Dude, What Are You Doing On Pinterest?

Over the course of the semester and in our final group project, I explored the notion of social media across multiple channels, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterst, Tublr, just to name a few. In both class discussions and in my group project team meetings, it was impossible to not laugh at notion of men on Pinterst and the inevitable   joke about an Alpha male using his Pinterst page to share a baking recipe or his favorite outfit. However, in a recently published article by Pinerest, in an effort to celebrate their 5 year anniversary, they published their growth stats, with particular attention on the numbers of male users on their website.

According to the article, the growth of their male users is significant.

"We doubled our male user base in the U.S. this year," Pinterest says. "Last year our male user base in the U.S. grew 73% year over year, and has been picking up in the past 6 months (54%) vs. the prior 6 months (40%), which is outpacing overall Pinterest growth."

The rest of the article goes into detail around the most popular uses of male Pinterst pages, such as:

1. Reading Lists
2. Fishing Spots
3. Ideas for Man Caves
4. Travel
5. Tattoos
6. Comics

As advertisers and marketers try to target males, it is important for them to recognize their increased interest in Pinterest and leverage this to their advantage. As Pinerest tries to sync products to seamless purchases, it is important to move past the stereotype Pinerest user to really look at the numbers and recognize that this is a valuable channel to explore to target the male demographic. 

Show Me The Money

Over the course of the semester, we have talked multiple times about the Facebook messenger app and the ability for Facebook to leverage its vast user base in avenues beyond their newsfeed. Facebook this week announced that through its messenger app, American users would be able to link their debt cards to "message money to one another just as easily as they send a snapshot or text." While not completely unexpected by Wall Street analysts, the peer-to-peer payments market presents a really good opportunity for Facebook to enter a fairly undeveloped market.

According to the New York Times article, not only is the peer to peer market a ripe one to enter, but the ability to have direct access to debit cards opens many different avenues for Facebook to explore and this is truly where there will be a ROI. "Facebook could use this as a back door to get people’s debit cards to enable the buy button” which will afford its users a seamless integration to purchase things they desire. This is coupled with the fact that Facebook has actively sought to increase their foothold and increase penetration with their messenger app and this is one way they plan to leverage this platform.

The company’s Messenger app is one of the largest platforms in the world, with more than 500 million monthly users. And last year, Facebook spent nearly $22 billion to buy WhatsApp, a separate messaging platform that now counts more than 700 million active users globally.

As someone who is an active user of the only true rival in this space right now, Venmo (screen shot below), a mobile payment app owned by PayPal, I would be happy to switch if the service were easier or in the case of Facebook, makes a seamless transition from having a conversation with a friend to sending them money. My concern, both via Venmo or the new Facebook App is the direct linkage to my debt account. I understand there are security settings, but having direct access to my debt account does concern me. Its the exact reason that I never use my debt card as a credit card for the fear that my account information can be taken. The other big rival would be Apple Pay, but at the moment, it doesn't have the peer to peer capabilities. Overall, I think this is a positive move for Facebook and a tangile way to account for the sizable investment it has made in the messaging space and as its seeks to become more than a social media outlet, this is a logical foray into something  that leverages their 1.3B users.

Excuse me, What Time is it?

As an amateur watch connoisseur, I like to believe that I have some type of appreciation for fine timepieces. This week much of the hype around watches was focused on reveal of the Apple Watch, in all its variations and glory. Like most who watched the launch, I was keen to hear about all of the bells and whistles. However, there was a subtle but intentional thing Apple did in its promotional material, that while in the scheme of the watch itself is inconsequential, in symbolic nature it reverberates well beyond as a metaphor and I give my kudos to the folks at Apple who made this suggestion. Traditionally in watch adverts, the time is set to 10:10 in order to showcase the face of the watch and the company logo, but Apple chose 10:09, an ode to it being ahead of the times. The watch market is know for precision and expertise over years of craftsmanship and as the new kids on the block, Apple tried to make a mark by distinguishing themselves from their competitors. 

It appears that Apple wants the Apple Watch's time to be ahead of even Timex, and displays a specific time of 10:09:00 or 10:09:30, both of which allow Apple to consider itself "ahead of the times" with the Apple Watch.

While some in the industry think that the reason for the 10:09 is due to symmetry, there is no doubt that what Apple did was intentional and think this is a great way to give a visual demonstration of what they are trying to be - ahead of the times.

You Must Protect This House

Under Armour, the fitness apparel marker is making a sizable financial commitment, in excess of 700M, in its effort to enter the electronic apparel and monitoring apps market. In the company's short 19 year history, it has risen to $3B annual revenue company driven largely off of it moisture-wicking fabric for workout clothes. However, in their effort to be cutting edge, Chief Executive of Under Armour, Kevin Plank sees the wave of the future as a deviation from its current operating model. UA will move beyond just apparel towards smart-clothing that will be able to track body movement and calories burned.

“If we believe that our future is going to be defined by these hard pieces of glass or plastic that sit in our back pockets, you’re crazy,” Mr. Plank recently told investors. “It is going to convert into apparel.”

Under Armour sees its acquisition of fitness apps, including two deals announced this year, as establishing a beachhead within a community of people who want to be measured—a relationship that could pay dividends if connected clothing were to become a reality.

Unfortunately for Under Armour, they have had notable flops in their efforts to be "cutting edge", including their foray into racing suits for the 2014 U.S. Olympic speed skating team that resulted in the racers blaming the suits, of which UA spent over 1M to make, for their poor performance at the Olympics. UA has also had issues in developing the technology required for the hardware for their clothes. As a result, UA has gone on an acquisition spree to acquire customers and engineers to build the technology. Another obstacles UA faces is from extremely challenging competitors including Nike and Apple, each of whom of their own niche in this space. Instead of trying to do this on their own, UA has actively sought to bring in-house this coveted skill set.

In their effort to enter the App space, UA has launched a successful partnership with Zappos to send Push Notifications when sneakers are nearing the end of their life (via mileage), which must be set up through the mapmyfitness app. As an avid runner, I think having this functionality is great and as long as the technology behind this is user friendly and seamless, I think this is a great way for UA to leverage their clothing line and take it to the next level.

Like its primary competitors Nike and Adidas AG , Under Armour distributes its products to retailers, meaning that for the most part it doesn’t have a direct relationship with its consumers. By building its fitness app community, Under Armour is trying to position itself to interact frequently with customers.

I really think that UA is really on to an interesting and innovative idea. While I am completely supportive of the fitness craze, where everyone wants to track their ever step with lines and lines of data, I'm still hesitant that the clothes themselves will be the way of the future. I think what UA has established is a great way to target an already engaged customer and plays into the overall fitness revolution, but I'm still questioning how receptive individuals will be to that in their actual clothing. As a marathon runner, I am a habit of routine and I love my Garmin watch, which is synced through my Garmin app on my iphone and I don't have any reason to change that. I think UA has the potential but I'm not going to be their first customer.

Small Business Meets Facebook

In an article written by Jennifer Saba at Business Insider, she hi-lights that the majority of Facebook's 2 million active advertisers are small businesses. Facebook cites that they have over 2 million active advertisers,  with the vast majority of that comprised of small and medium business owners. What is even more impressive is that over 30 million small business owners have Facebook pages. In today's world where shopping on Amazon is more common than going to your local mall, I am not surprised that so many small businesses have an online presence. To be honest, if a company in 2015 doesn't have a website, Facebook page and Twitter account I would be concerned about their long term prospects. However, a point that was raised during Patrick Ambron's lecture was that having online presence alone is not good enough. Failure to have it properly updated and relavent can result in a negative brand impression.

Getting more and more advertisers is mutually beneficial for both small business owners as well as Facebook. Facebook is making an active push to increase its presence in this space to take aim at Google's #1 position.

Google is the worldwide leader in digital advertising market share, at 31.1 percent, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer. But Google's slice has shrunk slightly, down from 33.6 percent in 2013. Getting more advertisers onto its platform is critical for Facebook as it tries to increase global share. Facebook's fourth-quarter revenue grew 49 percent to $3.85 billion from the same period a year ago, with mobile accounting for 69 percent of advertising revenue. Facebook, on the other hand, increased its share to 7.8 percent in 2014 from 5.8 percent in 2013, according to eMarketer.

The question really hinges on whether small business owners have any type of return on their investment and hope best to leverage and target Facebook users and convert their ad dollars into actual sales.

The Power of LinkedIn -

LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, this past Thursday made it first big foray into advertizing technology through the launch of a global display advertising network. LinkedIn, with its 347 million registered users in 200 countries posseses a great deal of information on its members and is looking to capitalize on the that vast treasure-trove of data.

LinkedIn has decided to partner with AppNexus to deliver ads based on LinkedIn data not only on LinkedIn's site and apps, but also has plans to leverage its network of 2,500 of other business-focused websites. The potential here is quite impressive and should be viewed as a great opportunity for LinkedIn. The lead product behind this initative is LinkedIn Lead Accelerator:

"[it] allows brands to place a pixel on their websites, which uses cookies to identify LinkedIn users so advertisers can get a better understanding as to the types of people visiting. LinkedIn says that currently, most website owners only actually know about 5% of their visitors, and that LinkedIn Lead Accelerator fills in that gap. Advertisers can then retarget those visitors with ads (with different messaging, depending on the different parts of the website they visited) on other websites and outside of LinkedIn across the new LinkedIn Network Display, which is powered by AppNexus."

According to LinkedIn, they view this as a B2B advertizing as a $50B and I believe this entry is in-line with their core competencies and as long as the user informaiton remains annoynmous, it should hopefully be acceptable to its current users. LinkedIn has ambitious goal in the B2B space (an internal memo indicates they plan to make this a $1b business by 2017), and with a clear stataegy, they are well on their way.

What's the Relevance?

Starting this week, Facebook has decided to launch a relevance score to its ads to let people know which ones are most pertinent to them. Of course, the goal with this is that users get the most relevant ads appearing which ultimately would result in better business.

The new relevance rating system will be on a 10 point scale (10 being the more relevant) and will be calculated through positive and negative feedback from a target audience and the score will be updated in real time. As a result, advertisers will need and in some cases be forced to create more innovate and interesting content to meet the preferences of their target demographic. According to Jerry Daykin, global digital and client director at Dentsu Aegis Network, "As marketers focus on making better content and getting it in front of more people, rather than churning out posts every day, it does become more and more viable to thoroughly test each one." It is important to hi-light that Ads will guaranteed delivery are not impacted by the relevance score. 

According to Facebook, the relevance score matters because it can lower the cost of reaching people, help advertisers test ad creative options before running a campaign and it also has the potential to help optimize campaigns already in progress. I think there is some potential in the relevance score, but companies and advertisers need to have a goal in mind and an ad campaign can still be successful despite a low relevance score and it will be important that companies don't get hung-up on the rating. Even Facebook appreciates that the score is not the end all, be all as it relates to a successful ad campaign. "While understanding relevance scores has real benefits for advertisers, it’s important to keep this metric in perspective. Relevance scores should not be used as the primary indicator of an ad’s performance. As has long been the case on Facebook, the most important factor for success is bidding based on the business goal you hope to meet with an ad." Therefore, companies need to establish and have a goal for their ad and not let this new score interference with that. From my vantage point the relevance score is more beneficial to the end user and will force advertisers to constantly monitor their score and will try to stay aware from a low score.

Has Google Peaked?

For the first time since 2008, Google's share of the US Search market dropped below 75%, coming in at 74.8%, according to StatCoutner. This most recent change is driven off of a slight increase from Yahoo (up to 10.9%) with respect to market share and Bing remaining persistently in the game at roughly 12.5%.

The driving force behind this appears to have been the fact that the default search engine on Mozilla Firefox switched from Google to Yahoo. As hi-lighted in the Business Insider article, one of the biggest things to surface as a result of this increase is the immense power a default search engine can have on the overall search engine market. While still relatively easy to change your default, it appears many are not changing the default. Another interesting point raised in the article that I was not aware of is that Google is the default browser to Safari but their contract expires this year and rest assured that Yahoo and Bing will do their best to obtain a significant market share through this partnership. If this recent drop in market share is any indication, Google should do everything within its power to maintain its relationship with Safari. 

As mentioned in the article: "Search Engine Watch notes than desktops are becoming increasingly defunct as people use their smart phones and tablets to go online. These days, people access the internet often directly through apps, rendering traditional search engines obsolete. In 2014, mobile exceeded PC internet usage for the first time in history." I think Google, to its credit, as kept up to pace with the changing way people are accessing the internet and must continue to do so.

To say its the end of an era for Google might be a bit premature. On a global basis, Google is still the preeminent leader in search and it isn't even close. So while the competitors count tenths of a percentage point, Google still benefits from the luxury of being at the top of the moment while the others are fighting, albeit viciously, up that steep cliff.

Additional information available on Business Insider

Wait, there's also a game this Sunday?

As an avid (some would say fanatical) football fan, Sunday afternoons from August to the first week of February are sacred. They are reserved for friends, camaraderie, beer and food as my friends and I visit a multitude of watering holes to fill our football craving. However, as this Sunday approaches, this Sunday is not like other Sundays through the Fall, as this one is "Super". 

Superbowl Sunday has reached epic status in terms of the two-week build-up to what will undoubtedly be the most watch television program of the year. This year, as Russell Wilson and the Seahawks and Tom Brady and the Patriots battle it out on the field to see who can crown themselves champions of the National Football League, there will be an equal amount of competition off the field. Despite the magnitude of the game itself, there will be many more people paying attention to the TV during the stoppages of play, as companies try to battle each other with their Superbowl ads. The commercials that air on Superbowl Sunday are just as big, if not a bigger event than the game itself. The cost of just a 30 second ad costs millions of dollars ($4.5M to be exact) and can catapult an unknown company from obscurity to mainstream. 

As Laura O'Rielly hi-lights in her article for Business Insider entitled "Here Is Everything We Know About The 2015 Super Bowl Ads" , you have the usual players just as Budweiser and Doritos having multiple ads airing during the game. However, what I found interesting is that nearly every ad has a Hashtag to allow customers to follow up on the ad via social media. What I also find particularly interesting was just a few short years ago, it was always a mystery as to which ads/companies will shell out the money for an ad and now nearly a week before the big game, all of the ads are readily available to us on Youtube. This allows consumers additional opportunities to interact with the company and hope their ad is that one that goes viral. However, the key for companies is to leverage their captive audience into actual business to ensure their sizable investment doesn't go to waste.  

Another growing trend is companies reaching out to their customers to further engage with key customers for their input and involvement. Companies such as Doritos has given the camera over to their consumers and will show an ad that was produced by asking people to send in their own submissions for the chance to win a $1 million prize. Even new entrants to the Superbowl commercial game, Carnival Corp, sourced their commercial "from its "World's Leading Cruise Lines Marketing Challenge," which gave North American consumers the chance to "join" the company's marketing team and vote on their favorite creative concepts." From the companies perspective, they have the option to use the best ad from multiple sources and it is cheaper than hiring an ad agency. It also has the potential to be seen by others as a company that truly values its customers and serves as positive PR. 

The Chief Marketing Officer from Esurance explained the importance of having an ad on Superbowl Sunday: "Esurance is a major brand in the insurance category, but we’re not as well known as our major competitors who spend far more than we do. So, maximizing awareness of our innovative offering for customers is important. The Super Bowl is the biggest media event of the year and it offers us the opportunity to efficiently reach a very large audience while making them aware that, because of our innovative options, Esurance is the smarter choice for insurance in today’s modern world." The platform of the Superbowl is unlike any other and CMO's fully recognize the importance a Superbowl add can have on business. 

For companies to really get a ROI on their Superbowl commercial investment, it is absolutely critical that their investment goes beyond what is on TV for 30 seconds. Their website needs to be able to handle the increased traffic, customers should be able to quickly find the company online and the digital presence you have must have the potential to be quickly realized with the ultimate goal of converting new business and reconnecting with current customers. 

Digital Marketing Mistakes To Avoid In 2015

While an active user of all things digital and despite considering myself fairly tech savvy, prior to this course, I had not truly considered the impact of the digital marketing landscape or the way this space has changed drastically in a few short years.  According to the article I came across, during 2015, for the first time ever, companies will spend an equal amount of money on TV as they will on digital. As such, I found this article particularly helpful in laying out the key fundamentals of successful digital marketing campaigns while also hi-lighting key strategic decisions to be mindful of over the course of 2015.

As companies become more and more engaged in the digital space, it is important that companies fully appreciate the complexities of this and to recognize that simply having a nice website or fancy graphics isn't enough. I would be hard-pressed to name a company I interact with that doesn't have some form of digital presence, but if there are still companies out there that don't appreciate the digital space or fail to recognize the impact that digital has, I think those companies will fail to exist in a few short years.

What I found helpful in this article were the three simple, but important pitfalls to be mindful with respect to digital marketing. First was the failure to plan properly, or as the author of the piece eloquently phrased from military lexicon: “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.” As with any business strategy, planing is a crucial step to enable success and analogous to your traditional marketing strategy, there should be a clearly defined goal and objectives by which to measure success.

The 2nd mistake hi-lighted was around expectation setting. Too often, companies think that digital means quicker and that is far from the case. As the author states, "the idea that digital equals instant results is one of the biggest misconceptions, especially for companies newer to this practice." Be that on Pay Per Click, SEO, or social media, it is important that firms be patient and realize that change doesn't happen over night. Firms should haven't unrealistic expectations or think that just because it is digital it necessarily changes faster. There is still a timeline that is adhered to.

The third and last misconception the author hi-lighted was not being informed. I honestly find this so obvious I'm surprised that this has to be mentioned. With the volume of information at ones finger tips and the number of qualified people in this space, to not be well-informed cannot be a viable excuse.

At the end of the article, the author does a good job summarizing the salient points of where digital marketing stands in 2015. "Digital marketing, including mobile, will continue to grow and evolve well into the future and will eventually eclipse traditional TV, radio and print.  Now is the time to make sure that you are getting the most for your marketing spend. Be prepared to keep up with the times and have a scalable digital strategy that can adjust with the trends." This point really gets to the crux of the growing influence of digital marketing in nearly every aspect of our lives and the growing important and attention that digital marketing deserves, right along side, if not leading against traditional marketing.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2015/01/13/3-digital-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid-in-2015/