Brooklyn Nets CMO Using Big Data

Ad Age interviewed the Brooklyn Nets CMO, Fred Mangione, about how he's using big data to further engage fans as well as expand the fan base outside of Brooklyn and to previous New Jersey fans.

Using social media and other digital platforms to understand consumer needs and create customized messaging will grow to become a necessity for companies to stay both relevant and competitive. Sports leagues such as the NBA are no different. The fans are consumers of high priced items including tickets, merchandise, content, etc.  In the interview Mangione notes that the Orlando Magic have a team of eight people dedicated to understanding data on their fans. Using big data to understand the potential fan base outside of Brooklyn (both in the other boroughs and the greater New York City area) will be crucial to both engage and grow the fan base as well as monetize the new brand.

Using Content to Drive Sales

Digital Marketing and media impressions are at the core of most modern day marketing goals. To get specific results, many companies manage a mix of paid and earned digital outreach but rely heavily on paid and versus earned marketing.  Anheuser-Busch however has recently announced that their digital marketing efforts show an even split between the two.

The company has chosen to use content to drive sales. The company's VP of Digital Marketing was quoted to say “How do you use digital to move the business? By increasing sales and improving brand health.”

http://www.dmnews.com/anheuser-busch-brands-media-goal-is-50-earned-says-digital-marketing-chief/article/318028/

What's Behind the Recent News Acquisitions?

It came as a surprise to me when I learned this summer at Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, was purchasing the Washington Post for $250M. Why would such a savvy, successful entrepreneur be spending that sum of money to enter a business that others have been fleeing like rats from a sinking ship? I really dislike any thought of those critters but it is a reasonably good analogy for this situation. So, as you'd imagine it came as more of a surprise to me when I learned Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, was also jumping on the news bandwagon a few ago. And then there's Laurene Powell Jobs's investment in Ozy Media, and all the other recent money headed towards the less traditional news channels like Buzzfeed and Vox Media. Was there something that these Silicon Valley behemoths were seeing in the newspaper business that so many others were missing?

News revenue has been drying up over the last decade as sources of news proliferate via online channels (reducing subscription volume) and ad revenue moves to higher ROI, usually digital, channel. There have been attempts to plug the hole and/or reverse the trend via online paywalls, creative advertising strategy, and reorganizations, but they have proven more or less ineffective. So, it begs the question, what do these digital media mavens have in mind? A recent article by David Carr offers some plausible hypotheses. Carr mentions the tech world's obsession with making the world a better place; and suggests that perhaps communicating with a broader audience via news offers them another way to fulfill their underlying aim.

One speculation I have is that these tech geniuses may have see potential in digital advertising revenue specifically via Native Advertising / Sponsored Content. As I have alluded to in my recent posts, Native Advertising is one of the hottest trends in online advertising. With higher click through rates and some evidence of higher ROI through sales conversions, many brands are looking at sponsored content as a better destination for their spend. Publishers are reacting in kind; with more and more offering sponsorship of content in addition, or even in lieu of the longstanding banner and skyscrapers internet eyeballs have begun ignoring.

Why complexity hinders innovation in digital marketing

Having worked in the advertising space for longer than I care to admit, I have seen first hand how digital has revolutionised the industry. Today's technological advancements provide astounding opportunities for brands to build smarter and stronger relationships with customers.

If I go back to what I was taught at school, however, the principle remains the same; the goal of any advertiser is to show the right ad to the right person. Not only are we equipped to do this, in today's market we can now show the right ad to the right person, at the right time in the right place – so the advertisers role has been made easier – right?

Well, not quite. The issue we have in the digital technology market is that the current landscape is unsuited to do what's best for the advertiser. There are two problems. The first is common across a number of industries – supply chain complexity. Generally, after an advertiser hands over their digital budget to an agency, it is distributed across a number of third parties involved in the buying process. This includes agencies, trading desks, vendors and publishers. The advertiser pays for every layer of service and technology, with fees incurred at each level. So no matter how great any one company's innovation might be – through the use of social media measurement or mobile video ad delivery – managing them all is expensive and creates conflicting information for the advertiser.

The other problem, which is much worse for the advertiser, is that most of these companies have an incentive that goes against the original goal of the advertiser. This is not the fault of the intermediaries, but rather the way the digital ecosystem has evolved. A great example that is occurring in the UK market today is with agency trading desks that offer a great innovation – real time bidding.

Real time bidding (RTB) brings the open auction bid setup that is common in other areas of online marketing (PPC for example) to online advertising; including display advertising and video. RTB should potentially provide advertisers with a transparent way of buying, but right now it is only adding to the complexity.

Instead of providing advertisers with an end-to-end picture of how, where and when their campaigns are being served and at what cost, agency trading desks which deliver RTB are essentially functioning as a "black box" – an arm of the agency removed from the account team incentivised to gain large margins. Advertisers are pitted against each other with the systems in place working in favour of the agency, rather than the client – giving the agency no incentive to provide the best value for advertisers.

So how can we break away from this flawed model? It starts with advertisers taking a look at the big flaws at the core of their operations rather than focusing on incremental innovations in the margins. Marketers must demand transparency and accountability. Instead of working under a paradigm of blind trust, advertisers need to ask hard questions of partners such as how much are we spending, where is it going and why is it going there?

The fragmentation and complexity of the digital ad space means that technology Must be used to drive consolidation, in much the same way as it has been used to align other areas of change driven by technology – think CRM and ERP.

Marketers need to allocate resources upfront to streamlined open platforms, and explicitly to technology that reduces waste and inefficiencies, not continue to bury tech fees in media buys. Marketers should work with their CIO to create a tech-vetting process that requires incentives that align with their best interests.

Once marketers find the right mix of technology to simplify the process of digital marketing they don't need to worry about when or where their ads are served and who they are reaching. They can then focus on the truly difficult, strategic task of creating great customer relationships.

http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2013/jul/12/digital-marketing-advertising-innovation

First glimpse of Instagram ads

This week, Instagram shared for the first time images of Instagram ads. Moving forward, Sponsored Photos and Sponsored Videos will begin appearing in users' feeds, from brands that they don't follow. Instagram has also announced that only a handful of brands will initially be able to advertise to users. Additionally, users will have the option of hiding ads from their feeds.

Given the format, this is potentially a less intrusive form of advertising than what Google and Facebook have recently proposed. Additionally, given the format of Instagram, this could also present a great opportunity for companies to engage their brands through stories of the products / services they offer, and the people behind them (for instance in the W Hotel ad that was provided).

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/first-look-at-instagram-ads/

Marketing healthcare.gov

As this article spells out, the failure of Obamacare to develop a proper website based on simple UX practices is deeply disheartening.  Politics aside, if you are going to roll out a health care policy that mandates all individuals without health care must sign up for a plan you must ensure they have a way to do so. Underestimating demand, a fragmented design team, and lack of a logical website flow are some of the major problems that this system is experiencing. And with all the back and forth debate about this new policy you would think the administration would have gone above and beyond to ensure the website gets launched without any major glitches.  Instead this poorly designed and operated site adds fuel to the fire for the discussion around whether Obamacare is good for our society or not.

This now poses as a major PR / Marketing issue for the Obama administration as they must address (ahem spin) these glitches and continue to assure the American public that this policy is in their best interest even if they cannot offer the means to deliver it to them. In my opinion they should have hired a marketing team to oversee the launch (or if they did, they should have hired a better one) as no credible team would have let a website with so many issues get launched in this state. A marketer would have thought through the user experience and asked the right questions along the way, while putting themself in the mind of the typical user. And a marketer would have been prepared to consider the impact of the launch on the brand of Obamacare, a crucial consideration for President Obama.  All in all a major marketing failure, and Obamacare now needs rapid and over the top measures in order to resurrect its image in the minds of Americans.

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/lessons-user-experience-healthcare-gov/244933/

~ Mallory Godwin

Best time of day to send an email campaign

Following Kate's post about sending email campaigns on Fridays, I decided to do a little research and look into the best times of day to send these campaigns out, which is apparently between 8-10am, and 3-4pm! Sending emails during this time ca increase average open rates and CTR by 6%!

Some fun facts include:
- 23.6% of all emails open occur within an hour of delivery and decrease to 4.8% after 4hours, and almost zero after 24hours, so choosing your time is important
- Almost 40% of all messages are sent between 6 a.m. and noon, therefore emails sent in the afternoon have more chances of being noticed, given that most emails get sent in the morning

Click here for more info: http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/best-time-email-campaign/

ADS ON INSTAGRAM

This past Thursday, Instagram gave its user-base a sneak peak of what advertisements would look like on the social media platform. To my surprise, I was intrigued and excited by seeing their ad appear in my feed. I believe my reaction was due in most part to the authentic approach Instagram took in debuting its trial advertisement, pictured to the right, which had an accompanying comment authored by the company that calmly said "we are not selling out." Their debut ad's purpose was to show users an example of what an ad will look like on the gram: artistic, interesting and sort of fun. Instagram claimed that ads it allows on the platform will be engaging and creative and if they aren't users can complain, something that will force advertisers to try really hard. Also, in an effort to roll advertisements out organically, Instagram is offering its ad platform to only a handful of trusted companies which it has deemed worthy of advertising to its user-base, in effect its curating advertisements for us. And you can't really tell that the image to the right is an ad, which is great. It looks like a regular photo that would show up in anyone's feed and its not annoying at all, which is what everyone was afraid of, in fact its quite pleasing to the eye and hopefully all of the ads on Instagram will be similarly great. When Instagram debuted its trial ad a lot of people were upset, but a lot of people came to support the social media platform claiming that Instagram is a company too, a company that needs to make money. Facebook didn't buy Instagram for its simplistic design and awesome ability to take-up a large chunk of its users share of screen, though both are assets. Facebook bought Instragram for its earning potential and advertisements is how the subsidiary will make money, its that simple. 

Twpple Hack - Connecting Small Businesses with Social Media

TechCrunch Disrupt Europe Hackathon saw Sam Gichuru and Billy Odero spend the night working on a hack to help small businesses promote themselves by tapping into social network influencers. The hack, called Twpple, is designed to help smaller outlets, such as kebab shops, market stalls, hair salons and any small businesses that haven’t built up its own digital following.

The hack uses Klout scores as a shortcut to identify individuals with the most social cachet that the SMEs can then tap into. The social influencers get paid for tweeting a series of messages which they would word themselves) about the business or promotions they are running — with small payments giving them an incentive to help businesses spread the word.

“If your Klout score is 25 you can get $2.50 for sending three tweets,” said Gichuru, during his on stage pitch. “We have called this ‘pay per influence.’”

 

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/27/twpple-hack-built-by-kenyan-duo-connects-small-businesses-with-social-media-big-wigs/

--Prachi

Tech Boom or Bust?

There were three big news items this week that hit on the same overarching note: Are we in a tech bubble or tech boom?

It was recently reported that the S&P500 has hit records highs this year regardless of the fiscal and political meltdown in Washington. Tech stocks saw a surge in the past three weeks due to beating analyst estimates and showing record revenue gains as the 3^rd quarter came to a close.  Even companies who lost their luster a few years past saw shares rise as 2013 seems to be the year of the tech resurgence.

Another big win came to one of the last brand-name social media company that’s still private, Pinterest. They were just infused with $225M in round E investing, even though the company has yet to generate mass revenue. The company is now worth an expected $3.8 billion, which basically pushes them out of ever being acquired due to their large evaluation.

Finally, Snapchat also received an extremely high evaluation of $3.5 billion. Remember, this is the same texting startup that put “sexting” officially in our lexicon. It was also reported that Mark Zuckerberg Facebook was also reported to have offered Snapchat $1 billion to buy the company outright.

What’s shocking about this is how some of these companies have yet to really understand what type of revenues they can make. It seems yet again that they’ll probably default to “ad revenue” or “mobile ads”. This seems short sighted and a bit risky given that it’s not always a proven method to generate value. Speaking of value, people have put so much of it—literally and figuratively—in these companies that most feel overvalued without looking at the financials. It may be time to step back a bit and try to understand what’s going on in the world of tech and revenue generation. Government impasse, no revenues, and sexting… are we in a bubble? #yes. 

Email Marketing: Is Friday the best day to send marketing emails?

17.9% of a week's worldwide marketing emails are sent on Tuesdays, according to a recent study done by GetResponse. This appears to be justified, given that consumers open 19.9% of the marketing emails they receive on Tuesdays, more than any other day of the week. However, Fridays have the highest worldwide marketing email click rate at 4.9%, higher than the 4.6% click rate on Tuesdays. Fridays also have the highest open rate after Tuesdays, at 19.6%. Yet, only 14.9% of worldwide marketing emails are sent on Fridays, the smallest share of any weekday.

What might explain the high Friday open and click rates? I would hypothesize that people are getting ready for the weekend. They've made it through the week and have some time to catch up on their emails. They may also be looking for things to do over the weekend, like sales to shop or restaurants for dining. They probably also have higher purchase intent because they are further down the funnel and closer in time to when they will go shopping or dine at a restaurant.

Does this mean every marketer should start sending marketing emails on Fridays? The answer to that depends on the marketer. Marketers should start by reviewing their current email marketing performance. If they are marketing products or services that consumers frequently purchase on the weekend, Friday emails may make sense to keep the brand top of mind, as people plan their weekend activities. It might be worth testing Friday emails among a subset of customers to see whether they have any positive impact. If so, the email marketer should then test some different subject lines and email formats to see which gets the best results. The right email marketing strategy will be different for every marketer. Simply sending emails on Fridays may not have much of an impact if your emails are still in the 80% that aren't opened.

Mobile marketing more important than ever this holiday season

According to Deloitte's 2013 Annual Holiday Survey, 68% of smartphone users will shop via mobile during the holidays. They will use their smartphones to find store locations, check and compare prices, get product information, shop or browse online, read reviews, check product availability in-store, and to get coupons, discounts and sale information. These so-called "omnichannel shoppers" are important because they intend to spend 76% more than those who shop in bricks-and-mortar stores only. Furthermore, the shopper walking through the aisle is 14% more likely to purchase. Usage of a smartphone in-store to enhance the purchase experience signals intent and increased engagement.

Deloitte Infographic

Interestingly, the survey also found that 22% of respondents would be more likely to purchase from a retailer that offered self-service and/or mobile checkout and 14% were more likely to purchase from a retailer that offered free wifi for comparison shopping. Even though these shoppers are expected to spend more, they are still looking for value. 73% of respondents said they expect to be influenced by discounts and promotion offers like free shipping, free returns, price matching, etc.

So what does this mean for marketers?

First, they need to make their stores mobile friendly, starting with free wifi and mobile payments, to help customers avoid the long checkout lines that accompany holiday shopping.

Second, retailers should have mobile apps that enhance the shopping experience. A good mobile app with include a store locating functionality, price check, easy to find product information and the ability to check in-store availability of products.

Third, retailers need to harvest the purchase intent of the customers in their store using discounts and promotions. One way to do this may be to use technology like the Estimote Beacon, on which I wrote my last post. Ideally, the beacons would work with the retailer's mobile shopping app to deliver the right discounts and promotions at the right time, based on time spent in aisle, examining product, and how the customer is using the mobile app (e.g. to price check, etc.).

Instagram Ads Preview

Again, another social media platform, Instagram, decided to place advertisements. The ads will be relatively standard, once in a while Instagram will plug a sponsored photo in your stream and mark it with “sponsored”. Instagram already have a lot of partners lined up. It is not quite sure how many ads Instagram will post but it shouldn’t be more than 4 per day which is Tumblr’s number. If the user has the same email for Facebook and Instagram, the ads that pop up will be affected by user’s Facebook activity. With Instagram’s ads, Facebook will be able to boost its share to higher than 33%.

Instagram ad is something everybody was expecting so not very surprising but I personally didn’t like the news. I am worried that it will become like Facebook where it’s hard to see the actual posts because there are so many ads on the wall. Today, I went to my Facebook account and deleted all the musicians, movies and TV series that I had liked in the past because it was taking over my Facebook feeds. I hope that Instagram will come up with strict plan of how many ads per day they are going to display and stick to the plan. 

http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/24/instagram-gives-a-first-look-at-its-upcoming-advertisements-which-look-exactly-how-youd-expect/

Big data of Pinterest

Pinterest created a partnership with Getty images to understand how user behavior when pinning images. It sounds like Pinterest is trying to find a revenue source in its current business structure. by identifying where users go to find pictures, where and how they select them will help the company determine potential opportunities for selling user data. It would be curious to see what leads will come out of the partnership and what it implies for the big data collection and analyses.

Liza Shepeleva

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57609417-93/pinterest-to-pay-getty-for-data-on-images/

Where is the ROI in Social Media Advertising?

Nearly all firms adhere to the principle that to remain relevant, they need to have a strong social media presence. However, the ROI from these investments—which often involves spending with third-party vendors as well as paying for internal social media management teams—is questionable. In August 2013, a survey discussing this concept with various Chief Marketing Officers revealed that only 15% of CMOs can quantify the impact of social media advertising. Perhaps even more startling, however, is that this same group envisions doubling this expense over the next five years.

This behavior is indicative of social media’s place in today digital marketing world: it is still in its infant stages, and is little understood. Although sites like Facebook and Twitter are now monetizing their large, global user-bases, the advertising spend of many firms is purely experimental at this point. There is little long-term data or research to say what is effective, what isn’t, and what kinds of ROI can be expected.

In their inability to estimate ROI, firms are showing their lack of strategy within social media. They want to show that they are up-to-date and competing against other players within the industry, but jumping into the deep end may not be the behavior that shareholders expect or invest in. The next several years should be telling for social media as it continues to evolve and social media outlets gain experience in understanding advertising impact. In the meantime however, CMOs might be better served by spending money on social media research rather than blindly throwing money into the social media black hole.

How You Can Win at Social Media Right Now (Hint: Silly Cat Pics Don't Cut It)

Companies are embracing different forms of social media more and more to promote their brand and market their products. While we are still in the early stages of this type of interface many companies are doing the right things to attract customers and build a community of loyal followers. There are a few key takeaways from this article with one of the most important ones that companies cannot sound too corporate or stiff. If people are going to interact with a brand on social media they have to feel as if they are interacting with an actual person. The article quotes, "With 20 percent of adult Internet users active on Twitter, engaging Tweets are becoming increasingly important." Brands need to identify with their user base and be able to interact with them over social media in a human way.

Additionally, brands needs to stimulate conversation amongst a community of followers in order to create a community feeling where users bond around a specific brand. This is critical to building loyalty to a brand. There have been many successful companies who have done this, but amazingly there are many that have totally missed the boat on this. 

For those companies who haven't woken up to the reality that this is the direction they must take when thinking about their marketing plans they need to wake up.

Read more at http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229617

Data, data everywhere … but only a 1 in 2 chance that it’s actually right!

I’ve been doing some research for my group project into the issue of data management and collection, and what advertisers really know about you. The shocking truth, according to a limited survey carried out by a firm called Enliken (whose business is to get people to give them more accurate data about themselves in exchange for access to content) is that half of what advertisers think they know about you – from your politics to your style – could be wrong.

Although the survey only covered 116 people and about 9000 data points, its findings were seen to provide a valuable sample highlighting the biggest issue with current tracking and ad-targeting companies – namely, that they may capture a lot of data and link it to a profile, but in actual fact much of it can be wrong. 

The low levels of accuracy can be for various reasons – from user-entered inaccuracies, to error-prone software to false positive and negatives in the interpretation of data points. As for company performance, well Yahoo came in lowest on the league, with 48% inaccuracy and worse than bluekai at 40%. Google came in first, but still with an average of 20% inaccuracy and 12% uncertain.

In the Mashable article, where the writer himself took the survey, he came out on the upside – only 26% of the data about him was obviously wrong! If that’s seen as "good", no wonder why it's so hard to design a really effective online marketing campaign.

Read on: For more details on the accuracy (or inaccuracy!) of the top tracker companies (including bluekai, Yahoo! and Google), see the story at Mashable: http://mashable.com/2013/03/19/enliken-online-advertising/

It’s the little things: Moment marketing and how a single tweet can drive an entire campaign

I was fascinated to read Cameron Clarke’s recent article in The Drum that Nokia's 'Thanks Apple' tweet has now officially been recorded as one of the most retweeted brand tweets ever.

The story: During Apple’s hyped launch event for its new iPhones last month, Nokia cashed in on Apple’s huge media spend and media buzz by harnessing Twitter to poke fun at its rival.  A two-work tweet from Nokia’s UK account -  “Thanks, ♯Apple” – accompanied by a picture declaring “Imitation is the best form of flattery” played on the similarity between the Apple’s newly unveiled iPhone5’s colour phones and Nokia’s own range of bright designs.

The stats: Nokia’s tweet went viral and garnered an astonishing 38,000 retweets, which puts it in the top echelons of marketing tweets in the site's history. That was more retweets that Oreo’s ‘Dunk in the dark’ tweet from the Super Bowl, when Oreo capitalised on a power cut during America’s most watched sporting event and became on of the most talked-about brands without having to pay a dime.

The point: It just shows how a clever and timely spin on a current event or announcement – even a competitor’s – can drive brand exposure and enhance brand values online and off…. Timing, of course, is everything … but it doesn’t cost a penny. 

Holiday Shopping in the Digital Age.

It’s hard to even remember the time before “Cyber Monday”- the time when “Black Friday” was the only game in town and you had to bundle up to brave the cold, November temperatures to score the latest digital gadget or hottest new toy.  But now, we can comfortably sit in our pajamas, waiting for the digital channel to go live. 

Marketers are taking an aggressive approach to expanding the convenience associated with online shopping by allowing customers to purchase online and pick-up in the store.  This way customer can avoid the crowds, but still have access to their purchase without having to wait for delivery.  Target has rolled out this service to all of its retail outlets (where previously it had only been available in half). 

Target is also entering into the competitive TV advertising space to publicize the promotions available for Cyber Monday.  Target has produced over 20 commercials inspired by the hashtag #mykindofholiday to highlight the various ways in which people celebrate.  The campaign is fully integrated with the social media strategy to create a true omni-channel experience to the customer.  For example, Target will highlight 100 products in its stores that have been trending well on Pinterest and will allow people to pin images/videos from its online catalogs to a digital pinboard. 

While marketers have been emphasizing just this type of integrated, omni-channel experience, it will be interesting to see how marketers measure the success of such programs.  Is having a Pinterest driven approach to product selection a strategy that demonstrates measurable returns to the business? Surely savvy companies like Target, Walmart, and Amazon will quickly figure out what the value is and others will follow suit. 

http://cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2013/10/26/target_steps_up_onli.frame.html

Mobile App Ads: Does OS Impact Conversion?

Mobile apps must be marketed, but what is the best way to market them? Should you use text ads, expandables, banner ads, interstitials or some combination of these within the app? An App Insight Report recently published by InMobi indicated the highest converting type of app ad is an interstitial ad on an Android device, which boasts a conversion rate over 3%. An interstitial ad looks like the image on the right:

On Apple devices, text ads had the highest conversion rates: close to 2%. In the banner ad category, such ads on Android devices converted at 1.12% versus 1.4% on Apple devices. Perhaps the most glaring difference was in the category of expandables, which convert at .63% on Android devices and 1.65% on iOS, which indicates the user experience for the same type of ad varies quite dramatically between operating systems. 

In summary, InMobi recommends marketers consider using some combination of banner ads and interstitials, which they claim gives marketers a broad reach... but this all depends on app category, as banner ads vary highly among categories, as eMarketer indicates in the table below: