How do Traditional Media Fight Back: Three Ways Publishers Embrace Digital Channels

The pervading digital media has long eclipsed publishers and TV channels. Nevertheless, several major traditional media companies have been playing catch-up on their digital channels to piggyback on the trend.

Since digital news outlets can no longer assume readers come to them, they need a strong social distribution strategy to reach where readers are. Washington Post has been experimenting with digital newsfeed channels from Facebook’s Notify to Apple News, through which generated greater social traffic. In addition, the Post balances its demand for viral hits with hard news coverage on Facebook and Twitter, allowing it to generate a much greater follower interaction than Times for each post.

Mobile has also been a major part of the story. Washington Post strives to reach new audience through launching its Rainbow suite of apps on various channels including Amazon Kindle. The Rainbow took a radically different approach by deploying a glossy, magazine-like format with only one story displayed on the screen at a time. With its cleaner display format, as well as its enticing visual graphics, this platform has successfully beguiled 5000 new followers in mere three days. Conde Nast also rebuilt its digital backbone to capitalize on the explosion in mobile and native advertising. Its titles like GQ have featured infinite scroll and feed-based navigation to drive more traffic so that more native ads on the site will be visible to the audience

Publishers have also embraced virtual reality to prompt readers’ interaction. New York Times released a VR film earlier this month – The Displaced, which chronicled the tribulations of Syrian refugees. The publishers even delivered more than a million pre-assembled Google Cardboard sets to home delivery subscribers, which helps to make its VR app the “most successful NYT app launch ever”. The Economist is also working on a VR project to make a virtual experience out of its Big Mac Index.

Related Links:

• http://digiday.com/publishers/conde-nast-uk-repositions-capitalize-mobile-native-ad-growth/
•  http://digiday.com/publishers/washington-post-leapfrogged-new-york-times-web-traffic/

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

Email Marketing in the Mobile Age

112 billions business emails are being sent everyday, 93 billion private mails. Even though it is not perceived as a very "hip" channel, after more then a decade of successful usage, email marketing still is tremendously relevant. 

With the mobile internet on the rise, sending and receiving mails brings new challenges but also opportunities. The obvious advantage is the fact that with our mobile devices we are always online and many check their mails even more frequently then on a PC. 
On the other hand, conversion rates of mails being opened on mobile devices are much worse. This is mainly because most people do not make purchasing decisions while they are on the go. Furthermore, many people have a higher feeling of trust when they are online on a home PC. Also, it is still hard to track people's interactions and purchasing behavior across multiple devices. 

If you research for the best practices of email marketing, most tips have been around for quite some time:

1. Relevant content: Here it will be exciting to see, if automized content can be increasingly contextualized to address people individually in their (mobile) environment

2. Intelligent Personalization (see 1.)

3. Holistic and integral communication across all channels

4. Modern email marketing tool-architecture that allows a data-driven and comprehensive CRM.

5. Staying creative in the way you approach customers or leads (despite automatization and data-drivenness) 

6. One last important point is the format of the mobile screen. Thorsten Blöcker, head of consulting at the marketing agency Netnomics, says in a blog post: marketeers should try to make their mobile mails as interactive and compact as an app. 

This video shows an example how mobile mails can be optimized for the channel and how content can be adapted to a small screen.

It will be exciting how email as a channel will evolve in the mobile age. If email marketeers make their content adaptive to the mobile screen and if data-driven personalization is used more and more for a creative address, its relevance could further increase. 

The End of the News Website

NowThis is a young media and news company that exclusively publishes its content on social media platforms. After being a news startup like many others, in february 2015 they decided to take their website with content offline and focus on tailored videos through external channels. This DIGIDAY article about how NowThis tries to crack mobile video made me generally think about the future of media businesses, websites and their mobile publishing channels.

"NowThis, founded by former Huffington Post execs Ken Lerer and Eric Hippeau and backed by $5 million in venture capital, plays to the sensibilities of an always-on, always-social, always-sharing audience." That's why they optimize their video content, with a goal of 15-20 daily videos published, for mobile platforms and screens. With a team of more than 30 editors and content creators in their New York office they are constantly producing news for a young generation of media consumers.

In my opinion, this is further intensifying the battle about the future of the news industry. Traditional players are not only challenged by how to monetize their content in a digital world. The concept of a website with paywall, also known as "walled garden", is still an experiment to many while startups like NowThis are already moving beyond this and claim that a website is out of date.
There are numerous young companies like Circa, Quartz, or Insider that are innovating distribution and content creation.  Insider for example is a Business Insider spinn-off from the German media conglomerate Springer, starting exclusively with a Facebook page. Bild Online, the web spinn-off of Germany's most popular daily newspaper produces their own daily news in a smartphone screen format. What you can observe there is that not only the distribution of content is changing, but the entire storytelling. Original content from print or web media is not just cut down to make it fit into another platform like Instagram or Snapchat. NowThis and its ambitious peers are creating original content individually for all relevant mobile platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Kik. That's how they are able to respect the particular cultures, tones, and follow the best practice success codes of every platform.

Mobile is a great opportunity for innovative news companies but it is also an additional stress factor that challenges traditional players.

Shopify launches Sello, a social commerce app

Shopify lanched a new social commerce app called Sello.

This is an interesting move from the ecommerce provider Shopify. This move is not surprising given the rise we have been seeing towards social media ecommerce. Social network commerce gives the possibility of a lot more interaction between users, given that instant messaging can also be used.

This also implies a new business model for Shopify where it used to charge a fee or commission over sales, and now will leave payments between shoppers and business owners.

You can download the app at getsello.com.

To learn more go here.

Instagram is no longer framed by square. Pros and Cons of its format change.

Link from AdAge

http://adage.com/article/digital/instagram-s-formats-marketers/300130/

    Instagram has recently renounced the rigid square format limitation, allowing users to upload portrait and landscape photos and videos. Its action is a reaction to the popularity of vertical video – the dominating format on mobile. The flexibility of format avoids pictures and videos being cropped at awkward angles, and makes them more cinematic on the feed. It also allows marketers to migrate their Facebook campaign videos directly onto Instagram, greatly saving the time and energy of creating distinct campaign videos for each social media channel.

    Nevertheless, Instagram could lose some of its identity after initiating this change. According to TNW News, at its creation, Instagram limited the format to a square to pay homage to the original size of instant pictures and to promote the retro feel of instant photos. The flexible format and filter options have made the resulting pictures less artistic. In addition, Instagram could risk of being flooded by mundane and kitschy advertisement as the pliability of format might lead to marketers throwing everyday TV ads that would disturb users’ experience. Moreover, rather than creating unique user experience, some marketers might duplicate Facebook contents and post on Instagram, making Instagram indistinguishable from other networks.

    Beyond the format, other compelling issues should also be heeded. Marketers have long yearned for the ability to post through social marketing dashboards rather than merely via Instagram’s mobile app. This feature, if added, could help companies take greater control on contents and on posting schedule, as well as mitigate the risk of accidentally posting a damaging photo. Additionally, on other social media sites, companies have been posting links to connect users from their networks to brands’ websites that provide further details about an image. This is especially useful if the brand is promoting its product or publicizing its campaign. Given Instagram’s picture-oriented focus, it could potentially serve as façades for e-commerce stores. Moreover, Instagram doesn’t currently provide notification outside the app and would stop notifying the poster after certain numbers of likes and comments. It would be great if Instagram could, as other media networks did, offer the option of email notification so as to facilitate brands’ follower engagement.

Shazam Your Wine to Become an Expert in Vine

A PSFK article "Shazam Your Wine to Become an Expert in Vine" does not only have a catchy title but also covers a very interesting app, Delectable.

The app used to identify a wine, rate and share your drinking experiences with fellow Dionysoses. The updated version now allows users to "shazam" a wine and add it to your history under the titles: Top Styles, Regions, Top Rated Wines, and Drinks With."

To me, this is a flag for Google as an example of the increase in mobile, in-app searches as opposed go googling things as default. It will be interesting to observe how Google will address this challenge.

Red Envelope War: Fighting over Mobile Payment Playfield on Chinese New Year

Gifting red envelopes stuffed with cash to relatives and friends is one of the most ancient traditions during the Chinese Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival. This centuries-old custom now has a new face in the digital age. On the eve of the Year of Sheep, China’s Internet giants, mainly Tencent and Alibaba, have turned the holiday tradition into a wildly popular phenomenon that helps them tap into the digital wallets of millions of Chinese.

What exactly is digital red envelope? The marketing strategy first gained popularity during Spring Festival last year, when Tencent rolled out the feature on its popular messaging and social network app WeChat. Users – both individuals and businesses – could post links to the digital “red envelope” either on their news feed or in group chats. Those who click the link get a small cash coupon that can be applied on services like online shopping or paying for taxi. But here’s the catch: only a limited amount of “red envelopes” are given out each time, so those who open the links too late are left with nothing.

While sending cash as a way of celebration may sound bizarre to some, the marketing strategy has proved to be a bonanza for Alibaba and Tencent. On New Year’s Eve alone, WeChat recorded more than 1 billion red envelope transactions, a 200 percent increase from last year. Thanks to its partnership with CCTV during the popular New Year’s Eve live television broadcast, WeChat sent out 120 million red envelopes during a segment when audience “fought” for the cash gifts.

After WeChat first rolled out its first red envelope promotion last year, Jack Ma called it “the Pearl Harbor attack.” To rival Tencent’s success, Jack Ma himself led Alipay’s fight by posting his customized Alipay red envelopes on Weibo (China’s Twitter). On New Year’s Eve, Ma posted a photo of himself with a question: “Who looks like an alien?” The lucky ones who gave the correct answers (“Me”) got red envelopes directly from the billionaire himself. According to Chinese media reports, Ma’s 99,999 red envelopes with a total amount of 990,000 yuan were grabbed within the first three minutes. In the week leading to the New Year, Alipay gave out 430 million red envelopes with total value of 600 million yuan.

The red envelope war between Alibaba and Tencent is the latest showdown in China’s  increasingly competitive third-party mobile payment market. Will China’s largest ecommerce company or its most popular messaging tool have an edge on winning over Chinese digital wallets? Though Alipay has a head start with its 190 million active users thanks to its affiliation with Taobao, TMall, and other Alibaba’s e-commerce sites, Tencent’s WeChat payment has grown rapidly since it pioneered the red envelope promotion. The competition escalated so rapidly that Tencent blocked Alipay’s red envelopes on WeChat since early February to fend off its “invasion.”

But getting active users hooked on their payment tools is only the beginning. The bigger opportunity lies in the one-stop platform that Alibaba or Tencent plan to build. From taxi-hailing to food ordering, both Internet giants are increasingly battling over the same services that bring mobile users to offline spending. Moreover, both companies aim to attract users to their money market funds as they seek to expand in the alternative investment market. Between billionaires Jack Ma and Pony Ma, whoever wins the digital wallet war would get a head start in the next round of competition.

3 Billion Internet Users and Growing - 2015 SEO Strategy Must

According to Internet Live Stats, an international team of developers, researchers, and analysts making statistics available live, around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today. In 1995, it was less than 1%. The number of internet users has increased tenfold from 1999 to 2013. The first billion was reached in 2005. The second billion in 2010. The third billion in 2014.
The chart and table below show the number of global internet users per year since 1993:

Google predicts that there will be more than 3 billion more internet users by 2020. We are heading from a world of 3 billion connected to the internet in 2014 to at least 6 billion by 2020. Between Facebook's drone technology and Google's stratospheric balloons (called Project Loon), there is to the potential to take that number up to 8 billion by 2020.

This could possibly be one reason why Google Executive Eric Schmidt made a bold and confident announcement that "by the end of the decade, everyone on earth will be connected to the internet." This represents trillions of dollars of economic buying power. This is a HUGE opportunity which is why it is more important than ever to focus and master these five SEO strategies for 2015.

1. Build and optimize for mobile traffic

In 2014, mobile Internet use finally surpassed desktop Internet use. This marked a fundamental change in consumer behavior with major implications on search and search engine optimization. The ability for a brand to deliver speed to market high-quality mobile experiences for consumers will certainly gain a competitive advantage.

2. Increase focus on social media and engagement

Social media is now a marketing channel as well as a customer-service channel. Your social audience expects your brand to engage with them on a more personal level. The two must go hand-in-hand.

3. Inbound links are gold

In the same manner word of mouth, referrals and customer feedback are for real interactions; inbound links are indicators of value, authority, and trust to search engines. Earning a single link on a high-quality relevant website is valuable for multiple reasons including SEO, attracting referral traffic, leads, sales and branding exposure.

4. Expand beyond Google

With the growth of mobile, online service providers and software applications are developing internal search functions to better serve their own audiences which means search is growing beyond engines on Web browsers. In 2015, consider shifting greater focus to optimizing brand presence for search across platforms beyond Google like Amazon, Wikipedia, Yelp, and mobile applications.

5. Patience with long-tail search will reap rewards

Long-tail search, less costly than one or two word key phrases, is more promising but requires patience. Long-tail keyword queries tend to be more relevant and convert at higher rates as a result of greater specificity, and ultimately, purchase intent. Brands that can command the power and influence of long-tail queries will see positive results.

Develop and implement these five SEO strategies for a successful 2015.

Snapchat Launches Discover

Snapchat isn't just for silly videos and photos anymore. They have officially launched Discover, a new way for media companies to publish content for Snapchat users. Discover will allow Snapchatters to access special content which will only be available for a limited amount of time, keeping in line with the app's general theme. Currently, content is available from media outlets like ESPN, National Geographic, People, and Cosmopolitan and features interactive articles and photos designed specifically for the app.

Snapchat Discover Media Platform

This is the first time outside media creators have been able to post content to the app, but it is not Snapchat's first attempt at monetizing its service. Already companies have begun to leverage the popularity of Snapchat by posting advertisements as "snaps" to users' apps alongside other user generated content.

It will be some time before we see whether Snapchat's new move is a win, but for the time being, it is one more digital door allowing media companies to deliver content (and thus market to) users.

Twitter is taking a page out of Facebook and Google's playbook

According to Business Insider, Twitter will soon be changing its terms of service so that it can monitor the other apps that users have on their phones. There are major privacy and user experience issues that arise with this new policy. Ultimately, it comes down to a universal technology dilemma: How much control will we give technology to improve how it serves us?

Twitter contests that it can make better products and better understands the needs of its customer by being able to track what apps its users are also interacting with; however, Twitter won't have access to the actual content that user access in other apps. Twitter makes the case that other technology companies such as Facebook and Google already have much more access to user data; in fact, Facebook has started to replicate Google's search model where users remain within the Facebook app when they access outside content.

Obviously, Twitter believes it needs to keep up with these other tech behemoths to predict what is "the next big thing". While this can be a great development for small upstarts looking to be acquired, it also presents an unfair advantage given that Twitter and Facebook have the ability to quickly replicate services and products it deems to be threats.

Five Takeaways From Alibaba's Record-Busting $9.3 Billion Shopping Fest

Five Takeaways From Alibaba's Record-Busting $9.3 Billion Shopping Fest

Alibaba set a new record selling $9.3 billion in merchandise during the annual e-commerce holiday. The sales on Nov.11 exceeded the 2013 record of $5.8 billion. Approximately, 43% of sales came from the mobile channel. Alibaba's ambitions are growing bigger, more mobile and more global.

So what are the big takeaways?

1. Size Matters: Everything the company does is larger than life! The company invited more than 600 reporters to its headquarters in Hangzhou, offers more than 1 billion product listings on its platforms and had the record for the biggest initial public offering.
2. Jack Ma is the Steve Jobs of China: The big buzz of the night was whether Mr. Ma would appear.
3. Mobile has momentum: Every year Alibaba growths its mobile sales, the figure was 5% in 2012, 21% last year and nearly 43% this year. In China, many people are going online for the first time on a smartphone, not a desktop which gives mobile  a  big room for growth.
4. Chinese brands win: Even with many big western brands available, the top sellers were local brands.  
5. Alibaba has global ambitions but is laying low in the U.S--for now: Joe Tsai, Alibaba's executive vice chairman, said the focus now is bringing goods from U.S. merchants to Chinese consumers, though targeting U.S. shoppers could be interesting later on.

Read the complete article: Five Takeaways From Alibaba's Record-Busting $9.3 Billion Shopping Fest
Source: A.Doland. (2014, November 11). Five Takeaways From Alibaba's Record-Busting $9.3 Billion Shopping Fest. Ad Age

Timely Mobile Sharing

At present, with the rise of social media, it’s not uncommon for people (especially those attached to their phones) to learn about major local and global events via social media feeds.

People everywhere are able to capture events in real time, also contributing to timely sharing of news on personal feeds. Mobile devices are responsible for approximately 72% of total content sharing when a major event occurs. There has been a noticeable shift in where people get their news. Less and less, people are getting their information from televisions and newspapers. According to data from ShareThis, a free social sharing widget, “social media users are much more likely to share content via mobile devices after a major current event occurs.” This data comes following a thorough analysis of content sharing around events such as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

On days where there is not a major breaking news event—“regular news” days—desktop computers account for about the same amount of content sharing as smartphones (43%); however, this all drastically shifts in the event of a major news story. When a given topic begins to trend on social media, mobile content sharing jumps to 72%.

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Devices-Spur-Sharing-of-Timely-Content/1011571/1

Mobile advertising continues driving Facebook’s growth

Facebook presented its quarterly results yesterday satisfying the expectations: Mark Zuckerberg announced $3,200M in revenues in Q3, a 59% increase versus the same quarter last year. The company has focused its growth efforts on the mobile division lately, and the results are showing. Mobile ads supposed $1.95 billion for Facebook in Q3, a 121% increase in a year, and growing. Around 66% of their revenues come from mobile advertising, versus 62% in Q2 and 59% in the same quarter last year.

“The social network is increasingly focused on catering to mobile consumers because that’s increasingly how its audience interacts with the social network. Facebook has 1.12 billion mobile active users, and 456 million of them, roughly 34% of Facebook’s overall user base, only access the social network through mobile apps or mobile versions of its web site.”

It seems the right place to be considering that, according to emarketer, the mobile advertising market will grow by more than 30% annually in the next 3 years; it is estimated that it will surpass desktop-based ads by 2017. Experts have anticipated that Facebook will control 20% of the mobile advertising market by the end of the year, while the current leader, Google, has suffered a 5% drop on its share down to 45%.

Source: Business Insider Intellgence for newsglobal.us

Some interesting numbers announced by Facebook yesterday:

• Profits almost doubled compared with the same period in 2013, from $425M to $806M
• EPS increased 13 cents up to 30 cents per share in a year
• The number of active users continues increasing, with more than 1.35 billion active users currently (including both desktop and mobile)

On a side note, Facebook’s share price dropped 9% after announcing bigger than expected expenses in 2015. The company plans to increase expenditures as a result of a more aggressive hiring and acquisitions strategy between 55% and 75%; for sure the $19 billion investment in WhatsApp will account for a big part of it.

Sources:

http://www.internetretailer.com/2014/10/28/facebook-generates-195-billion-mobile-ads-q3

http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Most-Digital-Ad-Growth-Now-Goes-Mobile-Desktop-Growth-Falters/1010458

http://newsglobal.us/news/chart-of-the-day-all-of-facebooks-revenue-growth-is-coming-from-mobile-ads-fb

Where do people look on webpages?

Surfing randomly on the internet, maybe on Facebook or maybe reading the news, I came across an article that covers an interesting topic we covered in class: where do people actually look when they look at advertisements or webpages?

Interesting findings were obtained through the use of heatmaps: researchers found out not only where people look, but also some of the factors that influence their visualization, as well as differences based on gender. I will here focus on webpages, which are closer to the focus of our course.

Researchers found out that most users are affected by "ad blindness". I thus found out that this disease, which I know I am affected by (with a certain satisfaction), is more widespread than I initially thought.
Users "filter" what they see, automatically excluding what appears in the spots traditionally reserved to ads (e.g. right and top side of the page). This principle holds true for both websites and search results. Moreover, users' eyes focus on the center-top part of the page. In other words, whatever does not appear on top is progressively non-existent.

 

 

Experiments have been run also on mobile webpages, with slightly different results. Unlike "normal" webpages, on mobile platforms users' attention tends to be attracted by images and text boxes, while large sections of words tend to be ignored. Users seem to "screen" the page searching for something interesting and then, once they found something worth their attention, they focus on the text.

As a "bonus", I want to give something that can be interesting for those looking for a job. Researchers conducted also experiments to understand where recruiters look when they read your CV or resume.
In the six seconds they spend reading your resume, they will focus most of their time reading about your education and, secondly, what you did last. They will also have a glance at your interests.

So, my advice is: don't spend too much time detailing those older jobs and mention at least one interest that makes you sound interesting.
And of course, make sure that Columbia Business School appears well visible. It is probably worth it.

For those interested, here is the link to the full article:
http://www.businessinsider.com/eye-tracking-heatmaps-2014-7?utm_content=buffer94ca3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Facebook reports strong earnings on growth in mobile ad revenue.

Facebook reported strong earnings last week sending the stock up over 16% on the news.  Both revenue and profits beat analyst expectations and investors were pleased to see that 49% of revenue is coming from the Facebook Mobile platform.  This is much higher than well-established advertising competitors like Google and Yahoo indicating Facebook’s strength in quickly monetizing the platform. 

The key driver in the revenue growth has been the introduction of news-feed ads- the pesky messages that interrupt the stream of your friends updates/comments when you open the application on your mobile device.  The reason these ads have been so popular with advertisers is that companies now have much better data to support the efficiency of the channel.  For example, Facebook has partnered with Nielsen and Datalogix to help collect loyalty data and to track purchased for CPG companies.  This, in turn, has given advertisers much better insight into their return on investment and has encouraged them to increase spend.  This strikes at one of the fundamental issues with investing in the social media ecosystem- that the metrics to indicate success or failure of a particular campaign or product are still under development.   I spoke with the Head of Social Media at Vice about this issue and he mentioned that the standard metrics that are currently used – reach, engagement, etc – are just a guess at what actually matters.  He mentioned that every day they his team looks at the data to understand whether they can extrapolate meaningful insights for their clients.  This is both exciting and frustrating for the marketing community.  Over the next few years, it will be interesting to see whether the power of mobile has staying power as a major advertising channel, or whether advertisers will be disappointed with the yield on their investment and put their money elsewhere.  

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-s-mobile-ad-revenue-49-ad-business/245027/