Digital advertising and online video surge continues
Picking the right tool for the right job

Despite an overall gloomy forecast for global advertising, GroupM estimated positive growth for digital media in its latest report released Thursday. The global media investment management firm projected that growth in measured digital media investments will rise between 16 percent and 18 percent to approximately $100 billion globally in 2012, compared with a previous 16 percent forecast. That amount accounts for about one fifth of the entire 2012 measured ad spend.

Internet advertising budgets continue to grow in every country. The GroupM report forecast a 22 percent spending uptick in 2013, as digital spending trends continue an upward trend globally, regardless of local economic conditions.

Online video watching and advertising breaks record

More than 180 million U.S. Web users viewed a record 33 billion pieces of video content--and 11 billion ads --in June, according to comScore. Driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, Google sites ranked as the top online video content property in June with 154 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo Sites with 51 million, Facebook.com with 49 million, VEVO with 46 million and Viacom Digital with 39 million. Last month, time spent watching video ads totaled 4.6 billion minutes, with BrightRoll Video Network delivering the highest duration of video ads at 805 million minutes.

Overall, video ads reached more than half (53%) of the total U.S. population an average of 68 times during the month.

Macro View

A Commerce Department report Wednesday showed builders broke ground for more new homes in June than in any month in nearly four years. Wednesday's housing report from the Commerce Department showed home construction jumped 6.9 percent from May. Because builders cut back so sharply during the downturn, "if there's an increase in the number of households of any magnitude, the homebuilders will now benefit," Daniel Alpert, managing director at Westwood Capital, an investment-banking firm told the Wall Street Journal last week.

Meanwhile, last week’s cover story in the staid Economist argues that the U.S. economy is remaking itself (see article) thanks to the private sector. “Old weaknesses are being remedied and new strengths discovered, with an agility that has much to teach stagnant Europe and dirigiste Asia.”

What’s more, last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association said applications for home mortgages jumped last week on a surge in demand for refinancing as interest rates for 30-year mortgages fell to a record low. Other data in recent weeks has shown a sharp increase in signed contracts for home purchases in May, as well as rising home prices. “Housing continues to be the one sector of the U.S. economy that is outperforming expectations,” said Michael Gapen, a Barclays economist told Reuters.

Conclusion

Despite this morning’s sell-off in U.S. equity markets, the latest economic data confirm our economy is clearly in a slow growth mode and that won’t change much, regardless of who wins the November elections. Yes it’s going to be slow. And yes there’s going to be some growth. If you’re trying to reach your target customers, you need to be selective and online video and digital advertising absolutely have to have a place in your marketing mix—but they’re not magic silver bullets. You have to pick your spots carefully and mix video and digital into your overall tool kit.

My dad is a lot handier than I’ll ever be when it comes fixing things around the house. Sure he’d sometimes fix things that weren’t really broken, but it’s his intrepid appetite for experimentation—not a manual or eHow video--that eventually teaches him how to get the job done.

“There’s a tool for every job, and a job for every tool,” he’d admonish me. “But don’t ever try to use that fancy new cordless drill to fix everything on your Honey-Do list.”

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TAGS: Digital advertising, online video, GroupM, comScore, Commerce Department, home building, Mortgage Bankers Association, Barclays, BrightRoll Video Network

Device Owners More Comfortable With Mobile Advertising

The corporate and affluent set use social media, but rules change when time is a more precious commodity than money. Embedded links make case studies, white papers come to life.

Late last week, the research firm Nielsen Company, released a summary version of its survey of more than 5,000 consumers who already own a tablet computer, eReader, netbook, media player or smartphone.

When it comes to advertising, 57 percent of iPad owners -- and 59 percents of connected devices users generally -- show a willingness to accept advertising in return for free access. That said, acceptance of ads should not be mistaken for engagement with ads. Almost half of iPad owners (48%) and 44 percent of connected device owners expressed a neutral attitude toward seeing ads on their gadgets. Neutral meaning that like broadcast television users, they “don’t particularly enjoy” seeing the ads, but will still tolerate them to get the content free of charge.

Neilsen researchers said iPad owners indicated a greater likelihood to engage with ads they find interesting than iPhone users or connected device owners as a whole. And it's not necessarily because of splashier ads on the tablet. For example, 40 percent of iPad users said they are more likely to click on ads that are simple text ads compared to 25 percent of iPhone and all connected device users. At the same time, 46 percent of iPad owners said they enjoy ads with interactive features versus 26 percent of iPhone users and 27 percent of overall connected device owners.
We tend to agree with Online Media Daily who weighed in: “Perhaps in part because of the novelty, iPad users just appear to be more into ads now. That translates into higher conversions. After viewing an ad, iPad users are also more likely to make a purchase either via a PC or in a physical store.”

The Affluent Like Social Media, Too

A new survey from SEI Networks found that seven out of ten people with net worth of $5 million or more are on Facebook or a similar social media site. That proportion is significantly higher than the population at large, with 61 percent of U.S. adults using social networks according to Pew Research Center.

Among the 70 percent who reported using social networks, half said they use Facebook, 37 percent said they visit YouTube, and 35 percent use LinkedIn. Researchers said the high proportion of wealth people using social media is especially noteworthy because these individuals tend to skew older than the general population, defying the conventional wisdom that older adults don't use social media as much as younger people.

Should high-end and B2B advertisers plunge into social media?

Yes and no. First of all, we think the usage of social networking may be directionally accurate, but among affluent decision makers (both at home and at their jobs) our experience is that LinkedIn (professional networking site) is probably getting much higher regular usage than Facebook and Youtube for important information exchange instead of entertainment. As SEI points out, the high penetration of social networks among the pretty rich doesn't necessarily translate into frequent use, simply because these affluent individuals often don't have the time, according to SEI. Less than one in five (17.4%) of respondents said they use social media on a daily basis, compared to 38% of the population at large. Separately, new research from Spectrem Group showed that the most popular careers among individuals heading households worth $5 million or more are senior corporate executives, business owners and physicians or dentists -- occupations which don't leave much time for idle Facebook surfing.

Digital agency Whitehorse says in a recent report that 42 percent of B2B marketers now have people working at least part time on social media activities. But, executive buy in is still lagging behind (36 percent of B2B marketers in the Whitehorse survey says there’s still “low executive interest.”


3 emerging trends in corporate use of social media

Jesse Stenchek’s Smart Blog on Social Media had a nice piece today on three emerging trends in corporate social media: reaching out to customers, remembering who’s in charge and no single department controls social media.

Embedded links make case studies, white papers come to life. Just keep em short.

Surprise findings from an Eccola Media survey of 500 B2B decision makers and influencers found that white papers and a case studies are still attracting their attention. The decrease in consumption of written content in digital form was replaced by an increase in downloading and printing of written content. By including links to media files in your thought leadership content, there’s a 93 percent chance that buyers click through and 80 percent of the time, influencers will say the media files favorably increased the value of that content.

What’s the optimal length for a white paper these days? You guessed it, six pages, not 20 and always include an executive summary. We also recommend including “key take-ways” at the begging of each chapter or section. What’s the biggest impediment to white paper adoption. “Poor writing,” according to Eccola who advises marketers to leave the technical writing to the writers, not the techies. Amen to that.

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Tipping Points: Digital Ad Spending to Top Print in 2010. Facebook Overtakes Google.

In digital economy, everything’s a commodity except ideas.

In today’s wired world, the most important economic competition is actually between you and your own imagination, wrote New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman on Sunday. More on that in a minute.

Facebook Overtakes Google as most popular US Web site

Whether or not Facebook fits into your marketing plans, it’s important to note that the ubiquitous social network destination overtook Google as the nation’s most popular Web site according to a recent report by Hitwise. Checking Facebook accounted for more than seven percent of all Web visits, the report found. Studies show that the average American spends seven hours a month on the site and that 44 percent of all social sharing takes place on the platform. But as Online Metrics Insider pundit, Pat Lapointe recently noted, research from Keller Fay Group clearly shows that only about 10 percent of total word-of-mouth activity occurs online. Further, it establishes that in MOST categories (not all, but most), the online chatter is NOT representative of what is happening offline, at kitchen tables and office water coolers.

Digital advertising to eclipse print in 2010

While print advertising is expected to rebound slightly into positive territory, more and more signs are pointing to 2010 as the year that digital advertising officially surpasses print. Legacy media is one area that could certainly benefit from fresh ideas, or more to the point, executing on those fresh ideas. A new study from Outsell, a consulting and research group serving the information industry, recently released findings of its annual survey of over 1,000 U.S. advertisers and marketers. Altogether, U.S. advertisers and marketers plan to spend $368 billion in 2010, Outsell found -- up 1.2 percent from 2009. Within the 2010 figure, 32.5 percent ($119.6 billion) will go to digital, versus 30.3 percent ($111.5 billion) earmarked for print.

In another new study, Kantar Media found that print media in 2009 underperformed the entire industry as a whole, off 17.5% versus 12.3 percent, for the year and down 11.5% for the fourth quarter. B2B magazines particularly took it on the chin, down 26.2 percent for the year, versus a 16.6 percent for consumer magazines (which are down only three percent so far in 2010according to Media Industry Newsletter). As in previous years, print ad revenue declines will fall heaviest on newspapers -- with Outsell forecasting total ad revenues of $27 billion in 2010, down about eight percent from 2009. Outsell also sees revenue for print directories falling about eight percent to $11.6 billion. But it's not all bad news for print, as Outsell predicts a two percent increase in ad spending for magazines -- rising to $9.4 billion – reversing a several year long slump.

"The advertising recession began to ease in the final two months of 2009 and preliminary figures from the first quarter of 2010, when compared against the abyss of a year ago, indicate many sectors are experiencing growth," noted Jon Swallen, senior vice president of Research at Kantar Media in a company news release. As with other forecasters, Kantar says the best performing media category in 2009 was cable television -- losing just 1.4 percent for the entire year and up 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter. Network TV was down 7.6 percent for the year although it exceeded cable TV in the fourth quarter, up 4.1 percent.

Why ideas can’t be commoditized in the digital era

Today, just about everything is becoming a commodity, except imagination, except the ability to spark new ideas, New York Times pundit, Thomas Friedman notes: “If I get an idea, I can get a designer in Taiwan to design it. I can get a factory in China to product a prototype. I can get a factory in Viet Nam to mass manufacture it. I can use Amazon.com to handle fulfillment. I can use freelancer.com to find someone to my logo and manage my backroom. And I can do all of this at incredibly low prices.

The one thing that is not a commodity, and will never be is that spark of an idea. Thanks Thomas. That’s as true in 2010 as it was in 1910.

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