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March 25, 2016

Retail Brands: Selling on Social Media

Among over one hundred billion in eCommerce sales between January and March of this year, around one and a half percent of retail shoppers purchase products via social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

Data shows that within that one and a half percent, retail shoppers predominantly used Facebook as the way to shop, encompassing eighty-one percent of sales. On the other hand, Pinterest yielded close to eleven percent, while Twitter, Youtube and Instagram consisted of around five percent.

According to the study, shoppers were more inclined to complete transactions via search or email marketing which actually consisted of around seventy percent of purchases in the study.

Although, some brands are concerned with the lack of completed transactions that their brands are yielding on strong social media platforms, the VP of Abercrombie & Fitch, views this digital relationship between the brand and the consumer in a very different light.

Even though Michael Scheiner strongly believes statistically data is an important factor when conjuring up a strong social media marketing plan, he does emphasize the valuable experience that consumers have when they do engage with brands on these platforms.

Essentially, Scheiner’s main takeaway is focused on creating an innovative brand image in order to potential customers to have a unique relationship with the retailer based on authentic interest in the product. In other words, branding proves to be one of the most, if not the most salient motives for retailers to stay active on social media.

As different social media platforms attract different audiences at various times of the day, the need for organic content is in no way long gone or dead. Insight from Mark Aikman, the general manager of marketing at Mercedes-Benz approaches Instagram as a platform geared towards branding.

With Aikman and his team generating organic content on a daily basis for branding purposes, Mercedes’ marketing manager firmly believes that these separate marketing mentalities not only gear towards both short and long-term success, but also produce a digital environment where Facebook is perceived as more of a direct-response platform.

Interestingly enough, although number crunching, quantitative data and statistics generally drive any retailer’s social media marketing strategy, these global brands are holding true to the notion that consumer engagement is an extensive process.

“People who are pinning are building for the future, whether the future is a baby shower four weeks from now [or] a wedding they’re planning four months from now,” said Kate Spade & Co. evp and CMO Mary Beech. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

John Partilla is the CEO of Screenvision, and he’s a veteran of the marketing industry with nearly three decades of experience in a variety of roles. Please read “John Partilla Named Screenvision CEO,” “John Partilla: Screenvision Names Exec CEO – Variety,” “Screenvision Taps John Partilla To Be CEO As It Seeks To Rebuild” and his Screenvision profile to learn more. Also, check out his Crunchbase, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

January 27, 2016

Adblocking On The Rise

As programmatic advertising has been on the rise for both ad agencies and brands alike, this in no way eliminates different forms of rebuttal that this portion of the industry faces as a response to these ads based on cookie based data. Back in fall 2015, a mobile app for the iPhone was released in order to block ads from big social networks such as Facebook, and even the tech giant Apple itself. If you want to read more about adblocking as a trend that is here to stay, have a look at the Guardian.

It is evident that users are not keen on engaging with ads by the increased trend of more global companies creating ways to avoid them or block them altogether. With browsers such as Firefox blocking ad pop ups back in October, other companies have also taken a stance against what some would say “bothersome” ads that target users based on location, search history, etc.

The U.S. as a whole maintains around a 25% ad blocking rate on mobile devices, while the Asian market has around a 50% rate due to the implementation of this practice well before the Western countries have. This no doubt will negatively affect the digital advertising industry’s way to influence consumers to engage with brands of all types.

Other than the fact that these ads often times slow down the speed of the browser or take up unnecessary data, many users agree that it’s more of an annoyance than anything else.

With the increased mobile engagement of around 90% among millennial users between the ages of 18 through 29, ad blocking on these devices has increasingly become as common on mobile phones as desktop computers, due to an overall increase in user engagement on mobile. But it doesn’t stop here, GlobalWebIndex Research and insight director Jason Mander affirms that ad blocking as a trend actually is more prevalent than we think it is.

Mander highlights this fact by stating that “Arguably the most striking aspect of this data is the huge potential for ad blocking to continue growing. Across every single age and gender break, it’s at least 70% who say they’re either blocking ads already or are interested in doing so in the future.”

The digital advertising industry has no doubt been negatively affected on the Publisher’s side of spectrum, as seen by the stark decrease of user demand of these add becoming more apparent in the last six months or so. In terms of the notion of “value” in the eyes of both publishers and brands, one of the best practices for programmatic advertisers is to target higher-earning income households, as it is the most promising way for this range of consumers to purchase the product.

Although this can be seen a bit hopeless for the demand or Publisher’s side of the advertising relationship, useful data from GlobalWebIndex highlights the fact that high-earning income households in the top 25% of the U.S. demographic actually demonstrates a much lower rate of blocking ads rather than middle or lower income homes.

This in turn, gives some peace of mind for big time Publishers such as the New York Times, Facebook or the ever-growing online site Mashable, from not being able to digitally appeal to their most valued customers.

November 9, 2015

Top Box Office Movies

The weekend of November 7th saw ‘Spectre’ open in first place with a $70.40 million debut. ‘The Peanuts Movie’ impressively held onto second with $44.2 million and much further back in third was ‘The Martian’ with $9.1 million.

Even though ‘Spectre’ would seem to have a good opening number, it is well below the expectations of a James Bond installment. The number is 20 percent less than the opening number of $88.36 million, which was the box office start of ‘Skyfall’ in 2012. It’s also a mere four percent over the 2008 James Bond entry ‘Quantam of Solace’. The reviews for ‘Spectre’ were also mixed, so box office watchers doubt the movie will improve much upon its debut. Nevertheless, the next weekend is not expected to have any high-grossing films so ‘Spectre’ might at least continue to lead.

‘The Peanuts Movie’ had a strong opening that generally fulfilled expectations. Compared to other recent animated features such as 2012’s ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ with $49.04 million and 2007’s ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ with $44.31 million, ‘The Peanuts Movie’ fell a little short, but not by much. It should be noted that those numbers are also without adjusting for any kind of inflation. However, the positive reviews and success relative to its genre say that ‘The Peanuts Movie’ is likely to hold up much better at the box office.

Though it had led the box office for the previous five weekends, ‘The Martian’ slipped to third with only $9.07 million made over this weekend. It fell about 22.5 percent, but has overall performed quite strongly. It’s on pace to make $200 million domestically thus far, with that total nearly reached in just 38 days.

August 10, 2015

NFL and Twitter Ink Deal

Twitter’s turmoil in the boardroom and slowing user growth have grabbed the headlines as of late, but the news is not all discouraging. The National Football League just announced that it is renewing the deal with Twitter it first signed two years ago. The two-year agreement ensures that Twitter will play host to official NFL content custom-produced for the platform. Users of this social media will now be exposed to more NFL-themed content.

The social media behemoth has been angling to become a major player in the live events. Analysts have revealed that Twitter has been developing a product that will work to curate and organize tweets about live events such as sports games, concerts, and more. Executive are hopeful that his product, which they are calling Project Lightning, will attract people to the platform without actually forcing them to have an account. Other companies in the space such as SnapChat have already begun to see a lot of success regarding live events.

The deal inked in 2013 allowed official NFL content and highlights to be displayed on Twitter. The two parties divide the generated revenue from the ads that are shown at the beginning of the video clips. NFL fans on twitter will also have access to exclusive content such as expert analysis, behind the scenes videos, game recaps, infographics, breaking news, and more. Peter Kafka from Re/code points out that the significance of this deal lies in the fact it is the first time Twitter has reached a multi-year deal with a large media company.

A recent report from Nielsen reports that the National Football League reached upwards of 200 million unique viewers during their 2014 regular season. That’s an impressive number as this accounts for more than two-thirds of all viewers in the United States. Furthermore, this data deals only with the regular season and does not include the sport’s most-watched event, the Superbowl.

May 28, 2015

Ubimo Receives Funding

As self-service marketing platforms race to deliver precise customer data in order to show those customers the most relevant ads possible, one such platform has been gaining a lot of attention and funding. Ubimo, which was founded by former Googler employees, recently closed a series B funding round for $7.5 million. The round was led by Pitango Venture Capital with YJ Capital, a venture capital arm of Yahoo Japan, joining in as well. This marks the first time that Yahoo Japan has invested in an Israel-based startup. Currently, Ubimo has raised a total of $9.7 million starting in August 2013.

Ubimo CEO, Ren Ben Yair

Ubimo’s co-founder Ran Ben-Yair believes that any location-based marketing platform is a potential competitor but there are some innovative ideas behind Ubimo that make it stand out. While there are indeed other platforms that provide similar features, Ubimo collects even more data points that may be useful for marketers looking for higher conversion rates. The additional data points that Ubimo incorporates includes weather information and local events that may be happening around a consumer’s area.

This allows marketers and ad agencies to better deliver ads that a consumer may find relevant. Factors that can influence the relevancy of ads, and therefore conversion rates, include purchasing trends, age, location, location of certain venues or nearby events, the weather, demographics of the consumer’s neighborhood and gender. Since marketers know that businesses tend to draw out different, but sometimes specific groups of people, it is important to know who and where those people are in order to better serve them relevant ads. In advertising, one of the biggest complaints from the regular consumer is that some ads are just irrelevant to their interests. But when an ad is relevant, consumers are more open to them and do not mind having data on them collected for that purpose.

Ubimo works in real-time and serves the growing mobile marketing sector which is quickly overtaking other traditional forms as more and more consumers become mobile. After receiving its first round of funding in 2013, Ubimo opened a sales office in New York City and attracted the attention of ad agencies and Fortune 500 brands.