Mar 20

Digital Marketing Strategies Done Right: Red Bull Case Example

By Heather Timmerman addience, Digital Media Trends, Video Comments Off

Red Bull has been long known in the marketing industry for their association with extreme sports sponsorships often linking them to adrenaline seeking stunts and athletes. The world was introduced to this concept with the Red Bull Stratos event featuring Austrian adventurer, Felix Baumgartner on October 14, 2012 with the world’s biggest jump from 128,100 feet, breaking the speed of sound (Red Bull Stratos.com). Although the data on the Red Bull Stratos website is mostly scientific, marketers around the world have written tons of articles about the content marketing lessons that can be learned from Red Bull.

With over 5,000 videos and 50,000 photos, Red Bull Media house has become a case example of the emerging trend of brands becoming more like media companies (Source: Mashable, Preview Networks Blog). Digital content has become the currency that drives audience, engagement and eventually revenue opportunities. It begins with the development of a good story and then capturing content worth sharing (Source: Econsultancy). Whenever there is interesting content, it increases the options a brand has to capitalise on it according to the Content Marketing Maturity Model from Altimeter Group (Source: Mashable). However, the key is subtlety, or developing contextually relevant content around the brand itself.

“Red Bull has introduced its content marketing around and about the product, but it is never directly correlated to the drink itself. Nobody is going to go to a website and spend 45 minutes looking at video about a drink. But Red Bull has aligned its brand unequivocally and consistently with extreme sports and action. They are number-one at creating content so engaging that consumers will spend hours with it, or at least significant minutes” Rebecca Lieb, Altimeter Group.

The energy drinks latest adrenaline-junkie event series is the Cliff Diving World Series 2013 events happening around the globe. It kicks off in France in May, stops by our very own in Denmark in June, and continues onto Portugal, Italy, USA, UK, Brazil and ending in Thailand in October (Source: RedBull.com). Check out the video above for a taste of that great content marketing everyone is raving about which we have syndicated to sports and entertainment publishers in Denmark such as On Side, Kino.dk, and EkstraBladet.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

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Feb 05

How Online Video & TV Compliment Each Other – A Super Bowl Example

By Heather Timmerman addience, Digital Media Trends, Video Comments Off
Screen Shot 2013-02-04 at 3.48.06 PM

Check out M&M’s Super Bowl teaser video

Various research and reports have indicated how consumer behaviour is becoming more multi-faceted when it comes to media consumption. Most recently a KPMG study revealed ”Consumers are increasingly using multiple media at the same time, particularly when watching television. According to a recent poll of 1,000 U.S. consumers from KPMG, 42% of the respondents said they watch TV and access the internet via a laptop or PC at the same time. Another 17% said they watch TV while using a smartphone. Just over a fifth (22%) said they were using these devices to access a social media site while watching TV” (Source: MediaPost).

Given these trends, how are brands using major events to integrate online and TV strategies? If the recent Super Bowl ad commercial hype taught us anything, it’s that brands are becoming more in-tune to consumer behaviour trends by releasing TV commercials online before the big game and keeping fans engaged during the game with social media tactics. Not only are they giving the consumers what they want, they are also increasing views online by 600%, in hopes it will create greater brand exposure and ultimately sales (Source: Mashable). Some studies have also shown that releasing ads early online shows a 20% increase in web traffic to advertiser sites (Source: MediaPost). For those that like to save the big reveal until the day of the event, releasing teaser videos are the likely compromise satisfying both consumer interest and brand goals.

While marketing strategies between the two mediums is becoming more synchronised, the budgets certainly are not. The average Super Bowl TV commercial is $4 million for 30 seconds (Source: Digiday). The digital industry is far away from those sorts of numbers for a one day 30 second spot, however that is the beauty of the internet. First of all, consumers don’t just passively stumble across the ad or watch it on a pre-determined ‘channel’, chances are they have actively searched or sought out the video in order to view it, or stumbled across it via multiple channels in a variety of ways (i.e. news sites, portals, social media, etc.). Secondly, advertising dollars can go a lot longer online. Four million dollars can equate to 50 million Forbes.com first page interstitials (the ad before the article), an 8 day YouTube homepage ad, or a Twitter trending topic every day for one month (Source: Digiday). That’s a lot of bang for the buck!

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth.

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Jan 23

Views Versus Engagement: What’s Your Video Strategy?

By Heather Timmerman addience, Digital Media Trends, Measurement Comments Off

Views, like friends, and followers is a numbers game. It’s what you do with those views and friends and followers that matters. Are you funny and witty with your posts? Do you share insightful and valuable information? Once you’ve gained the audience with number of views, how do you keep them interested in your brand? Views can create exposure and advertising opportunities, but engagement can indicate loyalty and purchase intent. It all depends on the success criteria a brand is looking to measure. Enagement

Many articles have been written about this topic and often use YouTube as an example of the mothership of all portals in terms of video. The key word here is portal. It’s a once stop shop used for direct search purposes, after hearing about some song, commercial, video, or event. The popularity of the video is often measured by the number of views it has received. However, the chances of anyone stumbling across a branded video is slight, which is a challenge if views are what brands are after. Not only that, but a recent study found that user engagement could actually be more difficult on YouTube (Source: MediaPost). Therefore, YouTube is one strategy, not the only strategy.

The above mentioned study compared 20 YouTube videos using TrueView as a strategy, with the same 20 videos using a video syndication strategy. It used a measurement formula called Engagement Per Thousand Views (EPM) to measure likes, comments, tweets, pins, shares and posts to calculate the engagement per 1,000 views. The engagement factor was significantly lower for the TrueView videos compared to the videos syndicated to other websites outside of YouTube. Facebook engagement in particular, was higher for the syndicated branded videos than it was for UGC videos, which is good news for brands (Source: MediaPost).

We have discussed the views versus engagement debate over a series of multiple past posts in this blog, which basically sum up the challenges of marketing video in a banner world, focused on impressions. There are also many industry articles discussing the challenges to the viewing tracking mechanism by companies like comScore with the introduction of vCE, and most recently a vCPM proposal, by a member of the “Data Driven Thinking” community (Source: adexchanger.com). While the industry is still settling on a uniformed standard, brands will need to decide for themselves which is the most measurable and meaningful way for them to track.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth.

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Dec 06

Smartphone Penetration Levels are Ripe for Mobile Advertising Opportunities

By Heather Timmerman addience, Digital Media Trends, mobile, Video Comments Off

Mobile advertising makes up 20% of UK profit for M&C Saatchi (Source: TheDrum.com).

Sales via mobile devices were the online hit of the biggest retail weekend in the U.S. which confirms an increasing global trend and highlights an opportunity for advertisers. Device usage is at an all time high with 54% of consumers owning one in the EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) according to Q3 2012 data, which is up 38% compared to 2011 (Source: comScore). Smartphone usage has also broken the 50% threshold in the U.S. and there are even forecasts indicating that 2011 and 2012 could have been the peak years of growth, according to the technology diffusion curve (Source: Businessinsider.com).

In terms of tablet ownership, “the UK is leading the way with 17.7% of their smartphone audience also owning a tablet, followed closely by Spain with 16.9%. Italy and France are on par with 15.1% tablet penetration among smartphone users, but Germany falls behind the EU5 average with only 12.8% of the smartphone audience owning tablets” (Source: comScore). The U.S. market share is currently at 25% ownership, according to Q2 Pew data (Source: Journalism.org). Referring back to the technology diffusion curve again, tablet ownership is where the market share potential is in terms of device sales, and the penetration level of smartphone ownership provides a scalable platform for advertising sales.

Which brings us to user behaviour on smartphones. The top three activities besides calling in the EU5, are text messaging, checking news, and sharing photos and videos (Source: comScore Data Gems Europe H2 2012). Nielsen data indicates a 63% year over year increase in mobile social media usage from 2011 to 2012 which is no doubt linked to the growth of smartphones during the same period (Source: MediaPost). One in four minutes is spent on social networking in Europe and 30% of mobile user time in the U.S. is spent on social media (Source: comScore, MediaPost). One could therefore assume that the majority of the photo and video sharing is happening on social media networks which is a huge opportunity for marketers.

That assumption has been confirmed by a nonscientific review indicating photos were the number one brand choice for content sharing by some of the most popular brands on Facebook (Source: Socialmediatoday.com). Brands that are leading the way on Facebook include consumer product companies such as Coca Cola, Converse, and Red Bull as well as media companies such as YouTube, MTV, and Disney (Source: Tracksocial.com). Mobile advertising on Facebook however, is still in the beginning stages as mobile ads only became available for purchase on Facebook in June, 2012 with the launch of sponsored stories and promoted posts (Source: Mashable).

The Black Friday/Cyber Monday holiday weekend in the U.S. highlighted another mobile advertising trend that uses hyper-local, geo-targeting campaigns that combine the in-store shopping experience with online product search to offer deals and discounts (Source: MediaPost). That strategy seemed to work since more than 18% of shoppers used a mobile device to access a retailer’s site, making up 13% of total web-based purchases, adding to the retailer’s bottom-line (Source: Bloomberg).

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth.

 

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Nov 21

Advertising ROI: A TV & Online Comparison

By Heather Timmerman addience, Digital Media Trends, Video Comments Off

Increasing evidence from various studies and reports indicate that online video is a compliment to TV versus a replacement when it comes to advertising and branding efforts (Source: State of the Video Industry Q4 2012). Sticking with the theme from last week’s blog which discussed how media is bought and measured in the TV and online world, the question of how (or whether) ROI is measured is an obvious one. However, the results and answers to this question are less than obvious. 

Given ROI metrics for TV are still being developed 70 years after the first ad was broadcast, it begs the question why online is held to higher standards at a fraction of the cost (Source: gigaom.com, nielsen.com)? Does the receptiveness of the consumer mindset and time and place have something to do with it? Perhaps; as most consumers are watching TV after work hours and online during work hours, although tablets and mobile could challenge that theory. A logical reason could simply be that those in the advertising industry have learned from their mistakes and do not want to repeat history without proven ROI for all future advertising mediums.

Regardless of the reason, TV advertising has been shown to produce higher yields for a percentage of campaigns but the return cannot necessarily be guaranteed for all. A three year study by Deutsche Bank indicates that although in half of the advertising campaigns the return did not sufficiently cover the media cost, the gain from the other half more than offset the cost (Source: wpp.com). However, additional recent research by Accenture indicates that 82% of TV ads generate negative ROI, and a recent study by Simulmedia using data from Nielsen and Kantar Media shows that in the majority of cases, TV ads are only seen by 20% of marketers’ targeted audience (Source: Financial Times).

Online advertising on the other hand, has a targeted audience focus with immediate measurable results, but some would argue it lacks the reach of TV, while others would argue scale is the internet’s strength (Source: gigaom.com, techcrunch.com). Platforms such as Facebook with over 1 billion active monthly users are quickly gaining ground, but the industry has yet to settle on the most effective online advertisement type or strategy, which is completely dependent on the brand or advertiser goal (Source: facebook.com). From keyword advertising to banner ads to video, and paid, owned, earned, and social media strategies, the options are vast.

Research any of these methods and you will find multiple studies indicating online keyword campaigns increase offline sales results, to online banners are dead, and that video is the new TV (Source: inc.com, forbes.com, tech crunch.com). How can a marketer not be confused? Out of all the data, one theme is ringing through loud and clear. The proven use of sight, sound, and motion in the TV world is quickly becoming the preferred method of choice online as well with video advertising projections continuing to increase year over year (Source: MediaPost). Advertisers have even gone so far as to say that online video is just as effective if not more than TV advertising, but they also said that more definitive ROI and success metrics are still needed (Source: TechCrunch, Brightroll Report).

Facebook seems to have found a way to close the loop through their partnership with Datalogix, a Nielsen competitor (Source: BusinessInsider.com). The way it works is after a user views or clicks on an ad on Facebook, the retail store collects the user/consumers email and home address information, which allows the brand or advertiser to cross-reference that information with a report Facebook provides, ensuring the user/consumers anonymity, and confirming the online and offline link. The question now remains whether the conversion percentage and overall yield is higher online compared to spend.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth.

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Nov 14

The Measurable Media Buy: A TV & Online Comparison

By Heather Timmerman addience, Digital Media Trends, Measurement Comments Off

While advertising is becoming more and more targeted for both offline and online mediums, it is still too early to tell how this will affect advertising buying and revenue trends in the future. While online is considered the most measurable medium in the world, TV still holds the majority of advertising budget spend. According to Nielsen, TV holds 61% of advertising dollars globally and in Europe online advertising is currently 20% of budgets according to the latest IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark report. 

Looking at the past 4 fiscal quarters (Q1&2 2012 and Q3&4 2011) there is a positive overall global trend in terms of advertising spend, even though it has steadily become lower per quarter. Starting with the oldest calendar quarter first, Q3 2011 showed a 9.6% increase, Q4 2011 showed a 7.3% increase and Q1 2012 showed a 3.1% increase in global advertising spend. While overall there was global growth in Q1 2012, Europe was the only region to show a decrease in spend. However, the first half of 2012 altogether shows an increase in spend by 2.7% compared to the first half of 2011 (Source: Nielsen.com, Blog.nielsen.com). Comparing 2010 to 2011 there is a marginal increase in U.S. ad spend by 1.8% and a decrease in Europe by -0.4% which indicates the London Olympics and U.S. Election advertising helped in 2012.

Breaking it down by medium, the first half of 2012 shows that even though Europe may have decreased spend overall, online advertising spend was up by 11.2% and TV down by -2.2%. The IAB indicates a 14.5% growth in online overall, with a 45% growth in video, and 132% growth in mobile advertising (Source: IAB UK). Even though all these numbers indicate there is a growth in online advertising mediums, and there have been a multitude of articles written about the shift of TV dollars to digital, TV continues to hold “the lions’s share” of ad dollars (Source: Nielsen). The question is 1) how long will that remain the case and 2) how important are measurable results to the media buy?

If we were to focus on the 2nd question first, the answer is uncertain considering ROI on TV Metrics are still being developed 80 years after the invention of the medium (Source: gigaom.com). Although there are measurement standards that still need to be put into place in the online space, the online advertising world allows brands and advertisers to be much more targeted and strategic than they can be with TV which relies mostly on demographics when buying ad space (gigaom.com). In terms of mass reach, there is no doubt TV dominates but that also comes with a massive price tag. Online syndication strategies, like those offered at Preview Networks, are increasingly becoming a viable option for brands and advertisers focused on reach. The “programmatic buying of video inventory” (otherwise known as RTB) allows for audience specific buys which could eventually close the gap between TV and online (Source: BeetTV/Forrester).

The answer to the 1st question above may take a few more years to develop before we see any monumental shifts moving budgets away from TV and more towards online, particularly as the Millennial generation becomes more influential in the media buy equation. The reality for now is that while online video trends are increasing, the advertising spend is much smaller than TV but the future looks bright. Projections for 2012 spend are 29% over 2011, with another 29% year-over-year growth forecast for 2013, and 27% growth for 2014 (Source: MediaPost). The good news for both advertising mediums is that measurement initiatives are becoming more strategic for TV and standardised for online in 2013 (gigaom.com, comscore.com). Hopefully that will provide more insight into how important measurement is in the media buy equation in the future.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth.

 

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Nov 08

The RTB Discussion for Brands & Publishers

By Heather Timmerman addience, Digital Media Trends Comments Off

There has been a lot of information and excitement in the online advertising industry about real-time bidding (RTB) as of late. While most of the articles are from markets advanced in this advertising buying method, as a European based international company, we understand that all markets are not created equal. Whether RTB is a regular practice in your market or not, one projection states that 50% of all online advertising will be bought or sold via RTB by 2015 and another states that RTB will grow at a compound rate of 60% over the next four years (MediaPost.com, AdExchanger.com). So in order to make sense of an increasing trend and all of the information overload, here is a breakdown of what RTB might mean for you as a brand marketer or publisher.

What does it mean?

Put very simply, RTB is an automatic way to buy display advertising in individual and targeted impressions versus buying a block of impressions on select websites. This moves the focus away from specific site lists and towards a more efficient audience buy. The demographic of the consumer or their search behaviour or purchase intent is more important than the website itself, as the brand or advertiser may want to reach a consumer who uses many websites in one day. The idea is to follow the consumer in a strategic and targeted way, not cross your fingers and hope that they visit the website on which you have purchased thousands of impressions.

How does this affect online video?

As online video is currently being bought and sold in display advertising spaces, RTB is very relevant for online video advertising buys at the moment. However, this is a very troublesome approach as we have stated in our Online Video Advertising Challenges & Opportunities three-part blog series as it works against the medium’s potential as an advertising tool. When video is negotiated and analysed in a CPM world, there are also measurement and placement challenges. However based on the description of RTB above, one could argue this could benefit video advertising buying in the future. If recent trends are any indication of the changes to come, then the partnership by video music site Vevo and Adap.tv, are an indication of what private exchanges could mean for the industry in terms of premium placements and monetisation of video inventory.

Who are the players?

Many agencies and ad networks are using this buying mechanism to help brands and advertisers with their online advertising initiatives. From a brand perspective, you will have many different RTB solutions or partners – not just one, as a recent article by MediaPost points out. Brands may also encounter RTB’s through their demand side platform (DSP) provider which by definition, optimises media buying from multiple sources including ad exchanges and ad networks. From a publisher perspective, RTB’s help them improve yield and fill rates by exposing the inventory to a larger buyer number. By allowing a sell side platform (SSP) to optimise media selling, publishers can increase their earned revenue dollar and decrease unsold inventory. The IAB has a great chart that outlines and explains all the various players in the online advertising ecosystem which is highly recommended for more information.

What to be aware of?

As a marketer you want the most ‘bang for your buck’ which means maximising message delivery in front of a relevant audience. The idea behind RTB is to eliminate wasted impressions on sites that are not producing results for your advertising. There have been some RTB concerns regarding ads appearing on low-quality sites, so you will want to make sure your RTB vendors use brand safety mechanisms to ensure this doesn’t happen (Source: MediaPost.com). There are also some performance efficiency concerns in which some argue technologies still need to be built in order to protect advertisers. Either way, as long as the brand or advertisers are knowledgeable and aware of the issues, there are partners to work with to ensure an “in-view” ad impression (Source: AdExchanger.com). From a publisher perspective, you want to maximise all possible advertising spaces and revenue potential, and RTB’s help you accomplish this task. However, the revenue potential is minimal due to the abundance of inventory available in the exchange. On one hand earning revenue is a good thing, but on the other the inventory available may not be premium quality or relevant for your site. The question is, whether premium exchanges will be able to solve this issue.

What are the alternatives?

For brands, the alternative is to keep a manual, control based approach to media buying which means you are in charge of all advertising placement and audience decisions. The benefit to this method is assurance your ad is only seen on sites and in spots that you deem appropriate. On the other hand, scalability may be lost. Brands also need to ensure they have the appropriate amount of in-house resources or partners secured in order to make these buying decisions. For publishers, the alternative to using an RTB is also manual ensuring readers or viewers are always exposed to the messaging you would like them to receive. The in-house resource requirement is an increased need in this case as well, which means the revenue opportunity could be decreased if the appropriate ad cannot be sourced, resulting in unsold inventory. Ultimately, the RTB decision for both brands and publishers comes down to whether scalability or control is the focus.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth.

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