Digital, Online Marketing

BCG Digital India Insights for Marketers and Media Companies April-2015

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 11:28:00 +0000

There will be as many as 550 million connected consumers — 40% of the population — in 2018, said a report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Digital India: Insights for Marketers and Media Companies.

Equally significant are the changes taking place and who these consumers are and how they are using their devices. In 2013, 40% of users were 25 years old or older; 54 % will be 25 or older in 2018.

Many users will live in rural areas. In 2013, 29% of users lived in rural areas; in 2018, approximately half will reside in smaller towns and villages. This will open up significant growth opportunities for marketers and service providers that keep in mind the dynamics of the rural market in India, such as using online distribution through e-commerce to ensure wider product availability.

The user base will include more women. In 2013, 25% of users were female; in 2018, women will represent a third of all users. The increasing gender parity will have a major bearing on the internet economy — women control 44% of household spending in India.

The ways in which consumers use the internet are also changing. Mobile connections will increase from 60% to 70% in 2013 to 70% to 80% in 2018. A majority of Indians who embrace the internet, particularly rural consumers, have bypassed the PC and are using mobile devices to get online on the go. Some 70% of rural users access the internet from their mobile handsets.

Content will become more vernacular as the user base diversifies and grows to include larger numbers of rural consumers. The use of vernacular content online is estimated to increase from 45% in 2013 to more than 60% in 2018, mirroring broadening consumption patterns in off-line media such as print and television.

Credits: BCG

10 Reasons why Indian SMB’s dont try Online Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 08:48:00 +0000

1) Lack of budget (because they feel digital marketing is expensive)

2) Lack of time to learn about digital advertising

3) Very sales oriented organizations - They would spend 15 lakhs per annum on a sales rep rather than a digital campaign which would last 5 months and deliver same results

4) No space/budgets for experimentation

5) Some digital consultant would have tricked them some time back, made quick bucks and fled..

6) Cant understand SEO

7) “im 45 !! I don’t need to learn new stuff now” attitude by Brand Managers & Senior Stake holders

8) “My boss in US said Digital marketing works, I tried once it did not work"

9) "I know my customers in Indian market wont respond to digital ad’s"

10) This ‘ecommerce bubble will burst again’

5 Reasons - Why SEO and SEM are difficult to Understand

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 08:45:00 +0000

Few say - it's difficult to understand digital Marketing
So i asked them what did you try understanidng ?? most reply - "SEO SEM"

(althought Digital marketing is not just SEO & SEM) - I guess i agree with them to a curtain extent..

Few reason why SEO & SEM is difficult to understand are:

1) Technical nature of the excercises - few SEO steps are techinical and difficult to be understood by non technical professionals (but given 3-4 days of learning it's easiely understood)

2) Complicated process of Adwords - unless you have some one to train you initially - self learning is difficult & scary for few. Lets agree that Facebook provides a easier ad campaign platform

3) Experementing using real time budgets on SEM - is scary to most marketers - they do not know how to configure, track and monitor the campaigns

4) Keyword selection and bidding - if you dont understand how bidding works and which keywords to choose - then you are in SOUP!!

5) Understanding thet Content is the King -when it comes to SEO
Most people dont realize that with out good content SEO will not work - thus it becomes harder to trust in SEO

Let me know if im wrong here :)

Basics of Digital Marketing - for those who are startting today

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 08:44:00 +0000

New age marketers are finding it difficult to understand "which are the first few steps they need take - while they plan for Digital Marketing"

Well here are few simple tips:

Website:

1) Ensure you have a well structured website - Light, has quick loading time, less of Flash and more of rich content which is easy to read.

2) Make sure that your website is SEO freindly - so that it is well recognised and indexed by Search Engines

3) Choose a responsive design for your website - this means your website should automatically change its layouts based on the Device it is being accessed from. (Desktop, Tablet, Mobile etc.)

4) Since more that 40% Google search in India happenes through Mobile devices - Mobile friendly website are vital

Social Media:

1) Ensure you have a company/brand page on atleast 3 Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin

2) Write good content relevant to your brand - atleast once in 2 days

3) Understand and learn few basic guidelines about posting & designing content on Social networks

4) Learn about the different Paid advertising models which each Social platform has to offer..

5) Try Social Media advertising on your own (Page Like ad's, Promoted posts on Facebook) - it's easy as learning how to cook simple Noodles :)

Keep these basic steps in mind and im Sure you will figure out the rest as you move forward

*Quick tip - learning one small new thing everyday can make you expert in Digital Marketing in the near future

Cheers!!

Google makes us all dumber: The neuroscience of search engines

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:46:00 +0000

As search engines get better, we become lazier. We're hooked on easy answers and undervalue asking good questions

In 1964, Pablo Picasso was asked by an interviewer about the new electronic calculating machines, soon to become known as computers. He replied, “But they are useless. They can only give you answers.”

We live in the age of answers. The ancient library at Alexandria was believed to hold the world’s entire store of knowledge. Today, there is enough information in the world for every person alive to be given three times as much as was held in Alexandria’s entire collection —and nearly all of it is available to anyone with an internet connection.

This library accompanies us everywhere, and Google, chief librarian, fields our inquiries with stunning efficiency. Dinner table disputes are resolved by smartphone; undergraduates stitch together a patchwork of Wikipedia entries into an essay. In a remarkably short period of time, we have become habituated to an endless supply of easy answers. You might even say dependent.

Google is known as a search engine, yet there is barely any searching involved anymore. The gap between a question crystallizing in your mind and an answer appearing at the top of your screen is shrinking all the time. As a consequence, our ability to ask questions is atrophying. Google’s head of search, Amit Singhal, asked if people are getting better at articulating their search queries, sighed and said: “The more accurate the machine gets, the lazier the questions become.”

Google’s strategy for dealing with our slapdash questioning is to make the question superfluous. Singhal is focused on eliminating “every possible friction point between [users], their thoughts and the information they want to find.” Larry Page has talked of a day when a Google search chip is implanted in people’s brains: “When you think about something you don’t really know much about, you will automatically get information.” One day, the gap between question and answer will disappear.

I believe we should strive to keep it open. That gap is where our curiosity lives. We undervalue it at our peril.

The Internet can make us feel omniscient. But it’s the feeling of not knowing which inspires the desire to learn. The psychologist George Loewenstein gave us the simplest and most powerful definition of curiosity, describing it as the response to an “information gap.” When you know just enough to know that you don’t know everything, you experience the itch to know more. Loewenstein pointed out that a person who knows the capitals of three out of 50 American states is likely to think of herself as knowing something (“I know three state capitals”). But a person who has learned the names of 47 state capitals is likely to think of herself as not knowing three state capitals, and thus more likely to make the effort to learn those other three.

Link:http://www.salon.com/2014/10/12/google_makes_us_all_dumber_the_neuroscience_of_search_engines/

Your First Date with Online PR

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 04:44:00 +0000

Google Zeitgeist 2013: Its Sunny Leone Again! Sachin, NaMo & Chennai Express Most Searched

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 09:06:00 +0000

December 18, 2013 · by Team NextBigWhat · in India Online

Most-viewed YouTube ads in India in 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 12:42:00 +0000

YouTube is turning out to be a favourite destination for creative agencies and brand campaigns that are made to engage the audiences online. And, as the internet user base in India continues to grow, brand managers and creative agencies are releasing the true potential of YouTube.
Google India has come up with a list of top YouTube ads in 2013 in India as per the YouTube Ads Leaderboard, which ranks the "most engaging" commercial content that people have been watching on the platform.

Google India has come up with a list of top YouTube ads in 2013 in India as per the YouTube Ads Leaderboard, which ranks the "most engaging" commercial content that people have been watching on the platform.

As per the company, the trends indicate that digital ads create a level of brand engagement that is not possible through TV alone. On the internet, people don't just watch ads: they like them, comment on them, share them with friends and in some cases, remake them.

Ads with humour, emotions, babies and tech companies rule. The Cadbury 5 star ad featuring Ramesh and Suresh, and the Google Reunion campaign which shows the reunion of friends separated by partition have shown the success of emotional ads on YouTube. Evian and Nestle Kitkat baby ads captured the imagination of netizens.

As per YouTube's annual ads Leaderboard, the ranking algorithm includes various factors, but the view-count numbers are eye-popping as the ads are being watched by millions.

Top 10 ads on YouTube 2013 in India ( by views):

Dove Real Beauty Sketches: The short film used an FBI-trained sketch artist to draw women first based on their own self-perception and then based on that of a stranger. Released exclusively on YouTube, campaign has a very high emotional quotient as it touches the cords of human perception around how they perceive themselves as compared to other individuals. Campaign sends across a strong message that digital led campaigns are self sustaining and delivers a high ROI.

Lifebuoy help a child reach 5: Each year, in India, over 2 million children die before their 5th birthday due to infections that can be prevented by simply hand washing with soap. This film for Unilever's Lifebuoy soap, by Lowe Lintas, tells the moving story of a father's celebration of his son reaching the age of 5. The film won a silver lion at Cannes 2013, Content tailor made for YouTube, divulges into a very serious issue in India which is to prevent child mortality by early age infections like diarrhea etc, crossing over 10 million hits on YouTube campaign has been a huge success because of its socially sensitive nature.

Kitkat Dancing babies: This Digital campaign is symbolic of success humorous content enjoys on YouTube, Humorous babies' content is highly popular on YouTube and such videos attract huge viewership. The highlight of the video is the infectious music track, created by celebrated music producer Mikey McCleary. The ad film was directed by Shyam Madiraju, from Gobsmack, Bobby Pawar, Chief Creative Officer, JWT, and Madiraju worked closely with animation experts from Crater Film Studios, Belgrade, to create the mix of real and animated "baby" shots.

Old spice Mantastic Man: A very non-conventional ad campaign released on YouTube becoming instant hit as it talks about Masculinity with a pinch of humor which has proved to be an instant hit among the audience and the message is absorbed by the public very clearly. The campaign is an adaptation of the global Old Spice campaign and features Milind Soman in the role played by Isaiah Mustafa. Seated on his throne. He then explains the ingredients Old Spice Deodorants have to make one 'Mantastic and a refined man'. It ends with the girl sitting on his lap and Soman urging viewers to buy the deodorant.

Evian baby and me: Another classic digital ad campaign using babies' funny content to send the message across to the target audience. Strong viewership of 60 million is symbolic of popularity of the babies' content on YouTube. This isn't the first time Evian has scored big with its baby advertising shenanigans. In 2009, the company's "Roller Babies" commercial, which featured roller-skating babies, became a huge success.

Kajol's reaction on Lifebuoy help a child reaches 5: In this vides made exclusively for YouTube, Kajol talks about her experience as a mother and how she feels about the Gandappa story. She shares her feelings on how unfortunate it is that children in rural India lose their life because of diseases like diarrhea.

Ramesh and Suresh ad campaign for Cadbury 5 star: Riding on the success of previous campaigns featuring the funny duo of Ramesh and Suresh, this campaign cashes on the recall value of the characters Ramesh and Suresh which have established a great connect with the audience for the funny element they possess.

Sony Xperia z: Sony xperia z campaign divulges into real life situations to show the features of the product. The ad is over 120 seconds and keeps the viewer hooked throughout.

Samsung Galaxy S4: A completely product driven ad campaign giving viewers a detailed visual info of all the features of the mobile phone. It's very interesting way to keep the audience focus intact on the product.

Google Reunion Campaign: A highly emotional campaign in which Google reunites friends split by partition of India and Pakistan. Campaign slightly over 3.5 minutes was released on YouTube and became instant hit as it crossed 10 million hits in a very short span of time.

Pointing out the trends Google India pointed out that unlike television where content distribution is limited by the reach of the channel it is broadcasted, YouTube campaigns have a global impact and reaches out to the global netizens. Some of the major global brands have come up with campaigns made exclusively for YouTube

It also said that web first campaigns are here to stay as many leading brands are now making web only or web first campaigns - releasing their campaigns on web first.

Longer duration ads gives more freedom to creative minds as they have the freedom of going beyond 30 second limit, establish open communication with the consumer and inspire people to share the ads with their circle of friends. Creative professionals are experiencing a new high in the era of digital platforms, which is unshackling the talent of highly skilled advertising professionals in India.

Ads with humour, emotions, babies, tech companies rule. Case in point are the Cadbury 5 star ad featuring funny duo of Ramesh and Suresh, Google reunion campaign which reunites friends split by partition have shown the success of emotional ads on YouTube. Evian and Nestle Kitkat baby ads captured the imagination of netizens

Rewind 2013: Key digital lessons brands should take into 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 12:19:00 +0000

The year is about to end and we have seen a flurry of research reports and surveys around the state of the digital domain in the country. As expected, India’s internet and mobile growth, along all parameters has been extraordinary. But with the digital medium poised for even rapid expansion in the coming years, there is still a lot that remains to be learnt.

As part of our year-end ‘Rewind’, exchange4media takes a look at a few digital trends that occurred in 2013 and what the focus areas for 2014. Even as advertisers adapt to the evolving digital ecosystem, new media platforms like digital, social and mobile are set to bring in a paradigm shift in the way marketing works in the future. From improving content to suit each medium’s particular nature to exploring new options on social media, 2014 is set to be an exciting year for brands and agencies alike. Let us take a look at some of these.

Be more aggressive in promoting online transactions
The latest Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) report states that India has 209 million internet users, a number expected to reach 215 million by the end of the year. In fact, India is already going to overtake the US in terms of internet users in 2014 and be second only to China (which currently has around 300 million users). Though, driven primarily by mobile internet, internet usage in India has grown by 40 per cent in 2013, the number of active users who actually transact online is just 9 per cent. Though this will definitely grow, it is not growing as quickly as many would have hoped for. (For example, Ernst & Young predicts that online transactions will grow from 11 million in 2011 to 38 million in 2015, with success rates of online transactions hovering just around the 71-74 per cent mark.)

Companies need to ask themselves why more users are not transacting online; leaving aside the obvious issue of broadband penetration and reliability? Brands (especially e-commerce sites) will need to do more to educate people about e-commerce, which will help improve the entire digital ecosystem. There seems to be an inherent fear among consumers, especially of the older generation, when it comes to transacting online. Creating marketing campaigns and brand tie-ups that allay these fears should be one of the priorities going forward.

Don’t follow the social media herd
The social media segment has also seen tremendous growth in India, in fact, the country recorded the fastest social networking growth in the world of 37.4 per cent in 2013 with the primary marketshare being taken by Facebook and Twitter. However, there are other social media platforms available too and these have their own advantages. For example, a recent global study showed that visitors on Tumblr (2.93 million users in India) spend an average of 14 minutes per visit, a minute and a half longer than an average Facebook visit and a few minutes longer than the average Twitter visit, which begs the question, why are we not exploring other social media platforms?

When it comes to social media marketing, most brands and, to be honest, most digital agencies do not think beyond Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube. The rationale behind this is understandable, after all, brands will want to concentrate their campaigns on the most popular platforms, but it is also necessary that brands become more tactical about their social media strategy. For example, a camera manufacturer might have better consumer connect if it is more active on Pinterest or Instagram, than, say, Twitter. Brands will have to decide which platform best suits their image and their needs and then craft a suitable marketing plan, instead of blindly following the herd.

Innovation will be key
The new media (social, digital and mobile) are expected to be the platforms that will drive the next level of advertising growth in the coming years. For marketers, there could not be better news. All three platforms are interconnected and have tremendous scope for innovative campaigns. Digital agencies need to appreciate though that what works for one might not work for the other. Experimentation and providing relevant content for the medium will prove a differentiator between how successful or not a campaign is.

For example, on the digital front, ads can be audio-visual, instead of static banners every time. Mobile ads could take advantage of the touchscreen smartphone’s ability to pinch and swipe images. Create the right content for the right medium should be the mantra for advertisers and this can only come with an in-depth understanding of the medium’s potential.

Separate digital from the mobile
We have spoken a lot about this recently and for good reason. With mobile marketing currently the fastest growing marketing segment globally (A Pitch-Madison report in 2013 predicted that mobile ad spends in India are slated to grow over 43 per cent to reach Rs 430 crore in 2014) and smartphones ubiquitous across geographies; from Tier I cities to Tier III towns, it is time for advertisers to take advantage of the unique opportunities that mobile offers. Better content, more targeted campaigns will help.

Some brands have made use of the ‘missed call’ as an audience attractor; this is a great idea and uniquely suited to the Indian consumer’s mindset. What the mobile segment needs is more such innovative concepts. Don’t restrict yourself to traditional digital inventory like banner ads, etc., there is a lot more to explore. Can WhatsApp be used for brand promotions? It currently has 20 million+ active users in India and a push-to-talk (PTT) feature to boot. Can brands create interesting audio virals on it? Every idea may not be practical but as we mentioned in the earlier point, it is time to think out of the box.

http://www.exchange4media.com/53850_rewind-2013-key-digital-lessons-brands-should-take-into-2014.html

Mobile ads forecast to account for more than third of new ad revenue by 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 10:58:00 +0000

Smartphone and tablet advertising growth will not be at expense of traditional media, says global media buying agency group

Advertising delivered to smartphones and tablets is forecasted to account for 36% of new global ad spend over the next three years. Photograph: Wu Hong/EPA

Mobile advertising is forecast to be the most important driver of the global advertising economy over the next three years, accounting for more than a third of the $90bn in new revenue expected by 2016.

Advertising delivered to smartphones and tablets will account for 36% of new global ad spend over the next three years, according to a new forecast by global media buying agency group ZenithOptimedia.

However, the growth in mobile advertising will be in addition to rather than at the expense of traditional media such as TV and newspapers, according to ZenithOptimedia.

The rise of mobile advertising is in stark contrast to the upheaval caused by the rise of PC and laptop-based internet display and search advertising in the past decade, dominated by Google, which has hit the press industry particularly hard.

"This is the first time in the past 20 years that a new platform is expanding overall media consumption without cannibalising any of the other media platforms," says Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at ZenithOptimedia, which published a three-year global forecast on Monday.

By 2016 mobile advertising will become the fourth-largest medium globally, worth $45bn, leapfrogging radio ($37bn), cinema ($34bn) and outdoor ($40bn).

The global ad market is forecast to be worth $500bn this year – with 5.3% growth expected in 2014 and almost 6% in 2015 and 2016 – with mobile driving what Zenith says will be the strongest period of growth in a decade. By 2016 the global ad market will be worth almost $590bn.

"The principle engine of this growth will be mobile technology," says Barnard.

Over the next three years TV advertising will be the second biggest contributor to the $90bn growth in global ad spend, accounting for 34% of the new money.

Desktop advertising on PCs and laptops will be third accounting for 25%.

By 2016 TV advertising will remain by far the biggest medium with a 39% share in 2016 valued at $230bn. TV's share of global ad spend will peak this year at 40%.

By 2016 desktop internet advertising will be the world's second largest medium, accounting for 19% at $111bn, and newspaper advertising will rank third at $82bn and a 14% share.

Overall ZenithOptimedia's global forecast is bullish, upgrading a September prediction of 5.1% growth in 2014 to 5.3%.

This is in contrast to WPP's media buying arm Group M, which has also published a new global forecast but has taken a more pessimistic view of next year.

Group M has downgraded a previous 5.1% growth forecast for 2014 to 4.6%, blaming "economic gridlock in the US and a persistent financial crisis in the Eurozone".

Adam Smith, Group M's futures director, said that worldwide there are plenty of examples of "local, specific support for ad spend growth" but that "total global spending remains vulnerable to a wider economic downslide".

10 trends that reshaped digital marketing in 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 12:34:00 +0000

The first banner ad ran in 1994, which means the digital marketing industry is on the eve of starting its third decade of life. At that time, just proving the efficacy of online advertising and waiting for widespread consumer broadband adoption were the most important trends facing marketers. Online video was still a dream, social media wasn't even a category yet, and smartphones and tablets were things you could only see on an episode of Star Trek.
A lot has changed since then...
As I reflect upon this list of trends shaping digital marketing, I see the clear signs that this industry is beginning to mature. Almost all of these trends have sprouted from seeds planted many years before, and our upcoming challenges aren't new developments but rather the evolution of existing trends that mark major pivot points of change.
While none of these trends alone should be a surprise -- when you consider them as a group -- it's easy to see that this industry's ready to move on from being a teenager into full adulthood.

25 percent of all marketing is now digital

It was reported by Gartner earlier this year that one out of every four marketing dollars is spent online. As more and more marketing dollars flow to online channels, the pressure mounts for digital advertisers to deliver. However, the same problems we've had for years -- inventory quality, consumer privacy concerns, inefficient and costly media execution -- continue to threaten the next wave of growth.
The good news is that online advertising has definitely proven that it can be a major driver of conversion activity and has secured a strong place within the overall media plan. But how will digital marketers need to evolve the industry in order to garner the next 25 percent of the advertising revenue?

Mobile device usage is now firmly on track to represent half of all website traffic

This shouldn't be shocking to anyone, but the knee-jerk reaction has somewhat been to wait and see. There seems to be some hope that technological innovation and changes in consumer device behavior will begin to slow their pace a bit so marketers can begin planning multi-year, multi-million marketing strategies on stable ground. However, marketers must overcome the inertia and jump in headfirst before their competitors figure out how to leapfrog them on the mobile battleground.

(Source)

The second age of programmatic buying

It just needed a few years to get some momentum, and it's time for it to blossom and evolve. Now that marketers have had a few years to play with the tools, vet the data and media, and build some expertise, the appetite to take programmatic beyond standard ad units on remnant inventory is growing. There have been major moves to build programmatic pipes to premium inventory as well as figuring out how to scale automation to handle more impactful native ad formats.
With so much interest from buyers, there has been pressure on publishers to evolve their teams and internal processes to allow for more programmatic selling. Programmatic is turning the corner and is on a fast track to automating the buying and selling of any ad impression that could be sold this way.

The imminent death of the cookie

It's true. Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla now all plan to launch browsers with default do not track settings that reject cookies or, at the very least, send out a signal that users does not want to be tracked. Many of the digital marketing technologies that track, measure, target, and retarget are absolutely tied to third-party cookies, and the loss of the cookie will impact almost every company -- be it brand, agency, publisher, or vendor. Unfortunately, cookies have been abused by a few bad apples over the years, which has sent consumer privacy advocates spinning.
Those abuses, along with the NSA scandals this year, have forced the issue, and more data is being sent behind encrypted walls. To survive, digital marketers need to figure out a new default tracking mechanism. Google announced recently that it is working on a solution to finally allow the anonymous tracking of consumers for advertising purposes, meaning that one company would own the gateway to this information. Either way, it's going to happen very quickly, and 2014 might see this major shift occur.

Google's curveballs

Speaking of Google, its two curveballs this year have altered the landscape of search engine marketing (SEM). This important channel -- including both paid and organic search -- has historically been the largest line item of digital marketing spend and biggest driver of online sales.
Google announced enhanced campaigns in February and forced all of its paid search advertisers over to this new approach in July. Whereas previously search marketers were able to split campaigns to target PCs, smartphones, and tablets with individualized budgets and bids, under the enhanced campaigns structure, keyword campaigns are automatically opted into PC and tablet targeting with an optional bid adjustment modifier for smart phones. This dramatic shift sends waves through the industry with paid search marketers having brought a surge of attention in 2013 to multi-device marketing.
Google began encrypting organic consumer search terms that led to site visits in 2012. Although this started by only blocking the terms from consumers signed into a Google account performing a search, over the last 18 months, the percentage of total keywords blocked from website analytics platforms began rising significantly late this year. Finally, in September, Google announced that 100 percent of keywords would show up as not provided. This has been a major blow to search engine optimization (SEO) as the core of these practices has been tracking keyword visitation. With almost half of all website visits originating from natural search terms, and Google representing almost 70 percent of that traffic in the U.S. and abroad, SEO practitioners had to utterly change their entire approach overnight.

Actionable attribution

The ongoing industry measurement discussion put the focus on actionable attribution in 2013. With more dollars coming into this space, there's more scrutiny and accountability than ever before on how we measure the performance of digital marketing. It seems that everyone believes that last-click isn't the right methodology, but the lack of standards around attribution has made it hard for advertisers to make the switch.
Ultimately, what everyone really wants out of multi-touch attribution is the ability to optimize marketing efforts to generate the highest return. For that to happen, attribution must evolve to become more actionable than it is today. Solutions must plug in to marketer buying and optimization platforms to bring automation both within the ad and in the online content owned by brands. We're getting close to realizing that vision, but it's not here yet.

Facebook advertising

A variety of industry factors came together to launch Facebook advertising into the stratosphere in 2013. In just over a year, Facebook's mobile ad offering rivals every established mobile ad network, and its Facebook Exchange (FBX) programmatic channel is one of the biggest players in the space. In fact, the social advertising category as a whole is beginning to emerge as a viable channel with YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and others launching more and more paid media opportunities.
Up until 2013, social marketing mainly centered on social media's promise to facilitate rich, engaging social conversations with consumers at scale via owned and earned media while paid media was a bit more of an afterthought. The unique targeting available (interests, connections, etc.) and the native ad formats that leverage the power of these platforms (Facebook promoted posts, sponsored tweets, etc.) will help marketers find new avenues to reach consumers at scale. Starting in 2014, marketers will be able to build complex, layered social advertising plans to take advantage of the evolving platforms offered by major social players.

Television and online video data

We've been watching television and online video data for years, and it's time for the marriage. The industry has never been closer than now for this vision to become a reality. There's just too much cost in developing fully separate high-quality sight, sound, and motion assets and too much value in crafting cross-device, sequential video campaigns for them not to be managed, planned, and executed together. It's all about reach and frequency with television, and online video fits very neatly into that model. This convergence of offline and online should end up moving more dollars to online video from the proportionally large television budgets.
It's possible that the convergence of offline and online video could help to bridge the gap between offline and online advertising. The impact on digital marketers would mean more fluidity between these budgets where online is at a record high of 25 percent, but that means there's still 75 percent of the dollars still on the table. The merging of television and online video is something every digital marketer should be rooting for.

Real-time becomes more real-timey

Many marketers haven't even considered a world where all channels have real-time components because it just seems that the industry is too far away from that concept. However, more opportunities are coming online for real-time marketing to exist.
All of programmatic isn't RTB (real-time bidding) enabled, but a lot of it is. For brands to be able to react in near real-time -- with consumers who are in-market and researching/browsing online -- is one of the most powerful differentiators to traditional, offline advertising. Take for example travel shoppers who might be in-market for just one or two days as they look for deals before finally booking their trip. Once these consumers send out the first in-market signals, the brands that have the marketing infrastructure to react quickly will have the best opportunity to make the sale.
Look to 2014 for technology providers and publishers to offer more solutions to get the industry closer to real-time marketing.

Location and proximity marketing will finally gain prominence

The rise of social and mobile as significant consumer trends opens up a whole new world for location and proximity marketing. Brands must collect and decrypt the signals about where a consumer is online and how far they are from a physical location in order to serve up the best mobile ad (and site) experience.
Although the tools to engage with this type of cutting edge marketing are still being evolved, 2014 will be a turning point for brands to mass adopt these tactics in order to fully take advantage of the mobile revolution. There are companies out there -- with major brick-and-mortar business models -- that have been desperately waiting for these innovations in order to reach consumers at scale so business can flourish.

Read more at http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/35559.asp#StD3hemYJe20XKdd.99

Online Marketing News: Most Effective SMB Social Sites, Converting Customers Prefer Video

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 06:25:00 +0000

Digital Now Accounts for 57% of Daily Media Consumption

Consumers now spend more time each day consuming digital than traditional media, according to the most recent GlobalWebIndex. Overall, consumers now spend an average of 10.7 hours a day with all forms of media and 5.6 hours of that on digital. People are turning to online channels for radio, TV, social and other forms of content consumption in record numbers, especially in China and UAE. Social increasingly dominates the time that consumers spend online; globally, social accounts for 48% of total digital time.

Digital 2013 – A Global Analysis of How Consumers Spend Their Media Time is based on more than 32,000 internet users from 31 countries, with surveys answered in the final quarter of 2012.

Brand Videos Increasingly Valuable to Decision Making Consumers

Online video isn’t just a trend; it’s become the way many consumers choose to consume information as they make purchasing decisions. Approximately 57% of consumer respondents to a recent survey by e-commerce services company Invodo said that product videos make them more confident in a purchase and less likely to return an item. This new finding marks a 5% increase over one year ago. Brands will also be interested to know that 41% of consumers are more likely to share product videos than other product content.

LinkedIn & Twitter Increasingly Effective for SMB Marketers

LinkedIn and Twitter have enjoyed the greatest surge in the proportion of SMB marketers who find the social networks effective as marketing tools. LinkedIn is effective for 29% of Constant Contact survey respondents, an increase of 19% over May 2012. Meanwhile, 25% say Twitter is effective, up from the 7% positive response in May.

Facebook still rules the social media marketing kingdom, with 82% of respondents saying it’s an effective tool for their brand.

Google News Doesn’t Want Your Sponsored Content

Consider this a warning to publications of all sizes: you’re free to do what you want within your own editorial guidelines, but Google doesn’t want to see sponsored content in Google News search results. In fact, adding paid content to the mix could get your site removed from Google News. In a post on the Google News blog, Sr. Director of News & Social Products Richard Gingras warns:

“Credibility and trust are longstanding journalistic values, and ones which we all regard as crucial attributes of a great news site. It’s difficult to be trusted when one is being paid by the subject of an article, or selling or monetizing links within an article. Google News is not a marketing service, and we consider articles that employ these types of promotional tactics to be in violation of our quality guidelines.

Please remember that like Google search, Google News takes action against sites that violate our quality guidelines. Engagement in deceptive or promotional tactics such as those described above may result in the removal of articles, or even the entire publication, from Google News.”

What can you do ensure you don’t color outside the lines? Gingras explains:

“If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party), we strongly recommend that you separate non-news content on a different host or directory, block it from being crawled with robots.txt, or create a Google News Sitemap for your news articles only. Otherwise, if we learn of promotional content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News.”

Mobile & Tablet PPC Ad Growth Strong

Marketers continue to invest heavily in mobile and tablet PPC ads, though overall paid search spend was static this quarter, according to IgnitionOne’s Q1 2013 Digital Marketing Report. According to researchers, overall spending on paid search ads from brands rose 2% in Q1 2013. The Yahoo Bing Network showed the greatest gains at 11%. Laurie Sullivan at MediaPost explains, search engine marketers spent more on advertising in Q1 to run ads on smartphone and tablet devices, even while total search spend flatlined. Spending on both devices rose nearly equal amounts, with tablets up 112% and smartphones up 113% YoY. The growth cannibalized PC budgets, she claimed.

LinkedIn Makes Social Search Smarter

Last year, LinkedIn processed over 5.7 billion internal searches on their platform. This week, the professional social network announced a streamlined search experience that pulls content from all across LinkedIn including people, jobs, groups and companies to display on one results page. Other new features are standard in web search but certainly welcome in social search, including autocomplete, suggested searches, more personalization in their algorithm, and automated alerts to changing search results.

Source

Do you also prefer newspaper inserts over junk e-mails?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 12:08:00 +0000

We all like receiving freebies be it coupons or other offers. But, which is the most preferred way to receive them is very much debatable. Marketers are switching on to newer and technologically advanced methods to promote their product or services, but traditional media has not lost its effectiveness.

In December 2012, Valassis (VCI), one of the US's leading media and marketing services companies, announced results from its Consumer Print Usage Survey. Results indicate that while digital is key with Millennial shoppers (ages 18-34), traditional print media also plays an important role in the group's shopping routines and are not only instrumental in decision-making, but often serve as a catalyst to online shopping.
Valassis' Consumer Print Usage Survey revealed 91% of Millennial who use newspaper inserts do so to save money, and 60% said they would shop less without newspaper inserts. Newspaper inserts guide Millennials prior to shopping in several ways: by alerting them to sales (68%); driving them to purchase (51%); reminding them of a need (46%); helping them decide where to buy (35%); and alerting them of a product or service (26%). Survey results also uncovered 30% of millennial newspaper insert users go online after seeing a product or service in a newspaper insert.

The survey also provides insights into Millennial shopping behaviors and the role newspaper inserts play in the shopping routines of this deal-seeking generation. The survey platform was selected based on its history of heavy millennial use 86% of Millennials visit Facebook every day.

In addition, the study also found that millennial shoppers use newspaper inserts when choosing restaurants, apparel, telecom products and services and more:
• 87% of Millennials who use newspaper inserts utilize them regularly or occasionally when selecting a restaurant;
• 84% of Millennials use inserts to find coupons or discounts when shopping for apparel, and 71% use inserts to find the best price; and
• 64% of Millennials who use newspaper inserts look to them when making decisions on telecom products and services.

Newspaper inserts, on average, are kept in homes for 3 or more days (62 percent keep them 3 or more days). Heavy insert users, particularly women, keep inserts much longer and inserts from product categories that are more expensive purchases are also kept longer. One-fourth of readers keep inserts that interest them a week. 35 percent of all women age 35-54 keep preprints at least a week, as do 34 percent of African Americans.

On the other hand, junk mails are very less appreciated by all. Last year, Americans were sent about 84 billion pieces of junk mail, according to the U.S. Post Office, and they have apparently had enough.
Frustration with mailboxes cluttered with fliers and catalogs has finally caught up with junk mail companies, and it's been a long time coming, study researchers say, as junk mail makes up about 50% of all mail delivered in the U.S. today.

India has become the top spam-spewing nation on the planet, suggests a report.
Compiled by security firm Sophos, the report ranks nations by the amount of junk mail routed through computers in each country.

India has jumped to the top of the spam chart in less than a year, rapidly overtaking the US, said Sophos. About 10% of all junk mail sent across the web came from or passed through computers in India, said the firm. India's rapid rise up the chart of spam producers has been helped by the rapid growth of the web in the country.

*Source - Mediavataar

Airtel publishes Infographic on Rise of Smartphones in India

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 08:44:00 +0000

Couple of days back Airtel released a mobile app allowing customers to manage various Airtel services which included their mobile, DTH as well as internet services. This app was released on all mobile platforms making sure that all Airtel customers could use it irrespective of their mobile phone OS.

Airtel has gone ahead and released an excellent infographic that reveals the reason behind releasing these apps – The rise of Smartphones in India (which is kind of obvious now). However, the infographic does put across some very interesting numbers.

One statistics is that the use of mobile web has nearly doubled in last one year – From 70 million to 132 million. Here is another interesting one – 77% of Indians have nearly 30 mobile apps installed on their phone. Music and Social Networking are the 2 categories which rule Indian users’ mobile phone apps. Checkout Airtel’s Infographic for more such numbers.

Link

Comprehensive Indian Internet Usage Statistics - Aug 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 11:04:00 +0000

In a recent webcast titled “The Rise of India’s Digital Consumer”, the director of ComScore, Kedar Gavane provided interesting insights into the growth of internet usage in India over the twelve months ending in July 2012.

The Virginia-based Internet analytics firm focuses on supplying market intelligence data to clients that include the world’s biggest corporate giants. Data is obtained through complex software systems that focuses on population samples, after which appropriate adjustments are made to estimate the views of larger masses.

In spite of being widely trusted, comScore’s data collection exercises haven’t been free from controversy and data from competing firms has conflicted with that of comScore in the past.

In the webinar, the data presented was based on usage patterns that were studied on people aged 15 and above in the home and work environments.

Global Internet Trends and India’s Standing

ComScore highlights that the worldwide online audience has jumped 7%, with Asia-Pacific markets adding more than 40 million users.

India has been identified as the fastest growing online market during the same period, with a 41% rise. This is much higher than China (5%), Brazil(6%) and Russia (20%). With most online categories in Indian exhibiting an average reach below the global figures, the potential seems to be high.

India’s internet penetration has been estimated at 10%, with 124.7 million users going online during July 2012.

India’s audience is getting younger

ComScore has found 75% of the internet audience in India to be aged 35 years and below, promising to make it the youngest online population in the coming years. In the webcast, Kedar emphasized that the audience is only going to get younger in the future.

Females formed 39.3% of the total audience, and the sharpest growth was observed among male and female segments in the age-group 15 to 24.

Online Category Trends

High Growth Areas

comScore’s findings show the travel, search, social networking and news arenas to be growing sharply in India’s online world, crossing worldwide averages.

These are the ‘super seven’ categories pointed out by the data:

Categories	Year-on-year Growth %	July 2012 Reach %
Games	60	41
News	54	80.3
Search	43	91.5
Retail	43	59.9
Health	43	21.1
Social Networking	43	95.5
Travel	41	44

There’s an apparent high potential for retail, games and health, since they fall below worldwide trends.

The Top Ten Sites

Over the survey period, Google and Facebook topped the growth charts, at 59.7 and 52.1 million users respectively.

An interesting point to note is that the data shows a rise of over 10 to 40% in the frequency of user visits for the top ten sites.

Rise in News Consumption

The news category appears to be one of the most engaged, with up to 5 minutes spent on it by each unique visitor.
A growth of 54% has been noted in this category, with multiple means of accessing the news, including mobile devices. This is lesser than the global average of 80% but is catching up. Yahoo-ABC News Network leads from the front with a July 2012 reach of 20.4%, followed closely by The Times Of India at 18.7%. Other key players include New York Times Digital (11.3), HT Media Limited (11.1%), oneindia (9.6%), India Today Group (8.5%), IBN Live (7.9%) and NDTV (7%).

NRI Visits to Local Website

Another interesting set of data revolves around the non-resident Indian (NRI) unique visitors to some of the leading Indian websites.
These are the key sites that NRI’s visit, along with the percentage of the total unique visitors that they make up:

NDTV (35%)
IBNLive (22%)
The Times of India (36%)
Manorama (53%)
Rediff (17%)
In.com (32%)
Cricbuzz (55%)
ICICI Bank (12%)

comScore also concludes that the regional newspapers have the highest share of non-resident audiences and are the best way to connect with them.

The Online Retail Boom

As many as 3 in 5 internet users in India visit retail sites, which have registered a growth of 43% over the last year. The statistics indicate a close contest between Snapdeal and Flipkart in horizontal retail, and Jabong and Myntra in the lifestyle category, all of them fueled by aggressive marketing and growing demand.

July saw a total of 37.5 million unique visitors from India coming to retail sites, with the apparel sub-category being the fastest growing sub-category at a year-on-year growth of 362%. Consumer goods, sports equipment and home furnishing have shown promising signs of growth as well. Vertical retail segments are expected to grow the fastest in the coming months.

Growth in the Travel Segment

India’s online reach in the travel segment has crossed the worldwide averages, according to the ComScore statistics. Indian Railways tops the charts with a 19.2% reach in July 2012, followed by MakeMyTrip at 11.6% and Yatra Online at 8.3%
With a rise in people using private buses, redbus.in shows a reach of 2% during July.

e-Commerce Transactions in India

Direct debit or Netbanking is the most popular payment method as per figures from the second quarter of 2012, with a 58% share. Visa and MasterCard follow at 21% and 12% respectively.
IRCTC averages at $17 (INR 935) per transaction, while Flipkart indicates $35 (INR 1925) per transaction.

Facebook and its Continued Dominance

In the social networking space, Facebook has risen 47% in terms of unique visitors between the twelve-month survey period. Around 52 million users are indicated to have signed up. LinkedIn’s unique visitor count has risen 36%, a reflection of the decent show put up by the job market.
Orkut, which once used to be widely popular, has had its unique visitor count plunge by 69% – an indication of little attention from its parent company Google. Twitter use in India continues to be low, and the number of unique visits has risen just 5% to 3.8 million in July 2012.

The Rise of Entertainment

The unique visitor count for entertainment sites is indicated to have touched nearly 56 million in July 2012, up from nearly 41 million a year before. YouTube is a runaway leader in this category, with a reach of 53.7% at the end of July 2012. They are followed by CBS Interactive (14.8%) and Songs.pk (8.8%).
In spite of a fairly high reach of 89% in India, the entertainment category is still behind the worldwide figure of 94.1%.

Mixed Growth Witnessed in Other Categories

Business and finance has grown at 35%, with SBI being the most popular bank. ICICI Bank follows at the second position, and HDFC at the third.
Real estate has grown 38%, career services have grown 30% and the automotive category has shown a growth of 18%.

Online Video

This category has shown a growth of over 37.3% and the engagement figure is indicated to be 3.4 billion videos each month.
52% of all the videos belong to the entertainment category, and the soaring viewership in the video category has resulted in a corresponding boom in video advertising.

Growth in Mobile Engagement

Over the last year, the number of pages viewed on mobile devices has grown from 3% in July 2011 to 7% in July 2012. Information covering food and travel, and online trading are the most popular subjects among tablet users. As for the operating systems used in tablets, iOS controls 80% of that market share.

Future Trends Concluded from Data

The statistics presented by comScore suggest that smartphones and tablets are going to drive usage further through WiFi access.
A huge growth is expected in the games, health, news and retail categories, with Kedar pointing out that social media is a central touch point for all categories.
Going by predictions based on past trends, entertainment will dominate the content growth across both mobile devices and PC’s, and categories like travel, news and career services are expected to continue showing decent growth.
There’s a projected increase in cash-on-delivery payments, particularly in the retail category. With India’s internet population expected to get even younger in the coming years, there’s likely to be a boost in online advertising targeting the youth.

Link

Talk to Kids About Cyberbullying [INFOGRAPHIC]

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:19:00 +0000

There is a lot to do before your kid’s school year gets started. Hopefully, having a talk about cyberbullying will be on your to-do list.

According to a recent study by internet security company McAfee, kids are witnessing and sometimes engaging in cyber bullying. Almost one in four of teens claimed to be a target of cyberbullying and two-thirds of all teens have witnessed cruel behavior online, notes the Teen Internet Behavior study.

But only one in 10 parents are aware that their teens could be targets of cyberbullying.

Today’s schoolyard is Facebook, with slightly more than 92% of teens saying cruel behavior takes place on the site. Kids say bullies also make attacks on Twitter (23.8%), MySpace (17.7%) and Instant Messager (15.2%).

But teens will stand up to bullies online. When witnessing others being attacked, 40% of teens have told the person to stop, 20.7% have told an adult but 6.3% joined in. When being attacked themselves, 65.8% of teens responded to the attacker (with 35% responding in person).

Some of these online confrontations are hashed-out in the real world, where 4.5% of teens have been in a physical fight with an online bully, while about 15% avoided school.

Check out the infographic below to learn the latest about teens and cyberbullying, and let us know in the comments if you’ve ever been a victim.

What Can The Indian Government Do Rather Than Banning Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:12:00 +0000

With the soaring communal violence the Government has proposed to ban social media and monitor it. But is banning social media the only way ahead? Can the government take one step further and use social media for its benefit?

I was born in a small town called Haldia, West Bengal. For my higher studies, I moved to Pune and once while travelling in the Azad Hind Express I met a young guy in early 2000. The guy was visiting Pune for the first time for a job and he told me that it was his first ever train journey. The young lad belonged to Manipur and he was in his early twenties. During the journey he shared quite a number of stories and one of them was about how he had to travel to the nearest town which was a six hours journey to watch television.

Fast forward today nobody knew who was Mary Kom till the time she won a medal. Not only that I have observed that we still treat them as if they are coming from some different land. The present unrest has been prevailing for a long time and governments have been suppressing it ever since. So what is happening in the North East today is a culmination of this rage.

And as usual the rising egos in the state and central government and the ever growing distance between Delhi and North East have cost us dear.

Common man is again suppressed in the hands of opportunists who have benefited from these riots. Seeing the growing tension, the state ministry has set the ball in the neighboring country’s court and our 60+ educated central ministers have placed the trigger once again on “Social Media.”

Why the Government wants to ban social media?

The intention to ban social media or monitoring social media has been an alternative with the government for some time now.

Our ministers who were still using websites to show their presence, were caught napping during the Anna and IAC (India Against Corruption) movement last year. Part one of the movement which made Anna and his team clear winners was also due to the humongous presence IAC created on social media.

After the movement, we saw that the Government with the face of Kapil Sibal started playing a double role. In one avatar, it started creating its presence on social media and in its other avatar it started talking about monitoring social media. But will putting a ban on social media solve the problem?

Riots didn’t evolve with social networks coming into picture, it has been there before my birth. It will always be there even if we ban social media then emails, groups, mobile phones, etc. You can’t blame technology and turn a deaf ear to the root cause of the problem.

However, I also understand the virality feature of social media and it being a double-edged sword. In recent past, I have seen images being morphed by evil brains and creating tension on social networks. We do know that every technology in this world has its positives and negatives. The onus is on us – how we use a technology and then educate people about the two sides of the coin.

The government has miserably failed and has become the butt of jokes on social networks. One of the primary reasons is that instead of using social media to create a bridge between the people and the ministers, we have seen the presence is either blowing their own trumpet or ending up in parliament kind of fights.

The Prime Minister’s office had initially created a presence on Twitter and later on Facebook and YouTube. All the accounts are out there online to see what the government is doing. There is nothing wrong in this but social media is not only about talking about yourself but it is also about listening.

Not just the current government but most of the other parties’ social media presence is also namesake. Mamata Banerjee initially became famous because she wanted to monitor Facebook but later seeing the reactions of the people she joined Facebook. The response was good, numbers are there…but can anyone complain about anything. I doubt anyone would like to risk doing it!

Is there any other alternative than putting a ban?

Whenever we have tried to control something without rational thinking, it has backfired.

So, instead of banning social media, the government can use it in its favor controlling the crisis of NE. The virality feature that our politicians are scared of can be used for killing rumors. Can’t the government get in touch with Facebook and Google India to find out ways to use social media in a better way? Can’t the Government start a social media campaign to “Save NE and Save India”?

Twitter is one of the tools that the government can use. A brilliant example is how Nirupama Rao, India’s Foreign Secretary used Twitter during the evacuation of Indians at the time of the Libyan crisis. The Twitter account was regularly updated for the public to know about the evacuation.

Social Media is not rocket science; it is about communicating with humans and for that you need to have the will to evolve and change. Banning social networks is not a solution to combat rumors but it is a half backed measure to cover the lid on the growing tensions.

It’s high time that our babus take a serious effort to understand social media and how can it be used effectively.

[Author Bio – Prasant Naidu is a Blogger and Founder at Lighthouse Insights, a site that talks about Indian social media news and insights.Loves to experiment in social media and believes social media is a game changer for SME's.]

Link

Video Streaming in India – Is bad internet the only reason?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:58:00 +0000

Hulu, Vimeo, Netflix…

Have you ever heard these names? Have you ever used them?

The answer to the first may be yes to a lot of people but to second I think a few would answer yes. Except for Youtube, Bigflix and now maybe TED videos very few services have hold of any kind in India.

Of course, one of the causes is that most of these services like Hulu and Netflix are not available in India. Even Google Play has not launched its audio or video services in India. But these are not the only reason that Video streaming is not popular, especially comparing to audio streaming which has gained some traction in recent years.

Of course, there is always the elephant in the room – quality of internet in India. It is to say politely, growing. I will not talk about the speed though for now. The success of Youtube during World Cup showed that there is a market and there is speed somewhere.

I want to discuss this speed and other things. Let me take one topic at a time.

1. TV

Television rules the roost and is in no mood to give in to internet soon. People are hooked to their favourite TV shows and have no source to watch them on internet. We have services like Bigflix that show movies but nothing to entice a user to watch via internet every day. Only TV can do that.

Netflix and Hulu do that in US. We need something like that to move people to internet.

2. Data Caps

Continuous streaming isn’t going to do any good to your data caps and with the meagre data caps of 3-5 GB for good connections it is no wonder that people are stingy with their net.

Video streaming is a bandwidth hog. And the chicken and egg situation does not help at all. If people use internet more it will become cheaper and it will become cheaper if people use it more.

3. Mobile internet

In India, mobile internet is gaining more traction and though watching video in mobile is feasible it is not an experience comparable to television.

4. Audio Streaming

It is comparatively more successful because of three prominent things. First, it requires less bandwidth. Second, it works remarkably well on mobile (read Saavn). Third, in many offices no one frowns if you listen to music while working but video means you are not doing your job. In my office itself I can see almost everyone with earplugs in their ears but the screen has an excel sheet on it

Amidst all this, youtube seems to find success because of a few reasons – one, it is already installed in most smartphones thus becoming the first source in case a person wants to watch video on mobile.

Second, most videos are small in youtube and people can watch them without killing their bandwidth quotas. World cup of course was a different ball game. Even companies had a blind spot when their employees watched in office but that is the charm of cricket and not something that will contribute to anything else.

What do you guys think? Will video services gain any substantial market in future?

HTML5 vs. native apps: How to pick the right path

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 06:54:00 +0000

The mobile technology landscape is incredibly confusing. There are numerous choices, ranging from new HTML5 technologies, native app development methods, and all sorts of content management systems.

At CBS Interactive, we have numerous mobile solutions, including native apps for CBS.com, CNET, and “60 Minutes,” along with mobile-optimized Web sites for GameFaqs and global properties like ZDnet.

At first blush, it seems problematic that various properties have picked completely different architectures for mobile delivery. A technologist’s initial inclination is to have everyone run a consistent architecture across all of our properties. Yet it actually makes sense to run a variety of architectures to support mobile delivery.

The biggest issue to address is the ongoing tension between HTML5 and native. Most of the debate between the two is focused on different technical features that very quickly delve into minutia. However, the actual decision between the two should be made based on the type of traffic a site has.

Where’s the traffic coming from?
If the majority of a site’s traffic is side door traffic from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, the site should embrace mobile web and HTML5. Since most of the site’s users are arriving via links, the content must quickly load in the mobile browser. Such sites include music lyrics sites such as our site MetroLyrics and other types of information look up sites.

If a majority of a site’s traffic is direct but intermittent traffic–meaning users come directly to the site, but only once in a while–the site should implement HTML5 mobile Web. These types of sites are “tourist sites” that are not visited regularly by people and therefore users are very unlikely to download an app. Such sites include corporate websites such as my company’s CBSi.com homepage.

If the majority of a site’s traffic is direct traffic where people are regularly going straight to the site’s home page from a bookmark or typing in the URL, the site should use native apps. Such sites include CBS.com, CNET Reviews, and other types of highly branded destination sites.

Sites with direct traffic that is intermittent–meaning people drop by every now and then–should still use HTML5 rather than native. For sites with a lot of direct traffic, native apps also provide useful additional features such as push notifications and offline storage, which are not relevant to sites with intermittent or side door traffic.

Sites that have an even mix of direct and side door traffic should also implement both native apps and an HTML 5 mobile view. A word of caution, however: there is always an inclination to heavily promote your native app to everyone going to your mobile Web site by forcing users to click through a native app promotion. This is a way to piss people off. Most of those visitors are clicking on a link in Google or Facebook and expect to see the content. They don’t want to download your app.

What can you spend?
Once you determine whether to build an HTML5 mobile Web site or a native app, the next big question is how much you are willing to spend. Really, there are only two choices: complete and cheap or custom and expensive.

Sites should generally start with a turnkey and cheap solution. For turnkey mobile Web HTML5, vendors like Pressly and Mobify will take your content and make it sport a sexy, Flipboard-stye tablet interface. WordPress includes mobile plugins that work great on iPhone and Android. Be sure to add a “view full site” option so that your users can opt out of the mobile experience and access functionality that the turnkey HTML5 solutions do not yet support.
To deliver turnkey native apps, services like MobileRoadie will consume your content, social feeds, and more and let you style good iPhone and Android native apps, with iPad soon to come. The apps are gorgeous and responsive and provide extensive options.
For the sites that need to support both mobile web and native apps, it is likely that the turnkey vendors will soon begin to support both distribution channels, and one vendor will be able to deliver best-of-breed solutions for both mobile HTML5 and native apps. For now, however, I suggest using a different vendor for each.
Once you have a baseline mobile presence, you can consider adding a custom experience that will support numerous features and user interface enhancements. Unfortunately, custom means expensive, both for HTML5 and native apps.

There are numerous systems integrators such as that deliver elegant, iPhone, iPad and Android native apps. Be aware that these integrators are going to need to be able to integrate with your registration, user profile, and content systems and that will likely require engineering and IT work. Some integrators such as FreeRange360 have an underlying platform that makes this type of customization relatively straightforward.

While HTML5 has come a long way, it is still not up to par with the native app experience. Some publishers, such as the Financial Times and Playboy, have come close to native app functionality by investing heavily in HTML5 in order to bypass Apple’s 30 percent app store subscription fee. However, there are no turnkey JavaScript libraries that provide functionality such as efficient swiping and offline reading.

That said, it is relatively straightforward to efficiently deliver an excellent mobile Web experience. Libraries like jQuery mobile and Sencha mobile provide excellent HTML5 iPhone-style user interface controls, and it is easy enough in modern web frameworks such as PHP and Ruby to detect what type of device is requesting content and delivering a customized page for particular screen sizes, known as the “if viewport then” technique. It is tedious and cumbersome work, but can be done, and provides an excellent level of control and flexibility.

For properties that contain primarily text and images, you could consider a hybrid HTML5-native approach, where a mobile-optimized HTML5 site is wrapped with a native wrapper like PhoneGap. While this sounds like an ideal solution, consider that this approach is quite nascent, and that it takes quite a bit of work to make HTML5 work and look like a native app.

In summary, when discussing your mobile strategy, use the type of traffic your site has to determine whether to use HTML5 mobile Web or native apps, and then use your level of budget to decide whether to go turnkey or custom. And have some fun with your apps and please let me now what’s worked for you.

This story originally appeared on CNET and is republished with permission.

Deadly Social Media Sins

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:15:00 +0000

Gluttony
“Social media is not about being everywhere, it is about being great and present where you are.”
Scott showed an example of a company tweet that had clearly been syndicated from Facebook regarding their number of likes. What this sort of action shows your customers is that you aren’t available to engage, but you are here to announce. I believe that there are cases where posts can be cross-shared across multiple platforms but each post must be relevant to the platform you are sharing it on.

Another interesting term that Scott used for this sort of interaction was “Mannequin Networking” or being there without actually being there. What this teaches us is that the ability to react and be present is worth much more than simply sharing our own agenda.

Pride
“You cannot avoid looking at tools because you don’t like it. As an example, I hate Farmville.”
Pride can easily get in the way of your evolution as an individual or a company. Some of the best advice that Scott gave during his whole presentation was “learn it if you hate it, because you can turn it down with an educated decision.”

Say your target market is immersed in something like Farmville on Facebook. According to studies the demographic for social gaming is typically a 47 year old, educated, female. What is the moral of the story? If your network is spending time doing something the least you can do is understand it.

Sloth
“If you are going to use it, use it, if not delete it.”

If you don’t monitor your page regularly then delete it. If you are only able to monitor your pages on a monthly or even weekly that is simply not enough. If an account has been created and you don’t use it, that is worse than not having one at all. Social media is very much about connecting and engaging with people. If you don’t like to interact and are not a people person, social media is not for you.
A major offense by many companies is failing to include mobile as part of their plan. Almost everything we do is through our phones and if we want to be social its imperative that we recognize how our customers will be accessing and interacting with our information.

Mobile Marketing Tip: Switch phones with someone and see how your site looks on different devices. If you make your audience work to consume your content they will stop consuming it.

Greed
“You want to get more fans and followers? Be better! Create better content.”
We’ve all seen those companies that offer “more fans for $5” or “get more fans now.” There is no quick fix or instant gratification when it comes to social media.

When focusing on this deadly sin Scott provided many examples of companies that literally asked their followers not to leave negative comments, and that they would be deleted. Negative comments happen to everyone, it is how you respond that sets you apart. A great example of a company overcoming a ridiculous blunder was that of Red Cross. Below I have included the initial tweet as well as the response that the Red Cross quickly posted to recover from the damaging message.

People surfing the web through their phones

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:07:00 +0000

As a disclaimer before his session Jason Falls admitted that there were probably 5-10 more qualified individuals in the room for the presentation. But he was the one chosen for the job! One of the reasons being that he could distill (similar to his favorite bourbon) mobile down into easy to consume information.

What we learned in the session was what we should be paying attention to, and what is the “star trek” B.S. that we shouldn’t be paying attention to yet. Jason’s presentation was flush with factoids, his take on mobile, and a no B.S. approach to optimizing mobile for customer experience.

Spit-Balling Some Mobile Stats

Another disclaimer – Jason didn’t include his statistics on his presentation slides but did note that the majority of his information came from Tom Webster, comScore, Nielsen, and mobithinking.com. Did you know:

54% of Facebook users visit via a phone
1/3 of those people use phone to access Facebook more often than other devices
¼ of status updates are made by phone multiple times per day

Understand That Your Audience is Not You

“If 54% of Facebook users access the platform via their phone – that means that 46% of them don’t.” – JasonFalls
It is human instinct to focus soley on the large number that validates which direction we as marketers are leaning towards. When you’re determining where to invest time and money, make sure that you balance both sides of the equation.

87% of people are now on cellular phones
Mobile devices account for 9% of all website hits
What do people do with their phones?

In more technologically advanced countries smartphones are used for nearly all online browsing. U.S consumers prefer mobile for things such as banking transactions, travel booking, shopping, and local information. In fact:

1 in 8 Americans will use mobile commerce by 2015.
1 in 4 applications are not opened more than once.
1 in 8 Americans compare prices on their mobile phones
However, 7 in 8 do not …

Indian online ad spend to jump 54% this year: IAMAI

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:53:00 +0000

The Indian online advertising market, including classifieds, will grow by a whopping 54% in the next 12 months, a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB said.

As of March 2012, the industry was worth Rs 2,851 crores in annual revenue and will further grow to Rs 4,391 crores by March 2013, the IAMAI, which represents the online and VAS players in India, said.

IAMAI, however, includes online classifieds in its online ad market estimates. Online classifieds are sometimes not included in the definition of online ad market. India has a large online matrimonial ad segment.

Excluding online classifieds, online advertising in India was worth about Rs 1,250 crore last month and will grow about 25% to Rs 1,561 in the next 12 months.

Mobile advertising will grow from 105 crore to Rs 144 crore during the same period (all numbers annualized.)

Interestingly, the display market continues to be slightly ahead of the search market in India, contributing about 55-60% of the total 'pure' online ad market. The ratio will remain very similar even after a year, it predicted.

Worldwide, analysts have been pointing to a sharper rise in search advertising compared to that of display.

"Travel and banking and financial sector continued to be the main spenders as far as display ads are concerned. The display ad spend by automotive companies has appreciably increased. Its overall share has risen from 9% in FY2010 to 13% in FY2011 to 14% in FY2012," the report said (see chart.)

In terms of size, the online advertising market in India is about 11% the size of the conventional or traditional media ad market, the annual survey said.

Online advertising has been growing in India, even in the recent economic downturn. "On an average, the digital ad spends have been growing at 25% year-on-year basis," IAMAI said (see chart.)

2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:20:00 +0000

While the speculation, pontification and monetization of social media is reaching momentum of tsunami proportions, many businesses looking for practical advice are asking, “Exactly how are marketers using social media to grow their businesses?”

Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner has posed that same question and others like it to a sample of marketers on the front lines of the social web to help bring some clarity to what works, what doesn’t and where to focus.

When asked about the bearing of the report on the intersection of search and social, Mike said, “With Google integrating results from its Google+ network into search, we’ll begin to see an Amazon type social proofing of search results based on the activity of friends. This will make search even more important.” We agree!

The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report is out today and offers 42 pages of insights, tables, graphs and examples of tactics. Over 3,800 respondents provided their advice on the who, what, when, and where of social media marketing. They also shared where they plan on investing in the future.

Key subject matter covered in the report includes:

The top 10 social media questions marketers want answered:
The time commitment
The benefits of social media marketing
Commonly used social media services
Social media sites people want to learn more about
Social media outsourcing
B2B vs B2C
Changes since the 2011 report

How much time should you spend on social media marketing tasks each week? It’s a reasonable question and the responses broke down as:

59% – 6 hours / week or more
33% – 11 hours / week or more
15% - 20+ hours / week

Other key findings from the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report include:

83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.
Top benefits of social media marketing:
85% Generating more business exposure
69% increasing traffic
65% providing marketplace insight
76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing
While only 40% of marketers are using Google+, 70% of marketers want to learn more about it and 67% plan on increasing Google+ activities

This report is a perfect compliment to the upcoming Social Media Success Summit online conference coming up on May 1st. You can get your basic questions answered and some alignment with what others are doing from the report and then get practical advice, tips and training from consultants and practitioners from the online conference. It’s a great example of content marketing to promote an event actually.

Download the report here

潔⁰牐扯敬獭眠瑩⁨慌摮湩⁧慐敧⁳䰦潥敮䄠慧湩‡慓档湩‬慎潍☠䌠敨湮Building B How to Improve Your Conversion Rates& Where to Start Conversion Rates&

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:44:00 +0000

According to DiMauro, nearly 2/3 of organizations surveyed are engaged in private, online communities hosted by companies that sell them computer hardware, software or services.

The average visit in an online B2B community is 10 minutes, with 1 visit every 5-7 days.

What B2B organization wouldn’t want roughly 40 minutes of time per month with members to help solve problems, learn how they are using tools and what topics they are most interested in?

Building an online community gives organizations an opportunity to strategically connect with its audience in meaningful and sometimes deeper ways through private interactions.

Many companies continue to respond chaotically to social chatter. With this, they can end up with what Vanessa calls social media muddle.

Part of that muddle is due to baseline measurement such as number of fans/followers. Vanessa recommends going beyond such measurements and make sure someone in the organization is responsible for reviewing social interactions so that they can be strategically brought back to the organization and impact future marketing decisions.

Online communities can help companies shift from chaos to focus. Specifically moving from a set of discrete interactions to a dynamic, meaningful relationship which can impact business outcomes.

Benefits of online communities can include deepening customer relationships, building greater brand equity, providing better customer care, shortening product innovation cycles, extending and accelerating product and service delivery and delivering improved financial returns.

Which companies need online customer communities the most?

Those where customers are:

open to sharing information with other customers
purchasing a platform product and need to communicate with each other about how to capitalize
willing to participate in off-line user groups or in-person customer summits

And where customer problems are:

critical, ongoing and ever-changing
such that knowledge for solving problems becomes obsolete quickly
those where other customers can gain major value by learning from the experiences of other customers
urgent

Here are 3 models for communities:
1. Gated

select, narrow target audience
acceptance criteria established
protected dialog
managed topical agenda
supported by the organization

2. Public

open call, all interested
member directed
public forum
ad generated support

3. Hybrid

tiered membership
consensus/trend driven
public forum with private areas
thought leadership
hybrid revenue

An example online community is the Palladium Group’s Execution Premium Community. The audience includes senior strategy professionals from organizations worldwide.

The case for the community included; helping increase customer intimacy, raising awareness of products and services, tapping into leading trends in strategy execution and creating a new revenue-generating service line.

Results to-date include more than 50% of the membership from non-US countries and its ongoing revenue, which it started generating at month 6.

Then she reviewed the online community LexisNexis Investigators Network (LNIN). The audience includes federal, state and local law enforcement and currently has more than 7,000 registered members.

This site aimed to bridge the gap between different law enforcement agencies.

Results to-date include over 4,000 members in the first year, members from all 50 states and 3 new product enhancements implemented.

The following are 3 Operations Processes communities need to succeed:

1. Expert community facilitation
2. A healthy balance of Institutional Content and User Generated Content
3. Persistent and programmatic outreach

For B2B communities to work, they need to solve a problem, accelerate a process and/or make something easier.

To get members interacting, know the types of members and what motivates them.

Fame Seekers – seek opportunities to grow reputation and showcase thought leadership
Motivators – seeks opportunity to be valued. Connect people with each other and with content
Problem Solvers – reticent participant but overcomes this in order to get answers to their questions
A member who uploads a photo of his/herself is 7x more likely to post a comment. Be sure to pay attention to the members who join and upload a photo first. These people are likely fame-seekers and can be encouraged by member spotlights, shout-outs or in discussions.

Understanding the members of the community, their individual goals and what drives them to share and engage are all critical to building a successful community.

Online communities may be the right next step for organization’s who want and need to connect with customers who have persistent needs and can learn from the collective wisdom of others.

潔⁰牐扯敬獭眠瑩⁨慌摮湩⁧慐敧⁳䰦潥敮䄠慧湩‡慓档湩‬慎潍☠䌠敨湮Building B How to Improve Your Conversion Rates& Where to Start Conversion Rates& Where to Start

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 04:45:00 +0000

If your company is throwing around the idea of building a landing page or series of landing pages it is first important to understand what they are, as well as the elements that go into creating an effective landing page.

At their core landing pages are simply a single web page that contains a form that inspires your customers to take the next step. While seemingly simple, many companies are not properly implementing their pages.

Last week at SES New York I attended a session by New York Times Best Selling author and SES Advisory board member Bryan Eisenberg (@thegrok) on “The Anatomy of the Perfect Landing Page”.

The Problem With Landing Pages

Typically landing pages are focused on driving traffic. But how much is that traffic worth if your visitors don’t convert? According to Eisenburg on average only 2% of visitors convert once they reach a landing page.

While many websites don’t have a problem driving traffic there is a major problem with conversion. Even as technology continues to improve at a drastic rate, conversion rates have barely increased. What is the disconnect?

On average companies are spending $92 per visit to bring people to their site. However, the ratio of spend is $91 on driving traffic, and only $1 to convert traffic.

There is Hope for Landing Pages

A recent infographic released by Econsultancy on web testing suggests that you should test the following elements which apply to both landing pages as well as standard websites:

Call-to-Action Buttons
Page Layout
Navigation
Copy
Promotions and Offers
Checkout Process

According to another report by Econsultancy there are 4 variables that are most strongly connected to improving overall conversion ratios including:

Perceived control over conversion rates
A structured approach to CRO
Having someone directly responsible for CRO
Incentivizing staff based on conversion rates
Slice & Dice Optimization

Unless your website is already converting at 50-70% breaking up and re-assembling your page will not have a significant impact. You may be getting slightly better results, but if you’re trying to aggressively increase your conversion this approach will not have results that are worth the effort.

5 Dimensions of a Landing Page

Eisenburg shares what he calls the 5 dimensions of a landing page. These dimensions include:
Relevance: is your content relevant to the needs of your audience?
Quality: have high quality images been used on the landing page?
Location: are elements of the page properly located to catch attention and inspire action?
Proximity: does the flow of your landing page allow for quick access?
Prominence: are your calls to action prominently displayed and easy to access?
In order to properly develop the dimensions listed above it is essential that you focus on the “conversion trinity.” This trinity is a serious of questions that your customers will ask themselves either consciously or subconsciously as they are on your site.

Is this page relevant to my query?
Do I know why this is the right solution for me?
Is it obvious what I need to do next?
Cues that continue to move your customers through the cycle would include things such as trigger words or offers, appealing graphics, consistency in color, shape of elements, and location on page.

What Should We Ask Ourselves?

When building a landing page, website, or any online marketing tool it is key to ask yourself and your team: Why should someone do business with me? If you are unable to answer that question very quickly there is a problem. Be sure to always provide value and follow with strong calls to action that continue to move prospects through the buying cycle.

Looking for additional tips on optimizing your landing pages? Be sure to check out “Landing Page Tips to Increase Conversions – #SESNY” which was posted on our blog earlier this week.