John Battelle's Conversational Marketing Summit, which debuted last fall with much acclaim in a more intimate setting in San Francisco, faced a challenging task with its second edition last week in New York.
For starters, the speaker lineup was impressive, but two of the most important players of the social media Web were noticeably absent: Facebook (which, to be fair, took part last year) and Twitter. Yes, where was Twitter, the epitome of online conversations? Or at least another micro-blogging service?
Additionally, and more crucially, the program had to deal with what business lingo calls a "good problem:" the summit last fall had done such an excellent job establishing and exhaustively addressing the topic that it was hard for the NY program to offer new insights. Sure, the trend toward and the need for conversational media have continued and amplified. So has the emergence of the distributed Internet, or in Battelle's words: "To keep building our brands, we have to go to where the audience has gone." And the audience has gone to conversational media, as traffic data suggests, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
The most successful new online brands are indeed conversational: Blogging service Wordpress, for example, experienced a whopping 202 percent traffic growth since last year, YouTube is up by 80 percent, Wikipedia by 28 percent, Facebook by 72 percent, and Flickr by nearly 86 percent. Sites with tools, services, and platforms that enable conversations to thrive are thriving themselves while the traffic to traditional properties (aka portals) stagnates or shrinks.
"Too many advertisers buy impressions instead of making impressions," Matt Freeman of GoFish remarked. Despite all the momentum that conversational media enjoys, as far as marketers' best practices and tools are concerned, not so much has actually changed since the last CM Summit. And some of the panels seemed to artificially prolong a conversation that had already ended last fall.
B2B = B2C²
Yet it was still an excellent program that Battelle and team put together. Focusing on the role of conversational media in building brands, the summit set out to find the "online analogs to the executions we so love in magazines and television."
Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer of General Electric, was well-suited to provide answers, for she represents an old, venerable brand (the "Hillary Clinton of brands," as someone in the audience framed it) that is successfully adapting to the new branding paradigms on the web. Overseeing a $1 billion budget, she can afford to experiment. But it's not only the money, it's the latitude: "GE is a brand with the permission to do a lot of things," Battelle described it.
Comstock spoke about the importance of "visual storytelling" and GE's continued foray into social media and conversational marketing. She said that the company should--and will--be more aggressive in embracing online conversations, further enhancing the use of embedded video ads and engaging audiences through multimedia content in all of its online channels: "The media plan is becoming the distribution channel." Comstock also made an interesting point about GE's investment in consumer marketing: in her eyes, it elevates the overall brand because it provides a strong umbrella for all of GE's B2B marketing. She's on top of an emerging trend: at the end of the day, enterprise clients are consumers and have the same emotional needs (or as the saying goes, "B2B customers are consumers who have the luxury of having a company pay for what they desire"). On the engagement level, conversational media seem to increasingly force B2B marketers to think like consumer marketers and develop programs that connect directly with the customer--through narratives rather than benefit statements and feature lists.
Will standardized metrics stifle innovation?
The most interesting debates throughout the two-day program centered on the elephant in the room: measurement. Most people in the industry would probably agree that the "end of the click" is near. CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) and CTR (click-through-rate) do not suffice anymore as go-to metrics for the effectiveness of brand-building display advertising campaigns.
A recent report from Starcom MediaVest suggests that the majority of clicks being purchased are being consumed by unemployed, twenty-something, gambling, shopaholic, Internet addicts: "Heavy clickers represent just 6 percent of the online population yet account for 50 percent of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, (...) heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites--a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers."
Therefore the cry for new types of brand engagement metrics is getting louder: "There is more and more emphasis by advertisers for greater return-on-objectives in campaigns, particularly in the digital space where the accountability data is so readily available," said Grant Prentice, Starcom USA's director of connections research and analytics. "'Natural Born Clickers' shows us that we can't count on click-through rate as our primary success metric for display ads; Starcom is more reliant on shifts in brand attitude metrics and analytics tying online exposure to sales as the true measures of online advertising efficacy." Added Battelle: "The success of online advertising can no longer be defined only by direct response metrics. Today's brand marketers are focusing on an entirely different set of parameters."
However, at present, there exists a plethora of metrics but no standardized set of measurements that lets conversational marketers prove the impact of their programs.
"One of the greatest barriers that we've seen for marketers in social media has been a general lack of standards and tools for campaign measurement and reporting," said Debra Aho Williamson, analyst at eMarketer. "There are, of course, vendors who supply disconnected data points, but it has so far been up to the marketer to wade through this sea of data themselves. What is needed is a single device or methodology that aggregates relevant data in an easily digestible form." Several companies and industry alliances have developed dashboard models seeking to fill that gap.
Federated Media, the summit organizer, introduced its own product: the Conversational Measurement Toolbox, an open suite of campaign measurement, planning, and reporting tools across the three dimensions--"engagement-amplification-equity"--offering marketers greater control and insight into their conversational marketing efforts.
Not everyone working on the creative side of the business is buying into the quest for a standardization of metrics. George Bennett, founder and CEO of branded entertainment firm Magic Bullet Media, contends that viral marketing campaigns are by nature unmeasurable, at least by standardized measures.
In his eyes, viral content, by definition, spreads through paths that are outside of the marketer's domain and are therefore difficult to track--and that's exactly how it should be. Well, probably not much longer. Video analytics firm Visible Measures announced Monday that it is launching a service that enables advertisers and agencies to measure the viral reach and audience engagement of video campaigns. Visible Measures' technology monitors user engagement in a given video stream, and its Viral Reach Database tracks video performance over 80 million unique videos across 150 of the Web's most popular video-sharing sites.
Let 100 flowers bloom
Amid the fixation on engagement metrics, Rich Silverstein, co-chairman and partner of advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, brought back the idea of the good old big idea: "If it's good, it will work. Nice ideas that are big and deep will go a long way." And they even become a broader conversation, a cultural phenomenon, as proven by the recent Clinton vs. Obama Saturday Night Live spot (and a Time cover), both of which were inspired by a Silberstein NBA commercial.
Maybe a standardization of metrics would indeed stifle innovation and social media marketers' appetite for experiments. In the unregulated, fragmented social media space that we're in right now, anything goes, which may very well be a major factor for its vibrancy. Failure is always an option. Andy Markowitz from Kraft Foods quoted Guy Kawasaki: "Let 100 flowers boom."
However, Steve Rubel, senior vice president and director of insights for Edelman Digital, slammed the industry.
"We've gone backwards. There's no standard. The TV screen has a number. A dollar is a dollar. Having a standard makes transactions work. IAB has been moving slowly, fearing, justifiably, that if they come down from Mt. Sinai with two tablets offering a Ten Commandments of metrics, they worry that things could change in six months and render any standard useless," said Rubel, who also writes the Micro Persuasion blog. "Because there are no standards, all agencies are speaking different languages and no one has an answer."
Yet he reminded the audience that the "social Web is made of people" and demanded additional qualitative metrics that measure the impact of conversational marketing on the other side of the equation--the consumer. Social media, at its core, is about collaboration, he argued, and attempts to simply apply the old, quantitative templates of tracking marketing programs would fall short of capturing the essence of online conversations. They are no longer one-way streets: "Consumers are tired of being treated like cattle." They know they are marketed to and expect substantial value in return for their permission, said Rubel.
Consequently, metrics failing to measure the value of marketing programs for consumers would be one-sided and skewed. He also suggested rebranding "conversational marketing" as "collaborative marketing."
"Conversations are just a means to an end," he said, and he finds them valueless if they don't have a positive impact on consumers' lives. That's a somewhat radical proposition, seemingly far ahead of its time. What would truly consumer-focused, impact-driven conversational marketing metrics look like? A good question for the next CM Summit, this fall, in San Francisco.
Sony BMG, one of the top four recording companies, has signed a deal with Mozes, a start-up that connects communities through mobile phones.
Mozes will hand Sony BMG music artists a way to communicate with fans through text and voice messages. Right off, this isn't spam, says the company's CEO Dorrian Porter.
He says Mozes only sends messages to people who have opted into the program. If you're a hard-core fan of musician Teddy Geiger, Porter says, you'll want him texting you with his next concert date or leaving a voice message about an upcoming release (Geiger uses the service, Porter said).
"People want a way to manage their messages," Porter said. "This is a way for people to be in control of who communicates with them on their cell phones."
Under the terms of the deal, Sony BMG artists can send text and voice message updates to fans, who in turn can send their own messages back as well as check out those left by others.
Bands are making their fans aware of the service during concert performances by shouting out their text codes. Concert-goers join the service by texting the performer and opting in.
For Sony BMG, this marketing method can offer a much more directed link to its target communities. Porter said Mozes has deals with a major retailer and NBA team.
Mozes charges companies a monthly fee, but the service is free to consumers. The 22-employee company based in Palo Alto, Calif., raised $11.5 million recently in a second round of funding, according to TechCrunch.
Google increased its market share of searches in the United States in May, rising from 67.9 percent share in April to 68.29 percent in May, analyst firm Hitwise reported Tuesday.
During the same period, Yahoo dropped from 20.28 percent to 19.95 percent and Microsoft dropped from 6.26 percent to 5.89 percent. Fourth-place Ask.com increased slightly from 4.17 percent to 4.23 percent, Hitwise said.
Search share is financially important because it means there are more opportunities to sell advertisements.
In the U.K., Google had 87 percent search share to Yahoo's 4.09 percent, Microsoft's 3.72 percent, and Ask.com's 3.07 percent.
Two Microsoft research groups, Microsoft Research Asia and Microsoft Office Labs, have launched Task Market, an online marketplace for jobs that can be done on Office applications.
Like Elance, oDesk, and other piecework job sites, Task Market is a marketplace for people with skills and time--and those that need them.
Task Market is focused on very specific, and nontechnical jobs. At the moment, the only job categories allowed on the site are writing, editing, translation, and basic design. Why not programming or scripting or multimedia editing? Because, as the FAQ says, "By focusing on tasks accomplished using applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, Task Market makes it quicker and easier for small businesses to get their job done."
Of course, Webware recommends Web-based productivity suites (like Google Docs) for team editing and collaboration, but there's as yet no marketplace service for Google like Task Market. Anybody want to build one?
Each job in Task Market has its own discussion thread, in which bidders for the job can communicate with the person who wants it done. There doesn't appear to be a way to contact individuals privately, though, which is odd. Users (both contractors and customers) get ratings--just like on eBay--once a task is complete.
Task Market is a simple and clear service for finding document-based tasks for hire.
Task Market lets employers specify the fee they're willing to pay for a job, and all payments go through eBay's PayPal.
Task Market's big benefit right now is that it is very simple to get into. It's easy to post a job, and it's easy to scan the available tasks. More mature services, such as oDesk, provide better job-tracking services, as well as more options for users to promote themselves and set up teams.
The site, still in "tech preview," and has few jobs on it.
Demand in emerging markets fueled worldwide growth in the cell phone market for the first quarter of 2008, according to a new report from Gartner.
The firm published a report on Wednesday that said worldwide sales had increased by 13.6 percent in the first quarter compared to the first quarter of 2007. Much of this growth came from developing markets.
Sales in Asia jumped 26.6 percent from the same quarter in 2007 driven by demand in India and South Korea, as consumers upgraded their handsets before extending carrier contracts. Sales also increased by 25.8 percent in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. And the biggest growth was seen in Latin America where sales increased 28.4 percent compared with the first quarter of 2007.
Meanwhile sales in Western Europe dropped about 16.4 percent, the first decline in sales in this region since 2001 when Gartner first began tracking the sector. Sales in Japan also dropped about 10 percent.
"While sales in emerging markets continued to be driven by strong net new subscribers' growth, mature markets felt the pressure of an uncertain economic environment," Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner, said in a statement.
In North America, Gartner found that sales increased only 2.4 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. Gartner's numbers differ from those of another research firm NPD Group, which found that sales of handsets in the U.S. actually declined 22 percent compared to the first quarter of 2007.
Gartner's analysts said they believe that the mobile handset industry will continue to grow about 10 percent to 15 percent in 2008, driven mostly by emerging markets. But the firm also warns that the current economic slowdown could further slow growth in mature markets, while higher food prices could lead to longer replacement cycles in emerging markets.
The sales cycle in the U.S. has already started to lengthen. A recent customer survey by J.D. Power and Associates found that consumers in the U.S. are holding onto their phones, on average, a month longer than they had previously. So instead of replacing a phone every 16.6 months, as Americans had done in 2006, they are replacing phones, on average, every 17.7 months.
In addition to economic woes, the market will likely slow a bit due to market penetration. With nearly 3 billion cell phones in the market already and penetration over 80 percent in places like the U.S., it makes sense that sales in these regions would slow.
The good news is that consumers in developed markets are starting to buy more smartphones, which typically cost more and offer better profit margins for manufacturers. These handsets typically sell for between $200 and $600, compared to more basic phones which sell for about $60.
The challenge for handset manufacturers going forward will be striking a balance between offering more expensive, feature-rich devices for developed markets like Europe, Japan, and the U.S. and also offering lower-cost, basic phones for the emerging markets, such as India, China, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.
(Credit:
ComScore)
Google gained share of U.S. search in April compared with rivals, ComScore said Wednesday.
Compared with March, the company gained 1.8 percentage points to reach 61.6 percent share, ComScore said. Yahoo dropped 0.9 percentage points to 20.4 percent, Microsoft dropped 0.3 to 9.1 percent, AOL dropped 0.2 to 4.6 percent, and Ask dropped 0.4 percent to 4.3.
Americans conducted 10.6 billion search queries total in April, a number that dropped 2 percent from March, ComScore said. That means Google increased its absolute number of queries 1 percent, but all the others dropped.
Google passed Yahoo in its share of monthly visitors in the United States for the first time this April, buoyed by growth in search and YouTube videos, according to ComScore statistics released Thursday.
However, underscoring the variability of this sort of measurement, which extrapolates overall data from the usage of a "panel" of users at home and work, ComScore rival Nielsen Online released its own data as well with some different results. Although it also showed Google as No. 1 in terms of unique users, it said Google passed Yahoo way back in January 2007.
ComScore said Google sites had 141.1 million unique visitors in April, a tad ahead of Yahoo's 140.6 million. Microsoft was in third at 121.2 million, with AOL at 111.3 million.
Nielsen's data showed Google at 128.2 million, Microsoft at 122.1 million, and Yahoo at 117.1 million.
Nielsen also provides information on time spent at the sites, though. There, Yahoo leads its rivals with 3 hours and 9 minutes per month, but AOL owner Time Warner leads Yahoo at 3 hours 40 minutes per month.
Microsoft's usage was 2 hours and 17 minutes, and Google was 1 hour and 47 minutes, Nielsen said.
Remember the movie The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn as unlikely brothers, shot before the backdrop of vertiginous San Francisco?
Well, here's a new interface for the city by the Bay: SFZero is "a new representation for the data that's already there. Your mind is full of inaccurate representations that are affecting the way you use the San Francisco data flow, steering you away from interaction and collaboration and toward unproductive reflexive data loops.
SFZero designers are working double shifts to engineer this next-generation interface that will bring you together with your cohabitants to experience the freedom that is hard-coded into San Francisco's protocol."
Sounds enigmatic, looks enigmatic, and is enigmatic. I am therefore not sure if I fully get it, but in any case, SFZero seems to be a new kind of ARG (alternate-reality game)--a "Collaborative Production Game," as they call it.
"Let Someone Else Plan Your Day!" SFZero says. "Release total control of your life to an anonymous source that supplies you with instructions and directions!"
How can you not sign up for that?
Hat tip to Chelsea Holden Baker.
Update 4:07: I corrected a typo in the Yahoo market share statistics.
When you're talking about billions and billions of search queries, each potentially with some keyword-based ads alongside, every few hundredths of a percent of market share is important in the search market.
And that's what Google carved away from its main competition yet again, according to statistic for U.S. searches performed in April. Google increased its share from 67.25 percent in March to 67.90 percent in April, while Yahoo dropped a smidgen from 20.29 percent to 20.28 and Microsoft dropped from 6.65 percent to 6.26 percent. Ask.com, in fourth place, eked out an increase from 4.09 percent to 4.17 percent, Hitwise said.
The study also spotlighted Google's starring--and growing--role in sending traffic to various industries.
In April in the United States, Google was responsible for delivering about 31 percent of the Internet traffic at health and medical sites. For travel, Google was responsible for 23 percent of Internet traffic; for shopping and classifieds, 17 percent; news and media, 15 percent; and entertainment, 15 percent.
In all those areas and a few others, Google gained share over search rivals, Hitwise said.
(Credit:
Hitwise)
Google was the dominant site to watch videos in the United States in March.
(Credit: ComScore)People in the United States watched about 11.5 billion videos online in March, and Google extended its dominance in the area, according to new figures released Monday.
Google's sites served up 38 percent of the total videos watched, and YouTube accounted for 98 percent of Google's tally, ComScore said. Google gained 2.6 percentage points of market share since February.
Rivals are far, far behind: Fox Interactive Media, with 4.2 percent share; Yahoo with 2.9 percent, Viacom with 2.2 percent; and Microsoft with 2.1 percent.
Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006. It's working on new YouTube ad technology, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said last week, to try to make more money from the video site.
The total number of videos watched grew 13 percent since February 2008 and 64 percent since March 2007, the Web analysis firm said.
