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How Social TV Will Save Traditional TV
08 Aug 2011 Posted by Brian Spencer
Your TV set and your social profile are about to merge.
Adweek reported that social TV will change the way we watch TV and the way we connect with friends. With a click on the remote, your TV will share what you are watching with your Facebook friends. You’ll also see an on-screen listing of what they are watching. Discussions will take place on the TV screen so that you can laugh, cry, rate, and review programs in real time.
Consumers are already making a habit of sharing their media habits online. Social TV will just make it easier.
Here are the benefits for advertisers and networks:
Higher product integration value
Conversation leads to greater engagement. If I’m engaged in a program, then I’m less likely to miss details. Product integration becomes more valuable as friends discuss the outfits, the cars, and the music in the program.
Less channel surfing
Social TV makes it painful to change the channel if my friends are watching the same show. This returns value back to traditional commercial pods. It also gives networks an incentive to create buzz-worthy programs to keep friends watching together.
Less time-shifting
The DVR takes a back seat during real-time viewing. With social TV, any ordinary program can become a must-see appointment. If it becomes a habit with my friends to solve the murder together during CSI: Miami, then I will miss-out if I’m not watching in real time. This makes the DVR less of a threat to commercial ratings.
More brand chatter
The conversation doesn’t stop during commercial breaks. Expect users to comment and review every spot the same way that Super Bowl parties produce chatter about commercials. Marketers have an opportunity to identify brand enthusiasts and extend the conversation.
The next few years will see dozens of technology platforms fight to bring social TV into the mainstream. Marketers should be prepared to put their best foot forward during programs with lots of buzz, and nurture the brand conversations that social TV will produce.
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Facebook’s Ad Revenues To Nearly Double This Year
02 Sep 2010 Posted by Market and Main Media
In the social media category, the most influential player is Facebook, accounting for almost a fifth of all display ad traffic in the country. Estimates from eMarketer predict that Facebook will book nearly double the sales in global advertising in 2010 that it did for 2009. Last year, Facebook was estimated to have pulled in $665 million but analysts say the private-held company may bring in as much as $1.285 billion in 2010. The social media site’s self-serve ad platform is doing exceptionally well. Self-serve ads, launched just three years ago, are the fastest growing ad platform in Facebook. In fact, according to Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst for eMarketer, the self-serve ad platform “accounted for about half of all ad spending on Facebook.” Williamson added, “It’s really become a tremendous business for the company. We didn’t account for the size of that business last year in our estimate, but we found that it’s become a great tool for direct-marketing advertisers.” In part, this surge can be accounted for by the increasing number of self-serve advertisers (typically local marketers) who have reallocated marketing dollars from yellow pages listings to Facebook.
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The Era Of Social Media Is Here To Stay (At Least For A While)
08 Jul 2010 Posted by Market and Main Media
A recent commentary by Social Fresh’s Justin Kistner brings a macro perspective to our understanding of social media’s pervasiveness. What’s interesting is his assertion that “we’re in the 3rd Era of the Web and it’s The Era of Social Media.” In other words, we’re at a turning point in which two older eras of web innovation (e.g., new media, Web 2.0) give way to the new era of social media. Kistner even links the decline of Web 2.0 with the rise of social media based on a Google search analysis of the terms “social media” and “Web 2.0”. Indeed, blogs, wikis, forums and RSS have peaked with the advent of Facebook.
But social media is more than a trend, as this excerpt from Kistner’s blog points out:
- 3 out of 4 Americans use social technology
- 2/3 of the global Internet population visit social networks
- Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web
- It’s growing at 3x the rate of the overall Internet
No other social media site has gained the traction that Facebook has. Facebook leads the social media charge and epitomizes the sea change that social media brings to how we use the Internet. Not only does Facebook dominate web searches, but its traffic and usage have exploded, making it the most visited Web site on the Internet (surpassing Google and Yahoo!). A Hitwise analysis shows that Facebook actually sends more traffic to news and media sites than Google News does.
Ultimately, Kistner’s point is that the social media era is not a passing trend. It will be around for a long time and is definitely something for businesses to invest in rather than ignore and hope it goes away.
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Earned Media Earns Its Stripes
11 May 2010 Posted by Market and Main Media
Working together, Nielsen and Facebook have uncovered a clear link between home-page ads on Facebook and an increase in ad recall, awareness and purchase intent when the ads mention “friends” who have become fans of the brand. Typical home page ads without mention of friends’ names boost recall by an average of 10%, increase brand awareness by 4% and grow purchase intent by 2%. On the other hand, ads that showed the names of friends who were brand fans coincided with 16% better recall and 8% better brand awareness and purchase intent. Furthermore, awareness and recall is even better when the Facebook user’s news feed shows that a friend has become a fan of a brand featured in an ad. In this case of “organic” social advocacy, recall was increased by 30%, brand awareness went up by 13% and purchase intent went up by 8%. The study of 800,000+ Facebook users surveyed them on 14 different brands in a number of categories.
“One major takeaway from the research is that paid and earned media work together in ways that could have implications well beyond Facebook,” concluded Jon Gibbs, VP-media analytics at Nielsen. “The market has been talking very much about how to buy paid media and earn earned media, but there’s been very little attention to the types of hybrid impressions and hybrid experience that blends these two.”
Working together, Nielsen and Facebook have uncovered a clear link between home-page ads on Facebook and an increase in ad recall, awareness and purchase intent when the ads mention “friends” who have become fans of the brand. Typical home page ads without mention of friends’ names boost recall by an average of 10%, increase brand awareness by 4% and grow purchase intent by 2%. On the other hand, ads that showed the names of friends who were brand fans coincided with 16% better recall and 8% better brand awareness and purchase intent. Furthermore, awareness and recall is even better when the Facebook user’s news feed shows that a friend has become a fan of a brand featured in an ad. In this case of “organic” social advocacy, recall was increased by 30%, brand awareness went up by 13% and purchase intent went up by 8%. The study of 800,000+ Facebook users surveyed them on 14 different brands in a number of categories.
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