social media

Social Media Update 2016 via Pew Research Center

• Posted: December 19, 2016

A majority of Americans now say they get news via social media, and half of the public has turned to these sites to learn about the 2016 presidential election. Americans are using social media in the context of work (whether to take a mental break on the job or to seek out employment), while also engaging in an ongoing effort to navigate the complex privacy issues that these sites bring to the forefront.

On a total population basis (including Americans who do not use the internet at all), 68% of all U.S. adults say they are Facebook users, 28% report using Instagram, 26% Pinterest, 25% LinkedIn, and 21% Twitter.

Today smartphone owners (at the time of this survey, 72% of American adults) can choose from a variety of messaging apps that fill many of the same functions. Some of these apps look and function like a traditional chat or messaging service, while others offer unique features – such as the ability to post anonymously, or to have one’s posts expire or delete themselves after they are viewed.

Access full article from PewResearchCenter

CHART OF THE WEEK

 

Chart of the Week – How Social Media Affects Online Shopping

• Posted: December 5, 2016

The rise of social media over the past decade has not only changed the way people communicate, it has undoubtedly also had an impact on how they shop, be it online or at a boutique around the corner.

Before making a purchase, consumers now have the chance to scroll through thousands of product photos on Instagram or Pinterest, look for promotions on a retailer’s Facebook page or scroll through comments in a brand’s Twitter feed.

According to PwC’s Total Retail 2016, a global survey of nearly 23,000 people, 78% of consumers are influenced by social media when shopping online. The following chart sums up in which ways social media affects online shopping behavior.

Editor’s Note: a series of infographics are provided in the article. These Athletes and Brands Created the Most Social Buzz During Rio – via Adweek (sources: Pixability and OMG)

• Posted: August 29, 2016

 

Pixability, a video ad platform, looked at how sponsors’ videos scored across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, OMG examined the impact of social media mentions. “The conversation is always on, before, during and after these events,” said OMG’s Darrell Jursa.

Access full article from Adweek

Social Used Mostly for Branding, Not Performance – via MediaPost (source: Advertiser Perceptions)

• Posted: August 10, 2016

The findings, which are derived from AP’s interviews of more than 300 agency and marketer executives, found that most of those budgets are either going into “sharing networks” or being bought “programmatically.”

The report also finds the vast majority of social media spending by brands is not focused on so-called “performance” — advertising intended to generate an immediate action — but on building “brand awareness.”

Only 38% of respondents said they were utilizing social media to generate “offline sales.”

Access full article from MediaPost

STATISTA INFOGRAPHIC

• Posted: July 26, 2016

“Facebook Inc.” includes WhatsApp, Instagram and of course Facebook and Messenger, four of the world’s largest social media / messaging services. Facebook alone reaches more than 1.6 billion people per month and WhatsApp also passed the billion-user milestone earlier this year. Tencent, the Chinese company behind WeChat and Qzone can also boast a billion users in total.

This chart shows monthly active users of selected social networks and messaging services.

How brands like Netflix and Spotify use data visualization for social campaigns (source: ClickZ, from Asia)

• Posted: June 21, 2016

Examples discussed below available by clicking here.

The article points out that visualization of data is often overlooked or deprioritized – especially in Asia and describes two consumer-facing campaign examples that should put data visualization back on your radar.

In order to promote its TV show Narcos, which tells the story of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel, Netflix created infographics that brought the economy of the Columbian cocaine trade to life in a socially engaging way.

Spotify’s Found Them First gave music fans a way to prove that they were really into certain bands and singers before they became famous. Listening data was used to show users all the artists they had discovered ahead of other Spotify users. Within weeks of the site’s campaign launch, it had received more than 1 million visits and more than 100 million social media impressions, without any media spend.

“Five Steps to Measuring Your Social Media ROI” and “Shoppers Take to In-store Video Ads”

• Posted: May 3, 2016

From Ad Age – “Five Steps to Measuring Your Social Media ROI”

Numerous surveys among marketers have revealed that demonstrating social media ROI has been a challenge.

Metrics can vary, e.g. fans, followers, retweets, shares, traffic, referrals.

The author offers five steps to better measure the effectiveness of social media efforts:

See more »

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/steps-measuring-social-media-roi/303730/

 

From VentureBeat – “Shoppers Take to In-store Video Ads”

Research into Digital OOH has been expanding. Eye-tracking software and scanning technology now make it possible for marketers to see what kinds of ads people are watching and which parts of the screen they view.

Millward Brown conducted a study last month, among the notable findings:

Checkout lines are the most hated part of shopping.

Most customers are interested in watching screens.

Nearly half of customers are more likely to shop at stores with screens.

See more » http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/17/study-shoppers-take-to-in-store-video-ads/

 

 

TARGETING

• Posted: April 26, 2016

Conference Paper – “Out of Home Advertising at Scale” – IRI

IRI had already collected empirical metadata that indicated significant underestimation of OOH impacts, especially for retail and consumer goods (both CPG and durable).

We now have leveraged a trade-area based approach to more accurately measure OOH by making the distance from OOH location to point-of-sale.

In order to understand how this localized impact model performs vs. the industry standard Market-level model, we ran a side-by-side comparison of both approaches across a cross-section of brands representing multiple categories including Beverages, Home Care, Snacks and Personal Care. Results will be presented at the ARF conference.

From Adweek: Article in the News – “Twitter Is Making It Easier for Big Brands to Target Smaller Groups”

Twitter is adding sublayers to ad campaigns. The goal is to make it easier for larger brands to better target and monitor advertising on their platform.

Twitter product marketing manager Andrea Hoffman wrote, “One campaign can have many ad groups, and an ad group can have many targeting criteria and creatives. This level of granular control helps advertisers improve how they measure results, set promotion schedules, test different audiences, and identify which Tweets work best.”

 

What Makes Brands’ Social Content Shareable on Facebook?  An Analysis That Demonstrates the Power of Online Trust and Attention

• Posted: December 21, 2015

A December 2015 Journal of Advertising Research article by Tania Yuki, Founder/CEO of Shareablee, analyzes which psychological drivers might increase the likelihood of social sharing of brand content on Facebook.  She feels that such sharing is an indication of genuine interest and advocacy by those consumers, and that the shared content is valuable to the development of brand equity. Yuki believes that few brand marketers fully realize the value of consumers sharing brand content on Facebook.  To the author’s knowledge, there has been limited research on what actually makes content shareable and on the psychological drivers that prompt sharing.

Yuki’s methodology involved replicating an earlier framework that outlined ways to increase virality of content. The author tracked the 2,000 most-shared social posts over a 12-month period on Facebook and then surveyed more than 10,000 social-media users about what might drive them to share that content online.

This paper concluded:

-there are clear psychological drivers that affect sharing of brand content on Facebook: social currency, emotion, usefulness, and content that tells a story.

-these drivers vary by users’ age and gender as well as by brand category.

-these differences should inform the ways in which marketers craft their social content to inspire their audiences to share their content and, thereby, generate word-of-mouth and earned media recognition.

Brand marketers who understand the significant drivers of shareable content can use these insights to develop their social content and to design their posting strategy on social media channels.

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Finally, Guidance on Social Media Ratings

• Posted: November 30, 2015

The Media Rating Council (MRC) has issued an official set of social media measurement guidelines.  In conjunction with the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, the MRC has released an in-depth 40-page document, which outlines common practices.

Also participating in the development of these guidelines were social media vendors, publishers, measurement organizations, ad servers and ad networks. In addition, the guidelines were reviewed by buyer-side trade organizations.

According to this article in Media Life Magazine, these guidelines cover methods used for measuring a number of types of social activity, including tracking and counting users accessing content within social media, interaction and/or engagement with social media content,

and consumer “listening” and sentiment.  The guidelines also cover the measurement of user-generated content and video.

The article includes these excerpts from the guidelines:

“In order for a user-action to be considered part of social media audience activity it should be trackable/measurable (publicly or privately), fall within the campaign time period (for campaign level or advertising counting) or defined measurement period and include all valid traffic.”

“Examples of trackable/measurable user-action may include interaction (clicks, shares, retweets, likes, favorites, etc.) with social media content, application downloads or social shares from a brand website to social media platforms.”

The Media Life article also provides a direct link to the guidelines.

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