studio staterooms” for single travelers.
A Decade of Super Bowl Ad Stats: Ad Spend Reaches $1.72 Billion
From 2002 through 2011, the Super Bowl game has generated $1.72 billion of network advertising sales from more than 125 marketers, reports Kantar Media.
Leading the pack is Anheuser-Busch InBev with $239.1 million in ads. The company has advertised in every Super Bowl for the past decade, as have two other top spenders, PepsiCo and Walt Disney Co. The top five advertisers of the past decade collectively spent $636.6 million, for 37% of total advertising revenue.
The average rate for a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl increased 40 percent over past decade, for $3.1 million in 2010. NBC is asking $3.5 million for a 30-second unit in 2012, but the price will vary based on when the ad runs and if the advertiser opts for a larger package that includes spots in the pre-game and/or post-game coverage.
Kantar Media bemoans the rise in “clutter,” as the volume of commercial time has crept up. The Fox broadcast of the 2011 Super Bowl included 46 minutes of network ads, second only to 2010 with 104 minutes. That commercial time included paying sponsors, NFL messages, commercial messages from the NFL and Fox ads promoting its own shows.
About 20% of advertisers are first-timers, but in 2011 that dropped to 14%, with only four new marketers (Best Buy, Carmax, Groupon and Salesforce.com). Only three first timers have confirmed ad slots for 2012, being Century 21, Dannon and Relativity Media, a film studio.
Interestingly, the Super Bowl is attracting not just giants like PepsiCo and Disney, but smaller marketers as well. In 2011, nearly one-third of advertisers spent more than 10% of their full-media budgets. Careerbuilder spent $3.1 million, for 31% of its budget, and Salesforce.com spent 23%.
Interactive Video Ads Strong in Completion, Action, Finds Benchmark Study
Interactive in-stream ads keep viewers attention found PointRoll, a marketing solutions technology provider and a Gannett Company. PointRoll has announced the findings of its 2011 Video Benchmark Study, which revealed that 78% of viewers completed 100% of interactive in-stream ads, compared to 69% who completed 100% in-stream ads without interactive elements. Further, interaction rates (wherein users took an action within the ad) were more than 300% higher than those of in-banner video ads. The study compared campaign results from April–December 2011.
In interactive ads, automotives are particularly strong in holding viewers attention. Fully 80.66% of in-stream interactive ad viewers watched the ads to 100% completion. Non-profits held strong interest as well at 70.66%, and entertainment at 69.77%.
Non-interactive ads paint a different picture. Consumer goods leads the pack, with 96.85% of viewers going to 100% completion, and consumer electronics second at 82.89%. Last in the field—restaurants and food service, at 9.03%.
A key metric is interaction rate, versus click-through rate. Automotives garnered a 12.29% interaction rate, but only 0.25% click throughs. Consumer goods achieved a 2.07% interaction rate, but only 0.62% in click throughs.
In-banner video is surprisingly soft at holding attention, with an average among all categories, with a 100% completion rate of 38.82%.
Beauty Marketing Going Social, but Not Abandoning Traditional Advertising—Yet
Beauty product makers are clinging to traditional advertising venues: consider the ubiquitous Cover Girl and “Maybe It’s Maybelline” TV spots, and the still-thick ad-heavy Glamour, Vogue and Cosmopolitan.Still, marketers are hedging their bets with social and mobile campaigns, aimed at “going viral” and creating customer engagement, reports global market research consultancy Kline & Company.
During the 2011 holiday season, marketers ramped up viral campaigns to attract consumers, chiefly those looking for the best deals on personal care products. They turned to social and mobile media for discounts and promotions, and Kline believes “marketers are finding that mobile couponing offers significant advantages over paper-based forerunners in delivering higher redemption rates and encouraging impulse purchases.”
While broadcast and print media ads and coupons remained strong, marketers reported feeling “threatened” by new technologies that enable potential customers to screen out TV ads. For print advertising, they reported feeling constrained by inflexible publication dates and comparatively high costs. They enjoy the real-time adaptability and keyword-based targeting available in mobile and social media. Also, the relatively young and trend-setting demographic natural to those media. Still, those marketers and advertisers feel underserved by the metrics available from those media, and how they stack up against print and television. Kline has devised and a proprietary 5-point metric which it believes rates marketing methods on how critical each is for a given brand.
The study, Beauty Marketing 2011: U.S. Promotional Activities and Strategies Assessment, finds advertisers establishing presences in venues including Facebook, YouTube and the localized Foursquare, where they believe they can accurately target a given demographic. The marketers are tapping into the emerging potential of the still-in-infancy “Facebook commerce” (f-commerce) and “mobile commerce” (m-commerce), and treat these media as sales channels versus brand-awareness opportunities. They are also using those media to engage with enhanced loyalty programs and new sampling methods.
Research: Facebook Ads Offer 45% Cost-Per-Click Savings
Facebook enables advertisers to make “considerable savings” in online marketing, found TBG Digital (TBG) in its latest Global Facebook Advertising Report.
As a Facebook advertising firm, TBG is certainly vested in proving great results. But, it had its methodology and findings vetted by the UK’s University of Cambridge, and drew data from its own heavyweight client base, including JetBlue, CapitalOne, Dell and Heineken.
The report, which was based on 326 billion impressions in 205 countries, and from 256 TBG clients. It reveals these findings:
- Strong incentives for advertisers to stay within Facebook, with potential 45% reduction in cost-per-clicks (CPCs)
- Stabilizing Facebook growth in US created an increase in advertising costs
- Facebook earned 23% more in ad rates since Q1 2011
- Ad performance improved by 18% in 2011
- The top five Sectors comprised almost 70% of total impressions
- The financial sector accounted for more than 60% of impressions in offsite campaigns
- CPCs increased from Thanksgiving to Saturday December 17
TBG discovered reductions in CPCs for advertisers that run campaigns to recruit fans or that require users to install applications. Savings reached 45%, in contrast with those that direct traffic away from Facebook. That is a strong incentive for companies to build presence within Facebook. For example, financial services firms often direct users back to their own websites to complete a quotation or sign up, but tailored applications that perform the same functions within Facebook drives down advertising costs.
Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) rates, the other core cost comparator which indicates how much Facebook earns every time an advert is shown to a user, increased by 8% on average over Q4, for a total increase of 23% in 2011.
Click-Through Rates (CTRs) also increased by 18% during for the entire year2011. This, believes TBG, indicates that ad output is resonating with users more, and indicates a greater that Facebook advertisers have a better understanding and use of targeting methods like time of day, demographics and user interests.
TBG assessed 18 “bellwether industry sectors” for volume and effectiveness. The top five sectors, ranked by volume, were finance; retail; food and drink; games; and entertainment, which accounted for nearly 70% of total impressions on Facebook. TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell commented that “Users are increasingly discerning about what they view on social media networks, so it is in all advertisers’ interests to ensure that their content resonates with their target audiences and fits with their usage habits. Food and drink recorded the highest CTRs, largely due to successful fanning campaigns in that sector.
Food Network Magazine Savors 7th Ratebase Bump
Hearst Magazines announced yesterday that Food Network Magazine will increase its ratebase—its seventh increase since its 2009 launch—by 50,000, and up to 1.45 million. As Folio reports, Hearst’s most recent filing with the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) for the period ending June 30, 2011 tallied the total paid and verified circulation at 1,472,607, and print and digital single copies at about 340,000. This increase took effect with the January/February 2012 issue.
Hearst first piloted the magazine in late 2008 with a test circulation of 300,000 issues. In August 2011, the company announced that Food Network would reach 1.4 million for the 2012 January/February issue, but surpassed that figure by 50,000.
The magazine's media kit describes its demographics as 71.9% female, 28.1% male, with a relatively low median age of 41; it has 6.1 million readers aged 18-49, and 4.6 million aged 25-49. Median household income is $66,978, lower than some of its epicurean competitors like Saveur.com and Bon Apetit, but likely due to its younger and roughly 50% single readership. Food Network Magazine’s success underscores a trend for 2011; two of the top five fastest-growing digital properties were epicurean sites, being Saveur.com and BonApetit, also a print journal. All but one of the top five were lifestyle books.
Consumer Magazine Ad Revenue Flat for 2011, Plummeted Q4
The Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) has released its consumer magazine print ad tallies for 2011. Sales were relatively flat, with an $8 million increase over 2011—a drop in the bucket, as total revenue was $20.09 billion. Pages dropped 3.1% to 164,255 in 2011, but plummeted 8% in Q2.
Association of Magazine Media CEO Nina Link observed that Q1 and Q2 were positive, but with “A weakened economy in the second half of the year…advertisers grew more skittish from diminished consumer spending, wild stock market swings and zero job growth.” Still, there were what Link calls “pockets of strength,” sectors that increased their spending for the full year. These included apparel, cosmetics and the financial (e.g., insurance) sectors. Financial, Insurance & Real Estate posted the strongest gains, with ad revenues up 19.4%, and pages up 12.7%. Banks, investment firms, credit card providers and the like made up for poor real estate advertising. Toiletries and Cosmetics gained 9.5% in revenue, and Apparel & Accessories, 9.7%. This could be an example of the “lipstick effect,” whereby consumers who cannot afford luxury goods like automobiles console themselves with a less costly luxury. The food sector was down, which Link blames on rising energy and production costs in the industry; also in home furnishing and supplies, due to a soft housing market.
