ABC's Deal with Facebook Creates a First in Television and Marketing Analytics

Dancing With The Stars, ABC's celebrity reality competition, made news a few weeks ago as the first network show to get access to real time access to fan feeds and relevant conversations and posts. This partnership allows Dancing with the Stars to use facebook as they would Twitter, but this time they can track statics abut facebook chatter as it occurs amongst their fans and followers.

This kind of data, while seemingly useful, hasn't yet proven to greater insights than what can be garnered n Twitter, but this type of leap take by ABC's executives is helping to shape the way networks interact with fans, how digital marketers cultivate data point to prove campaign effectiveness. The general focus on viewer's social media content and buzz creation may provide feedback that could make Dancing with the Stars a more prominent player in its category via potential increased sponsorship and ad sales.  Overall the show hasn't preformed well and it is doubtful that these metrics will sway ad revenue from other networks that have already proven success by way of ratings and social media trending. 

The only benefit can come from this venture with Facebook would be ABC's ability to increase in capacity for targeted advertising revenue when tied to real time demographics of the Facebook users who choose to watch and comment about the show.  If this is part of ABC Executive's strategy, than with time, we will see if target ad revenue will be the ticket that brings Dancing with the Stars to a more prominent place in the reality competition genre.


http://allfacebook.com/dancing-with-the-stars-apis_b125093

The Social Research and Analytics Opportunity

I was intrigued by the first class on digital marketing, in particular, the impressive stats on the expected growth in just about every channel of digital marketing – search, display, email, mobile marketing. While each of these channels presents significant baseline growth opportunities, on a more macro level, my mind was focused on the tremendous opportunity this presents for meaningful research and analytics in each of these areas.

With several hundred online methods for customers to voice their opinions on brands on the Web – how can companies get savvy about filtering out the crap and understanding the real data on their brands effectiveness? How can they mine and leverage the vast pools of data from social networks to gain competitive advantage? An example of a company that rode the early wave on analytics and has since been phenomenally successful is Techlightenment. Based in London the company started out creating facebook ad campaigns and has since expanded to using analytics for data insights and market research. Some of their tools include powerful front end surveys in facebook, rich media polls and social research dashboards.

As we progress through the course, it will be interesting to learn whether the sophistication of research and analytics can provide real competitive advantage across the various digital marketing channels. Watch this space.