About Stephanie Wierwille

Posts by Stephanie Wierwille

February 8th, 2012

Traditionally, the Super Bowl is the biggest night for TV advertising, but Sunday night’s Super Bowl was a big night for digital, too. Trends from the 2011 Super Bowl were back, with advertisers releasing ads online prior to the Super Bowl in hopes of increasing viral spread and integrating mobile ads with the TV campaigns. In fact, this year over half of advertisers released ads online before the game, looking to draw on Volkswagen’s success last year. And mobile upped the ante from last year’s Anheuser-Busch iAd with a QR code in Go Daddy’s spot, linking to discounts off Go Daddy products. But this year, the digital showing went even further.

Mobile

Shazam announced just before the big night that the entire Super Bowl, the halftime show and many of the ads would be Shazamable. Viewers could Shazam the Toyota spot for the chance to win two Camrys, download an MP3 from Bud Light, watch a music video from Pepsi, vote for their favorite ads, access music content during the halftime show and check out stats about the plays and players during the game. While QR codes connect print to the digital world, Shazam is blazing the trail for connecting TV and audio to digital content. Shazam has not released exact participation stats, but has noted that with “millions” of viewers participating in the Super Bowl integration, 2012 will be “the year of the Shazamable TV ad.”

Chevy invited fans to “experience Super Bowl Sunday in a whole new way” with the Chevy Game Time mobile app, which allowed viewers to play trivia, take polls and enter to win one of 20 Chevrolets or other prizes.

Video Streaming

This year, the Super Bowl was streamable both online and from mobile devices. Verizon cut a deal with the NFL to exclusively stream the Super Bowl on iOS and Android devices with the NFL mobile app, and for the first year the game was streamed on computers. Live streaming is a testament to the changing landscape of TV: the Super Bowl is the biggest moment for TV every year, and yet it’s recognizing the growing trend of streaming TV online. The live stream had 2.1 million unique viewers, making it the most-watched sports game online. While there were limitations (such as a lack of live commercials), online streaming allowed for embedded live streams from Facebook and Twitter, further enhancing the experience with social engagement.

Social Media

And speaking of social, perhaps the biggest story of the night was in social media. Viewers are no longer relying solely on their witty Super Bowl party friends for commentary, but are turning to the second screen for live running commentary about the ads, halftime show and plays. At the end of the game, Twitter saw 12,233 tweets per second, setting a record for the highest tweet frequency during a live sports event.

Brands were prepared for viewers’ connection with Twitter, and hashtags got their fair share of airtime in the TV spots. Audi’s #SoLongVampires, Bud Light’s #MakeItPlatinum and Jack in the Box’s #MarryBacon hashtags all looked to increase engagement on Twitter. Coca-Cola’s polar bears even used the hashtag #GameDayPolarBears to comment on the game from Twitter and point users to more polar bear content on YouTube. In most cases, including hashtags in the spots seemed to work, as #MakeItPlatinum and #SoLongVampires became trending topics in mere minutes.

Coca-Cola saw success on social media even before kickoff with its Facebook event app, which asked fans to RSVP to watch the Polar Bowl – a live stream of the Coca-Cola polar bears’ reactions to the game. Before kickoff, 32,000 people had RSVPed, and the live stream received so many views that the Coke team had to add six servers to accommodate the traffic. Its Twitter feed received a whopping 12.5% increase in followers before the game even started.

The Super Bowl’s social media integration went beyond Twitter and Facebook into the location-based arena with Pizza Hut and Amex’s Foursquare offer. By checking into “Super Swarm Sunday,” Amex members got $5 off any food ordered from Pizza Hut.

The Takeaway

The 2012 Super Bowl is leading the way for digital to further enhance the TV entertainment experience and enhance engagement with advertisers. TV spots are no longer simply 30–60 seconds of impression time; they can be the beginning of an engaging experience with a brand that lasts far beyond those few, short seconds. Instead of looking at TV advertising in a silo, it can be used in conjunction with digital to begin an engaging customer journey.

November 21st, 2011

The term Web 3.0 has been thrown around for a couple of years, and techies disagree on the definition. Most predict that Web 3.0 will introduce personalized data; others see Web 3.0 as the integration of various platforms (Web + TV + mobile + etc.), with Web 4.0 integrating data with personal history and needs. Regardless of the definition, Web 2.0 is quickly evolving.

The Web So Far

Brief Recap: Where Web 1.0 connected people with information, Web 2.0 brought participation and social into the mix – people connecting with real people, not just identity-less usernames. Social is the main buzzword right now, but it’s adopting and developing quickly to a Web with much more personalization.

A More Intuitive Search

One of the key elements in this personalization process is semantic search and natural language processing (NLP). We’re used to keyword-based searches – if you want the answer to a question, you must type in the right keyword. This works well, until you’re looking for something, but you don’t know its official or common name. Enter semantic search.

The semantic Web is still in its infancy, but takes the stance that current search engines don’t work like natural speech, in which a listener understands speech based on its context, not just the key nouns. Search engines generally don’t understand the difference between adjectives and nouns and how they work together; they just return results that include any or both of those words, together or separate. Still-developing semantic search engines like Hakia and recently launched Lexxe strive to interpret the meaning of the search query to provide relevant results.

NLP makes Apple’s Siri special because it understands the context of a query. It can associate pronouns with the previous context, so you can tell it, “Remind me to have dinner with my aunt,” and later, “Also send her an email reminder.” Everyone’s buzzing about the fun of asking Siri philosophical questions, like “What’s the meaning of life?” and less philosophical questions, like “Who’s your daddy?” The finding? It’s not quite human, but it’s really good at sarcastically pretending. Ideally, NLP allows you to speak to Siri as you would a human, instead of throwing out several keywords as you would to a GPS.

Personalizing Experiences and Recommendations

Context-aware computing uses information about the user, such as stored history, location, social network, etc., to improve the relevance and quality of the experience. Each of these types of context is embedded in current tech tools, but the next step is a higher level of personalized data through learning about the user and customizing interactions.

Taking 3.0 to Mobile

Apps are also moving toward understanding context and personalizing accordingly. Facebook has long since personalized the newsfeed, delivering stories from the people with whom we interact the most and therefore those we likely care about the most. The app market has exploded with personalized recommendation apps like Alfred and Ness. They keep track of the restaurants you like and supply you with similar places. Ness takes it a step further, by integrating the tastes of your Facebook friends. Tools like this are pioneering personalized recommendations. Perhaps a Web 3.0 world would dole out recommendations based on GPS coordinates tracking where you spent the majority of your time in the past. Privacy concerns aside, we’re likely to see the emergence of more tools that learn what we like (and who we like) and make suggestions accordingly.

In a Nutshell…

The key emerging theme is that the Web is evolving from a hub for information that needs to be sorted and sifted through until we find what applies to us. As it develops to learn more about the user, it can become more personalized to the needs of the user, making it much more relevant and efficient.

What About Marketing?

As marketers, this begs the question: how can we leverage the evolution of digital to better understand our target audience and personalize experiences according to their tastes?

We have a much better shot at getting to know the target audience as the Web evolves. By integrating user history, social network, preferences and interests into a central hub, we can move beyond demographics and behavior to users’ psychographics. What are their interests? What topics are they influential about? What motivates them in the digital sphere? With answers to those questions, targeting becomes a more individualized experience instead of just sending out a general message intent on persuading the demographic-specific masses. Currently, brands respond to individual Twitter and Facebook users to create relationships and retarget media placement to consumers based on their history. But as web users continue to personalize more of their tools, there’s even more of an opportunity to customize messages to be relevant to the individual user, not just the audience as a whole.