MediaPost, 8/31/10
According to a study presented at a Pivot Conference (in partnership with Extra Mile Research) entitled “Marketers’ Current and Future Use of Social Media,” 63% of marketers are already investing in social media marketing, and of the 37% that are not currently investing in social media marketing, 62% are planning to invest, including 46% who plan to do so within one year.
Other key findings include:
News Release, 8/31/10
Despite Growing Concerns Around Privacy Legislation and Data Risks; Audience Buying, Increase in Spend from International Markets and Automation Drive Industry Growth
the Rubicon Project, the advertising technology company, reveals exclusive insight into emerging industry trends and market shifts that occurred in the second quarter of 2010, along with insights into what’s next for the digital ad landscape, in the tenth installment of its Online Advertising Market Report series. The report also includes excerpts from the well-attended panel, “Is All Inventory Created Equal?” hosted in June by the Rubicon Project during New York’s Internet Week.
Included within the report is the latest update on the Rubicon 20 Index, a measure of performance across a number of factors (including CPM, revenue and traffic volume) on a roster of twenty of the Web’s most heavily-trafficked properties. At the beginning of Q2, CPMs across the Rubicon 20 Index have risen by an average of 25 percent vs. Q1 2010. Overall, the Index has grown 47 percent, on a trend line basis, from the start of 2010 to the midpoint of the year.
Additional key forecasts and trends addressed in this report include:
BtoB, 8/30/10
With the increased use of compiled lists, primarily culled from Internet sources, marketers now have many options when building prospecting databases. The question is, how to choose among the various list-compiler vendors and parse their relative strengths?
A new study attempts to shed some light on the subject. “Online Sources of B-to-B Data: A Comparative Analysis, 2010” is a follow-up to a previous study a year ago, and reveals an evolution in how business data are collected and offered.
One finding this year dovetails with last year’s study: While business data tend to be relatively accurate, the breadth of company contacts is spotty.
Ad Age, 8/30/10
The role of a “chief listener” evokes images of fuzzy sweaters, chamomile tea and sitting around with a patient ear. Instead, try sifting through unstructured data and building complex queries.
“We get about 300,000 new mentions of Kodak every month and we don’t censor the comments or videos people create about our company,” said Beth LaPierre, Kodak’s chief listening officer, a role that’s just starting to crop up in a few major marketing organizations and involves decidedly non-touchy-feely tasks. “I’ve spent the past five months defining how we handle those data via technology and tools.”
The big task? Data mining — and figuring out who needs the information.
Fuel Lines, 8/30/10
Does your agency have a social media strategy for your social media efforts? Most agencies have jumped on the bandwagon but appear to be shooting from the hip with no strategy or measurements in place.
Ad agencies and companies are going about social strategy backwards, by first concentrating on the tools and technologies instead of focusing on what they want to achieve. My understanding of social media and how to monetize it was greatly expedited because my rifled focus on applying it for new business.
A survey conducted by marketing firm Digital Brand Expressions found that 78 percent of client companies responding to their survey said they use social media, but only 41 percent said they have a strategic plan in place to direct their social media efforts.
Other key findings from this survey that should be of interest:
NY Times, 8/29/10
The shoes that Julie Matlin recently saw on Zappos.com were kind of cute, or so she thought. But Ms. Matlin wasn’t ready to buy and left the site.
Julie Matlin was tempted by a pair of shoes on Zappos.com. Then the shoes started showing up in ads on other sites she visited.
Then the shoes started to follow her everywhere she went online. An ad for those very shoes showed up on the blog TechCrunch. It popped up again on several other blogs and on Twitpic. It was as if Zappos had unleashed a persistent salesman who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Mediaweek, 8/29/10
After being live for a year and backed by an estimated $100 million ad push, Microsoft’s Bing now commands about 12 percent or 13 percent of the search market, up from 8 percent or 9 percent a year ago, depending on the source. Yet category behemoth Google still commands about 65 percent of the market.
So is Bing a boom, a bust or something in between? Search buyers credit Microsoft for making steady, albeit slow progress. “If I’m [Microsoft CEO] Steve Ballmer, I’m looking at Bing’s share and saying, ‘Hey, it’s been a really good year,’” said David Karnstedt, president/CEO of the search agency Efficient Frontier.
Readwriteweb, 8/27/10
While young adults are the heaviest users of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, older users over 50 are starting to catch up. According to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 47% of Internet users between the ages of 50 and 64 and 25% of online adults over 65 now use social networking sites. Compared to just a year ago, the number of Internet users over 50 in the U.S. who use social networking services has nearly doubled.
eMarketer, 8/27/10
Social media is becoming an even more integral part of the marketing landscape. According to a June 2010 survey by King Fish Media, HubSpot and Junta42, 72% of US companies said they had a social media strategy.
The three companies surveyed 457 US marketers and managers; 52% of respondents were in the publishing, media, advertising and marketing industries.
The figure is one of the highest percentages yet among surveys that queried marketers on whether they had a social strategy.
ClickZ, 8/26/10
With every passing day, it seems social media becomes more engrained in the media strategist’s daily work life. Whereas not long ago our interest in social sites was limited to the advertising options these sites afforded our clients, they are now garnering consideration on a deeper level. Buyers are collaborating closely with social media strategists to create campaigns that cover all key online touch points, and to ensure that the campaign concepts they help to devise and the placements they negotiate extend to consumers on social media sites.
The most challenging part of this newfound relationship is determining how best to correlate one form of advertising with another. Marketers have tried numerous approaches, from using online ads to promote their social media presence to employing social media to promote their site presence online. The one rule of thumb that media strategists should follow is this: the approach you adopt should be motivated by your ultimate objective.
Here’s how some major brands have used their media buys to support their social media marketing efforts – and vice versa.
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