New Google TV Integrates With 30+ Streaming Services

Google has come out with a new platform called Google TV (formerly "Play Movies") and in addition to being able to use content from its own services like YouTube TV, Google TV can also aggregate and organize content from a number of other sources, including major third party streamers like Hulu and Disney+. 

Below is the full list of streaming services that are supported on the platform:

• ABC
• Amazon Prime Video
• AMC
• A&E
• CBS All Access
• Crackle
• Comedy Central
• DC Universe
• Disney NOW
• Disney+
• Epix Now
• Fox Now
• Google Play Movies (now Google TV)
• Hulu
• HBO Go
• HBO Max
• History
• Lifetime
• MTV
• NBC
• Pluto TV
• Showtime
• Showtime Anytime
• Sling TV
• Starz
• TBS
• The CW
• TNT
• Tubi TV
• VH1
• YouTube TV

This new Google TV platform replaces "Play Movies," which wasn't widely used, and makes things more streamlined by directly placing your account-wide Google watchlist on your TV. It is available on the new Chromecast and will be launched on Android phones as well.

PepsiCo's in-house technology informs radical shift to digital

PepsiCo has accelerated growth from traditional TV to streaming while expanding its online sales. 

At the center of their efforts is their ROI engine that has supposedly increased their return on investment during campaigns. 

ROI Engine's genesis predates the pandemic, with the idea around the technology first emerging a year and a half ago amid a broader reassessment of PepsiCo's marketing measurement.

The fact that ROI engine was deployed beforehand helped PepsiCo accelerating and enjoy growth in digital sales in the pandemic particularly in North America. Now it's time to deploy it in the rest of the world.  

Facebook seeks to help businesses advertise and sell with Kustomer acquisition

 Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/30/facebook-acquires-kustomer-a-crm-start-up.html

On Monday 11/30, Facebook announced that it had acquired Kustomer, a CRM startup that leverages AI and process automation to provide an efficient platform for companies to manage sales and customer relationships.  While most of Facebooks acquisitions have been consumer-facing (Instagram, WhatsApp, Giphy, etc.), this acquisition signals Facebook's intent to provide even more services for companies who are using the platform to advertise and sell their products.  With a Kustomer integration, companies could feasibly advertise and close sales on platforms like WhatsApp and Messenger, branching beyond display advertising and Facebook's Marketplace platform, ultimately driving more conversions.  This will likely be a big revenue driver for Facebook as well, which earns 99% of its revenue from advertising.

It's unclear when we might expect changes to Facebook's core platforms; they'll want to make sure an integration with such revenue implications is done right.  However, with the resources Facebook has at its disposal, I'd be surprised if we don't start to see these options popping up for advertisers very soon.

Lonely Planet sold to US Digital Marketing Group - Red Ventures

 

Travel guide publisher Lonely Planet has been acquired by US digital marketing group Red Ventures for an undisclosed sum.

Red Ventures aims to propel Lonely Planet it into the digital era while “remaining committed to publishing the guidebooks that have made Lonely Planet the iconic brand it is today”.

Red Ventures said Lonely Planet had produced over 150 million travel guidebooks, reaches 186 million people annually and covers 22,000 destinations around the world.

As the pandemic hit in March and April, Lonely Planet announced office closures and redundancies across the group, including several at its Dublin office. While the company said it would continue publishing its country guidebooks, it cut back several ancillary services.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/lonely-planet-sold-to-us-digital-marketing-group-for-undisclosed-sum-1.4424895

Miguel Fernandes

Amazon's Biggest Holiday Shopping Year Despite the Pandemic

Today, Amazon reported that it experienced its biggest holiday shopping season in 2020. Independent businesses selling on Amazon surpassed $4.8 billion in worldwide sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, which is up 60% from last year. 71,000 small and medium-sized businesses had seen sales above $100,000.

At the same time, foot traffic to stores on Black Friday dropped 52% compared with last year. Amazon is one of the best positioned retailers to continue benefiting from this trend. As more users will continue fearing going out and instead will order online, the market which Amazon dominates, Amazon will continue reaping benefits until the arrival of stronger e-commerce competitors.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/01/amazon-announces-black-friday-cyber-monday-2020-results.html

When social media campaigns start using TikTok

A new addition to marketing campaign has been the use of TikTok given its extensive reach to younger audiences. With the rise of its popularity, Instagram released a similar feature, 'Reels', to compete with TikTok. However, Reels has yet to gain traction with users. Meanwhile, Snapchat has already decided to join the bandwagon with its own knock-off version of TikTok called 'Spotlight' to draw in user engagement. Similar to TikTok's algorithm to populate users 'For You' feed, Spotlight curates the best snapchats that are submitted by users to populate others feeds. With a new feature, Snapchat will have to leverage digital marketing techniques to boost popularity so it will be interesting to see if it gains traction.

Can TV ads make the jump to a digital world?

     Since the beginning of time (or at least network TV), brands large and small have advertised on television ranging from smaller cable advertising buys to million dollar Super Bowl ads. Reach was a huge advantage provided by television as huge numbers of individuals watch. There was also some ability to target specific customers using demographic ratings and targeting programs that are more watched by your preferred demographic. As digital ads have risen in popularity bringing the ability to hyper-target customers, the appeal of TV advertising has begin to fall.

     Earlier this month, Nielsen announced that it had partnered with Vizio and other smart TV manufacturers to allow tracking of over 55 million televisions at the zip code (in some situations household) and individual ad level. This increased tracking is expected to raise ad rates due to the more precise targeting and success tracking involved. What this does not address is another big problem that TV advertising (and to some level digital advertising) grapples with. For a digital ad, you can track immediate clicks and purchases and use that to better gauge effectiveness of your add. While this change in TV advertising is positive it still does not address the issue of calculating ROI that advertisers face since they can't connect TV impressions to sales. Based on this, I foresee a short-term bump in advertising rates for TV advertising due to this Nielsen trend but a long-term shift to digital advertising and TV streaming advertising (which has similar problems to this new system but allows even more hyper targeting).  

Marketing for a Pandemic Holiday Season

This year, the sales surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday looked different from the typical Black Friday sales that customers have gotten used to. Instead of one-day-only “doorbuster” sales with a myriad of discounted products where customers line up outside for these limited in-store offerings, retailers across the world, including big box retailers, have had to find new ways to approach these sales in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Specifically, many retailers are doing away with offering the best deals in-person, and stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy have made some of their most enticing sales online-only to de-emphasize the importance of in-store shopping. This shift toward online shopping is creating another challenge: ensuring that customers receive their purchases in time for the holidays. With postal services more burdened than ever (as people send away for things that they would normally buy in-person, whether it is food, household supplies, or holiday gifts for others), retailers have changed their marketing and overall approach to online sales. First, they are spreading out the promotions over a period of days and even weeks to smooth demand, and many offered these sales earlier in November and even in October to account for shipping delays closer to the holidays. Second, they are encouraging in-store/curbside pickup for items bought online to alleviate challenges regarding shipping, with some stores like Nordstrom even offering small gift cards/free cups of coffee/other incentives to pick up your online order in-store or at curbside. Stores will likely use these tactics more to drive in-store/curbside pickup as the holidays get closer and postal services become more strained.

While some customers prefer this new approach to holiday sales, which allows them to explore more in a given amount of time and make all the purchases they want, retailers also understand that online sales make it harder to encourage impulse purchases: customers have more time to think about a particular item before purchasing, and they are not swayed by the holiday music/decorations or chaos/crowds that make them feel the desire or need to buy something in a rush. I will be interested to see what other marketing tactics retailers roll out in the coming weeks to combat these challenges and encourage holiday shopping in this pandemic environment.

Sources: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/30/cyber-monday-2020-time-to-test-the-limits-of-e-commerce-.html , https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/23/holiday-2020-so-long-doorbusters-retailers-roll-out-weeks-of-deals.html , https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/23/holiday-2020-so-long-doorbusters-retailers-roll-out-weeks-of-deals.html 

Is SMS Marketing Effective?

From an efficiency standpoint, SMS marketing naturally seems like an obvious channel for brands to leverage.  When you look at the statistics side-by-side with email marketing, SMS has a lot going for it.  In terms of open rates, emails garner an average of 20%, whereas SMS offers are opened at a rate of 98%.  This makes sense given that so many of the often hundreds of emails we receive on a daily basis are spam and get deleted before they opened.  It also makes sense given that text messaging is our most commonly used form of regular, instant communication.  So when you see a text message pop up, you are highly likely to at least open it.  Additionally, a text message usually gets a response within 90 seconds (and 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of being received), whereas it takes people an average of 90 minutes to respond to an email.  But what about return on investment?

Given that SMS marketing has become so much more popular and widely used by brands in recent years, the hypothesis is that in the near future, SMS marketing may come up against some of the same roadblocks that email marketing has had.  These challenges include the high spam rate, which goes hand-in-hand with the changing psychology around people coming to expect that a great deal of the texts they receive in a day will be marketing messages, and therefore disregarded as spam before opening.  But before that happens, brands using SMS marketing can mitigate future challenges as much as possible and get the most ROI out of their current SMS methods.  

There are some key contributors to ROI in SMS marketing.  Be timely and relevant - SMS ads are particularly useful with real-time deals and coupons, flash sales, etc., so utilizing this channel well for these initiatives will pay off.  Keep it short and well-communicated - SMS messages should be communicated in 160 characters or less and should be written in plain, conversational English (using all caps and emojis is never a good idea, if people see that in an email it’s a first indication of spam, so the same holds true for a text from an unknown number).  Make the click-through as frictionless as possible for recipients, which can easily be done with a call-to-action button or direct link.  Finally, and most importantly, know your audience - do the due diligence necessary to home in on your target demographics, particularly for just-in-time deals, for which SMS as a channel is particularly effective.

All in all, companies should develop a strategy that incorporates both SMS and email marketing, as both can be highly effective for different reasons and at different times.  The timing is paramount, and just as important is getting permission to send a text message.  Your audience may completely abandon you if you send them a text ad without their permission.  If used with the right methodology, SMS can be just as effective as (if not more so) and yield comparable ROI to email marketing.

Sources:

https://optinmonster.com/sms-marketing

https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2019/01/roi-showdown-sms-marketing-vs-email-marketing

Measurement challenges for LinkedIn and Facebook

 As we've discussed in class, measurement can a huge benefit of digital marketing. Compared with traditional channels like radio and tv, it is much easier to link advertising to action in digital channels, where a user can be tracked from impression to click to conversion. However, many ad platforms are still figuring out how to effectively measure the efficacy of digital campaigns . Below are two articles highlighting recent measurement errors by LinkedIn and Facebook, both of which overcharged customers. While LinkedIn's issues were relatively minor and resulted in illegitimate charges of less than $25 for 90% of affected customers, Facebook is dealing with relatively more reputational blowback. 

Going forward, it will be important for ad platforms to proactively identify the ways in which their attribution models can 'break,' and ensure they are transparent when escalating these issues to their customers and the media. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedin-finds-measurement-errors-that-inflated-video-and-ad-metrics-11605228577

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-latest-error-shakes-advertisers-confidence-11606346927

Managing Success for B2B Social Media Marketing

Managing Success for B2B Social Media Marketing

Link: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/b2b-social-media-marketing/

While it’s true that many of the top brands leveraging social media operate in the B2C segment (such as Nike, Starbucks, and Applebee’s), it doesn’t mean that B2B companies don’t have a place in the social media arena. 

In terms of platforms used, 65% B2B players use LinkedIn to acquire customers, 55% use blogging, 43% use Facebook and 40% use twitter.

The problem that many B2B companies often face is: a lack of knowledge and an awareness of social media or not having the right staff/resources to run their social media campaigns.

For successful social media marketing, a B2B company needs to take a strategic approach and execute their campaign with precision. This can be done through 3 steps:

1. Define clear marketing objectives: Having measurable goals that are relevant to the big or small business will help create a winning B2B social media marketing strategy. You need to ensure that each goal set is smart and measurable in nature so that gauging success becomes simpler, and more scientific. Build a social media plan with targets and timelines to generate targeted leads, build a reputable brand and offer online customer service.

2. Identify the target audience: Social media is made up of diverse people, so not everybody is going to be interested in the content you share. Which is why it’s important to reach out to an audience that connects to you and your content. You want businesses who pay attention and listen to your advice. Being in the B2B segment, this not only helps you build a list of followers, but also lets you create real authority and a positive brand in your niche. By adding more value to your social media content, you will slowly but steadily differentiate your business from other companies that are not putting the effort in B2B social media marketing. Know your priorities, analyze competitors and their social media strategy, decide on what content to share and create and assign personas in a structural manner.

3. Choose the right social media channels: Every social media network is different. And the people that use it have different interests and priorities. When your B2B company experiments with social media marketing, it’s important to understand the importance of selecting the right social media platform. Effectiveness ratings for B2B platforms is as follow: LinkedIn 66%, Twitter 55%, YouTube 51%, SlideShare 41%, Facebook 30%, Instagram 22%, Pinterest 20%.

Text-Messaging, Influencers and Amazon Fashion's Capsule Collections

 Amazon Fashion has bet big on Influencers in order to build demand for their business. Amazon Fashion debuted "The Drop" last year featuring capsule collections designed by influencers and only available for 30 hours. By utilizing this format, they are able to tap into the high demand that surrounds street style and limited-edition drops (ie. Yeezy, Air Jordans etc.). Street style and hype beast fashion have exploded in recent years- yet despite the lack of traditional advertising the most iconic streetwear brands still spend a lot of money marketing their drops through expensive photoshoots, fashion shows, and sometimes even tv show or movie-length commercials.

Yet, with The Drop Amazon has avoided much of the marketing cost by relying on influencers as designers. They launched with 5 influencers (each with their own unique style) who all had at least 1M followers. They then used these influencers to tease their respective launches on their Instagram and YouTube pages leading up to the launch. Doing the lead up they also had their influencers ask their followers to sign up to receive text alerts for when the capsules dropped also giving Amazon a whole skew of consumers to push texts to for every subsequent drop. The Drop has quickly grown with celebrities such as Kendall and Kylie Jenner joining for a capsule collection. Additionally, this brought many more people to Amazon Fashion who may have scoffed at it before. It has firmly placed Amazon into the fast-fashion world and the company has quickly gained their footing.

Patagonia's Anti-Black Friday/Cyber Monday Stance

 While many brands were gearing up for a productive sale season over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, offering promotions including discounts and gifts with purchase, Patagonia took a stance against the sales rush. The outdoor apparel brand is know for its sustainable practices, and has boycotted Black Friday before, arguing that increased consumer spending during sales causes unnecessary waste and a large carbon footprint due to increased shipping of products. 

This year, Patagonia released a poem via a newspaper ad to express their viewpoint, which soon went viral on Twitter. The poem was very clever from a marketing standpoint because of its creative simplicity. Read top to bottom, the poem sounds like a defeatist resignation, giving into the unavoidability of the climate crisis. However, once you get to the end of the poem it prompts you to read it again bottom to top, and this time it is a declaration of hope and call to action. The poem follows in the footsteps of Patagonia's 2011 ad "Don't buy this jacket". Instead of contributing to the noise and excess around Black Friday, which results in unnecessary waste that is harmful to the planet, Patagonia is using it's voice to inspire change. 

The ad is especially powerful because it is doing the opposite of what most other brands are doing, it is asking you NOT to consume. This creativity and uniqueness caused it to trend on multiple social media channels, further spreading the brand's message. Patagonia is sacrificing Black Friday revenue to stay true to it's principles, which in the long run makes people even more loyal to the brand. 

To read more, see: https://www.fastcompany.com/90580854/patagonias-palindrome-poem-ad-is-a-check-on-runaway-black-friday-cyber-monday-spending

Can Big Tech Buy Public Opinion?

Can Big Tech Buy Public Opinion? 

Along with food and family, football is usually a central activity in thanksgiving festivities across the country. There are usually several games shown on TV, whose ratings are consistent with major primetime events throughout the year. It is also one of the best times for advertisers to get in front of consumers who are typically in a warm family setting when watching the games. This year, it was hard not to notice who was advertising. Almost every break featured a commercial from Amazon, Facebook, Apple or Google. With the slight exception of Apple, all these ads were not selling you a specific product, they were selling themselves. The themes were, Amazon cerates jobs! Google is trustworthy, and Apple protects your data! So why are they spending so much money for primetime ads, if they are not directing you to a specific product? What all these companies have in common are that they are under heavy investigation for Anti-trust violations. This means the government is starting to think they are too big and powerful. One way to fight regulators, outside of court, is through swaying public opinion. This is clearly what these companies are trying to do on Thanksgiving. The question is, can it work? Obviously, it takes more than just commercials to improve favorability about a company, but notice, you now have a bit more information on Amazon's corporate practices. Through their ads, we now know they are focused on climate change, employee a lot of people and donate to local schools. We still may distrust Amazon and the others, but be careful, as you will surly see more public opinion ads in the coming year. 

-Alton

The Best Black Friday Campaign #OptOutside

 

eCommerce is changing how we buy, sell, and market products. First, the rise of eCommerce vendors and marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay drew attention away from brick and mortar stores. In more recent years we are seeing a slight rebalance, in that vendors and marketplaces are recognizing that digital shopping experiences can not only supplant but also bolster in-person shopping experiences.

Within some industries, particularly those that sell non-differentiated, commoditized items, eCommerce makes sense. We don't need to touch and feel five different brands of AAA batteries or K-cups to make a selection. Outdoor adventure gear is another story. I, like many others, enjoy walking around shops like Moosejaw or REI. I enjoy speaking with experts about gear, seeing the new technology in bicycle frames, or just playing with the headlamps. Fortunately, these companies understand the needs of customers like myself and have accommodated our desires. REI is a mecca for fans of the outdoors. Further, REI is learning how to use digital marketing to drive more people to their stores, just not on Black Friday.

In 2016, REI launched a campaign asking its shoppers to AVOID their stores on Black Friday. To give its employees time to rest and to help people appreciate the outdoors on this semi-holiday, REI launched the #OptOutside campaign. Three years later, REI still runs this campaign and has gained partners such as the National Parks Foundation. By drawing from its brand identity and mission to help people do what they love most - experience the great outdoors, REI launched a creative and successful marketing plan.

Luxury Retailers Enter E-Commerce

 For this week's blog post, I read an article on how luxury brands are trying to enter e-commerce. This has been a trend for the past few years, but accelerated by the pandemic. Historically, luxury retailers have been hesitant to sell their goods online, mainly due to fear of counterfeit goods. Most have avoided partnerships with Amazon, as the site is known for carrying everything and may give the wrong impression of the luxury brands.

Today, Amazon and other companies such as Farfetch are competing to carry luxury brands online. To assuage the concerns of the luxury retailers, they have given control of the digital storefront to the manufacturers and enforced tighter controls to limit the sales of counterfeit items. Some brands have tried moving online without a partner, but few have been able to find success without partnering with an existing online powerhouse such as Amazon. To date, Alibaba and Amazon are the strongest players in the East and West, respectively, and the two are racing to become the dominant player in the segment.

As international travel has been restricted, many consumers are now shopping for luxury goods online rather than visiting brick and mortar luxury retailers abroad. While the restrictions on travel may be lifted next year with the release of vaccines, luxury retailers are showing a long term commitment to the digital channel as they have seen promising results in the past year. 

This article drew my attention as I wondered what goods can't or typically aren't purchased online. Just a few years ago, it would be strange to purchase a car online, but Tesla and other companies have found success using the online model. I think it's interesting to see luxury retailers begin to embrace the digital sales channel as well after realizing that they can fight the issue of counterfeit goods and still control their brand image while partnering with major online retailers.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/business/amazon-farfetch-richemont-ecommerce-wars.html

Chatbots Can Be Used Throughout the Marketing Funnel

Chatbots are an emerging form of digital marketing with a wide variety of applications. Some key benefits of a chatbot include 24/7 availability and automation of responses to the most common customer inquiries. 

A chatbot can be used throughout the marketing funnel: 

1. Awareness - Chatbots can be used to enhance or augment customer awareness. For example, a chatbot can direct a customer to personalized, popular, or sale items on your website. 

2. Interest - When a potential customer is interested, they typically seek additional information with which they can use to make their purchase. A chatbot can directly provide or link to commonly used decision-making information such as customer reviews, warranties & guarantees, or pricing information.

3. Decision - Chatbots can be used to actively push interested customers towards a decision point. Chatbots can leverage the visitor's in-site behavior to prioritize and customize decision propositions.

4. Action - Chatbots can reduce friction between the decision-point and point-of sale. Many bots are equipped to perform the transaction right in the chatbot function, and they can also perform upsell and cross-sell functions. 

There are a wide variety of applications for chatbots, and their prominence continues to rise as small-business-friendly and affordable options proliferate across the web. 

For a more detailed readthrough of applications, see the following source article: How to Use Sales Chatbots to Optimize Sales Funnel | Landbot.

Holiday ads nod to COVID-19, but depicting gatherings also works

In an analysis conducted by Ace Metrix, 32% holiday ads were shown to have incorporated COVID-19 themes stressing how this holiday season is different from usual. 

Ace Metrix determined that campaigns which acknowledged the pandemic performed slightly better with viewers, but not significantly so. Including masks in holiday ads also did not make a substantial different in viewers' receptions. This indicates that acknowledging the new normal is likely more important than addressing all the specific details of it. 

The report shows that referencing the pandemic in ads may not be completely necessary despite the pressure companies feel to abide by safety guidelines in these ads. It appears that a majority of viewers did not care or comment on ads showing social gatherings without safety precautions. 

New norms perpetuated by the pandemic, such as curbside pickup, contactless payments, and video calling are also sparsely shown in advertisements. This may have to do with masks not being overwhelmingly popular in the country, as evidenced by the spiking COVID-19 cases. 

Interestingly, animation has taken a larger spotlight in holiday ads due to production challenges caused by the pandemic. 14% of holiday ads this year utilize some form of animation.

Source: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/holiday-ads-nod-to-covid-19-but-depicting-gatherings-also-works-study-fin/589391/

...Why DTC Brands Plan to Use Texting for Black Friday and Cyber Monday This Year

https://digiday.com/marketing/email-has-become-so-cluttered-why-dtc-brands-plan-to-use-texting-for-black-friday-and-cyber-monday-this-year/

Email is a mature marketing channel; however, still a crucial one with consistently high ROI. That said, it is no surprise that most brands use it - and thus, are scared that email inboxes will be too "noisy" - inundated throughout this season's "Cyber-Five" (the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday). In fact, I've read an article claiming that it's the best, most convenient time to unsubscribe. So, marketers are turning to texting, "a channel that is still nascent, but growing rapidly." Still, most brands see texting as an extension of their email strategies. The CEO of Sharma Brands states that "the click-through-rate is around 70% and conversion rate is north of 25%." While these results are promising, experts do note that text messaging is a more personal channel. As mentioned in class, customers are at a higher risk of unsubscribing if communication is too frequent. 

How The Pandemic Has Shifted Mobile Gaming Behaviors Worldwide

 https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-trends/mobile-casual-gaming-trends/

The article breaks up recent, pandemic gaming behaviors into 3 main trends: 

1) Casual Gaming Trends are on the Rise

There is, across the board, an uptick in spending. This can be in the form of in-game spending or purchasing a new game entirely. This presents two opportunities for marketers. Marketers can first focus on acquiring this new "casual" audience at a lower cost. Since 40+ percent of new gamers plan to continue gaming, marketers can also consider cost-per-action (vs. install) to develop more engaged users. 

2) Deeper Engagement and Longer Quests

The author encourages app campaigns to increase engagement - citing King (the maker of Candy Crush) as a prime example. King was able to reengage lapsed users, achieving a better ROI and cost per acquisition.

3) The Power of Power-Ups

Companies can incentivize users to watch video ads with "power-ups and boosters." Over one third of users will engage with the ads receive these incentives - more recently coined as "rewarded interstitials."

And this is just mobile gaming. I'm sure that console gaming (PlayStation, Xbox) has also increased in popularity throughout the pandemic.