You don’t have to be in advertising to know technology moves quickly. Even last year’s “tech laggards” now have a smartphone and Facebook page. So what’s next? As we look forward into 2012, trends in technology continue to ripple through the ad industry. Whether it’s “swimming up the social stream,” talking to your smartphone or “Shazamming” the song in a commercial, companies scramble to stay relevant as digital pushes further into the center of the advertising world. We invite you to dive into our Top Ten Digital Trends Report for 2012 and catch a glimpse of what is just ahead.
Mobile Apps Versus Mobile Websites | John Tornow
If you’ve experienced an app attack at all in the past year, we understand, especially since most everything is going mobile these days. But what’s it going to be in 2012…the mobile app or the mobile web?
http://trends.clickhere.com/mobile-apps-vs-mobile-websites/
Taming the Social Stream | Scott Luther and Sarah Allen
Too much content, so little time – why many social platforms are creating features to help users filter the influx of information. So in an effort to help you filter your content feed, we’ve highlighted our top topics for 2012.
http://trends.clickhere.com/taming-the-social-stream/
Reuniting the SEM House | Derek Louden
Most of us are familiar with the saying “two is better than one.” But when it comes to search engine marketing, does it make sense to manage SEO and PPC campaigns separately anymore?
http://trends.clickhere.com/reuniting-the-sem-house/
Advertising in the Dust of the Digital Revolution | Amanda Plewes and Sarah Allen
Digital or traditional…what’s your final answer? Don’t choose just yet, because you may not have to. The lines have fully blurred and a new time has come.
http://trends.clickhere.com/advertising-in-digital-revolution/
Creativity + Technology: Walking Hand in Hand into the Sunset | Jayr Sotelo
Ever notice how the tech people still seem to be put in a quiet silo to play with their gadgets? Even though ad agencies have undergone all sorts of change over the past decade, there is more to be had. A new model is emerging where creative plus technology truly equals innovation.
http://trends.clickhere.com/creative-technology/
Watching TV, Tweeting and Chewing Gum | Alex Kenney
Multitask much? Well, so do consumers, now more than ever. So how do marketers connect with people doing six things at once? Read on to learn tips and tricks to create engaging cross-platform experiences for your brand.
http://trends.clickhere.com/tv-tweeting-and-chewing-gum/
Real Artificial Intelligence Has Arrived: Voice Recognition | Colin Hogan
The time has come…
You: “What’s the big deal with voice recognition technology?”
Siri: “Click the Read more link below to find out.”
http://trends.clickhere.com/real-ai/
The Next Big Step for Digital: The Internet of Things Gets Real | Brian Kress
Internet connectivity is almost always at our fingertips. Literally. And advertisers are finding even more ways to make products and devices interactive. Read more to get inspired on ways to really bring your product or service to life!
http://trends.clickhere.com/next-big-step-for-digital/
The Responsive Web: A Web Fit for the Future | Matt Carver
Look to your left and right. You’ll probably find a smartphone, tablet and laptop all in near proximity. For marketers, that used to mean a separate site for each device, but with the emergence of responsive web design, there is now a holistic solution we’d recommend investigating.
http://trends.clickhere.com/responsive-web/
Buying Audio and Video | Cheryl Huckabay
Digital changed the game, in more ways than we may have expected. Check out this article to learn why television and video and radio and audio aren’t necessarily synonymous terms anymore.
2009 brought search engine marketing (SEM) the heavily promoted Bing from Microsoft, along with Google scrambling to enhance search results with real-time social media, expanding universal search and personalizing search results. On Google’s paid search side, new developments include product listing ads, product extensions, site link ads, comparison ads and the extension of universal search to paid search. Welcome to Google’s “Caffeine,” slated to be fully rolled out in early 2010.
Even with the long shadow of the economic crisis, SEM will be a bright spot of opportunity for savvy online marketers willing to be quick studies, early adopters and experimenters. Nevertheless, some are saying this will be the death of natural search engine optimization (SEO) and become a boon for Google’s pay per click (PPC) marketing. Needless to say, where Google goes, other search engines will follow.
Google continues to rule with 65.7 percent of U.S. searches in December 2009, 1 percent more of the market share than in November. Even with all of its hype, Bing grew slightly at 0.4 percent and Yahoo! has declined 0.2 percent from November. Ask has hovered at the 3-4 percent range for quite some time, and AOL has slipped below 3 percent market share.
With the above in mind, the Click Here SEM team anticipates the following trends will drive opportunity in 2010.
Search Engine Optimization
The rumored death of SEO is greatly exaggerated! Recent Google changes to personalize search and show real-time social media results will revitalize search engine optimization. Traditional SEO tactics are still necessary, but the changes made by Google will cause a reconsideration of what is affordably in a client’s best interest. There is no doubt that relevant content will remain the king of high-ranking search results, but how some results are indexed and served is changing.
Probably no other change will cause more confusion for non-paid search engine marketing than will the “personalization” of Google search results. Personalizing search means that Google will be looking at personal search habits to serve more relevant results. For example, search for “fox” and if Google has seen the habit of going to news websites, the likely search results will not be for the carnivorous mammal. Google’s other major change is to show real-time social media results in a live-scrolling “Latest results for …” panel. If there are concerns about brand reputation, about which there might be social “buzz,” marketers should consider monitoring or interacting in real time with public opinion.
One could argue that 2009 was the year of the social network where millions of people signed up for Facebook and Twitter accounts. According to eMarketer, Twitter’s audience tripled in 2009 (from 6 million to 18 million users) and is expected to grow at a 15 percent clip in 2010 to over 26 million users. Never before has there been such a way for users to express themselves. Google and MSN have already embraced user tweets in their search results, and this trend will continue to improve the user experience and search result relevancy. Search results could begin incorporating tweets and status updates from existing Twitter lists and Facebook friends. However, with the new multitude of opinions comes the formidable challenge of deciding what truly matters. Expect the social aspect of search to take on an even more prominent role in the coming year.
To evolve in light of recent and forthcoming changes and to successfully optimize websites for search engines, websites must become “authorities” in their spaces by practicing traditional SEO tactics, frequently refreshing content, adding keyword-tagged images, posting videos across the Internet, distributing press releases online, participating in social media and having unique content that encourages revisits. All of this will need to be fed to the search engine indexing mechanisms.
Sponsored Search
Click Here expects 2010 to hold a number of exciting changes for PPC search marketing. From increased customization and new ad formats, to an increased role for social media, PPC search will be more relevant, customized and current.
The best thing about PPC search is how it enables users to find exactly the things for which they’re looking. Recently, we’ve seen a convergence of users learning how to use search engines more effectively and search engines learning how to best serve their audience. Through the years, these moves brought us iGoogle, Twitter’s search functionality and a host of other features allowing users to further personalize their search experience. These adaptations will be a major driver for a number of exciting changes in 2010.
One change will be the rollout of new ad formats by Google. These new ad formats feature product comparisons and images, video, additional site links, and maps and addresses – all inside the sponsored search unit. Multiple product images shown on the AdWords Blog:
Marketers can now more effectively showcase their products and services to an audience that is increasingly savvy about the links they choose to visit. When used correctly, these new tools will enable marketers to increase the quality of the traffic they attract.
Lastly, there are a number of different search themes that, while not new, will continue to develop in 2010. Vertical search engines, mobile search, local search and video search will continue to be refined and improved. An excellent example of this development comes with Hulu’s release of video search through the use of existing closed captioning, allowing users to search for specific words or mentions within a video. Google is also venturing into this space by soliciting users to donate existing voicemails from Google Voice. While most feel this technology will be used for voicemail transcription, we feel voice transcription will make its way into the video space to enhance Google’s search capabilities. Another area of growth lies in local search. It’s been shown that 80+ percent of users who search for a business locally will contact that business offline. Expect businesses and engines to continue to build out this space as they leverage its value in helping users find the local businesses they seek.
Summary
2010 will be an exciting year both for the search engines and the end users who can expect to benefit from improved functionality, usability and relevance. Marketers will have more tools available to reach their target audience that include richer ad units, enhanced content search options and ways to tap into the vast and growing social networks. Also, as Internet-enabled cell phone users become more ubiquitous, a lot of searches will be starting there and websites need to be ready. If a business is sensitive to social commentary, it needs to get involved with social media. If a business sells tangible products, it needs to take advantage of Google’s product extensions.
Search engines remain the most used Internet medium, second only to email, including spam. As the Internet becomes less of a static information medium and more interactive and social, search engines will expand to index this broad spectrum of engagement, thus crowding the results pages. Search-savvy marketers will be recasting their messages in a variety of media to be found in both natural and paid search.
View all 10 trends here: Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond.
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I don’t know about you, but my mobile phone has changed my life. It’s my main communication device, it’s my life organizer, it’s my camera, it’s my favorite toy … it’s even my alarm clock. Well, all right, that’s not entirely true – I know it’s changed your life, too.
As we’ve watched the mobile industry grow, we’ve seen the device morph into a highly functional, multifaceted tool and witnessed users grow more and more dependent. In 2009, mobile phone penetration in the U.S. was 91.4 percent and is expected to be 93.9 percent in 2010. And according to the Pew Research Center, 57.8 million Americans access the Web through their mobile device every day.
With numbers like these, it’s no surprise the mobile commerce industry has gained momentum. Brands are seeing real benefits with this channel extension as users have grown to expect more personalized, timely service and interaction. In 2010 we expect to not only see continued growth in m-commerce applications with more varied players entering the space, but also expect to see mobile devices used in physical commerce as well.
Commerce as a Function of Mobile
Mobile commerce is the extension of e-commerce to the mobile device. Using tools like mobile optimized websites and mobile applications, m-commerce has linked online purchasing to users on their local device, when and where it’s most convenient for them.
Retailers went mobile first. Companies like eBay, Amazon and GameStop experienced vast numbers of users accessing their mobile sites, but also saw real, monetary results. eBay reported $380 million in combined sales from its iPhone app and mobile site during the first nine months of 2009. In 2009, the m-commerce market hit $750 million and is slated to be over a billion-dollar industry in 2010.
With retail paving the way, banking systems began realizing the value of mobile as well. A 2009 study by Mercatus revealed a growing consumer interest in mobile banking, showing overall adoption growth from 7 percent in 2008 to 11 percent in 2009 – a level of growth that supersedes past industry innovations like ATMs, online banking and debit cards. Institutions offering mobile services outperformed the competition in consumer acquisition; Mercatus projects a 60 percent sales lift for those that offer mobile capabilities. Institutions such as Bank of America, U.S. Bank, Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Sun Trust and 1st Bank currently have mobile applications in place, but as consumers grow more confident in mobile interaction, mobile services are expected to be a pivotal tool in the purchase decision process.
In 2010, we assume continued exposure and growth for both goods and service markets. Mobile is becoming a necessity, and businesses must adapt to the channel to remain competitive.
Mobile as a Function of Commerce
What’s going to be interesting about 2010 is how mobile will change our interaction with plain old regular commerce, not just m-commerce. This is the year we buy goods and sell goods in real time, in real space, with – not from – our devices. Our definition of m-commerce is about to be widened, if not flipped, with mobile point-of-purchase payment systems.
Consumers will reap the benefits of innovations that offer m-wallet abilities, such as contactless payment systems. Contactless systems use a piece of hardware attached to the device that houses data and offers the ability to be swiped at the point of transaction. Credit card companies like VISA and MasterCard are testing chip-embedded stickers that attach to the device and can be scanned like a credit card. Slated to roll out in the U.S. in 2010, United Kingdom-based IMS Research projects over 12.5 million locations will be accepting contactless payment by 2013.
And there are innovations to increase a seller’s transaction capabilities, too. Recently announced systems like Square (started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey), Mophie and Verifone’s PAYware use an external hardware piece that plugs into the phone, lets users swipe their card and then emails the receipt. Essentially, this system turns any mobile phone into a credit card machine. The highly anticipated Square is set to roll out in early 2010, while PAYware is pushing a launch date as early as January 15, 2010.
In 2010, Commerce is Mobile
This year mobile will solidify its spot as a bona fide channel; brands should be prepared to compete in this market as consumers demand more service. Here are some things to think about as you guide your brand into the 2010 mobile space.
1.) Mobile-optimized sites are the lowest common denominator of mobile.
- Create a consistent brand experience as users jump from the computer to their mobile device to access the Web.
- Use the mobile real estate wisely by keeping it simple and focused – include only the most necessary information and purest functionality.
2.) Mobile applications are the opportunity for a locally stored brand experience.
- Add user benefit by creating functional tools that inspire repeat use.
- Expand your reach by looking for co-branding partnerships to create consumer solutions.
- Consumers accept apps as a form of entertainment, so add engagement with branded games, video or interactive experiences.
3.) Disruptive mobile technology will change the brick-and-mortar experience.
- Utilize mobile payment systems to take the leash off the cash register and rethink the customer experience.
- Add speed and operational efficiencies with mobile inventory systems and applications.
View all 10 trends here: Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond.
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The Web isn’t about eye-catching graphics, animations or even motion video. And while all those elements, when properly orchestrated, can significantly enrich the online user experience, at the end of the day the Web is really about communication. Simply put, the Web is a vehicle to deliver a message. And to communicate your message to the appropriate audience, you need to go where that audience is. And guess what … They’re not just sitting in front of their computers waiting to be spoon-fed the latest trend or topic via their favorite blog. The term “online” no longer implies being tethered to a desk and monitor. People are on the move. Living their lives at a quicker pace than ever before, with more information, and messaging, at their fingertips than ever before.
The meteoric rise in popularity and participation on Facebook serves as a solid indicator of this trend in online behavior. As of this writing, Facebook has in excess of 400 million active members. And what may be even more telling is that in excess of 100 million active users are interacting with the platform through their mobile devices. More than 60 million of those users engage with the platform via Facebook Connect or native API (application programming interface) from other websites or third-party applications.
And Facebook isn’t alone in this. Twitter has seen similar indicators within its membership, with an estimated 80 percent opting to “tweet and be tweeted” via their mobile devices. And as of December 2009, there was estimated to be more than 50,000 registered applications using the Twitter API.
So, armed with this information, we must ask ourselves what does 2010 hold for us in terms of new opportunities and challenges? Well, speaking as a technologist, we must focus “beyond the browser.” And what we mean is that we must look beyond the traditional walled garden in which we have come to find such comfort since Netscape provided us with that first real glimpse of what was possible with the medium in 1995.
With the social media alpha dogs of Facebook and Twitter leading the pack, it should be no surprise that other services and solutions are springing up and taking advantage of these communities, thereby expanding their reach and conversations to realms beyond the browser.
Location-aware, or location-sharing, mobile applications such as foursquare and Gowalla have already started to make inroads into the space. Even Kevin Rose (of Digg.com) has become an angel investor in both of these ventures.
According to its website, foursquare helps you find new ways to explore your city. See where your friends are, learn about the places they frequent and even unlock rewards as you travel through the city. The foursquare application is currently available worldwide and supports a variety of platforms, including iPhone, Blackberry and Google’s Android devices.
Gowalla is also a mobile app that allows you to tag or “check in” with your current location, such as your local Starbucks or someplace in the mall. From there, you can do a variety of things, such as see who has been where you are or, for that matter, who on your list of friends might be there now. Gowalla even takes location-sharing a step further by adding some game-play in the form of trading virtual items left or “dropped” at a given location.
Both of these applications take full advantage of the open interfaces with Twitter and Facebook by allowing you to add your friends from those platforms. Foursquare offers businesses such as restaurants and retail stores the opportunity to participate through give-aways or promotional items offered for patrons who check in frequently. In this scenario, business owners or managers are referred to as “mayors” of a particular location. This creates buzz for the business within the mobile community. You can also become the mayor if you’ve been to a particular location more than anyone else.
As online marketing professionals, we must be there to embrace these opportunities from both a technical and strategic perspective. It’s a whole new paradigm in terms of messaging and creative packaging. And the possibilities are expanding on a daily basis. Think of a sculptor, constrained for years by a rigid, unforgiving medium such as iron or stone, suddenly exposed to very malleable material such as clay or wood. His creativity allows him to produce things that had previously been difficult, if not outright impossible.
The scenario is much the same in today’s world of online technologies. The exposure of new platforms and content to developers via open APIs and wrappers, such as Facebook Connect, promises to allow us to spend more time focusing on our message and much less time strategizing on how to shoehorn it into a rigid framework or existing website. We are free to participate in virtually any format we choose, whether that be a location-aware mobile application that allows us to stay in constant communication or simply syndicating relevant content into our own heavily branded website, blog or desktop application or widget.
But we must not become so intoxicated with this newfound freedom that we forget that we live in a digital world that is constantly evolving. As we exercise our creative muscle, be that visually or technically, we must be diligent in validating the direction that we’re heading against our strategic vision for the future. The truth is that no matter how reliable the rumor mill may be, we really don’t know exactly what the future holds beyond a certain limit. And it is with that mind-set that we must embrace and adopt practices that allow us to flex and adapt to new platforms, devices and, perhaps most importantly, user behavior. When Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “The medium is the message” in 1964, I wonder if he realized how profound that statement would be for generations to come.
Now it’s also important to note that the decision to embrace any of these new platforms isn’t always automatic. That is to say, depending on your brand and your vision for that brand, this may not always make sense for you. In that vein, we have provided the following three simple steps that should significantly expedite the decision-making process.
1. Take inventory of your existing online presence. Before you head down a path, it’s important to get your bearings and have a solid grasp of where you are. Take the time to document your digital touch-points and don’t overlook items such as the Facebook pages, tweets or blogs of your employees.
2. Define and document a clear and concise digital strategy. This will enable you to evaluate your options and validate any choices you make as to how they align with where you want to take your brand. Technology for the sake of technology is rarely a good idea. Make sure you have a solid, strategic reason for the paths that you take.
3. Begin to identify the technical resources you have at your disposal. Whether this is an internal team of developers or a capable, reliable technology partner, this will help you set realistic expectations and reconcile those expectations with your overall objectives.
Once you’ve gone through these exercises and you know where you need to go, the next steps are pretty simple depending on your findings. Consider the following:
1. Facebook – Incorporate a Facebook Connect feature into your website via one of their cut-and-paste code snippets. Or implement the live chat feature for an upcoming event.
2. Twitter – Generate a Twitter feed of brand-related tweets and incorporate them into an existing website, blog or marketing dashboard.
3. Location-aware (Gowalla/foursquare) – If your business or brand is public-facing, consider seeding the Gowalla or foursquare communities via your employees. Identify someone from within your organization to become mayor for your location.
The digital space is constantly evolving. It’s quite true that the only constant here is change. This presents us with exciting opportunities, unique challenges and a seemingly endless series of decisions. If we approach these decisions in the context and with the attention they deserve, they will allow us to reach our goals and objectives well ahead of our original schedules.
View all 10 trends here: Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond.
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If you haven’t noticed, social networking has infiltrated our lives. We post our résumés, our pictures, our relationships, our minute-by-minute thoughts, nearly everything we are to create better connections with our friends and loved ones.
Quick to follow suit, gaming has been revolutionized because of social networking, creating a new genre that could perhaps end up being the main genre of gaming: social gaming. Social gaming in essence is playing games as a way of social interaction, and we currently see it in two forms: (1) playing games on social networking sites and (2) having social experiences inside traditional gaming venues. As we enter the next decade, we expect that these two separate pieces of social gaming will begin to merge.
What We’ve Seen So Far
2009 was a hallmark year for a couple of new forms of gaming: social gaming and mobile gaming, particularly because it saw some validation from the traditional gaming world. For instance, with its base of a few hundred million users, Facebook accelerated through the ranks to become the biggest gaming platform man has ever known. Also, game-publishing giant EA opened two new divisions focused around nontraditional gaming: 8lb Gorilla is a “micro-studio” that builds inexpensive games for the iPhone, and EA acquired Playfish, one of the leading studios in building social games on Facebook. Each of these moves demonstrated the viability of these new forms of gaming and a hint that they are probably here to stay.
As a result, consoles started to take this whole “social thing” to heart. OnLive, a microconsole dedicated to, among other things, sharing your gaming experiences with your friends, launched a beta program, which is expected to be released in early 2010. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 added access to Twitter and Facebook from your console, allowing users to find and follow their Facebook friends on Xbox 360. Sony’s PS3 launched PlayStation Home, a virtual world where users create an avatar, decorate a personal apartment and find friends in public spaces.
From the other hall of social gaming, the social networks, game developers have started to hone in on a model for social gaming. The model is typically referred to as “freemium,” which, at its heart, allows users to play the game for free, but to get additional, exclusive items, they may need to pay a small price. In Farmville, the most popular game on Facebook with 75 million monthly active users, players build their own farm by hoeing land and purchasing various seeds, animals and other farm necessities.
On top of the freemium model, the most successful Facebook games add, of course, a social element. Using Farmville as an example, friends can give other friends gifts like fences, geese or apple trees, or help fertilize crops. Also, any and all activities in the game are available to publish to the gamer’s wall for all of his/her friends to see.
Predictions for 2010
Social Networking Sites Provide Consistency of Platform for Social Interactions
One of the major problems currently in the social gaming space is that many developers haven’t agreed on a platform for how users will socialize their gaming experience. Most games currently create their own platform for social interactions by building leaderboards, allowing users to communicate over a headset with a team and setting up a profile on a console.
Instead, we expect that 2010 will give us, or at least start down the path of giving us, a swath of games and consoles that rely on a single platform for social interactions.
As of right now, the closest to building that platform is the player with the widest network, Facebook. Facebook has taken painful steps to build a good method for distributing connections off the site in their product Facebook Connect and the newly announced Open Graph. Facebook currently allows Facebook users to log into third-party websites, applications, mobile devices and gaming systems with their Facebook identity. While logged in, users can connect with friends via these media and post information and updates to their Facebook profile.
In 2010, we expect game publishers, developers and consoles to continue their exploration of what Facebook can offer and leverage the platform to find new, interesting ways for users to share their play with friends.
Influx of Beautiful, Inexpensive Games that Rely on the “Freemium” Model
While the social networking world has seen the value in the freemium model for producing games, many of the more traditional gaming outlets have yet to realize its potential. Some games, such as the Sims and World of Warcraft, are getting close, but we expect that 2010 will see a number of new games that leverage the console and, to a lesser extent, mobile’s ability to build immersive, 3-D worlds that gamers can access for free, with upgrades to purchase.
Something to keep an eye out for in this instance is Sony’s Sodium One. Sodium is a new sci-fi Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game that will launch as part of PlayStation Home on the PS3. Rather than taking the Farmville path or a 2-D Flash game that, according to the PlayStation Home director, “pales in comparison to a traditional gaming experience,” Sodium takes the next step with social gaming, making it “as enjoyable and compelling as traditional console games.” The game takes place in a sci-fi space world with a virtual economy and virtual goods, a series of casual mini-games and “Salt Shooter” – where players pilot a hovercraft to kill robots and earn resources to upgrade their ships and add components to their PlayStation Home.
While we haven’t seen Microsoft or Wii announce anything that fits the freemium model exactly, if Sodium One is successful in bringing more users over to PlayStation and growing Home’s 10 million user base, we should certainly see something coming out of the other respective camps.
Why this Matters for Marketers
As the social gaming world takes shape in 2010, marketers will be greeted with a slew of new opportunities to make an impact in this space.
1. Participating in the social platform of choice. Regardless of whether Facebook Open Graph ends up as the social platform going forward, marketers should certainly enter the fray. When thinking of ways to leverage digital and gaming, marketers should take into account ways to include their targets’ social connections as part of the promotion.
2. Sponsoring freemium virtual goods. The easiest opportunity for brands in the freemium-type experience is to sponsor a piece of content. It may be as easy as Tropicana sponsoring a free orange tree to put on your farm in Farmville that produces better-selling oranges, or it could get to a place where a marketer could have their own store inside a virtual economy built by one of these games. Every avatar needs some new clothes, you know.
Social gaming is certainly an emerging opportunity and field that will not only change the way we as marketers interact with our customers, but also the way our customers interact with each other. It is important that industry leaders participate as this marketplace grows and help to shape the outcome.
View all 10 trends here: Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond.
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The Internet you know and love is always changing. It’s a law to which we’ve all become accustomed. One month you’re tweeting and the next you’re checking in on Foursquare. But there’s a fundamental change happening you may not be aware of. One that is impacting the digital world in a far more fundamental and permanent manner that could topple even the likes of Google. It’s called the “Real-Time Web,” and 2010 is the beginning of its reign.
You’ve seen many examples of why the “Real-Time Web” is important. None more powerful than on January 15, 2009, when a Twitter update from a New York ferry passenger broke news of the Miracle on the Hudson. Traditional news outlets and Google lagged behind.
While Twitter is a great public example of the “Real-Time Web” in action, the largest is in our day-to-day interactions via Facebook. Over 55 million status updates are made each day. All are “real-time” updates that friends and family can immediately access. Through this simple feature, Facebook has changed our expectations for interacting with data. If your customers can see what their friends are doing “right now,” then they will expect to see other things “right now.” Delay will not be tolerated.
If Facebook and Twitter aren’t enough to convince you of the power of the “Real-Time Web,” remember that these sites didn’t single-handedly create these “real-time” expectations. Mobile may have been the first step. SMS text messaging is the most common “real-time” activity, with over 72 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers text messaging. It’s not just the young ones. In 2009, according to Nielsen Mobile, the average 45-54-year-old U.S. mobile subscriber sent/received an average of 160 text messages per month.
Brands must look to 2010 as the year to embrace the “Real-Time Web” as a fundamental and permanent change, and begin to deliver “real-time” experiences. Here’s how we believe it can be done:
1. Monitor Real-Time Content
Just as your customers keep up with friends and brands by following them on Facebook and Twitter, it’s important in 2010 to make a commitment to listen to all the real-time chatter happening about your brand. Here are a few easy ways to get you started in 2010:
• Download a Twitter client like Tweet Deck and set up a few search alerts for your branded terms. You’ll be immediately notified when anyone talks about your brand.
• If you already have a Facebook page for your brand, make sure to monitor your wall, as well as the comments made on your updates. The “real-time” content your fans are creating may be more important than general blog or message board chatter.
2. Respond in Real Time
It’s not enough just to listen; 2010 is the year to get involved. If you’re already monitoring “real-time” content, responding is the easiest way to begin creating your own “real-time” content. Responding doesn’t have to mean in-depth, personal communication. It can be, but for those brands worried about time commitment, it can be as simple as acknowledging that you’re listening.
• Assign one person from your organization to be an official representative for your brand. Someone from customer service or public relations may be best equipped to respond.
• Assign one hour of one day each week that this representative responds on Facebook or Twitter in “real time” to recent fans and followers.
3. Distribute Through Real-Time Channels
Responding might be a first step, but making a commitment to the “Real-Time” Web means creating “real-time” content. This can be as simple as distributing the content you publish now through “real-time” channels.
• Create a Twitter profile and a Facebook page for your brand. The cost of entry is low to get started, and you can customize as you evolve.
• Create a calendar for creating “real-time” content. Start simple and plan ahead, updating your status once a week and tweeting once a week. Find things to talk about other than responding, such as expertise in your category or tips and tricks for your customers.
• As you add new features to your site in the coming year, ask yourself what could be “real-time” or distributed through “real-time” channels.
The brands that embrace the “Real-Time Web” in 2010 will be providing best-in-class digital experiences and helping to shape the expectations of their customers for the future. Brands that ignore the power of “real time” will be left lagging, literally.
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2009 was the year that advertisers picked up on augmented reality (AR). Now, it isn’t as if AR is anything new – all of us are familiar with the heads-up display on a fighter jet or the night vision displayed on the windshields of high-end luxury vehicles. That’s augmented reality: the bridging of the digital and the real world.
But the prevalence of webcams on new laptops and the mere fact that a tipping point occurred for AR let us see what marketers had up their sleeve to introduce us to new experiences with their brands. Examples include:
• GE: Plug Into the Smart Grid
• USPS: Priority Mail Virtual Box Simulator
• BMW: Z4 launch
• Doritos: Sweet Chili Chips
In fact, we even got into the space with The Home Depot’s AR gift card experience.
The vast majority of these applications were laptop- or desktop-based, meaning that you had to be near a printer that could print a marker and hold it up to your webcam that would then activate a virtual 3-D object that you would see on your computer’s screen along with yourself. Cool, but more of a one-time-use novelty feature that isn’t exactly seamless.
So what does 2010 hold for AR? Naturally, it’s already beginning to go mobile. But instead of us having to wear Robocop- or Terminator-style headgear as we walk around, a few key technologies are taking hold that will make mobile AR the future. Smart phones give us a high-speed connection wherever we are. GPS finds our location, down to just a few feet. Accelerometers figure out how the phone is oriented. A compass figures out which direction the phone is pointing. And the all-important camera on our smart phones is our lens into the AR world. The era of the consumer having to print a marker and hold it up to a webcam is over. In mobile AR, the world is the marker. Take a quick browse of Apple’s App Store and you’ll already find applications like Yelp’s Monocle that overlays restaurant reviews through your iPhone’s camera.
While there are still some limitations to mobile AR that have to be worked out, such as the accuracy of the GPS and compass, before AR apps can deliver extremely accurate geo-targeted content, we’re already seeing companies start to address those issues by making the applications rely on a combination of GPS data and street-view 3-D data.
What doesn’t have to wait for the advances in the location-accuracy of apps (which we expect to happen quickly anyway) are the opportunities for advertisers to begin to play in this space, delivering true value and a branded experience for consumers. Here are a few ways we see this happening:
1. Mapping
We know that GPS and mapping are already key drivers of increasing mobile use. In fact, those functions are some of the most popular on mobile devices and have exploded in the past year.
Any brand that has a retail or physical presence has an opportunity to use AR to help its customers find those locations, ideally through a mobile app. Imagine you’re a customer of a bank, but instead of a list of addresses for ATMs close to you, you are able to see visually that it’s just a quarter of a mile to the right.
2. Gaming
Think scavenger hunts are fun? Imagine how fun they can be if certain landmarks are coded in such a way that when you hold your smart phone’s camera up to it, it reveals a clue to the next step in your journey. Game makers are already starting to play around with mobile AR gaming, and brands should look to take advantage of the incredible engagement opportunities of this platform.
3. Enhancing Traditional Advertising
Traditional advertising vehicles such as print, TV, POP and collateral no longer have a singular purpose. All can have an AR element that enhances the consumer experience. Think of print ads that can come alive as long-form TV spots or give you a 3-D demonstration of the product. Better yet, tie in context such as the user’s location and current weather and give them a demonstration of how that product or service would work in a way that’s tailored to where they live and what they’re doing right then. Imagine outdoor boards in pedestrian areas that let you experience the brand in a way that a quick visual and line of copy can’t. Let the hint of a line develop into an enhanced experience. LEGO® has already experimented with an AR kiosk where a customer can hold a box that holds thousands of pieces up to a kiosk and see the final product, all assembled.
Talk about inspiring! That’s the power of AR in the real world. And think about the ways that users can annotate and share their thoughts on certain products that you create (that you could obviously approve).
Beyond 2010
The last point about sharing is an important one because if there’s one thing that we can bet on with all applications of mobile AR, it’s that users will want to comment, annotate and leave their thoughts on nearly everything. And if brands don’t create channels that make it easy to do so, someone else will figure out a way and start to take that control out of your hands.
What’s exciting is how mobile AR will allow individuals to contribute their own knowledge, experiences and perspective to create a new view of the world, one that aggregates and harnesses this human capital and shares it with the entire world.
In 2010, we’re confident that you’ll see lots of innovative applications of mobile AR (and some bad ones). We hope that you consider how mobile AR could create an engaging experience for your brand. Listen to your customers through your customer service channels or through your social networking presence. Think about how you could provide value to your customers and prospects through helping them augment their reality. And finally, experiment and be creative in your approach with this evolving technology. A lot of folks are going to be playing in this realm – even if it’s simply to present themselves to the press and public as an innovative and forward-thinking company. As augmented reality becomes more widespread and consumers are more used to seeing it, it’s all the more important to push the boundaries that others have set to find something that users truly decide is something with which they want to interact.
The far future? Check out this TED video of what they’re playing around with at MIT. It’s a bit too Terminator-like for me, but does give us a glimpse of what AR might look like not in 2010, but maybe 2018. Let’s hope Sarah and John Connor know what they’re doing.
View all 10 trends here: Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond.
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“Multiple Attribution Protocol” (MAP) may be a mouthful, but it’s an emerging reporting methodology that will redirect the online marketing effectiveness debate and measure what’s really happening when consumers interact with online campaigns. It is also referred to as Engagement Mapping, E2C (Exposure to Conversion) and Attribution Management, among other names.
We can all agree it usually takes multiple exposures to a message to get consumers to take an action on a website … especially when that action is purchasing a product or service. Each of those exposures plays some part in getting consumers to take action.
MAP is the process of tracking, collecting and properly valuing all online advertisements that lead up to an action (e.g., conversion, lead, etc.). It potentially gives credit to all of the messaging that leads up to the action. It’s the sequence of events that is becoming important to report on, not just the last event. With MAP, we will no longer attribute credit, make payments, plan budgets or optimize against the last action reporting method.
Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say there are four messages that lead up to action:
Using the last action reporting method, the paid search click would get the total attribution for the action (sale). Even though the consumer was exposed to three previous messages that could have influenced the action, they get no credit for it. In fact, the consumer is often already in the bottom of the purchase funnel when that last action occurs. In the MAP method, all four of these messages would get attributed a portion of the action (sale), which could give credence to messages in all parts of the purchase funnel. This could fundamentally change how you plan, buy and optimize your campaigns. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Well, it’s not.
The industry is struggling to come up with a sound solution – best practices, if you will – to implement MAP. There are two main reasons why:
1. There can be an infinite number of paths a consumer can take prior to taking an action, which leads to an infinite number of ways to set attribution. Each of these paths could affect how a message gets attribution. And determining these rules of attribution can get complicated fast. As a simple example, in one path to conversion, a click on a display ad followed by a click on a search ad may yield a 50 percent attribution to each. On the other hand, if another path starts with the same click on the same display ad, followed by a click on a video ad, the video ad might get 75 percent attribution since it is seen as a higher-impact unit. The lower-impact display ad gets only 25 percent this time. Imagine how mind-boggling this can get when you’re potentially dealing with hundreds of different paths in which you would have to determine attribution.
2. The volume of data can be overwhelming. It’s like taking your current last action reporting method and juicing it with steroids … laced with crack. And usually there is a cost associated with not only the additional data needed, but the cost to process the data as well. To help us meet this demanding reporting need, we’ve developed our own reporting platform that we call ART™, which stands for Automated Reporting Technology. We are engineering ART™ to have the ability to process the type and amount of data needed to implement a MAP solution.
Yes, there are companies out there that are purporting to have developed solutions. Some of them are as simple as evenly distributing attribution to all of the messages leading up to an action, i.e., Even Distribution Method. So in the example above, if there are four online messages prior to an action, each message gets 25 percent attribution of the action. That might be fine if you are running a simple campaign where all the messages were the same standard display unit. Unfortunately, most campaigns these days have multiple channels and multiple levels of messaging within each channel, so an Even Distribution Method is intuitively the wrong approach.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are companies offering a “black box” approach that weights the attribution based not only on the types of messages, but the order of the messages. This approach is very appealing, but requires you to takes a “leap of faith” since it is virtually impossible to grasp exactly how the distribution is being applied … not to mention the difficulty in explaining it to clients.
While currently there are no industry standards when it comes to MAP methodology, there are a wide range of methodologies being heralded across the country. In addition to the Even Distribution Method and the “black box” approach, some are skewing attribution to the first message, skewing attribution to the last message, or giving attribution to only the first and last two messages. Bottom line, there may not be a “one size fits all” solution once you take into consideration the type of product/service and its purchase cycle. What MAP ultimately will do is take credit away from the messages at the bottom of the funnel and help distribute attribution across all parts of the funnel.
The key to MAP is understanding the influences that each of your messages have on the action and applying a fair attribution to each. This way, some credit can be given to each of the messages seen prior to an action. By doing that, MAP will give a much better look at how each piece of our online campaign works to drive successful actions.
While MAP is certainly a more desirable reporting methodology, there remains much work to be done toward developing practical solutions. Look for greater strides toward more executable solutions in 2010.
View all 10 trends here: Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond.
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Wander around any tourist-trap kind of place, and you’re going to see that wooden cutout painting of the muscle-bound man with a hole where the face should be. And around that contraption there will be a crowd gathered as folks poke their heads into that hole, placing their faces just above the neck of that overly caricatured strongman image. Friends take pictures or just laugh, and move on.
We like to do this sort of thing because we like to be the star attraction. It’s no different in the digital space.
Personalizing Creative in 2009
Combine the growing popularity of webcams with the advances in video-tracking technology, add the emergence of Facebook and what we have is the last year in putting our faces into the center of all kinds of cool stuff. The audience can now be the star attraction in digital creative with mind-blowing realism and depth. And the crowds are gathering here as well, en masse.
Put Your Face in It
For years we’ve been automatically superimposing our face on video clips à la “Elf Yourself.” The result is traditionally a kind of South Park-like visual where the face is an obvious two-dimensional cutout. The quality of that visual has improved dramatically to a point where the superimposed face now looks like it’s truly part of the video.
For example, this past holiday GameStop was offering 2,500 games for under $20. With this kind of deal, parents were able to freak out their gamers with tons of great gifts. We brought a few game characters out of their games to help spread the word. One of these characters, the fairy princess, used her magic to let you upload your gamer’s face, look into the future and see how your gamer would freak out.
To pull this off, we wanted the best freak-out video moment and the best technology available to superimpose a face on that video.
Arguably the best holiday freak-out moment is YouTube’s N64 kid, a viral phenomenon that has raked in over 10 million views. And one of the most advanced technologies used to put an image in a video comes from Oddcast.
So with that video and that technology, we put together a very realistic and hilarious interaction that let people put their faces on the freak-out kid’s head.
With one straight-on shot of a face, we could put that face on the kid and make it look up and down and sideways, perfectly tracking with the movement in the video. The lighting in the room plays off the uploaded face as if it were in the original video. And there was no cutout effect; the face was seamlessly blended onto the head of the freak-out kid.
People were uploading pictures of their dogs, their grandparents – bearded faces were quite popular – and in the end letting GameStop’s audience believably place themselves in such a popular holiday viral moment helped gather quite a crowd around GameStop’s message.
Beyond putting your face into a campaign with cutting-edge realism, 2009 was also the year people started putting their lives into a campaign.
The Story Is You
Facebook Connect (now Facebook Graph) is a way to, among other things, build a creative experience out of the data in someone’s Facebook account (pictures, interests, friends, etc.). The result is a new kind of storytelling, where the reader becomes the main character and artifacts of their life become components in the narrative. And it’s all done on the fly.
One of the many executions is Doritos Hotel 626, where people visit a horror-filled hotel to explore its many rooms while facing a variety of frightening challenges.
Using Facebook, the hotel is filled with images and information pulled from your Facebook profile. In one room, two masked victims are bound in chairs. You learn that these two unfortunate souls are two of your friends. Images of your friends’ profile pictures appear next to the figures in the masks. You have to choose which one you’d like to survive. In another room, you look into a sink filled with water to see a reflection of your own face looking back at you. Everywhere you go in this hotel, you see bits and pieces of your own world woven into the storyline, which deepens the immersion and increases your commitment to the story because it becomes your story about you.
The Webcam Connection
Webcams also offer an instant sense of real-time connection between the audience and the creative. In 2009 we created a site for Amstel Light that is all about experiencing the taste of Amsterdam. The art, the culture, the music, the nightlife, all of these things take on a unique color in the world of Amsterdam, and we wanted to place our audience in that world. So we did that literally using the webcam.
The Dutch Roar is a kind of Amsterdam version of the “Are you ready to rumble!” call. It’s a proclamation of the good times about to start. To share the flavor of Amstel’s Amsterdam, we wanted to teach folks how to do the Dutch Roar (speaking in Dutch), so we created a tutorial and a place where you can record yourself doing the Dutch Roar using the webcam. By making our audience a part of the site, they become more invested in the experience, which involves making a deeper impression and increasing shareability.
Things to Consider when Including Personalization
Looking back at the evolution of creative personalization that has taken place in 2009, it’s reasonable to look ahead and see that this is only going to become more prevalent in 2010. Before making your audience the star in your digital creative, consider these things:
1. Consider the technology your audience uses to share. Whether it’s digital cameras, webcams, social networks, IM, Twitter, email or whatever the case may be, there are many ways we inject ourselves into the digital space. Find the right contribution technology for the audience and your message.
2. Work with the content your audience is already sharing online. Different audiences share different things about themselves. Whether they like to leave a Facebook status update every 15 minutes or they just post photos every month or so, the kind of information they share should be your starting point in figuring out what kind of contribution they can make to your creative.
3. Make your audience the driver of the story. Narratives often have several chapters. Explore ways to make sure your audience’s contribution is the driving factor in the story’s evolution from chapter to chapter. This will help define your audience as a lead role in the experience.
4. Be mindful of privacy concerns. Some people feel more comfortable sharing than others. Take stock of how much of the user’s private experience is broadcast back to them through the creative. And ask yourself if it feels appropriate.
5. Make it shareable. Seeing ourselves as the star is a great incentive for us to share. Take advantage of that tendency we all have.
6. Be careful with the content. Not everyone plays nice online; devise a plan to filter out any inappropriate content.
Whether it’s the strongman cutout at the beach walk or a video we can put our face on, we will always be attracted to opportunities to put ourselves into scenes that are not of our own lives and become the star attraction.
View all 10 trends here: Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond.
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Welcome to our Newest Insights Report – Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing each of these trends on the blog. You can also read the entire report here: http://clickhere.com/trends/
It only takes a glance at today’s marketing and advertising trade publications or a scan of current news feeds, blog posts or Twitter buzz to know the predominant topic on every marketer’s mind is … digital.
- JupiterResearch’s report “CMO Priorities for 2009” stated that “achieving measureable ROI” and “developing programs that integrate digital” are a chief marketer’s top two goals.
- A recent study from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business entitled “The CMO Survey” shows online marketing spending as the number one area of focus for 2010.
- And eMarketer notes that social media is the top area of investment with an expected 75% increase over last year.
In other words, digital marketing has come of age.
So you can see why we view the future as quite bright. Of course, good planning certainly helps. Over the past 15 years, we’ve built Click Here to be uniquely equipped to help brands seize opportunities afforded by the ever-shifting digital landscape.
Over the years, our clients have relied on our seasoned team of experts as a resource for digital marketing thought leadership. Yes, we do lots of presentations, training and publishing. So as interest in our insights about the future grows, we compile and share our perspectives with valued clients, partners and all others interested in the digital future.
The following comes directly from many of the bright people on the Click Here team. As you’ll see, they’re subject matter experts with really interesting ideas about how brands can and should take advantage of the digital platform.
We hope you find it informative and useful. Should you have any questions or want additional information, just call, text, tweet or whatever your favorite digital touchpoint.
View all 10 trends here: Ten Digital Trends for 2010… and Beyond.
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