Blog Archives
Think Different
Is it just me, or does Apple’s current iPad advertising bear a startling resemblance to rival Microsoft’s “Life Without Walls” ad campaign of almost five years ago?
Of course, not every idea can be completely new. But it does make me a little sad to see this, another example of Apple’s innovative streak fading away.
Having Your Cake And Eating It
A recent survey by GI Insight shines a light on our love-hate relationship with commercial messages within social media platforms.
An overwhelming 92% of British consumers surveyed stated their wish to “keep advertising very separate from real chat”, while 82% said that they use social media a lot but don’t want it invaded by advertising or commercial messages. This aversion to commercial practices is even stronger amongst young people with 88% of 18-24 year olds being opposed to advertising intrusions.
But these same consumers are also quite happy to interact with brands and companies while using social networks with 64% saying they have “liked or friended brand pages.”
What are we to make of these rather contradictory statistics? This disconnect is not new. Most consumers reject the idea of TV advertising interrupting their viewing while also claiming to enjoy watching some of the ads. It’s a very natural response; given a choice we’d all choose to have our cake and eat it.
The web doesn’t work that way though. The only economically-viable way to enjoy the many wonders of the Internet is to accept that someone has to pay for it, and this normally means agreeing to consume advertising messages.
What should companies do in the face of these new findings? A good place to start is to recognise that there’s a very fine line between between a helpful, friendly connection on the social web and a stalking, hard-selling PITA who deserves to be unfriended:
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Keep your commercial messages to a minimum, using them only when you have a really strong offer or deal that consumers would hate to miss out on.
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When advertising online, make sure it’s clear what is a commercial message and what isn’t. Disguising your commercial materials as social chat or reviews is an absolute no-go and any form of hard-sell will be rejected by many.
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Don’t contact customers or prospects directly through social media channels (86% of consumers say they would be “seriously put off a brand” if this happened to them) but invite them to contact you if your offer is strong enough to warrant it.
To read more, download the full report from GI Insight from this link (.pdf).
Measuring the half-life of your links
Understanding the concept of the “half-life” of different types of online links is important.
“Half-life” a term most often associated with measuring radioactive decay where it helps describe:
“the period of time is takes for the amount of a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half.”
(source: Wikipedia)
In digital marketing terms the ‘substance’ we’re interested in measuring is usually impressions or clicks.
And the half-life of an advert helps describe how long it takes for the ad to receive half of the engagement it will ever get.
In the pre-digital era, the half life of, say, a TV advert used to be roughly half the duration of the paid ad campaign. Because we were buying share of voice, we could control the half-life and set it to a point where our presence in the marketplace would be at its peak.
Things are different online though, where the impact of a new message is at its highest when the content is new and fresh, and quickly dissipates to (close to) nothing, sometimes in a matter of hours.
According to data from Bit.ly:
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A link shared on Twitter has a half-life of 2.8 hours
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A link shared on Facebook has a slightly longer half-life of 3.2 hours
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A link shared through email or IM has a half-life of 3.4 hours
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A link shared through YouTube has a half-life of 7.4 hours
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A link shared on StumbleUpon has a half life of around 400 hours (because StumbleUpon will automatically recycle content until it has achieved the desired viewing levels if part of a paid ad campaign, or until the content is no longer receiving positive feedback from its viewers if part of an unpaid activity.)
How to measure the half-life of your links?
You can easily measure the half-life of any link you share. At the simplest level, using a URL shortening service like Bit.ly gives you access to analytics data reported by the hour so you can quickly see how many hits you get and when. You’ll need to do some number juggling to calculate the half life but in most instances a quick glance at the last 24 hours chart should be enough to tell you roughly when the half-life was reached. The big downside of this manual approach is you have to move fast. Without customised tools, the free Bit.ly Analytics site only reports data for the last 24 hours, so if you shared your link last week it could be impossible to gauge the half-life accurately.
And remember, you can only truly measure half-life when all clicks have been received, which is, in theory, at a point in the infinite future. You need to make a call when clicks have dwindled sufficiently for you to ignore all future clicks (the long tail) and make your calculations. To help decide when is the right time to make this call, take a look at long-term clicks for a link shared a few months ago. In most instances, engagement will have dried up after a few days in which case it’s fine to calculate the half-life from that point in time.
But how does this knowledge help you?
By knowing the relative half-life of content shared on different platforms you can determine how frequently to post to those channels or when to post (and repost) to achieve maximum impact. This knowledge can also help inform your paid advertising plans helping you align them with activity happening across social channels to achieve maximum impact.
Let me know how you get on calculating your links’ half-life levels or contact me with any questions. I’d love to hear how you get on.
Ad Placement: a matter of life or death (almost)
Placing digital display ads has never been easier. You create your ads, pay your money, and a nice computer will automagically push them out across whichever networks you choose.
But all this automation means fewer human eyeballs checking ad placements actually make sense. And most marketers I meet think about where they’d like to see their ads while neglecting to clearly specify where their ads cannot appear.
New research from vCE Charter and reported by comScore has found that 72 percent of studied campaigns had ads running in proximity to content that was deemed “not brand safe”. Poor ad placement has the potential to destroy brand trust and to tarnish its meaning, ultimately harming sales in the long term.
So start thinking about where your ads should not appear. Be demanding and insist that ad network owners employ due care to ensure your ads are only seen in the most positive light possible. That’s what you’re paying them for, so make them work for their money.
Need an example of poor ad placement? Just visit almost any big ad-funded network and you’ll routinely spot editorial fighting with ad copy. Or watch this recent life or death TV example from the UK’s Channel 4:
How to Assess the Impact of Stopping Search Advertising: a Google Study
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to root out the motivation behind Google’s latest research finding that advertisers who stop buying paid ads on Google’s search engine lose lots of search engine clicks. So, in this post I’ll take a look at the research to help you navigate your way through the data.
First up, Google’s headline finding:
In the event of pausing a paid ad campaign, “organic traffic does not make up for the loss of paid clicks”
Few should be surprised by this finding. Paid ads on search engines exist to disrupt the natural search flow and provide standout far beyond that afforded by organic listings. And Google has recently enhanced this standout even further with their new Enhanced Ad Sitelinks feature that allow ads to be embedded within ads. So it’s logical that turning off paid ads will result in the loss of the vast majority of clicks they would otherwise have generated. Google’s research puts the lost clicks at 85%, slightly lower than a prior study in July 2011 which claimed 89%. Interestingly, if a minimal paid ad spend is maintained, the
We cannot read any additional data (e.g. click mix between organic and paid listings) because Google’s charts are not drawn to scale and the above 85% actually measures about 66%.
Where ad budgets are partially cut (although the research doesn’t specify by what percentage), the lost clicks amount to 80% on average.
The biggest problem I have with this study is that it assumes all clicks are equal, effectively ignoring the value of the different click types. If, for example, the 80% of lost clicks arising from a budget cut only contributed 10% of the end actions (e.g. purchase, sign-up, trial etc.) then this might yet prove to be ROI beneficial.
We know from prior studies, like Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra Univertisty’s study in 2010, that search engine users exhibit very different behaviours when confronted by organic and paid ads, and that their propensity to click on either shifts based on their needs. Informational searchers are typically more likely to follow organic listings, while transactional searchers, particularly those in buying mode, are relatively more predisposed to clicking on paid ads.
Google’s study concludes by assessing the % of clicks gained by increasing search advertising spend levels:
Where advertisers were previously not advertising with search ads, and then turned on search ads, the incremental traffic was 79%
No surprise, again, that buying paid ads leads to a sharp increase in overall click volume. However, this comes at the expense of some lost organic clicks, but we cannot gauge how much from the research because the charts have not been drawn to scale.
To accurately assess the true incremental value generated from increasing search ad spend we have to factor in the value of each end action. For examples, if we are seeking informational searchers, who are much more inclined to click organic listings, and by placing additional paid ads we generate fewer organic clicks, the net result may not be positive for our marketing goals.
Google’s report concludes as follows:
Across the board, our findings are consistent: ads drive a very high proportion of incremental traffic – traffic that is not replaced by navigation from organic listings when the ads are turned off or turned down.
It’s hard to disagree with such a generic statement; of course, if you pay for clicks you’ll get more clicks than you might otherwise. But each marketer needs to consider these findings in the light of their unique business challenges. By factoring in the value generated from each type of click, we can make a much more informed judgement about the investment levels needed in search engine advertising to achieve our goals.
Further reading:
- Google’s Research Blog: Search Ads Pause Studies Updates
- Research findings: Infographic
- Google Research Paper July 2011: Incremental Clicks Impact Of Search Advertising (.pdf)
There’s No Such Thing as an Awareness Campaign
Yesterday, at the annual UK IAB Engage event, there was much debate about the role that digital marketing can play in brand-building, as opposed to direct-response, marketing. The assembled agency experts were broadly in agreement that digital still falls short when it comes to brand-building work, although its value is growing as consumers spend more of their lives online.
Of course, this is nonsense. Asking whether digital marketing can effectively build brands is like asking if oxygen can keep people alive. Yes, it can, but almost certainly not in isolation.
But the real issue here is the marketing industry’s obsession with the out-dated notion of brand-building and awareness-creating campaigns. Agencies love these kind of briefs because they offer maximum scope for creativity, award dinners and, crucially, billable hours. Yet, the very concept of “building awareness” harks back to the former days of centralised brand control, when marketers called the shots and their audiences diligently consumed whatever was shouted at them. Our world isn’t like that any more.
Today, there’s no such thing as an awareness campaign. If a marketer is doing their job correctly, their target audience is only ever a click away from purchase. To set your sights purely on building awareness is to miss the immense opportunity presented by the social web. Your goal should be to get attention by sharing something interesting and sparking a conversation that takes people to a place where you want them to be.
So, remember, thinking solely about creating awareness is absurd. The social web and our digital world has changed this forever. Let’s stop debating the relative role that different channels can play in supporting each business goal and wake up instead to today’s reality: people don’t need awareness, they need useful, actionable content to help them make decisions on their terms.
