Crystal Ball Gazing (2009-2014)
December 13, 2009 at 1:48 pm
What better time to cast our minds into the future than coming to the end of the year? Forrester’s US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 – 2014 makes an interesting read. The US has always been a couple of years ahead of Ireland in online terms. That gap had been narrowing and anecdotal reports from Google Ireland were that the gap had narrowed to about 2 years. Recent economic conditions and the resulting freeze on investing in new and emerging technologies here has seen the gap widen again to about 3 years. However, with the focus on the “Smart Economy” who knows what changes that will bring?
204 US marketers were surveyed in March 2009 by market research company, Forrester, about their marketing plans from now until 2014. I’ve taken the time out to read and absorb the report. Here is my summary with own opinions included (of course!):
Wholesale shift in budget away from traditional to interactive
60% of marketing budgets are moving away from traditional advertising. Kimberly Clark Worldwide Huggies campaign bypassed TV completely to invest in digital media where new moms hang out. Expect to see more of this kind of thing.
What’s been hit?
What To Look Out For
Interactive marketing spend will reach $53 billion by 2014. Where’s this money going to be invested?
Search Dominates Spend
Accounts for 59% of online budgets. It’s expected to grow at 15% per annum to $32billion by 2014. It makes sense – 85% of online consumers search from their desktops at least once a week. If you’re marketing online, search is the first port of call for being found by a wide audience. Mobile search expected to increase – 11% have searched from their mobiles in the first three months of 2009 alone. The search market is growing through expanded keyword search strings. E-Consultancy noted in its Best Practice Guide for Search that as we become more used to search, we are searching using more and more keywords. So the supply of search is also growing.
Email Marketing Continues Healthy Growth
97% use or plan to use email marketing this year and this will continue to grow. Email is enjoying something of a renaissance as marketers grow lists with the promise of ‘green marketing’, as money is shifted away from direct marketing to email marketing, and as effectiveness is improved with linkages to other channels such as user generated ratings and reviews. Sovereign Bank in the US increased its email marketing spend from 10-15% in 2009, and completely skipped the DM piece in its student campaign.
Social Media Fixed Firmly in the Mix
Poster child social media shows the steepest growth of any channel (but remember it’s coming from a lower base) to 34%. Forecast spend on integrated campaigns and agency fees will top $3 billion by 2014. Social media is growing into an established part of the marketing mix – 64% of marketers already build social media apps and another 22% will by the end of 2009. When 42% of online adults and 55% of online youth want to engage with their favourite brands through social media applications, the demand is clearly there. It’s still early days yet for social media in terms of types, tools, metrics and benchmarks. Expect to see more engagement in the coming years and not just reach. Forrester foresees that portable identities will enable users to move their social profiles from site to site. So anyone engaged in that space is on to a winner.
Display Ads – Rich and PPC
Recession minded marketers prefer pay-per-click buy over impression-based ones (58% of budgets). Expect this trend to continue even after recession. But we’re still loving our rich media formats which are currently accounting for one-third of budgets; expect this to grow to 45% by 2014. (That means more of those annoying eircom ads where the ‘actors’ wave at us and annoyingly distract us as we browse).
Online Video
Pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll are sold in exactly the same way, so you’d expect the old television-centric agencies to shift their focus into online video anytime soon. With awareness and recall of nearly 300% being achieved by P&G for Charmin pre-roll ads, it would be strange not to see trad agencies dive into this space. The 2007 Forrester forecast predicted widespread adoption of online video and mobile marketing by the end of 2009. This hasn’t yet happened – largely due to the recession and resource-constrained marketers not wishing to trial untested media. But Forrester (2009) predict that online video will kick off big style in mid 2010 following by mobile marketing in early 2011 as marketers emerge from recession. Does that mean that the gap will widen ever more between US and Ireland if they come out of recession first and we lag even further due to the endemic nature our woes?
Mobile Marketing
Reminds me of Smithfield in Dublin – we’re still waiting for it to happen! Mobile marketing is one of the most anticipated, least adopted channels. Why? Complexity around metrics, marketers and carrier relationships, plus limited use of data by consumers have all put the skids on mobile to date and stifled adoption. When the recession is over and marketers are spending on newer channels again, Forrester expect mobile to take off.
Why? There will be increased use of data as devices improve, apps proliferate, and mobile operator competition brings data prices down. We’ll see more strategic apps and less of the gimicks that tend to crowd out the app store currently.
Forrester say that mobile maturity will see some efforts being made at introducing standards – but I don’t think so. We’ve had email for close to 15 years and are nowhere near standards amongst email clients (which is why I support the Email Standards Project and you should too!) – I don’t see the disparate mobile providers and handset manufacturers working together on standards as easily as Forrester expect. But I’d be happy to be wrong!
So What Does It All Mean For Us?
The main lessons I’m taking from this is to continue as we are. First step to promoting your business online is to invest in search and make sure that your business can be found by thge 85% who use search to look for your product. The report refers to US marketers investing more heavily in SEO as PPC gets expensive. I’ve been banging on this mantra for quite some time now. While PPC is great in the short-term, the click costs can be quite high – when you add up what you’re paying Google over a year or two, it makes more economic sense to invest in a listing on the left hand side.
Email marketing continues to bring great results. Whether it’s driving traffic to your site for a sale or promotion, or simply brand-building, keeping your business in front of their minds – it works! It’s been the most regular producing, low risk retention strategy for years. It makes sense as majority of people have emails. Emails are not dying out as had been predicted. In fact, we should soon be seeing the growth of the Social Inbox - fusing the best parts of our inbox as we now know it with control and immediacy of social media apps. Long live email marketing!
Early days for social media – my perception of it in Ireland is that 2009 was indeed a year in which many jumped on the bandwagon – or at least familiarised themselves enough to be ready to jump in 2010. But the message I’m sending time and time again is that social media is for life, not just for Christmas. We’ve all been to the seminars on the amazing results that can be achieved, some of us may understand that the creative costs aren’t that high compared to other media. But it’s the ongoing resourcing and dedicating of time to engage with the people we’ve tried so hard to reach – that’s the bit that costs money and that, sadly, is missing in many cases. Don’t just take my word for it. Seth Godin puts it like this:
Dating is a process. So is losing weight, being a public company and building a brand.
On the other hand, putting up a trade show booth is an event. So are going public and having surgery.
Events are easier to manage, pay for and get excited about. Processes build results for the long haul.
Tags: email marketing trends 2010, internet marketing trends 2010, social media trends 2010
RTE Asks Us What We Think
March 18, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I dislike RTE because:
- Presenters way past their sell-by dates get paid exorbitant amounts to annoy us. Same presenters wouldn’t be employable outside of the state broadcaster. And why is Lucy Kennedy everywhere? I don’t know anyone who finds her amusing or even talented.
- The website uses Windows Players for video content. Mac users are unable to access. This flagrant ignorance really annoys me.
- They don’t take risks like UK channels do. I’m not talking ground-breaking risks, but just mild ones like actually allowing 20-somethings write comedy rather than 40 year old men who know nothing but just happen to be on the Montrose payroll (The English Class, Leave it to Mrs O’Brien, The Big Bow Wow anyone?)
But giving credit where it’s due, RTE is finally doing something that should be applauded. Acknowledging that ‘television is changing’ they put out a call 5 months ago for film makers to put forward new and creative ideas for drama. The finalists are now over on the Storyland part of the site and we the people of Ireland can vote for the ones we’d like to see produced into a second episode.
Amazingly, the videos can be viewed by all! They play as Flash videos. Now why can’t the good people behind Storyland have a word with their colleagues over on the main site?
You’ve got until 5pm on Monday 30 March to cast your vote. Go now.
I don’t want to sound like a whinger here, but the few I’ve looked at all look crap.
- Happy Slapper is just 29 seconds long and doesn’t reveal enough
- The intro to Pub World is too long, it took about 2 minutes (out of 4) before anything actually happened. Lots of overacting man looking surprised in pub before that.
- Chez Spuds‘ description reads well, but I stopped it after 10 seconds as it looks like another attempt at humour not working
- Same for Rental Boys. I like the concept, but unfortunately it’s another bad example of stereotypes.
I applaud RTE for this ground-breaking attempt at user generated content. But it’s just not doing it for me.
PS – I don’t hate all of RTE’s stuff. Last year’s drama ‘Raw’ was worth staying in for. Excellent stuff.
Tags: RTE Storyland
Watch This Until The End
March 6, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Thanks to Sue for sending it my way. Have a good weekend y’all.
Where would you like to wake up tomorrow?
January 21, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Stumbled across this lovely site that reminds me of a video twist on Twitter. Where Twitter poses a question (what are you doing now?), this site also poses a question but goes out on the streets of Brooklyn and London and films people’s responses.
It’s lovely to listen to people’s responses. It’s very well produced video. It’s warm and funny and human and given that this week started off with the statistically calculated worst day of the year, it’s worth checking out.
Tags: Fifty People One Question
Trends and Opportunies in Online Video
June 8, 2007 at 3:33 pm
First off on day 2 of FOOA is Jeremy Allaire from Brightcove
Fragment or be fragmented – allow micro markets for content and programming to flourish. Small publishers, producers benefit. Forcing a lot of traditional media companies to re-think linear production and launch more focussed niche micro channels.
Eg. Discovery Channel with traditional networks. Have launched new micro channels (eg. turbo channel all about boats). Were able to take their vast catalogue of content and bring it to a niche audience. It wouldn’t have been possible as traditional broadcast channel, but viable in online context.
Eg. Shipwreck Central. A video site all about wreck diving. Comes from a professional TV company that produces professional shows distributed through national geographic. On web can take their own programming without having to deal with distributor. Can access national TV advertising – allows advertisers to really target.
Targeting becomes even more critical. Allows you to buy a user segment across hundreds of channels that meet your needs.
Explosion in distribution options – ‘reach consumers where they are, not where you want them to be’. It’s not about driving people to a destination where you control that user in some fixed form. But now consumers are everywhere – social networks, portals, video aggregators, etc.
Strategies for content owners to pursue – launch a branded destination site. Brand, rich programing, sell sponsorships. Allow end users to grab that content and place on the blogosphere. Target other sites that match te content and develop managed syndication. And put in place portal distribution relationships.
Result is a blended distribution strategy. Have to chart out programmes and policies to reach . . . like Web 1 ecommerce merchants. Access touchpoints and bring into transactions. Same kind of approaches beginning to enter b’band video world. Advertising and sponsorship being applied to this new world is bound to the content, wherever it goes. Advertisers must be comfortable that their advertising will exist in many different places to what they originally bought.
Eg. embracing blended distribution – Dow Jones. Branded channel Wall Street Journal with advertising. Embracing viral distribution – can copy the code from the videos like in Youtube. A smart tactic for professional companies to adopt. Can contextulise and talk about it. Dow Jones can wrap their brand around it, have ads at the beginning of it. So the sponsor’s message follows the programming wherever it goes.
Regional newspapers can apply to syndicate news from Sony, Wall St Journal, etc. Can distribute video content and even a commission for the views brought against their content.
A New Type Of Media Buy
Re-frames how buyers think about video content – targeting becomes critical. Must gain understanding of the structure – diverse contexts for the consumption. New measurement tactics need to be employed. Existing ones are built around domains. Wall St Journal Video is a content package, needs to be represented from a buyer perspective.
Introduces complexity also where you might have a Visa ad running in video content and Mastercard banner on the site??
Starting to see opportunities for brand marketers for syndicating content across sites that might be relevant for their brand objectives.
Driving demand for more integrated sponsorhsp rather an spot buys
Ad Formats And Policies
People are tired of ads. But yet it doesn’t have any effect on performance. They’ve measured it – with and without 15 second pre-rolls isn’t affecting performance. Pre-rolls with companion banner attached to 2-4 minute videos run in every other clip have limited opportunity for brand engagement.
Creative fatigue is developing due to insufficient inventory and too heavy rotation within video properties, limiting the value to all parties. Not well suited to support mid form and long form content.
How to overcome?
- Format innovaton. Overlays – text or video on video, takeovers on user click will take over the entire screen with deep experience, bumper sponsosships – brought to you by. . . and within the video.
- Proposal watch this space (they’re trialing this) – 3 second bumper ads, followed by 5-10 second mid-roll over the bottom third of the video overlay (brand impression and call to action) and post roll sponsorship takeover, also triggered by cliick on overlay.
- Policies – time based advertising, mid-roll implementation of advertising, strict adherence to creative rotation guidelines by buyer or through 3rd party networks.
Publishers will rely on a combo of these working together to drive the highest drive and value for their content. Mktplaces are going to become a highly important and viable way to serve this inventory.
Buyers and advertisers must get comfortable with the content moving between content owner controlled sales and market place owner fulfillment.
Role of Consumer Participation in Media
Embrace end users as:
•
- Fans
- Critics
- Programmers
- Producers
Support media and brand exposure in their online ‘home’s:
• Blogs
• Social networks
• Communities of interest
• RSS readers
Allow end users to become programmers
• Favourites
• Playlists
• Viral sharing/embedding
• Social bookmarking
End users as producers
• Simple – allow them to upload media to you
• Powerful – allow end users to remix and refactor your content and brand. New product from Brightcove called Aftermix. Currently in private beta. Youv’e got a piece of video, grab a clip, insert it, record some adutio, add effects, tap into rights cleared media (photography, audio, etc) Really powerful tool for brand engagement. Can create new artifacts that the marketer can use, becomes an asset and distribute…
Questions and Answers were interesting
Q. Is Youtube’s business at risk due to the lawsuits?
A. It’s difficult to build a business on pirated content.
Start with the rightsholders and let them define. Create the avenues in a manner that respects the copyright holder’s interests.
Q. Is there evidence of a business case for thousands and thousands of channels?
A. They’ve only started to emerge in any meaningful form in the last 6 months. Economics suggests it could be a very good business. Will always be quality issues. Creative issues – must be compelling. Marketing and brand must be developed. No magic formula, but they are emerging and accessing national audiences and at CPM’s they previously couldn’t have afforded. Early supportive evidence.
Q. Cost of creative talent?
A. Rights of talent in royaltys in these new forms of distribution. Network rights very different to TV rights. Increasingly we’re seeing the content owner/distributor trying to outline what those rights are and tie those to the talent contracts, so it’s very clear renumeration. Aggregated price.
Next up on Day 2 FOOA was Heather Luttrell from Indieclick – she gave a really good presentation on the advertising that works for Leading Edge, Bleeding Edge and Arrived Sites. But I’m not posting about that just yet because coffee and cookies are being served!
Real Life People Videos
May 9, 2007 at 10:50 am
Anyone who asks me what I think is hot on the web in the past few months would have been subjected to a passionate barrage about video content – and using real life people for testimonials.  The ultimate of course is real life people video content.
And that’s what eircom are doing. Give credit where it’s due, they are certainly embracing video. So if you want to know what is video content? And what are real life video testimonials, view eircom’s real life people testimonials.
Entertainment.ie Adds Video
March 31, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Nice to see Entertainment.ie have added video to their site. Because we’re all too busy to search – they also tap into our Irish obsession with being busy and not having enough time.
It’s called Best of the Web. I like it. I stayed on for about 30 mins so that’s sticky! Irish music tv is good, and ‘that’s pretty underground’.
