Capture the Micro-moments and win customers

Micro-moments is a recent novelty term invented by Google, which refers to the instant that triggers consumers to either search online or make expressions on social media. According to Google, the mobile devices "fracture the consumer journey into hundreds of real-time, intent-driven micro-moments"---  the want-to-know moments, want-to-go moment, want-to-do moments, and want-to-buy moments etc. As consumers can easily turn to their mobile devices for solutions and expressions, capturing those micro-moments become strategic for brands to motivate customers for purchase and build up customer relationship. 

In last class, we mentioned web-influenced sale, which refers to the situation where consumers use their phones to check for online price when they shopping in retail store. If Amazon offers a lower price for the same product in retail store, then the e-commerce giant may easily win the purchase from the consumer from the retailer. 

Another interesting example shown on the micro-moment google website is when a man got messed up with his cooking, he searched online for food delivery. Then if a nearby restaurant had adopted some location marketing strategy and made its appearance on top of the search page, it would be very likely to capture the moment the man wanted to get food delivered to his apartment. 

The importance of those micro-moments lies in the fact that when a person conduct the search or post things on social media, he or she has already become very engaged. He or she wants a solution or being noticed immediately. If at those tiny real-time moments, a brand could connect with those consumers by providing relevant information and products that meet the demand, it is very valuable. 

Google actually provides a very guideline on how to capture and utilize micro-moments on its website. The first step is to identify the moments you want to win from consumers. The second step is to think from the consumer perspective in terms of how we could offer easier, faster and most helpful solutions. The third step is to use context to deliver the right experience like location and time. The fourth step is to optimize across different platforms for the fact that people are using multiple screens. They may do an instant search on mobile phones and then purchase on a desktop. The final step is about measuring and identifying the most effective moments and think about issues like ROI etc. 

Reference: 

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/micromoments/intro.html#overview

Instagram and its ad platform

With more than 400 million active users, Instagram is now one of the world's largest mobile ads platforms. Its photo and now also available, video sharing features differentiate it aside from other social media platforms such as twitter and facebook. Visual expression’s creative, artistic and chic nature make Instagram a very engaging platform for users and brands can easily resonate with its followers expressing a certain lifestyle spirit. The demographic and behavioral characteristics of Instagram users make the platform a great place for brands to promote brand metrics and interactivities. According to GlobalWebIndex, around 70% of Instagram audience are under 35 and about 53% users follow brands using this platform, ranking the highest among all major social media platforms.

Recently, the platform has launched a new targeting tool for marketers, which allows them to capture the segment of audience who are excited about holiday shopping i.e. Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas purchase, by locating keywords and hashtags. A lot of brands are using Instagram to provide gift ideas and promote festive sales. It will alert advertisers when people posting content relevant to holiday buying.

A special thing about Instagram is that it does not have filtering algorithms, which allows ads be seen by a higher percentage of audience comparing to other social media platform which implement filtering algorithms. Instagram also provides good measurement functions for advertisers to evaluate campaigns’ ROI and effectiveness.

However, a weakness of Instagram as a marketing platform is that it lacks behaviorial data beyond the trending hashtags. As mentioned by Sarah Vizard, brands could hardly draw insights on how audience engage on Instagram.

Reference:

https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/10/05/instagram-at-5-turning-marketing-momentum-into-a-billion-dollar-ad-business/

https://business.instagram.com/advertising/

https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/11/25/instagram-to-become-shop-window-for-brands-this-christmas-as-it-launches-new-ad-targeting-tool/

Connection of TV ads and Mobile for more efficient targeting

      Concerns exist for how effectiveness are TV ads in promoting brand awareness and more importantly,  driving consumers down toward the funnel to execute the action of buying. Now, the problem may be solved as Millennial Media, a mobile advertising network consisting of 65,000 mobile apps, is partnering with Rentrak, a video measurement company whose measurement currency are used across screens, (movie studios, cable, satellite, local and national television network, etc.) to allow advertisers to connect TV ads with audience's smartphone. Using Rentrak data, after a viewer sees a commercial on TV, he/she is then matched in Millennial Media's smartphone user database. Then a targeting video related to the commercial he/she just seen will be placed in the mobile apps the viewer installed in the mobile device. Effectiveness of ads can be measured as whether the user clicks on the mobile ads or agrees to receive promotion and emails from sellers. 

     The strategic partnership meets the growing demand from advertisers to conduct advertising activities across different channels and utilizing all the screens in front of consumers to reinforce brand awareness. Furthermore, rich media such as video as well as mobile advertising are enjoying growing spending from advertisers and will become the most important method and channel of marketing. 


http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a70871f0-8e0f-11e5-8be4-3506bf20cc2b.html?ftcamp=crm/email/20151120/nbe/CompaniesBySector/product

WPP bought programmatic buying agency Essence Digital

 

    WPP, the world’s largest advertising company by revenue, has recently acquired the “programmatic buying” agency Essence Digital. Essence Digital is one of the fastest-growing media agencies and the largest independent buyer of online advertising according to Financial Times. Its clients include many big names such as Google, HP, Viber etc. The agency is specialized in “programmatic ” buying, which refers to utilizing computer algorithm and big data to buy ad space, either in time or not, to reach target customers more precisely and efficiently, resulting in great improvement on ROI of marketing budget.

    Programmatic advertising is said to be the future of advertising. Magna Global, the internal strategic consulting group of IPG, estimates that nearly $21 billion will be spent on programmatic ad buying this year alone.  The traditional way of ad buying involves negotiation between sellers and agencies as well as agencies and clients. Now, with programmatic advertising, those “human” interactions can be replaced by computers and software, while achieving better results in terms of delivering the right message to the right place and right people.

    However, we should probably be more careful when using this robotic way of conducting marketing activities. More work should be done on audience segmentation and content should be crafted more carefully tailoring to different clusters of audience. 

Reference: 
http://www.business2community.com/marketing/how-to-incorporate-programmatic-marketing-into-your-marketing-strategy-01350285
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3cd7cc80-82e9-11e5-8095-ed1a37d1e096.htm

VR video on YouTube--new media for Advertisers

YouTube is now supporting Virtual Reality(VR) videos. VR videos refer to a type of 360-degree immersive video which make the audience feel that they are actually being in the environment. VR content sounds very high-tech and not easily accessible before, especially for the high price of VR devices such as Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift etc.  But as Google is promoting Google Cardboard, a very simple and affordable viewer, where users can place their mobile phones inside and explore VR content on a variety of apps, the popularity of VR video will increase.

This new type of video will become a hot spot for creators and advertisers because of the engaging feature of VR videos. Google says that there are about 1 million Cardboard viewer owners and the New York Times will distribute 1.3 million Google Cardboard sets this weekend. And Youtube is promoting the idea of making VR accessible to everybody. The combination of this online and offline marketing will effectively wave huge interests among the public. And now, there are VR videos like the Hunger Games Experience and TOMS Shoes Giving Trip available on YouTube and the video platform is encouraging people to try this new and exciting VR experience.

Reference:
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2015/11/youtube-presses-play-on-virtual-reality.html
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/youtube-360-virtual-reality-video/?mbid=nl_11515

Gamification for marketing

Think how involved we are when playing games. A lot of brands now are applying gamification in their marketing activities to boost customer engagement, which is showing great success. For example, Marks&Spencer, a major British multinational retailer, allows its loyal customers to exchange Sparks points for promotions or events. An Italian restaurant chain Pizzi launched an event on mobile where customers can play scratch card game inside the restaurants and getting prizes. 

The principle idea behind applying gaming to marketing is that it encourages users to progress with the event, boosting the level of engagement. When playing games like Candy Crush, to progress with the game, customers are very likely to do in-app purchase, watching an ads in exchange for an extra life or boost and competing with friends on Facebook. This high level engagement promote games revenue and also appearance on social media platforms. After all, marketers are trying to raise consumer engagement, especially now that ads blockers are becoming increasingly popular. Gamfication is a very good way to encourage consumers to take an active role in marketing activities. 

Reference: 

How brands are using gamification to boost engagement

http://www.marketingweek.com/2015/10/23/how-brands-are-using-gamification-to-boost-engagement/?cmpid=mwweekly_1699189&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=mw_weekly

Median Age of Social Media Users is Getting Higher

According to a recent research from GfK MRI, although millennials are still the dominant players in the social media world, we are actually having a more maturing group of social media users. 

" US — The median age of Facebook users is 40 – up from 29 years in 2009 – with other social media networks showing similarly mature users with Instagram the youngest at 30 "

"The median ages of other social site users are 44 for LinkedIn, 42 for Google+, 38 for Pinterest, 38 for YouTube and 32 for Twitter".

I think there are several important implications from this demographic changing trend. 

First of all,diversity, along with market size, of social media is expanding. It is great as companies can approach a wider demographic and of course, more customers, in this virtual world.  Secondly, companies should adjust their digital marketing strategy accordingly. As mentioned by Florian Kahlert, managing director of GFK MRI: "...just adding social media sites to a plan without other sophisticated targeting no longer automatically increases your younger or savvy target groups..." And it may be worth devoting more marketing effort to the maturing customers. Although the dominant role in the social media world is still the young, the spending power of the maturing group is probably stronger.  For example, LinkedIn, with the highest median ages of 44 among major social media sites, also had the highest median household income (approximately $112,500).  I think that's probably one reason that luxury brands are spending more time and effort on social media platform. Last but not least, the content of marketing materials should be adjusted accordingly as more maturing people are usually less emotional than the young. They are more rational and put more emphasis on the actual quality and value. In other words, maybe not very appropriate, the maturing group are less likely to be intrigued by the seemingly fantastic ads. 

Reference: 
http://www.research-live.com/4013959.article?utm_source=google&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=research-live.com

The Paradox of Ad Blocking

Launch of IOS 9 and its support for ad blocking apps on Safari has brought the issue of ad blockers to the forefront among advertisers, publishers, tech companies and of course, mobile and internet users.  

At the first glance, as a frequent reader and user of internet, I am very happy to see ad blocking service becoming available in more places. I cannot wait but install those ad blocking apps on my iPhone to keep me away from irritating ads. But after seeing the news that Marco Arment, CEO of "Peace" (the most popular ad blocking app after launch of IOS 9), decided to pull off the program on iTunes and articles like " Ad blocking: Internet apocalypse or overblown issue"on Marketing Week and "The Paradox of Apple News and iOS 9 Ad Blocking" on Wired.com, I began to doubt that whether ad-blocking is a really beneficial thing to us end users or readers. 

As Marco wrote on his blog “Ad-blocking is a kind of war — a first-world, low-stakes, both-sides-are-fortunate-to-have-this-kind-of-problem war, but a war nonetheless, with damage hitting both sides. Even though I’m ‘winning,’ I’ve enjoyed none of it. That’s why I’m withdrawing from the market.”

Yes, we feel bothered when ads slowing down our browsers. It sometimes make people feel creepy knowing that they are being tracked by every click. However, those ads and trackers do help publishers provide free and high-quality content.Data collected from these media help brands understanding the market and after all benefit us customers by providing better customized products and services. 

Looking from another perspective, ad blocking increase competition and put pressure on advertisers and brands to provide higher quality ads that customers would like to see. The more expensive ads require more consideration to generate comparable ROI.  "Junk" Ads will be cleared out of the market, leaving us a more enjoyable virtual world. 

Advertising Opportunities and Challenges with the new Apple TV--"the future of TV"

Apple released the new Apple TV yesterday and Tim Cook called it " the future of TV". Instead of switching among different programs, users can now swipe to or ask Siri to bring up what they want, ranging from games, shows, films to even shopping apps. It is all about apps. 

Picture from : gilt-apple-tv-800x409.png

On the event yesterday, Gilt Groupe’s CEO, Michelle Peluso, showed off the company's App designed specifically for Apple TV. Now, we can curl up in couch, browse pictures of models wearing our desired dresses or sneakers on the high-resolution big TV screen and just buy them directly with a click on "BUY NOW" as what we are so used to do on computers, laptops and mobile devices. 

Despite the innovative shopping apps, people also watch videos, shows and films and play games through different apps on Apple TV. Broadcasters can no longer force audience to watch commercials between and during programs. With the App Store for Apple TV, the functionality and possibilities with television will be expanded greatly. 

With all of these innovation, I see some challenges as well as opportunities. 

As mentioned in class, it is hard to measure a TV commercial's impact on audience's behavior, i.e. how much does the ad contribute to the final purchasing action? Now as consumers can shop directly on TV, it becomes much easier to track consumers' behavior and measure the effectiveness of ads. It may also help with cross-platform measurement since IOS users apply the same Apple ID to all Apple devices. 

Applications help strengthen customer loyalty. People are less likely to switch to other brands or platforms( for example, switch from Amazon to Walmart) when they make a purchasing action through an app. App store for Apple TV for sure expands the market size. However, a great challenge associated with apps, as what have been observed on mobile devices, is that it is hard to keep customers use them regularly. Maintaining the app for using on high-resolution TV and keep it compelling and consistent with mobile apps  is not an easy thing to do. 

Picture from: appletv-story-582x409.jpg

Commercials have less control over audience since some platforms, such as Netflix and Youtube, provide ads-blocking or skipping ads services.Nevertheless, there are more opportunities to provide audience with customized and personalized advertising content on Apple TV. The potential of offering ads people want to see and capturing most of consumer surplus is greater. But obviously, proper customization is hard to realize and maybe too expensive to implement compared with traditional commercials on traditional televisions. 

Sources:
http://marketingland.com/gilt-shows-how-apps-and-online-shopping-are-coming-to-apple-tv-142067
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/first-look-souped-siri-powered-apple-tv/?mbid=nl_9915

QR code is extremely popular in China but why not in the U.S.?

Following the China Digital Marketing Group on LinkedIN, I came across one discussion about QR code a few days ago. Then I suddenly realized that I have not scanned a single one since I came back to U.S. after my summer vacation in my hometown---Shanghai, China. When I was in Shanghai, I used QR code very frequently. I would add my friends on WeChat by scanning their QR code ID. I downloaded apps and requested subscription and push service by scanning QR code on posters, computer screens and advertising boards on subways. Every time I came to a restaurant, the first thing I would do was to scan the QR code on the small advertising board stood on the table to follow the official account of the restaurant on WeChat. And then I could get coupons, free drinks or discounts as a first-time customer.  I even made payments by scanning the small square which would directly connect me to the interface of AliPay ( an app like Paypal). All I need to do then is to confirm the payment amount and click "Pay", without typing in any digits. But since I came back to U.S. in late July, I only used QR code for two or three times to board the airplanes. 

After doing some research, I find that there are two big reasons pushing up the popularity of QR code in China. One is WeChat and the other is the growing number of Chinese mobile internet users. 

In September 2012, Huateng Ma, the CEO of Tencent (company that owns WeChat), emphasized the huge potential of QR code in O2O (online to offline) and the company's strategy to push QR code on China's Internet Conference. Later, the QR code scanner function was built into WeChat. Being the most popular social network and an all-purpose mobile platform in China, WeChat definitely promoted the QR code's usage and commonality as users can now interact with the various functions such as making payment, getting information push service etc. in WeChat with those little squares so easily. It is more personalized and customer-oriented. You don't have to type in anything. You won't be bothered by switching among different apps or webpages. The high usability and network externality brought by WeChat make QR code a mania in China.

The other powerful hand is the huge population of mobile internet users. According to the China Internet Network Information Center's (CNNIC) 35th "China Internet Development Statistics Report", by December 2014, about 85.8% of internet users, which is about 557 million, connect the Internet through mobile devices.  And among the 1.29 billion mobile users, by February 2015, about 48.8% of them are mobile broadband (3G and 4G) subscribers (Data via Sina Tech).  Network externality has grown exponentially along with the widespread coverage of Internet and increasing number of mobile internet users, which has made QR code a very powerful and involving tool in people's life. 

Finally, back to the question why QR code has not become popular in U.S. I think a key reason is that none of the popular social network apps in U.S. has incorporated or emphasized the QR code scanner function. There are some QR code scanner apps available in Android market and IOS App Store. But as a separated application, the most exciting power of QR code---easing interactions with various other platforms, is limited. Breaking the barrier to network externality is important for QR code to become popular in the U.S. market. 

Reference: 

http://www.cac.gov.cn/2015-02/03/c_1114237273.htm

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/03/world/china-internet-growth-2014/

http://www.cac.gov.cn/2015-02/03/c_1114237273.htm