Digital Spend to Surpass Print in 2010
Jeff Whang
While it has been inevitable that spending on digital advertising will outpace print advertising (like it surpassed radio a couple years ago), it may happen sooner than you think. A recent study based on the spending habits of over 1,000 advertisers in December 2009, predicts they will spend 32.5% on digital while only 30.3% on print…this year.
Google Developing Real-Time Index
Brian Kress
Right now, when you (or any publisher) make a blog post, update a press release, or push any new content live on the web, you wait for the Google machine to find your content and then index it in their search engine. Well, that process may soon change. Google is in the midst of developing a system that allows web publishers (like us) to automatically submit new content to Google for indexing within seconds of that content being published. While it may sound heavy on details and light on change, search analysts think it could be the “next chapter” for Google.
What is Web 3.0?
John Keehler
Web 2.0 was coined in 2004… And was largely centered around user-generated content and sharing. Have we moved far enough for the Web 2.0 concept to be outdated? Learn more about this compelling case for Web 3.0 as something distinctly different from Web 2.0.
Public Data Visualization
Jill Krumsick
Google has increased the power of it’s data visualization chart tool by adding 13 public databases to the data set. This user friendly tool makes the vast amount of public information more consumable with various chart types and the ability to select data ranges. Some of the new databases included are world development Indicators, as well as population, GDP, income, unemployment, retail sales and cancer cases in the US.
Many brands plan how to deal with a crisis. This planning can be invaluable, as it allows them to quickly activate the organization to respond appropriately, and minimize damage. Toyota most likely had plans like this in place, but it’s what they’ve done more spontaneously with social media that is getting them attention from the marketing community. Most recently, The Washington Post blog reports that they have launched an innovative new site, Toyota Conversations.
The Toyota Conversations site is powered by Tweetmeme, and Toyota worked closely with Federated Media to launch the branded channel. The site allows Toyota to aggregate tweets that link to or mention news, images, video related to Toyota and the recall. While some of the tweets are negative, there’s a decidedly positive tone to the effort, as Toyota is prominently featuring their own tweets, videos, ads and links to other social media properties. They’re both embracing and controlling the conversation. So in addition to seeing a retweet where someone says they’ll “never buy a Toyota again”, we also see news stories being tweeted about that reference Toyota’s contribution to new safety rules, their March sales event announcement, and more. They’re also including what Tweetmeme refers to as “AdTweets“, which are essentially ads that include a “retweet” functionality.
This branded Tweetmeme channel is only one of many digital touchpoints Toyota is leveraging for the recall. The “hub” of the digital recall campaign, and the site you’re sent to from the homepage of Toyota is Toyota.com/recall. It’s a kind of recall “dashboard” (no pun intended), that includes important recall information for owners, news, announcements, videos and more.
Yet Toyota has also used a number of social media channels as well. Realizing the importance of news stories and social sharing, they have a partnership with Digg.com. In addition, they are using corporate social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Toyota has certainly jumped feet first into a number of different social and digital touchpoints, but what are the lessons to be had for other marketers? Here are a few thoughts:
1.) Social Shapes Conversation AND Media
We know that social media has become more important to customers, but it’s also become standard for media as well. Toyota seems to have recognized that sharing news is a big part of the conversation online, and that social media has to become a core part of any public relations effort, rather than an add-on.
2.) If You Build It, They Might Come
One of Toyota’s biggest blunders in these digital campaigns is that they don’t consistently cross-promote these social channels. Take, for instance, the fact that on the digital “hub” for the campaign, Toyota.com/recall, there’s no link to the ToyotaConversations.com website. In fact, there’s not even a link for Facebook or Twitter, only a link to the YouTube channel. Even in social media, once you get to the Facebook Page, you can find a link to the ToyotaConversations.com website, but there’s not a link on Twitter.
3.) The World is Still Flat
One of the more interesting dilemmas is the global presence of Toyota, and how small decisions have the potential to complicate things. Take, for instance, that the URL for Toyota in the US is Toyota.com. The Worldwide URL is Toyota.co.jp. The recall clearly hasn’t just affected the US, and the coverage has certainly been worldwide, yet there doesn’t seem to be much consideration taken to make sure the approach is coordinated globally.
Perhaps the most important takeaway is one Toyota has taken to heart… That a willingness to adapt to the changing media environment may be the best crisis planning tool.
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Twitter Engages Students in the Classroom
Jill Krumsick
With budget cuts and increasing class sizes, professors are finding Twitter to be an effective in-class engagement tool. By asking students to tweet their questions and comments to the front of the room, more students are participating and professors are seeing conversations continue outside the classroom.
Staying On Top of the News in 2010
Jeff Whang
A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals the drastic shifts in how we consume the news, even from just a few years ago. Catching up on the news has truly “become a social experience.”
Video: State of the Internet
John Keehler
Beautiful video with some of the latest and greatest surprising facts and figures that reflect how ubiquitous the Internet has become.
Mobile Outlook 2010: Mobile Marketer (PDF)
Jeff Kauffman
This Mobile Marketer Outlook is jam backed with information, covering 22 mobile topics over 46 pages. As more mobile buzz fills your organization, this report is sure to get you headed in the right direction; no matter what area of mobile is being discussed.
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I love the Olympics. And I love the Olympics because it’s bigger than the sporting events – it’s seemingly superhuman ability, it’s a unified spirit, it’s dedication, national pride and history (even more so than American Idol!). The 2010 Vancouver Olympics are no different. But this year, dubbed the “social games,” spectators have been drawn into the experience more interactively than in years past. Here’s how an integrated digital experience has expanded our Olympic access and ultimately our level of involvement with the games.
Digital Matches Traditional Reach
Timo Lumme, the head of TV and marketing for the International Olympic Committee, stated that digital media has matched the efforts of traditional coverage, each contributing over 20,000 hours of coverage. Combined, the Vancouver Olympics expects to reach 3.5 billion viewers worldwide – that’s half of the world’s population. The NBCOlympics.com page views beat the total views of the Winter 2006 games in just 10 days and has seen over 35 million unique visitors. With widgets, interviews, stats, medal counters, playbacks and anytime access, the website has proved to be the hub of 2010 Olympic activity.
Mobile As Important Access Point
Mobile has accounted for a quarter of the digital coverage… a quarter!! The NY Times reported that NBCOlympics.com delivered over 62 million page views to mobile devices, surpassing total views from Bejing and tripling the number of video streams. And, with increased mobile capabilities and greater smart phone penetration, the market has expanded immensely – 7 out of 10 Vancouver games mobile viewers did not access the Bejing games via mobile. In addition, the Olympic iPhone app adds an interactive mobile experience that 60% of users rate as “very good.” The app moves beyond static schedules and stats by frequently updating with breaking news and videos, linking access to social media buzz and the creating a personalized experience with favorites.
Social Games Engage Spectators
Nielsen measured that 13% of viewers watching the opening ceremonies were simultaneously surfing the web and 41% of those surfers were on Facebook. Viewers are using the platform to connect with other spectators in conversation, but also in competition. Facebook’s Vancouver 2010 MiniGames app lets users get in on the action virtually with social games and a video game. Mimicking the Olympic model, users compete in the global Facebook community to win medals in selected winter events. Talk about increased brand engagement – now anyone has the opportunity to win a gold!
Real-time Interaction
Twitter allows users to interact both around and with the Olympics. The NBCOlympics.com page integrated not only a live Twitter feed, but an interactive Twitter tracker to help viewers quantify trending traffic around the games. Twitter itself has created an avenue for increased interaction with the games by creating a list of athletes. Followers can see updates from the athletes themselves to get a real-time, first person perspective that has previously not been possible.
With the close of the 2010 Olympics, the digital bar has been raised. Consumers now expect multi-screen, full content access and marketers must adapt. With personalization, multiple touch points and user engagement as digital trends, brands must look to emerging technologies and product enhancements to differentiate. Marketers are challenged to not only differentiate, but seamlessly integrate all efforts to create a full digital experience. By offering varied benefits on each platform and promoting the touch points throughout, Vancouver 2010 did a nice job of creating a truly integrated digital campaign. Thanks for the digital experience Vancouver! Now let’s see what London will offer in 2012.
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Almost a year ago, Brian Kress wrote about the importance of capturing conversations online and the options for measurement out there, from DIY solutions to robust buzz monitoring partners.
Since then, the demand for capturing conversations has only grown. Our agency has invited many of the best services in the industry to walk us through their capabilities in the space and how partnering with them would provide real value to our clients. And our clients themselves are increasingly curious about what’s being said about them in the marketplace by consumers.
Through all this activity, the one question that we’ve been hearing over and over is “so what do I do with this?” Sure, it’s great that we now have the capability to capture, in real-time, what people on Twitter, in the blogs and on forums are saying about our brand. But more than just the volume of conversation, whether it’s positive or negative and some links to actual conversations, what action can we take as marketers with this new source of data about our brand and consumers?
From a PR perspective, it’s fairly easy. The ability to track relevant conversations as they arise in real-time gives you the opportunity to address them, whether it be calming and addressing negative sentiment or encouraging and reinforcing positive sentiment. But from a research perspective, it gets tougher. How do you wade through the sometimes enormous amount of data (in the case of large brands that are frequently talked about) to find interesting insights of truth or give credence to the few mentions that appear (in the case of smaller, less talked about brands), hoping that it’s not just the vocal minority?
As a brand steward, buzz monitoring tools are incredibly useful to keep a real-time pulse on the brand, but it isn’t the research tool that will single-handedly make you rich with insights. It’s one tool in an arsenal of research tools and one particularly suited to partner with other forms of research. Here are a few ways you can use buzz monitoring with other research tools to make insights much more actionable:
1) Use secondary resources like Iconoculture or Mintel to support or dismiss insights we’re seeing in buzz monitoring. I’ll demonstrate this with a silly scenario to get the point across. Say you have a used clothing retailer brand who notices in their buzz monitoring tool that there’s an increase in volume of people using their product in games of “capture the flag.” Rather than dismiss this as simply a vocal minority, you could see if this trend was appearing in secondary research reports, where you might see that “capture the flag” is experiencing a resurgence in popularity or that flag making companies have been going out of business, leaving these consumers nowhere else to turn. In this case, secondary research could help put some weight (or dismiss) a discovery in the buzz monitoring tool.
2) Conduct primary research using insights discovered in buzz monitoring to see if those ideas have legs. If the tool leads to an insight that a brand has already considered or is much closer to their core business model, it may be worth conducting primary research or adding on to an existing piece of research to see how well that idea plays out in a group setting.
3) Deploy a quick quantitative online survey to get a sense of if a certain mindset scales across the demographic you’re targeting. One aspect of buzz monitoring that is often difficult to gauge is the demographics of the people talking about your brand. In this case, buzz monitoring would pair beautifully with a piece of quantitative research. Recruit respondents who fit your target market and then share the ideas that you’ve seen in buzz monitoring to see how well they do with your best customers (or potential customers).
The key is to use the tools we have at our disposal to come up with a more complete analysis, not looking at buzz monitoring in a vacuum.
At the end of the day, we have to remember that buzz monitoring is a much more passive form of research than traditional qualitative or quantitative, where we have much more control. Unless our clients have a robust social media response team, we typically can’t probe when consumers bring up an interesting insights on a blog. We can’t write the discussion guide and require our Facebook fans to fill out all the questions. And we don’t even know if MrBigMan83 is even a man. We’re here to listen. And by listening, we might get a nugget of insight that we could use as we look at our client’s business using all the tools we have at our disposal – buzz monitoring being just one of them.
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What Do People Ask Their Social Networks?
John Keehler
A new study from MIT and Microsoft Research looks at what kinds of questions people ask their online network of friends. The most popular types of questions are recommendations… And the most popular topics are technology and entertainment, followed by home and family.
Facebook Drives More Traffic than Google?
Brian Kress
Recent Compete data says yes. Steve Rubel builds an argument that if the 2000s were the Google decade, then the 2010s might be the Facebook decade. Facebook wants to be the beginning and end of its users web experience, and it’s well on its way.
Walmart Prepares for the Era of Internet TVs
Jeff Whang
Already seeing the decline of the DVD/network/cable/satellite TV, Walmart has agreed to purchase Vudu, a Silicon Valley start-up whose online movie service is being built into Internet-ready HDTVs and Blu-ray players. With the marketing power of Walmart, brace yourselves for the next must-have entertainment setup – the Internet-connected TV.
The Real Future of 3D is Printing
Jill Krumsick
Virtual 3D is all the rage – we’re seeing a trend of film, online and TV applications and are about to experience a 3D boom. But what about real 3D applications? 3D printers have been around a few years but are quickly coming to a place of mass commercialization with HP announcing interest this week. From printing everyday objects to biological matter to food, the opportunities are vast. If you think Avatar blew your mind, wait until you can print a kidney.
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Bringing Personalization to the :30 Spot
Brian Kress
I skip ads. So do around 70% of people with DVRs. As DVR penetration grows, networks and cable companies are desperate for a strategy to make people like me watch commercials. One approach is taking a page from the digital side of the business: personalized TV advertising. With behaviorally targeted ads that know what programs I watch and what cereal I buy, TV advertising might start to skip me.
Follow the 2010 Winter Games…on Twitter
Jeff Whang
Are you an Olympics geek? If you can’t dedicate time every night to watch the latest (often recorded) coverage, you might want to check out this link that compiles all the standard “best places to watch online” as well as a few ones you probably haven’t heard of…like the Twitter handles of tweeting athletes, Olympic iPhone apps and more.
The Google Zoo Adds an Aardvark
Jill Krumsick
In its seemingly social growth strategy, Google announced its acquisition of Aardvark last Friday. Aardvark is a social search engine that relies on its network of users for answers. Here’s how it works – users register, denote their areas of expertise, input a query and in about 5 minutes, receive an organic response from another user. It will be interesting to see how this model gets incorporated into Google’s search engine or if it simply remains independent as Aardvark.
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This week, Google introduced a new feature that represents its latest venture into social media, called Google Buzz. It’s essentially status updating directly through your Gmail account, and it’s Google’s attempt to embrace social media and the “real-time” web. It hasn’t rolled out to everyone one yet, but you might see it when you log into Gmail, or you can visit Google.com/buzz.
Here’s how it works…
Following People on Google Buzz
Log into your Gmail account, and you’ll now see a link on the left-hand side just below your inbox that says “Buzz.” Click on this link to get started. You’ll essentially see a very Twitter-like interface directly in Gmail that displays recent “activity” from people you follow. This “activity” is a mish-mash of activity from people directly posting into Google Buzz or activity on other Google-owned social platforms, like Picasa, YouTube and Google Reader. The view of my account is pictured below:
Posting to Google Buzz
When you post on Google Buzz, it’s essentially just like you would post to Twitter or as you’d update your Facebook status. Google Buzz allows you to post links and photos as well. In addition, Google allows you to connect other accounts, such as your YouTube, Flickr or Twitter account.
Google Buzz Profiles
One of the interesting features Google has released is what they’re calling “Buzz Profiles.” These are actually pretty interesting profile pages that Google wants to be a hub to all of your social activity. It will be indexed in Google’s search results, and I’m sure Google would like this to serve as the “bio” page when people Google individuals. You can see my Buzz profile below:
Google Buzz Mobile
Google has also taken the mobile version of Google Buzz seriously, and it can be accessed via mobile web browser. The mobile version of Google Buzz takes advantage of understanding your location, and can geotag your posts. In addition, it can utilize voice recognition to post to your buzz.
Sink or Swim?
There are a few challenges this new product faces that don’t bode well for its future success:
1. Baked into Gmail
Other forms of digital communication are slowly replacing email. Google seems to have aligned this product with Gmail purely to leverage existing connections and Gmail’s traffic. Long-term, however, it will need to be able to exist on its own beyond the walls of Gmail. Buzz profiles are an attempt at this, but they may not be enough.
2. Incomplete Integration with Twitter
Despite the fact that many are touting Buzz as a “Twitter Killer”, Google was smart to integrate Twitter updates. However, it’s an incomplete integration. Buzz can only pull in Twitter activity, you can’t push updates from Buzz to your Twitter account. This may limit the amount of usage the new service gets from Twitter users, who can more easily update multiple social accounts in one location.
3. No Facebook?
With Google Buzz, you can’t pull in your Facebook updates or updates from your friends, and you can’t post from Google Buzz directly into Facebook. With a Facebook connect integration, Google Buzz has a chance to become a social communication hub. Without a Facebook integration, the best shot it has is at a niche audience. Even a niche audience like Twitter has is unlikely, as Gmail had only around 36 million monthly unique visitors, according to the folks at Mashable.
…What About Brands?
It doesn’t appear that Google is taking any steps to clearly separate brands from people as a part of Google Buzz. If your company has a Gmail address, you could set up a Buzz Profile for it, but the structure is clearly geared towards people, not brands.
I’d recommend creating a profile for your brand simply for the search engine inclusion and link benefits. But for now, focus your updating energy on other platforms that have embraced brand presence in social media. We’d hope that in the near future, Google realizes that brands can be just as active as people.
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Of all of the different tools we have to evaluate the effectiveness of a website, eyetracking is probably the most misunderstood and underutilized.
Eyetracking is the mechanism we use to observe and measure what people actually look at on a page. For individual users, they show what the order in which various elements caught their attention and how long they looked at a specific area.
Figure 1: This example from the Universtity of Minnesota shows in what order and for how long a single user looked at different objects on this page.
Typically they also produce heat maps that demonstrate what everyone in the test looked at while they were on the page.
Figure 2: This example shows the areas where a group of users fixated their gaze most often (shown in red).
What people look at and consequently do is directly tied to what they came to the page to do in the first place. However, people don’t keep seeking until they are 100% certain they found the right answer. They typically stop at the first reasonably plausible one.
In general, the better your design is able to both 1) draw peoples’ attention to the area of the page that will enable them to complete their task and 2) enable them to recognize it as the solution to their problem, the better the page will perform at helping them accomplish their goals and make them happy customers.
So how do you know for certain that that they’re looking where you want them to look so that you can improve your design?
You could ask them what they look at. User interviews, focus groups and properly constructed surveys will help discover what people think. But for more reasons than can be discussed here, they are inadequate measures of behavior.
Site analytics measure behavior, but they don’t explain why that behavior occurred.
Professional usability lab studies explains the “why” question to a great degree – and I recommend at least a quick, inexpensive informal study (often several) for most projects – but it still requires interpretation. Eyetracking can help the design team understand, contextualize, visualize and interpret these problems.
How to Get Started
There are 3 general approaches to getting started with eye-tracking studies. Which one you choose depends on your goals, expertise, capacity, deadlines, margin for error and budget.
- Outsource
Outsourcing is the ideal option for organizations looking to manage the performance of a high-value project that eyetracking can measurably help improve, if your team does not have equipment, time or expertise to conduct them. - Bring it In-House
Organizations that regularly build and refine websites should consider whether training and hiring in-house experts makes sense. The equipment and software can be obtained at a fixed cost (systems sell for over $20k), and in many cases incremental costs can be relatively low. - Simulate
If it could be shown that the human eye is typically drawn to certain objects with defined characteristics in specific contexts, accurately predicting what people would look at on a page is a matter of putting the right algorithm in a screen interpretation engine. Eyetracking simulation engine AttentionWizard is said to be able to do just that for static images. Its creators claim 75% correlation with actual eyetracking studies. This is partially because it cannot interpret the context of a specific task, but with prices for testing each image far lower than traditional studies, accuracy at that level may be worthwhile.
Limitations
Eyetracking doesn’t measure peripheral vision. Just because someone’s eyes did not fixate on an area, it doesn’t mean they didn’t see it or weren’t affected by it. Nor do they read minds. Just because it appears as though someone looked at something, it doesn’t mean they comprehended it.
Figure 3: This example from useit.com shows that users looking for the current U.S. population looked and fixated directly at the number that answered their question. However, as Jakob Nielsen reports, only 14% of users successfully identified it for what it was. A closer look shows that users fixated on only the left part of the number, implying that they did not really comprehend what they had seen.
To answer questions you have about a Web product (be it a site, application, or some hybrid of both), make sure that the test actually measures what it is you need to study. Just as you would not use a stopwatch to measure the temperature in Hawaii, nor should you ask analytics, surveys and usability lab studies to measure what areas of a page draw peoples’ gaze.
No single research method measures everything, but in many circumstances eyetracking can be a good supplemental tool in your design arsenal.
Related Links
Eyetracking: Is it Worth It?
First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye
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What Do We Share?
Jeff Whang
Researchers at UPenn take the New York Times’ most emailed articles over the last 6 months (checking every 15 minutes) and categorized, controlled for how prominent the stories were on the site and came up with a conclusion as to what kind of information travels fastest – the good news or the bad news. Take a guess and read on.
How We Watch Online Television
John Keehler
In a recent survey, Nielsen found some marked differences between online television viewing and traditional viewing. Most notably, online television is used to catch-up on programming, becoming more of a DVR replacement than a traditional viewing replacement.
Presidency 2.0
Jill Krumsick
The Official White House iPhone app debuted a few weeks ago, connecting news, blog posts, photos and live streaming video from 1600 Pennsylvania straight to your mobile device. Seeking to provide transparency, the Obama administration is pursuing a multi-platform digital strategy including live stream YouTube chats, stimulus funding for increased broadband infrastructure and now the iPhone app.
Who Says the Future Needs an Advertising Agency?
Brian Kress
Bud Caddell continues a discussion on what the future model of “the advertising agency” looks like, if the future needs one at all. The provoking statement is this: Advertising agency of the future sounds a bit like horse drawn carriage of the future.
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