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Headlines: Nov 28, 2014
FMCG shoppers not focused on price
Oreo stumbles with vlogging
Twitter sparks new privacy row
Australian online adspend to double
Black Friday insights boost Samsung
Fashion, grocery lead Indian etail surge
Headlines: Nov 27, 2014
Children ditch live TV, radio
Agency diversity not reflected in output
Licensing has huge potential in India
LatAm mobile is growing fast
Private marketplaces not delivering
Agencies need to innovate
Headlines: Nov 26, 2014
Click and collect gathers pace
Cinema ads are effective but …
Addressable TV set to take off
Impulse buying takes a hit
Mobile video hits Indian mainstream
Catalogues keep their clout
Headlines: Nov 25, 2014
Coke adds to FIFA pressure
Digital key to Xmas shopping
Aussies ahead in dark social
Bud faces down craft beer threat
Hispanics spending less this holiday
Etailers told cut marketing, not margins
Grainger puts emotion into B2B
Headlines: Nov 24, 2014
Bank brands must avoid the 'doom loop'
Mobile can build brands
Google explores ad alternative
CPG brands tap location
China to lead APAC ad market by 2016
Kraft uses mixed multicultural model
Hong Kong millennials reject stereotype
Headlines: Nov 21, 2014
Marketing confidence rallies in Europe
Smartphones drive m-commerce
Coke exploits health trends
Bigger malls better for China
India's online shoppers to treble
Clorox expands multicultural brief
Canadian marketers lag on programmatic
Headlines: Nov 20, 2014
Family is an idea, not an institution
'Unstoppable' programmatic surges
China leads in digital innovation
Mobile becomes America's first screen
Australians embrace VOD
Toyota adapts multicultural model
Americans in tech-life balance fail
Today's Top Stories
RSS Feed
FMCG shoppers not focused on price
28 November 2014
LONDON: Price is not the major factor in purchasing decisions for two thirds of European grocery shoppers, according to a new study which argues that brands and retailers need to appreciate how shopper types vary by market across the continent.
Kantar Media's TGI Europa study of shoppers in the UK, Germany, France and Spain
identified a number of different shopper types
, two of which – Strategic Savers and Promiscuous Purchasers – were driven by price. But these accounted for only around one third of all shoppers.
"When sales are under threat cutting prices is seen by many as a quick fix, but the reality is that it will probably only sway a minority of shoppers," said Anne Benoist, Director, Kantar Media TGI.
"Marketers need to adopt a multi-pronged approach to maximise the opportunities in FMCG shopping and to be mindful that between countries, the proportion of different shopper types can fluctuate greatly."
The study found that German shoppers were especially likely to be Strategic Savers, driven by low prices. They accounted for 21% of all German shoppers, a higher proportion than in other, more economically challenged markets. In Spain, for example, Strategic Savers made up 15% of shoppers, while the figure rose to 17% for both France and the UK.
Spain did, however, have an especially high proportion of Promiscuous Purchasers, a price-conscious group with an extensive brand repertoire who seek to keep costs down while not compromising on quality.
And Spanish consumers also retained an eye for premium items, with an above average proportion of shoppers – 20% vs 17% average – classified as Quality Crusaders, consumers driven by quality and willing to pay a premium for it.
The UK was the only other country to overindex on Quality Crusaders, with 23% of shoppers there meriting this description.
British shoppers were also the least ethical, with just 6% classed as Ethical Empathisers, compared to the average of 9%. Germany (12%) and Spain (11%) had the most ethical consumers.
For French consumers, convenience was very important. Compared to other countries, France had proportionately around twice as many Convenience Kings, driven by anything that makes shopping more convenient e.g. locality, opening hours, parking etc.
The final group of Conscious Connoisseurs – people who are passionate about food – was also the smallest, accounting for just 7% of shoppers. Most were to be found in Germany.
Data sourced from Kantar Media; additional content by Warc staff
Oreo stumbles with vlogging
28 November 2014
LONDON: The sensitive issue of how to signpost native advertising has claimed a high-profile victim as the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that a number of vloggers failed to clearly tell viewers their videos were in fact part of a campaign for Oreos.
Mondelez, the owner of the biscuit brand, had recruited and paid several stars of YouTube to take part in an 'Oreo Lick Race' to promote the product, and felt that the references made in their videos along with the material in description boxes under the videos made it "sufficiently clear to consumers that the videos were ads".
ASA disagreed
, however, noting that "the presentation of each ad was very much in keeping with the editorial content of the respective channels and that the fact that the videos were marketing communications would therefore not be immediately clear from the style alone".
And while disclosure statements "might indicate to some viewers that Oreo had been involved in the process, they did not clearly indicate that there was a commercial relationship between the advertiser and the vloggers".
The ASA told Mondelez the ads could not appear again in their current form and instructed it to ensure future ads in this medium "made their commercial intent clear prior to consumer engagement".
Lynsay Taffe from the ASA explained to the BBC that if a vlogger was paid to promote a product, they needed to
use words like "ad" or "promo"
in the title of their video, or include a symbol in the thumbnail telling viewers what they're about to click on is an advert.
Some prominent vloggers were unhappy about this, however, with one, Fleur de Force, arguing that it could
distract from the content
. "If you're producing a 30-second piece of sponsored content within a 10 or 15 minute video it's not necessarily the focus of the content," she said.
Another, Chyaz, reported that companies sponsoring her videos had told her: "Please don't make it very obvious".
Vloggers have
a fine line to tread
in these matters, as a recent blog for media agency Carat noted. They earn money from brands but need to retain their authenticity if they are to keep the viewers that attracted the brands in the first place.
Data sourced from ASA, BBC, Carat; additional content by Warc staff
Twitter sparks new privacy row
28 November 2014
SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter has announced its intention of collecting lists of the apps installed on people's phones in order to better target advertising, a move which has not met with universal approval.
The resulting app graph, which is what the microblogging site is calling the collection of data, is
designed to improve
'who to follow' suggestions and show more relevant promoted content, as well as "tweets, accounts or other content" that it thinks users may find interesting.
Twitter stressed that it was not collecting any data within those apps and that users could opt out at any time.
But Javier Ruiz, policy director at Open Rights Group, a UK-based organisation campaigning on digital rights issues, told the Telegraph that apps
could reveal sensitive information
about a person.
"For example, whether you have Grindr or Tinder can indicate your sexual orientation," he said. "Tracking apps is intrusive not helpful, and if this kind of tracking was used on a laptop, it would be considered spyware."
Techcrunch pointed out, however, that many companies are
already doing this sort of thing
– they just haven't told users about it. The software development kits used by some analytics providers, for example, "track users across apps where they're installed, giving the app makers a similar data set in order to identify the 'persona' of a user, which in turn allows them to draw broader insights about their own customer base".
That ability to make inferences about customers will also help Twitter in its quest to make the service more friendly for new users by adding tweets and accounts it considers they might be interested in.
The Guardian also pointed out that this data would enable it to "spot fast-rising apps from smaller start-ups, which may influence its acquisitions strategy".
And, from the newspaper which first published Edward Snowden's revelations, there was also
some praise for Twitter
for notifying users about app graph before turning it on and for explaining how to turn it off. This was, it said "a welcome break from past app privacy controversies, where people have discovered that certain data was being collected without their knowledge".
Data sourced from Twitter, Daily Telegraph, Techcrunch, Guardian; additional content by Warc staff
Australian online adspend to double
28 November 2014
SYDNEY: Australian online advertising expenditure is set to double over the next four years according to a new study, which highlights the growth of online video.
The report – Australian Online General and Mobile Advertising Market 2014 – from market researcher Frost & Sullivan forecast that
spending will increase
from the 2014 figure of A$1,150m to reach A$2,426 million in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 16%.
And within this, it said online video was the fastest growing type of online general advertising inventory, with a growth rate of 60% during 2013/14. This now accounts for 17% of overall online general advertising expenditure.
"Sponsorships, integrated site content and in particular native advertising grew as online publishers increased their range of offerings," said Phil Harpur, Senior Research Manager, Frost & Sullivan Australia & New Zealand. "Also the affiliate online advertising market continues to grow strongly, especially in the online retail, finance and travel segments."
The mobile advertising market was also earmarked for rapid growth, with Frost & Sullivan predicting a compound annual growth rate of 27% between 2014 and 2019, by which time adspend through this channel would amount to A$900m.
Harpur said this would be driven by increased consumer media consumption on both smartphones and tablets and the improved targeting capabilities of online publishers and mobile ad networks.
But he warned that "mobile ad networks will need to continually evolve their business models, or their proprietary technology platforms will be superseded by the open nature and technology efficiencies of ad exchanges".
Another notable development is the increasing effectiveness of social media, as the report noted that 72% of Australian organisations that had advertised on social during the past year reported a positive ROI, compared to 63% in 2013.
Harpur added that "the slowest growing category was EDM/e-newsletters, which actually saw negative growth during 2013/14, as companies move towards more cost effective online advertising solutions with a higher return on investment (ROI)."
Data sourced from PR Newswire; additional content by Warc staff
Black Friday insights boost Samsung
28 November 2014
BOCA RATON, FL: Samsung, the electronics manufacturer, has successfully demonstrated how market research can help brands cut through the Black Friday clutter by providing deeper insights into shopper needs.
Meet Shah, manager/consumer market insights at Samsung Electronics America, discussed this topic at The Market Research Event, a conference organised by the Institute for International Research (IIR).
Generally speaking, he told the delegates, Black Friday is dominated by two major themes – the first of which is all too obvious.
"Everyone wants to buy because the product is on sale," he said. (For more, including examples of how the firm activated its insights, read Warc's exclusive report:
The second issue usually attracting attention involves supply-chain management at a time of massive demand. "You also have inventory issues," continued Shah. "So having a good inventory plan is definitely important."
However, the research Samsung received surrounding this bellwether shopping occasion was, in the main, failing to provide any unique information moving it beyond such matters.
"We weren't seeing anything different anymore," is how Shah characterised the problem.
In response, it allied with market research company Quester on a two-wave program that incorporated both qualitative and quantitative work based around in-depth conversations.
"We did those two pieces, and what we were starting to see is that these conversations were identifying patterns," said Shah.
"The funny thing is, we weren't looking for these patterns. We were just trying to find a different way to get different insights, but through our first phases of analysis, we started seeing these patterns through the conversations."
Drilling down into this information, Samsung found a trio of customer cohorts that could shape its strategy – "deal-driven experience haters", "Black Friday experience lovers" and "price-focused experience lovers."
"We started to understand that there were three pretty big groups," said Shah.
And by thinking in terms of what could benefit these specific audiences – from targeted email to TV spots and in-person activations – the company was able to create bespoke strategies that drove up sales.
Data sourced from Warc
Fashion, grocery lead Indian etail surge
28 November 2014
NEW DELHI: Fashion and grocery are important categories in the fast-growing and fast-changing world of Indian ecommerce, where further acquisitions and investments by leading players are in the air.
Amazon is in talks about buying online fashion store Jabong, which has just reported a
trebling of revenue
in the first six months of the year. And Flipkart, which acquired rival online fashion portal Myntra earlier this year, has joined up with publisher Condé Nast to
target fashion conscious shoppers
with unique content.
The 'Flipkart Fashion Files' will feature a range of exclusive fashion diva/celebrity interviews, trend boards, brand and product stories along with lifestyle articles. Mukesh Bansal, head of fashion at Flipkart, described the Files as "a true combination of high quality commerce and content which will add a new dimension to our fashion category".
While the fashion etailers have yet to record any profits, the opposite is now true of the country's online grocers. The
Economic Times reported
Ganesh Krishnam, director at Bigbasket.com, as saying the business would be profitable this year, just three years after it was set up.
The convenience aspect is particularly useful to Indian consumers, according to Krishnan. "You can go shop at a Walmart or Tesco in the US and UK and they have parking. You can take the shopping carts right up to your car, so it's smooth," he said. "In India, none of this exists."
In addition to their lower overheads, online grocers have the capacity to grow more quickly, not being held back by the need to find prime sites and then build stores. Bigbasket.com, for example, currently operates in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, but plans to launch in Pune, Delhi and Chennai in the next three months.
The whole online industry could get a further shake-up when Alibaba steps up its investment in India. Jack Ma, founder of the Chinese ecommerce giant, has
signalled his intention
to diversify Alibaba's business interests in India.
He explained that there were already 1.3m suppliers listed on Alibaba's Indian site. "Our platform was never designed for them (Indian SMEs)," he said, "but their capabilities in taking advantage of opportunities is fantastic, and we have to build platforms to ensure more of them use it."
Data sourced from Economic Times, Financial Express; additional content by Warc staff
Children ditch live TV, radio
27 November 2014
LONDON: More and more 11 to 15 year olds are spending less time with live TV and live radio, preferring instead to view short video clips or stream music according to a new study.
Digital Day
report from UK industry regulator Ofcom was based on media diaries compiled by 1,644 adults, 173 children aged 11-15 and 186 children aged 6-11. This found that the secondary school age group watched half as much live TV as adults – a daily average of 1 hour and 32 minutes, compared to 2 hours and 58 minutes. This amounted to a mere 16% of their total media and communications time.
Overall, 11-15 year olds managed to squeeze nine and a half hours' worth of media and communications activity into just over seven hours each day as they did more than one activity at the same time.
Considering all of the time spent on 'watching' activities across a week among 11-15 year olds, just over half (52%) was with live television, compared to 69% for all adults. And more than one fifth (22%) said some weeks they did not watch any live TV.
However, this age group spent a significantly greater proportion of its viewing time watching short online video clips compared to adults (19% vs. 2%).
Among listening activities, live radio was by far the most popular with adults as 77% had done so during the week but the proportion fell to 42% among children. And when taken as a share of all listening activity, live radio accounted for just 21% of children's listening time, with digital music – streamed or stored – taking up 54% of the "share of ear". Old-fashioned physical formats added another 8% while background music videos made up 15% of listening time.
Communications activities occupied 11-15 year olds for almost two and a half hours a day, the report said, with 52 minutes devoted to social networking sites and a further 38 minutes to text messaging.
Data sourced from Ofcom; additional content by Warc staff
Agency diversity not reflected in output
27 November 2014
LONDON: Black and minority ethnic (BAME) employees now account for 13% of the total employed base of the member agencies of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), but concerns remain about the portrayal of ethnic minorities in advertising.
's annual survey of employment trends in media, advertising and marketing communication agencies revealed that there had been a 23.6% increase in BAME representation in the workforce over the past year, so that they now make up 13% of the total, near to the 14% figure for the UK population generally.
A recent report for the Advertising Association, however, said that just 45% of BAME consumers thought that
advertising was representative
of the country's multicultural society. Further, almost half of the country's top advertisers were running campaigns that underdelivered against ethnic audiences.
And when MediaTel sat down to view this year's Christmas TV advertising it found black, Asian and minority ethnic faces
almost completely absent
from the screen. "An anthropologist would conclude that Britain was made up of white, nuclear, families living in suburban Surrey," it said.
The general belief has been that if agencies themselves were more diverse, this would then be reflected in the creative. And it is certainly the case that agencies are becoming more diverse, as the IPA data shows BAME employees made up just 8.2% of the total in 2008, rising to 11.2% in 2013 and 13% today.
And one of this number, Karen Blackett, chief executive of MediaCom UK, was
recently named
the most powerful black person in Britain. She told The Voice that it was her "personal lifelong passion" to discover and mentor talent from diverse backgrounds and classes in order for them to get a foot in the door of the advertising industry.
Paul Bainsfair, IPA Director General, was bullish about the outlook for the industry. "With overall staffing levels up, the number of people from BAME backgrounds up, and with the number of women in executive management positions on the rise, the 2014 Census paints a positive picture as we move into 2015," he said.
"If we are to maximise our commercial creativity it will be essential to continue to grow, nurture and retain this diverse talent," he added.
Data sourced from IPA, The Voice, MediaTel; additional content by Warc staff
Licensing has huge potential in India
27 November 2014
NEW DELHI: India's licensing industry has enormous potential according to a leading industry figure, but is currently held back by a haphazard approach and a poorly developed retail sector.
Jiggy George, founder and CEO of the Dream Theatre licensing agency,
explained to Best Media Info
that consumers were aware of brands and that even niche properties – such as the Simpsons – still constituted a very large market in a country the size of India.
"But what we don't have is proper organised retail and a good environment to support licensing," he said. "As retail grows, there will be more organised businesses and [the] licensing industry will just grow exponentially."
It is already a significant market, valued at more than $550m, although only a tiny part of a global market worth some £150bn.
"It is very easy to acquire licenses in India," George said, "but to build a licensing programme is tough." He felt that the Indian market could learn some useful lessons from the West, not least the importance of building brands.
"Licensing is all about building brands, but, in India, a majority of them get it wrong because they want to start with licensing without building brands," he said.
He further observed that in the West licensing was a central plank of a strategy and not an afterthought. That included some insight about which products to partner with. "We have this tendency to slap [a character on] products which don't make any sense," he said. And while that might make money in the short-term it was not sustainable over a longer period.
In his own work George had chosen the cartoon characters Tom & Jerry for use on the packaging of a Parle cream biscuit brand. "Both these characters stand for a playful nature and the duality of their nature also gets reflected in their product," he explained.
Hollywood studios have been an enthusiastic exponents of licensing, tying in all sorts of merchandise to the release of their latest blockbuster, so it's a little surprising that Bollywood has not followed suit.
But, as George outlined, this was a consequence of the short film cycle in India. "A movie gets released, enters the Rs 100 crore club, and then vanishes. So, it does fantastic for the film business, but it is not a great business for the licensing industry." There were opportunities in sequels, however, since they are already established brands.
Data sourced from Best Info Media; additional content by Warc staff
LatAm mobile is growing fast
27 November 2014
QUITO: Latin American consumers are turning to smartphones and mobile broadband in ever increasing numbers but it will be some years yet before subscriber growth slows, a new report has said.
According to a study from the GSMA trade organisation – The Mobile Economy: Latin America 2014 – there were 718m mobile connections in Latin America at the end of September 2014. Smartphones accounted for almost 30% of these, a proportion
projected to hit 70%
by 2020.
Further, unique subscriber penetration (as a percentage of the population) currently stands at around 52% and is predicted to increase to 60% in 2020. And as the GSMA noted, that figure was "still well below" the figure at which subscriber growth tends to stall – around 70% to 80%.
Subscriber penetration rates vary widely across the region, however, from a low of 37% in Mexico to a high of 77% in Costa Rica.
At present the majority of mobile connections are 2G (60%) but the report said this share would fall to around 20% over the next five years as users migrated to mobile broadband and as 4G deployments accelerated.
"We are seeing a rapid technology migration in Latin America," said Anne Bouverot, director general of the GSMA. "The increasing adoption of smartphones – alongside expanding mobile broadband coverage – is unlocking new business opportunities for all players within the mobile value chain, as well as enabling millions of people to connect to the mobile internet."
This combination of accelerating mobile broadband and smartphone growth is driving rising mobile data consumption across the region, with Cisco forecasting a 66% CAGR over the next few years, well ahead of the growth expected in more developed markets.
The report also found that the number of mobile broadband connections surpassed fixed broadband connections in the region in 2011. Brazil, for example, has five times more mobile broadband than fixed broadband connections.
Brazil is the largest single market in Latin America, accounting for one third (114m) of the region's total unique subscriber base. Together with Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela, the top five countries account for 70% (230m) of the regional total.
Data sourced from GSMA; additional content by Warc staff
Private marketplaces not delivering
27 November 2014
NEW YORK: One response of publishers to the programmatic boom was to build private exchanges where they could retain more control and achieve higher prices, but anecdotal evidence suggests they haven't always succeeded in these aims.
DigiDay spoke to a number of players in this space, and found
opinions were divided
between whether the fault lay with the tech itself or the people using it.
"When it works, it's beautiful," said Pete Spande, Business Insider's CRO. "We're not exchanging insertion orders or amending them seven times a month. It's far superior to how traditional deals are done online. But we're not bullet proof yet as an industry."
Compatibility can be one problem, as the supply-side platforms that publishers have built don't always dovetail neatly with the demand-side platforms used by buyers.
"Getting the parts to work together is often a big challenge," admitted Daniel Young, programmatic director at The Weather Channel. "There are a lot of technologies, and each of them are trying to build the whole buy side or sell side one-stop shop, so there's an element of control."
And quite apart from the adtech world's internecine struggles, advertisers and agencies are often approaching the publishers' private marketplaces (PMPs) with the same intent as when they use open exchanges, expecting to find large audiences at low prices - which is precisely the opposite of what PMPs set out to achieve.
"They cannot apply the same numbers-driven approach to buying quality inventory and audiences as they do when they cookie-match in exchanges," declared Brian Fitzgerald, president of Evolve Media. "The two will never marry up, and quality publishing will always get marginalised for the bottom line."
Rich Routman, president and CRO of Sporting News Media, also had some useful advice for publishers: "If they [buyers] are using a DMP you haven't heard of and are targeting a very specific audience, you probably should think twice."
He further emphasised that publishers should ask buyers the right questions ahead of any PMP deal – about numbers being targeted, spending intentions, and so on – to avoid either side being disappointed.
"Blaming the tech is the easy way out," Routman said. "The tech works, but probably not up to the standard we set for ourselves. There's also a people process here that's a little broken."
Programmatic Primer
is a guide to the latest online advertising techniques and includes detailed advice on how to work with companies operating in this ecosystem as well as case studies of programmatic in action.
Data sourced from DigiDay; additional content by Warc staff
Agencies need to innovate
27 November 2014
SYDNEY: The Australian advertising industry creates no intellectual property, one reason it has become increasingly commoditised and caught in a downward price spiral, is the controversial assessment of one industry figure.
Darren Woolley, managing director of TrinityP3, a strategic marketing management consultancy, told an audience at a Sydney event,
reported by Mumbrella
, that agency staff were effectively "factory workers" at the mercy of a global market.
"When you are a commodity the only way is down and this is what is causing this race to zero," he said. There were, he argued, too many undifferentiated agencies and that was not the fault of clients or procurement or anyone else but themselves.
"If you are just a service supplier then get used to the fact that someone will always come along and take business off you because they can do it cheaper," he said. "Turn the conversation around to where you can add value."
Too many conversations with clients, he suggested, centred around costs and efficiency. "Don't have a conversation about cost recovery with a client, keep the focus on the upside which is value creation." Similarly, his advice on technology was not to talk about it "unless it's a way of adding value and effectiveness".
For him, the process of value creation started with intellectual property and agencies needed to consider what they created in this light.
But, he added, "it is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it and the IP created by the advertising industry in this country is worth zero because I do not know a single client who pays an agency for their IP. We give it away."
Agencies should be looking at innovating and developing products in-house that could be licensed to clients. "Anyone can take an order," he said, "but a real innovator creates things for people before they know they need it. Why can't agencies do that? It is a great way of proving your ability."
Data sourced from Mumbrella; additional content by Warc staff
Click and collect gathers pace
26 November 2014
LONDON: Ahead of an expected surge in online Christmas shopping, online retailers are setting up more collection options for consumers worried about missing a delivery or it not arriving on time.
A report from consumer magazine Which? revealed that one in ten online shoppers in the UK last year had problems with late deliveries and 20% of those had been put off ordering online again this year, the
Scotsman reported
"It's a sorry state of affairs when people are put off buying online because they have had their fingers burned by dodgy deliveries in the past," said Richard Lloyd, Which? executive director. "Retailers need to get a grip and make sure delivery services are first class, first time."
Four in ten of this "burned" group were instead turning to click and collect or choosing to have items sent to another address. They were also taking the logical step of ordering earlier.
Amazon, which already operates a range of collection options, including lockers at London train stations and a 'Pass my Parcel' service at newsagents and supermarkets, has
extended its coverage
yet further by signing up to the Royal Mail's Local Collect service, thus enabling consumers to choose to pick up from any one of more than 10,000 post offices.
Catalogue retailer Argos has also
joined the trend
pioneered by grocery chains to offer collection points at London tube stations. Its first Argos Collect store has just opened, with the format aiming to take advantage of the increase in digital sales – some 43% of all sales are now online, 22% mobile – and to widen its audience to include customers in areas where it does not have any stores.
"Digital shoppers are increasingly demanding improved choice, convenience and speed in the fulfillment of their online orders, especially via click and collect," said John Walden, chief executive at Argos parent company Home Retail Group, in remarks reported by Marketing Week.
The size of this market is large and growing, with consultancy Deloitte predicting that click-and-collect sales will reach £2.5bn over the Christmas period.
Data sourced from Scotsman, Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff
Cinema ads are effective but …
26 November 2014
LONDON: Cinema is a more powerful and emotionally engaging medium for brands than television according to new research, but it lacks the everyday reach of the latter.
A study for Digital Cinema Media (DCM), a cinema advertising supplier, tested ad campaigns running in cinema and television at the same time with a sample of 1,200 people.
The research suggested that the ads shown in cinema screens were eight times more effective at making a brand stand out than television.
And cinema audiences were four times more likely to be emotionally engaged than a television audience.
Recall figures were higher as well: viewers exposed to cinema ads were twice as likely to recall a brand as those who had viewed the TV ad. And when shown an unbranded still from an ad, three times as many cinema goers recalled which brand it was for when compared with TV viewers.
"These research findings are beyond conclusive: cinema advertising is doing something very different to people's heads than other media," said Simon Rees, CEO, Digital Cinema Media, in remarks
reported by MediaTel
"Maybe we're stating the obvious," he added, "but the sheer impact and engagement of watching an ad on the big screen means cinema is the medium of choice when it comes to strengthening a brand, delivering key messages, increasing awareness and attracting new customers, especially amongst a desirable, hard to reach target audience."
His balloon was deflated by Lindsey Clay, chief executive of Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, who said the findings "need some perspective".
Cinema audiences have been growing over the past five or six years, with the proportion of the UK population going at least once a year up from 64% in 2008 to 75% today. But, Clay noted, TV reaches 93% of the population in a week.
"Cinema advertising is great but it is an occasional treat for most people and most advertisers," she said. "TV is a major part of everyday life and the foundation of the biggest brands. So cinema is a great addition to TV advertising but in no way is it a replacement."
Data sourced from MediaTel; additional content by Warc staff
Addressable TV set to take off
26 November 2014
NEW YORK: Addressable TV, currently less than 1% of the total value of TV adspend, is poised for take-off but one leading industry figure has cautioned that it's not for everyone.
"(In) 2014, I see a marketplace that has essentially gone from zero to $300m of spend," Tracey Scheppach, evp/precision video at agency Starcom MediaVest Group,
told Beet.tv
. She reported that SMG had done more than 70 campaigns with 30 clients and "we're seeing amazing results in terms of efficiency".
She expected that the market was going to get rapidly bigger as more cable operators introduced addressable options over the coming months – addressability being dependent on the software installed in set-top boxes to ensure that ads are only shown to the households the advertiser wants to reach.
"We still haven't cracked the code on the broadcast side yet," Scheppach said, but ultimately that would not be a problem: "Video will all be IP-delivered in the end, which means it will all be addressable in the end."
Addressable it may be but there remain practical difficulties to overcome, as Michael Bologna, president of Modi Media, part of GroupM,
explained to Ad Exchanger
"At the end of the day, it's challenging because you have to determine who is your real customer segment, then you have to match data against subscriber files and determine what percent of the universe is that segment but it's got to be done across five cable systems who all use different technology, data sources and back end."
After all that, it was quite possible that the effective CPM might compare unfavourably with a regular TV campaign. "There is waste in television and addressability doesn't make sense for every advertiser," Bologna said.
"If your target audience isn't small enough and the cost of your product isn't high enough, national television still is and always will be the most efficient way," he added. "Addressability is really about refining targets and minimising waste."
Scheppach had a more expansive outlook, however, expecting that addressable would benefit everyone from the biggest advertisers, with particular targets in mind, to the smallest whose limited budgets had previously prevented them getting onto television.
"If you have creative and you have a strategic target, in the end I think addressable is going to work," she concluded.
Data sourced from Ad Exchanger, Beet.tv; additional content by Warc staff
Impulse buying takes a hit
26 November 2014
NEW YORK: Three quarters of Americans have made impulse purchases, sometimes pricey ones, according to a new survey, but a separate report suggests that this behaviour is increasingly a thing of the past.
CreditCards.com polled 1,000 adult consumers and found that 75% had
made an impulse purchase
, with 16% spending upwards of $500 and 10% more than $1,000.
The emotional state of the buyer was a major factor in the decision to purchase, with excitement (49%) the most frequently cited reason, ahead of boredom (30%) and sadness (22%). Anger (9%) and intoxication (9%) were also mentioned.
Overall, equal numbers of men and women reported impulse buying, but men tended to buy bigger and be less sober while women spent less and were sadder.
Gail Cunningham, vice president and spokeswoman for the National Foundation for Consumer Credit, said that retailers took advantage of this habit.
"That's why the end-cap displays and checkout lanes are so enticing," she said. "We don't realize that we need that magazine or candy bar until we are only minutes away from paying, yet they often make it into our shopping carts."
Yet, such items are appearing there less often than before, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, which argues that "intentionality" has taken hold of shopping.
The End of the Impulse Shopper
noted a "lingering frugality after the trauma of the financial crisis" but said there had been a deeper shift in shopping habits, driven by the web. Time-pressed consumers were doing more online research before heading off "on a mission" to stores where they buy only what they came for.
The Journal observed how families in the Milwaukee area set out armed with a shopping list and did not deviate from it, despite the temptations retailers placed in their way. Walmart's Better Together approach, matching items that sell well together, is one reaction to this trend.
Another has been to invest in smaller neighbourhood stores, especially as consumers are tending to visit stores only when they run out of items like cereal or toilet paper.
David Guenthner, Walmart's senior director/global customer insights and analytics, admitted to a recent conference that online purchases had
affected impulse buying
but added that shoppers welcomed the click-and-collect service as they could then pick up any items in-store that they might have forgotten to buy online.
Data sourced from CreditCards.com, Wall Street Journal; additional content by Warc staff
Mobile video hits Indian mainstream
26 November 2014
NEW DELHI: Mobile video is fast becoming the medium of choice for consumers in emerging markets to watch music, movies and TV shows, according to a new survey which says this appetite is particularly strong in India.
Vuclip, a mobile video on demand service, surveyed more than 12,000 people globally, with four fifths of respondents coming from India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. It found that 67%
preferred mobile
as their primary method of viewing such content, with men (70%) more keen than women (56%).
But in India these figures were significantly higher. Some 74% liked to watch mobile video content, including 77% of men and 66% of women. This level of popularity indicated, said Vuclip, that mobile video had moved beyond a few early adopters and was fast becoming mainstream.
When it came to intent to spend more time watching mobile video in the future, India was more in line with the global average. Fully 85% of men and 75% of women around the world – 85% men and 77% women in India – said they planned to increase the time they devoted to this activity.
But buffering of videos is a major constraint for consumers in India and more than half (55%) were willing to pay for a more seamless experience. Again, this was broadly in line with the global experience, with 54% of men and 49% of women saying they would pay to download videos and view them uninterrupted by buffering.
"It is only natural for consumers to expect an unbuffered viewing experience in their primary method of consumption," said Arun Prakash, COO of Vuclip. And he also highlighted a desire for relevant, high-definition content and simplicity of payment methods.
As regards the latter, 66% of respondents in India preferred to pay for mobile video via their mobile carriers.
For the former, the survey showed that users in India explored content across a lot of diverse interests from horror movie trailers, Bollywood, the prime minister's speech, a tiger attack at the Delhi Zoo, and devotional content inspired by all the festivals being celebrated across the country.
Data sourced from Business Wire India; additional content by Warc staff
Catalogues keep their clout
26 November 2014
SYDNEY: Catalogues remain a valuable tool for reaching Australian consumers, six in ten of whom say these are the most effective advertising channel in influencing their purchasing decisions, a new report has said.
According to the 2014
Annual Industry Report
from the Australasian Catalogue Association (ACA), catalogues have more influence on shoppers than television, email or the internet. It reported that 62% of Australians were swayed by them, ahead of television (52%) and press advertising (40%).
Catalogues also placed far ahead of personalised direct mail (29%), email marketing (25%) and social media advertising (17%).
Kellie Northwood, ACA executive director, drew attention to the disconnect between consumers' and marketers' views of what was influential. Some 69% of marketers ranked email marketing as the most influential channel, followed by TV advertising (56%) and personalised direct mail (54%).
"This [disconnect] is confirmed by the fact that of the top five influential channels ranked by Australians, three have experienced declines in advertising spend over the past year," she
told B&T
Overall, the report said that catalogues reached 19.6m Australians every week, which was more than the comparable figures for newspapers (16m), magazines (13.8m), free-to-air television (13.5m), commercial radio (9.7m) and pay TV (8m).
And engagement was high as catalogues, leaflets or brochures were regularly kept in the home for future reference by around six in ten consumers who could spend up to 30 minutes reading them during the course of a week.
A similar proportion were moved to visit online stores after doing so, highlighting a trend for online retailers to use offline methods to attract shoppers. Across all age groups, print catalogues were preferred to the online version. While this was most obvious with older consumers, even the younger ones were opting for print by a wide margin.
Among 25 to 34 year olds, 58% read print but only 12% read online, and for 14-24 year olds, 46% still chose print with less than 10% going online to view a catalogue.
Northwood expected that there would be an increasingly sophisticated level of engagement with consumers via catalogues in the future. "Augmented reality technologies are challenging marketers to think beyond the physical and engage consumers within a multi-channel and content-rich experience," she said.
Data sourced from ACA, B&T; additional content by Warc staff
Coke adds to FIFA pressure
25 November 2014
LONDON: FIFA has received a new blow as one of its leading sponsors, Coca-Cola, issued a thinly veiled threat in response to the global football organisation's handling of corruption allegations around the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments.
"Anything that detracts from the mission and ideals of the FIFA World Cup is a concern to us," a spokesman for Coca-Cola
told The Sunday Times
"The current conflicting perspectives regarding the investigation are disappointing. Our expectation is that this will be resolved quickly in a transparent and efficient manner."
The "conflicting perspectives" comment relates to the row that has blown up after FIFA declined to publish the results of an investigation into claims that bribes were made in order to win the right to host the World Cup.
Instead it issued a summary document which was then disowned by the author of the original investigation.
Earlier this year, major sponsors, including Coca-Cola, Adidas, BP, Hyundai, Sony and Visa, all expressed their disquiet at the "negative tenor" surrounding FIFA after it awarded the 2022 tournament to Qatar.
At that time, industry experts commented on the unusual step of brands commenting publically on these issues. Nigel Currie, director of sports marketing and sponsorship at Brand Rapport, told Marketing Week that brands were anxious to
protect their reputation
and image.
"CSR is now so important to brands that any of their activity or related activity such as major sponsorship programmes require monitoring and public comment," he said.
Coca-Cola is only too aware of how its association with the event has the potential to turn sour. An
ESOMAR paper
outlined how, when protests about official corruption swept Brazil in 2013, the World Cup had been drawn into the argument.
As a sponsor, Coca-Cola was implicated in the anger so it took steps to rethink its role in the discussion around the World Cup. It decided on a quick adjustment in course and implemented a communication campaign addressing the theme of the social unrests which produced positive results.
While Coca-Cola is the first brand to openly criticise FIFA, it is not the only one to still have concerns – Adidas has indicated it will talk directly to FIFA about the report and McDonald's said it was monitoring the situation.
Data sourced from The Sunday Times, Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff
Digital key to Xmas shopping
25 November 2014
LONDON: Digital will play a significant role in Christmas shopping this year, with two thirds of shoppers planning to spend 50% or more of their gifts budget online and ecommerce predicted to account for half of all sales growth according to two new reports.
The first finding came from a survey of 500 UK consumers by Accenture, the consulting firm, which also revealed that a similar proportion (67%) would do
most of their Christmas shopping
at online-only retailers.
Mobile is increasingly important, with one third of consumers surveyed (34%) believing that shopping with a mobile device will lead to better discounts and will help them compare prices while in a physical store.
And price is the major factor for shoppers: 93% said discounts were the primary driver of purchasing decisions related to their holiday shopping and 32% planned to set aside cash to take advantage of special offers.
Further, Britons appear to be becoming more comfortable with digital retail tactics, with 82% saying they were already using, or would definitely use, or are willing to try, mobile services that offer them real-time promotions and offers as they shopped in store.
"Mobility is having a dramatic impact on shopping in the UK," said Fiona O'Hara, managing director/Retail, Accenture UK & Ireland. "It is critical for retailers to make it seamless for consumers to trade on mobile applications by incorporating social media and mobile technologies into their stores and multichannel environments."
A separate report from rival consulting firm Deloitte predicted that ecommerce would take 13% of retail sales, up from 12% last year, and half of the seasonal sales growth. Overall it anticipates that digital technology will affect some £15bn in sales, whether directly through purchases or indirectly via price comparison and product information.
Ian Geddes, Deloitte's head of retail,
told Marketing Week
that omnichannel was the way ahead. "Those retailers that have invested in developing apps may now find that if these are only optimised for use as a separate channel, rather than an integrated part of the shopping experience, they will not be fit for purpose," he said.
"Just as physical retailers have benefited from the growth of click and collect, " he added, "technology investment in-store will increase the number of shop visitors who buy and how much they spend, as well as help join the online and offline worlds.
Data sourced from Accenture, Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff
Aussies ahead in dark social
25 November 2014
SYDNEY: Marketers need to look beyond social networking sites and consider how they can exploit dark social, especially in Australia where more clicks are generated on privately shared content than in any other world region.
A global study by RadiumOne, the advertising software business, reviewed social, sharing data from 9,000 people globally and analysed its Po.st sharing data across 900m monthly online unique users for a period of one month.
Overall, sharing on dark social – i.e. copying and pasting website links into email, text or instant messages – was found to be
three times more common
than sharing on Facebook. (Although, AdNews reported that RadiumOne was not able to access or include shares of content through the Facebook mobile app, which suggested that "a significant volume" of shares on the platform were not included in the data.)
The report said that Australia shared more content online than other regions, but much of this was not publicly visible. Some 95% of Australian respondents were sharing via dark social, the second highest of any region; and 35% said they only shared this way.
But Australian recipients were clicking through on those links far more enthusiastically than anywhere else: dark social accounted for more than half (53%) of all clicks from shared links, more than three times the global average of 16%.
"Dark social is one of the most valuable sources of social insights and intelligence because it represents the genuine interests of sharers and their targeted recipients," said Kerry McCabe, managing director for RadiumOne Asia Pacific, in
remarks reported by B&T
"It's a critical piece of the marketing puzzle, particularly for prospecting, and until now has been a large blind spot for advertisers and publishers," he added.
Across some 23 categories, retail, travel, technology, automotive and entertainment emerged as the content most shared via dark social.
One business that is increasingly focused on this area is Universal Music. Marketing director Nathan Thompson explained how, for example, it wraps its content from artists in a shortened "po.st" URL from RadiumOne which allows the music label to follow how users are sharing and with whom.
Universal also claims to have
improved the performance
of its programmatic media campaigns by 300% through use of dark social data.
Data sourced from AdNews, B&T; additional content by Warc staff
Bud faces down craft beer threat
25 November 2014
NEW YORK: Budweiser, the beer brand, plans to reverse falling sales by focusing exclusively on a younger demographic which is driving the current trend for craft beers.
"This is a very considered, long-term view of what will turn around the brand," said Brian Perkins, vp/marketing, Budweiser at AB InBev.
But the challenge it faces was highlighted in a Wall Street Journal report which noted how
volume sales had declined
from 50m barrels in 2088 to 16m last year, as light beers, including Bud Light, had taken an increased market share and as craft beers had proved increasingly popular with younger drinkers.
The latter now account for some 15% of this age group's out-of-home purchases and are one reason Budweiser is frequently no longer on tap in bars. According to AB InBev, more than four in ten (44%) of drinkers aged 21 to 27 have never tried the brand.
Consequently the beer brand will be moving away from a rather old-fashioned marketing approach, as exemplified by its use of Clydesdale horses in its seasonal advertising and Fleetwood Mac in its Super Bowl ad last year, to sponsoring food and music festivals.
Earlier this year, for example, it sought to
recapture relevance
among twenty-something beer drinkers with a series of short films featuring artists appearing at the Made in America concert, a three-day event in Philadelphia, telling their life story and the crucial turning points, which had then been delivered into the Facebook news feeds of millions of potential Budweiser drinkers.
A more contemporary message for Christmas will feature twenty-somethings looking into the camera and calling out friends' names as a voiceover asks " "If you could grab a Bud with any of your friends these holidays, who would it be?"
But a former executive cautioned against alienating core drinkers in rural America. "If you try to be too young and too hip, you lose your base," said Tony Ponturo, previously a senior marketing executive at Anheuser-Busch.
But distributors welcomed moves that meant even if Budweiser wasn't a first choice it was at least "in the purchase tent."
Data sourced from Wall Street Journal; additional content by Warc staff
Hispanics spending less this holiday
25 November 2014
BOCA RATON, FLA: Four in ten Hispanic consumers plan to spend less this holiday season than last year and most will be shopping in-store rather than online, according to a new report.
The Florida Atlantic University Business and Economic Polling Initiative survey polled 500 Hispanic consumers and found that 29% said they would spend more money this year, while 31% intended to spend the same amount; 40%, however, were
spending less
That last figure rose sharply as income fell, with 55% of those earning less than $25,000 reported they would spend less this holiday season. Just 13% of Hispanics with income over $75,000 were going to spend less.
"This means Hispanics with more discretionary income will be the driving consumer force this holiday shopping season," said Monica Escaleras, director of the FAU BEPI.
The sums involved are relatively modest, with most (71%) intending to spend less than $500. A minority of 8% will spend more than $1,000.
And, perhaps reflecting that, cash is likely to be the top method of payment. Some 59% will pay this way, while the remainder will utilise credit or some other form of financing.
The survey also revealed that Hispanic consumers prefer physical stores to online shopping by a two to one majority (67% v 33%), although 30% did indicate they would do most or all their shopping online. One third had no intention of straying online at all.
Again, income was a determining factor, along with age, as Escaleras noted "49% of respondents earning over $75,000 say they plan to do the majority of shopping online, while 45% of respondents over 55 said they will do no online shopping".
A separate survey of 1,000 Americans from Bond Brand Loyalty found holiday gift budgets were up on 2013, at $770. It said that two thirds of consumers planned to shop at their favourite retailers, and that 42% would
use loyalty points
to fund their shopping.
Data sourced from PR Newswire; additional content by Warc staff
Etailers told cut marketing, not margins
25 November 2014
NEW DELHI: The business model adopted by India's booming ecommerce businesses is leading to increased pressure on brands, especially in fashion, where leading e-tailer Myntra is reported to be demanding bigger discounts from its vendors.
The Economic Times reported that margins of between 28% and 32%
had been increased
to between 36% and 38% with some weaker players being asked for 40%.
Observers suggested that a business model that seeks to attract buyers with deep discounts might be incompatible with achieving profitability.
Fashion websites, for example, have reported that many online shoppers
start their purchase journey
from couponing sites; Myntra, for example, estimates that affiliates drive as much as 15% of its overall transactions.
One unnamed head of a foreign fashion label argued that ecommerce companies needed to put their own houses in order, by creating supply chain efficiencies and cutting back on their marketing and staff costs, rather than looking for more discounts from brands.
"A lot of manufacturers are hooked to the volume drug," said another." Now, Myntra is saying give us bigger discounts otherwise we won't do volumes from you or even block your products."
Amazon has been accused of similar practices, with one report earlier this year accusing it of
"muscling" brands
in the fashion and cosmetics categories, by seeking direct distribution deals, with sales via third-party resellers restricted in return for greater promotion.
It appeared that only those not affected were prepared to go on the record. J Suresh, CEO of Arvind Lifestyle Brands, said Myntra had not approached him for bigger margins.
"We are only concerned they don't undervalue our brands by discounting," he said. "We ensure that doesn't happen and it is part of our agreement."
Mukesh Bansal, CEO of Myntra, claimed to have "an excellent and mutually profitable relationship with our brand partners".
He added that the business had built very close relationships with the major fashion through "very close collaboration and trust".
Data sourced from Economic Times; additional content by Warc staff
Grainger puts emotion into B2B
25 November 2014
ORLANDO: W.W. Grainger, the industrial supplies group, has successfully shown how business-to-business marketing can use deep insights and emotion to engage customers.
Victoria Morrissey, the company's director/brand strategy and advertising, discussed this topic at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) 2014 Masters of Marketing conference.
"We're an industrial supplier," she told delegates. "Do you know what that means? It means we don't make anything. And everything we sell you can buy somewhere else, and probably for less money." (For more, including more details of the firm's strategic focus, read Warc's exclusive report:
Grainger taps the power of emotion
More specifically, the firm sells over a million products, be it pool tables, office chairs or batteries, and its customer base spans organisations from oil rigs and hospitals to government buildings and coffee shops.
"It's a commoditised market and … suppliers are seen as incredibly interchangeable; there's not a lot of differentiation," Morrissey said.
Achieving some kind of deeper resonance in a price-sensitive world promised to be challenging and rewarding in equal measure.
Grainger's clientele were often time-poor and resistant to marketing, too, meaning they would be hard to reach and engage.
The company's research revealed that its target audience shared some core characteristics: they were problem-solvers, experts and saw themselves as "coaches" and "mentors" for junior employees.
Given their process-driven mindset, pure "squishy-emotional" messaging would not be sufficient to make an impression, Morrissey suggested.
Rather, Grainger created a series of online videos where an experienced hand taught a younger staff member the ropes, while also highlighting the obstacles its customers faced on a daily basis.
"What is more emotional than making people know that they're keeping America running and keeping people safe?" said Morrissey.
As a result, the firm witnessed an improvement in numerous key brand metrics, including those defining it as a trusted partner, not just another name on a long list of suppliers.
Data sourced from Warc
Bank brands must avoid the 'doom loop'
24 November 2014
LONDON: Almost all UK millennials are ready to change their bank but one chief marketing officer has warned against getting pulled into a "doom loop" of discounting to attract new customers.
A study from the Rufus Leonard agency, which surveyed 1,000 18-34 year olds, found that 99% were prepared to switch banks, with 12% saying it would take as little as a free monthly coffee to persuade them.
"The key finding is that existing banks and money brands are seen merely as a safe store for their money and somewhere to move it around," Iain Millar, head of innovation at Rufus Leonard,
told The Drum
. "It's a transactional relationship, involving no brand loyalty and its value is judged on price alone."
But there were some incentives for this group to stick with a money brand, notably sustainability, which one in three rated higher than the digital experience. And many remained wedded to a more traditional banking experience with six in ten (59%) visiting their local branch at least once a month.
Miller observed that millennials would make up three quarters of the workforce in the next ten years and that financial brands needed to address their concerns.
He saw a gap in the market for a money brand that was capable of building "a new kind of relationship that inherently builds trust, loyalty and lasting value for millennial customers".
Over at TSB, the bank that came (back) into being after parent Lloyds Banking Group was forced to sell off 600 branches as a condition of accepting state aid, chief marketing officer Nigel Gilbert was critical of the role of marketing has played in banking in recent years.
"The covenant of trust when I started out has been broken completely in banks," he
told Marketing Week
, adding that "the bank itself hasn't really respected the discipline of marketing" as the focus had been on selling rather than promoting values.
Short-term incentives such as discounting for new customers, he argued, simply attracted promiscuous consumers and alienated existing customers.
"New people will churn because they are promiscuous and the other people will churn because they are fed up," he said. "That means you're in a doom loop."
To break out of that, bank brands need to have meaning, value and purpose, he said. That created advocacy and attracted people at a higher value which was a far more sustainable growth strategy.
Data sourced from The Drum, Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff
Mobile can build brands
24 November 2014
LONDON: Mobile advertising, often regarded as a direct response medium, is capable of lifting brand awareness by up more than 50% according to research.
Havas Media Group and Sky Media combined to analyse real world campaigns from finance brand Nationwide and pizza outlet Domino's alongside a lab-based control test featuring the Birds Eye frozen food brand.
The aim was to look at the best way of measuring mobile effectiveness in the absence of cookies and the results showed,
MediaTel reported
, that brand awareness increased by 54% after mobile consumers had seen ads from the aforementioned businesses.
And combined brand perception across all three brands showed a 13% uplift from the non-exposed to the exposed group of respondents.
The lab tests featured native mobile ads, not currently widely served, and these were found to be "more relevant and engaging" than standard banner ads as they caused less irritation but still achieved strong cut-through.
Formats and creative that were fun and had interactive elements were also more likely to cut through and drive action.
While much of this is within the purview of the advertiser, the mood and mindset of the consumer is not but this can be a major factor in driving message absorption. The research found, for example, that call to action increased by 70% for those who were more enthusiastic and excited at the point of ad exposure to the Birds Eye banner.
"There is no question of the importance of mobile devices to consumers which in turn translates to brands, making research into mobile effectiveness never more important," said Sorcha Garduce, digital insight director at Havas Media.
Brands "can utilise mobile advertising as part of their communications strategy to influence both 'soft' and 'hard' brand metrics, moving consumers along their brand journey," she added.
Sky Media's head of futures, David Fisher, advised brands to consider using more advanced high impact and native formats. "This research is evidence that exciting new format opportunities in the right environment can deliver vastly enhanced brand metrics," he said.
Data sourced from MediaTel; additional content by Warc staff
Google explores ad alternative
24 November 2014
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA: Google, the internet giant which derives most of its income from advertising, is trialling a new micro-subscription product that enables web users to view certain publishers' sites without advertising.
Called Contributor, Google described it as "an experiment in additional ways to fund the web". Users are
invited to contribute
between $1 and $3 a month and when they visit the sites of participating publishers they will see either a pixel pattern or a thank you message where they would normally expect to see an ad.
Publishers will not miss out on any ad revenue, however, as the set-up is designed to pay them the going rate for those advertisements that are hidden. Effectively the account of a Contributor member matches what would have been the winning bid on Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange, with Google continuing to take a slice of the action.
A Google spokesperson explained to Gigaom that readers or users would be able to support only those websites and publishers whose sites they
visited frequently
"It's a positive development as long as it's a fairly negotiated arrangement between Google and the publishers," said Jason Kint, CEO of the Online Publishers Association, in
remarks reported by DigiDay
Ten publishers are taking part, including Mashable, The Onion, Urban Dictionary, WikiHow, Science Daily and Imgur. Google explained that for the beta version it wanted to start small and see how much the feature was used.
For publishers, Contributor appears to offer a useful alternative option to the extremes of paywalls on the one hand and being totally dependent on advertising on the other.
But micropayments in any form have yet to find favour with media outlets, as the perception persists that they are awkward to operate and that,
in the words of Clay Shirky
, web users "don't like being nickel-and-dimed".
One advocate of micropayments claims, however, that, given a choice between these and paywalls, readers much
prefer paying
for specific pieces of content and that this also encourages browsing so making it more likely they will become a regular paying customer.
Data sourced from Google, DigiDay, Gigaom; additional content by Warc staff
CPG brands tap location
24 November 2014
NEW YORK: Consumer packaged goods brands are successfully utilising location-based marketing strategies to drive increased footfall and visit frequency at retailers, new research has shown.
Mobile ad network Verve, which earlier this year launched a
programmatic direct platform
for location-based mobile advertising, analysed more than 200 campaigns across a range of CPG categories including household products, food and beverage, personal grooming and pet food. It noted a 219% increase in mobile spend between 2012 and mid-2014, thanks in large part to location-based advertising,
MediaPost reported
Using a sophisticated combination of data, which included location, traffic patterns, demographics and transactions, CPG brands were able to target custom audiences and generate a 74% increase in foot traffic and 56% lift in visit frequency for retailers.
In some cases the results were even more dramatic, as demonstrated by specific campaigns for battery and beauty items which aimed to drive foot traffic to a particular retail partner.
The use of location-based awareness campaigns led to a 154% increase in foot traffic and 182% visit frequency to the same retailer, compared with non-location-aware creative ads.
Up to now the use of location-based marketing has largely been the preserve of retailers and auto dealers, but it is growing fastest among CPG brands.
"We see CPG advertisers have great success transitioning time-tested shopper marketing strategies to mobile through location-based audience data and proximity targeting," Tom MacIsaac, CEO at Verve, told MediaPost.
At a recent conference, Scott Martino, marketing analytics lead at Mercedes-Benz USA, outlined how location-based marketing could be an especially
powerful tool for automakers
, not least as most people visited a dealership at some point, whether researching or buying a car.
Not only could targeted content be served to consumers on a forecourt but "if we understand that advertising drove them to physically walk onto a dealership, that's a win for us," he said.
Beyond the dealership there were other opportunities, such as targeting people who had attended an event sponsored by the brand.
Data sourced from MediaPost; additional content by Warc staff
China to lead APAC ad market by 2016
24 November 2014
MUMBAI: Advertising revenues in the Asia-Pacific region are set to pass $121bn by the end of this year according to a new report which sees the market growing at 5% in 2014 and at 5.7% in 2015 and China taking the top spot in 2016.
Media Partners Asia (MPA), a provider of information services, made the predictions in
Asia Pacific Advertising Trends & Database 2014-15
and offered a longer term projection, suggesting that net advertising would increase at an average rate of 4.5% a year out to 2019.
The top six advertising countries in the region will be Japan, China, Australia, Korea, India and Indonesia, although the order will change, as China is expected to overtake Japan in 2016 and India to move ahead of Korea by 2017.
MPA executive director Vivek Couto noted that "ad spends from large multinational advertisers softened through much of 2014, partially offset by spends from domestic advertisers but this has dampened growth across Southeast Asia and other key markets".
Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand all reported reductions in adspend, helping to slow Southeast Asia to 1.2% in 2014, although spending here is forecast to come back strongly next year, at 7.5%.
"Multinational advertising demand may return but weakness across global emerging and developed ad markets may exert downward pressure on Asia," Couto said in
remarks reported by Indiantelevision.com
MPA suggested that TV's share of the advertising market had peaked in 2011 at 42.9% and was now on a slow downward trend. It anticipated TV would account for 41.6% of adspend this year and 40.7% by 2019.
If foresaw an especially challenging future for the medium in certain markets, notably Japan, Singapore and Korea.
Digital, meanwhile, will continue on its inexorable upward trajectory, as its share is forecast to increase from 23% in 2014 to 31% in 2019.
The report noted that digital had already overtaken TV to be the largest advertising medium in Australia; by 2019, this situation would be replicated in China, Korea and New Zealand. Other markets – India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand for example – would see digital's share rise double or treble from the current figure of between 6% and 8%.
Data sourced from Indiantelevision.com; additional content by Warc staff
Kraft uses mixed multicultural model
24 November 2014
MIAMI: Kraft, the food group, is taking a flexible approach to multicultural marketing, mixing more traditional strategies and total-market communications depending on the needs of specific brands.
Diane Tielbur, senior director/consumer insights and strategy at Kraft Foods Group, discussed this subject at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) 2014 Multicultural Marketing and Diversity Conference.
And she argued that total-market advertising, currently a hot topic among brand experts, is "one of many inputs" which must be considered. (For more, including the role of creativity in this area, read Warc's exclusive report:
Kraft's case-by-case total-market strategy
Drilling down into this theme, she recommended that marketers assess a wide range of factors while formulating their tactics.
"When you think about it from a brand perspective, a brand manager looks across general market, and Hispanic, and other multicultural [models] to determine where they should spend their next dollar," said Tielbur.
The needs and characteristics of its product lines also have be weighed up by executives seeking to fuel growth among different customer segments.
"If a category is at a high penetration – and a brand is at a high penetration – they can feel more confident about spending that next dollar," continued Tielbur.
"But it's a combination of live measurements and understanding the category and the brand."
Using an example of comparing Hispanic shoppers with the general market, Kraft's experience is that it is beneficial to determine if they are "in a similar place" in a given sector.
"If they are – and after you talk with them and really get to know them – you have a much better chance of taking a total-market approach," she said.
However, where there are clear points of distinction, then, "You really have to have two different messages to talk to your consumer," she told the ANA delegates.
Data sourced from Warc
Hong Kong millennials reject stereotype
24 November 2014
HONG KONG: Received wisdom about Hong Kong millennials is wide of the mark, according to a new report which finds them to be hard-working pragmatists who dislike superficiality and arrogance.
Communications agency Text100 surveyed 1,000 Hong Kong residents aged 18 to 33 and said that, far from being frivolous and chasing a celebrity lifestyle, they had
matured into a generation of level-headed consumers
. They are now far more likely to prefer a life as a successful entrepreneur than a Hollywood celebrity, while many are happy as they are.
Most described themselves as liberal and tolerant (58%) and a similar proportion identified themselves as trusting and open (57%). And while their counterparts in the US and UK disliked rudeness and stupidity, Hong Kong millennials were more likely to be annoyed by superficiality.
Another area where they differed from Western millennials was in their relationship with visual media. Half of respondents shared photos on social media and 43% video, significantly ahead of the equivalent figures for the US (37% and 36%) and UK (34% and 31%) and more than twice the proportion (20%) who shared text.
And where they were sharing was also important. Facebook and YouTube were widely used, but Instagram was found to almost twice as popular among this age group in Hong Kong as in western countries.
Further, one quarter spent more than an hour a week using video chat on their mobile devices.
"For marketers the implications are clear," the report concluded. "Pictures and moving images need to play a key role in any marketing campaign aimed at the Post-80s generation."
It also highlighted a crucial local platform where millennials spent time: more than half of respondents (55%) used discuss.com.hk, which is the third most popular media site in Hong Kong, ahead of Twitter, for example. In fact, half this age group spent no time at all on Twitter.
The research went on to identify six distinct personas based on the level of their digital engagement and online activities: Digital Shoppers, Digital Voyeurs, Mobile Cultural Pioneers, The Digital Conservative, The Emerging Technocrat and The Passive Sharer.
Data sourced from Text100; additional content by Warc staff
Marketing confidence rallies in Europe
21 November 2014
GLOBAL: Global marketing confidence remained steady during November, with that in Europe picking up after the previous month's dip and Asia-Pacific falling back slightly according to the latest Global Marketing Index (GMI).
The headline GMI for the month stood at 56.5, a marginal monthly increase of 0.2 points. Europe had moved up from October's index figure of 57.2 to 58.1, while Asia-Pacific slipped from 56.4 to 55.9 and the Americas remained unchanged on 55.9.
Global Marketing Index
, produced by World Economics, is a unique monthly indicator of the state of the global marketing industry which tracks marketers' expectations in three key areas – trading conditions, marketing budgets and staffing levels. A reading of 50 indicates no change while 60+ indicates rapid growth.
Trading conditions were strong across the board, with both Europe and Asia-Pacific recording rises to take their indexes for this metric back above 60. In the case of the former a 1.9 point increase to 61.4 was a welcome counter to the 5.3 point decline recorded in October; for the latter, a 2.1 point rise to 62.1 continued the strong performance of the previous month. The Americas was steady on 59.0.
While the overall index for marketing budgets remained in positive territory, it eased down 0.6 points to stand at 53.4, marking the 23rd successive month that panellists have reported rises in the amount of resources devoted to marketing.
The greatest optimism was to be seen in Europe, where the index rose 1.1 points to 56.0, reversing the trend of the previous month. But the Americas were down 1.5 to 52.0, and Asia-Pacific was edging close to the point at which marketers report falling expenditure, as its index dropped 4.3 to 50.9.
The final component of the GMI, the index of staffing levels, stood at 55.9, slightly up on October, and indicating that marketing departments are still adding staff. Regionally, the index rose 1.5 in the Americas and 0.8 in Asia-Pacific but slipped back 0.5 in Europe.
Ed Jones, World Economics chief executive, remarked that the figures showed strong business activity and solid growth. "The only media increasing their share of advertising budgets in all regions were digital and mobile," he added.
Data sourced from World Economics; additional content by Warc staff
Smartphones drive m-commerce
21 November 2014
LONDON: The rapid uptake of smartphones by UK consumers over the past five years has been accompanied by a rise in m-commerce so that more than half of smartphone owners now browse for items on their device and more than one third go on to buy.
According to the latest research from eDigitalResearch, consumer confidence in the mobile channel has followed the same path as that seen earlier in e-commerce, with people starting out with small, low-value purchases and progressing to larger, more expensive items. Overall it has
grown by 666%
in the past five years.
Smartphones have quickly become an integral part of the shopping journey, as 54% use them to browse and 36% to buy, with clothing and footwear the items most likely to be bought this way.
"Smartphones have had a fundamental effect on all shopping journeys, not just online, but in store as well," said Derek Eccleston, commercial director at eDigitalResearch.
"Our tracking over the years has revealed that over one third (36%) of consumers now use their mobiles when out shopping to check product and customer reviews alone."
It was not too fanciful to suggest that soon every transaction could involve a mobile device at some point in the shopping journey. "It signals the importance for retailers to optimise every part of their customer experience, from online to in store," stated Eccleston.
And that need can only become more urgent as the introduction of 4G leads to faster connection speeds and consumers becoming even more reliant on their mobile devices.
Developments such as Beacon technology also promise to transform the mobile experience, with more than half (54%) of smartphone owners open to receiving personalised messages from retailers.
"Beacon technology has the ability to drive the m-commerce revolution onto the next level," said Eccleston. He described the facility to deliver such content to smartphone owners as they wandered past a store as "the final piece of the jigsaw when it comes to multichannel".
Data sourced from eDigitalResearch; additional content by Warc staff
Coke exploits health trends
21 November 2014
ATLANTA: Coca-Cola's shift of its marketing focus away from larger packaging formats towards smaller ones as it seeks to take advantage of the new priorities of US consumers is paying off according to a leading executive.
The company has diversified in recent years into other areas such as water and fruit juices to take account of changing tastes, and has introduced a series of new products – Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Coke Life – to address concerns around issues such as sugar content.
"The health and wellness trend has set up, almost teed up, a tremendous opportunity for the Coca-Cola brand with our smaller packages," Sandy Douglas, global chief customer officer/president, Coca-Cola North America, told a Morgan Stanley Global Consumer Conference
reported by Seeking Alpha
"Consumers love it," he said, reporting that purchase intent for the new 7.5 ounce mini-can was up 25% among mothers compared to the standard 12-ounce can. "It takes away issues that moms have with our brand," he added. "Waste, too much [product], those are problems that people have."
Douglas conceded that the way two litre bottles and 12 ounce cans had been promoted for the past 30 years had resulted in some commodification of the category. "In the middle is where the consumer trend is happening," he said.
Looking across the grocery landscape he observed that diet and frozen products were struggling as consumers were increasingly heading for the Fresh section when in store.
That had been the inspiration for the recent introduction of Coke Life, sweetened with cane sugar and stevia, and with one third fewer calories.
"You'll see it in stores now in glass bottles," he said. "Premium priced as close to the natural section as we can market it."
And this trend is no short term-fad – Douglas expected it would continue and explained that "we see Coke Life as a platform". Far from being a finished product, he said the formula would be continually refined to reduce the number of calories and improve the taste.
Data sourced from Seeking Alpha; additional content by Warc staff
Bigger malls better for China
21 November 2014
HONG KONG: Chinese shoppers may have taken to online shopping with alacrity but they retain an enthusiasm for bricks and mortar, preferably larger malls, a study has shown.
CBRE, the commercial real estate firm, questioned over 11,000 consumers in 11 major countries across the Asia-Pacific region for its report
How We Like To Shop
. This found that affordability, cleanliness and security were among the factors shoppers of all ages valued most in a shopping centre for all age groups.
"The key message from consumers is clear – landlords and developers need to get the basics right," Jonathan Hsu, director of CBRE Research for Asia Pacific,
told Jing Daily
And within Greater China – which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as the mainland – the report said that shoppers overwhelmingly preferred to visit large malls.
Two thirds (66%) of respondents in this market liked to shop in a mall with at least 50 stores. Around one in five (22%) chose smaller shopping centres while 12% stuck to street shopping.
And those people going to big malls also expect to see big shops rather than a profusion of small outlets. "Bigger means better" for this region, the report said, as it noted the growth in flagship stores in recent years.
It recommended mall owners should "focus on providing a well-rounded experience to their customers" including a good mix of retail tenants and a broad selection of food and beverage outlets.
The region's consumers have also observed an increase in entertainment facilities along with more events, performances and exhibitions as mall owners seek to offer a "retailtainment" experience that drives footfall and increases the amount of time shoppers spend at the venue.
In the future, 80% of survey respondents said they would continue to shop as often or more in a physical store. But an even greater proportion – 85% – said they planned to shop online more than they do now.
"Retail landlords will have to integrate this platform into their overall strategy to remain competitive and, ultimately, to survive," said the report.
That meant developing innovative ways to reach consumers. Sebastian Skiff, CBRE's executive director of retail services for Asia, suggested using big data techniques to track "likes" and "check-ins" on social media in order to formulate a tailored marketing strategy.
And shopping centre apps with special offers and contests could boost user engagement and help build customer loyalty.
Data sourced from CBRE, Jing Daily; additional content by Warc staff
India's online shoppers to treble
21 November 2014
NEW DELHI: India's ecommerce boom shows no signs of abating, according to a new report, despite many consumers expressing unhappiness with their online shopping experience.
Google India's study of online shopping growth was based on a survey of 6,859 online buyers and non-buyers across 50 cities. It predicted there would be 100m online shoppers by 2016, up from the current figure of 35m, and the industry would be worth around $15bn,
Indian Express reported
Most of this will come via mobile, which Google India MD Rajan Anandan said was "driving growth in every single internet product entity".
Shopping queries from mobile, for example, had grown from 24% in 2012 to 57% in 2014. The report also noted that seven in ten respondents in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities planned to buy online during the next 12 months; in addition, women buyers typically spend twice as much as men in Tier 1 and one in four is already buying on mobile.
The motivations for shopping online ranged from practical – 65% cited convenience and 64% the range of products available – to prestige – 60% opted to buy online in order to improve their social status.
But there are some major hurdles that ecommerce businesses will need to address, as 62% of buyers were unhappy with their shopping experience and 67% complained about the complexity of the returns process. Among non-buyers, 55% said they didn't trust the quality of products sold online.
Delivery needed to be improved, agreed Sahil Barua, CEO at Delhivery. "Older models of distribution do not work any more," he
told Pitch
. "We need to simplify processes and also see what mobile can do for the supply side."
The industry needed to act now if it was to
satisfy the expected growth
in shopper numbers, said Nitin Bawankule, Google India industry director for e-commerce, local and classifieds. "Improved customer experience across all touch points, easy to use mobile apps can create a strong pull for non-buyers to shop online in Tier I and Tier 2 cities," he added.
Data sourced from Indian Express, The Hindu, Pitch; additional content by Warc staff
Clorox expands multicultural brief
21 November 2014
MIAMI: Clorox, the cleaning and household goods group, is making sure that multicultural marketing is now "everyone's responsibility", a goal forming part of the company's evolving total-market strategy.
David Cardona, the firm's director/shopper marketing, category advisory and multicultural capabilities, discussed this theme at the 2014 Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference.
"We've been embracing and talking about total market for the last year-and-a-half," he said. (For more, including how the firm is implementing this idea at the brand level, read Warc's exclusive report:
How Clorox developed a total-market strategy
More specifically, the organisation – which has a portfolio including Glad bags, Brita water filters and Kingsford charcoal – has dispersed the responsibility for multicultural messaging across its brand teams.
Adopting and implementing this model promises to fuel a total-market mindset among its marketers, with extremely beneficial results.
"It's about finding the most relevant, efficient way to communicate to your target," he said.
Successfully tapping into the potential advantages of this model, Cardona continued, requires incorporating deep multicultural insights throughout the marketing cycle.
"We've basically enhanced our business planning process in order to make sure that we are thinking about multicultural much, much, much earlier in the process," he said. "It all has to start with the beginning."
Previously, Clorox had a "separate and siloed" approach to consumer segmentation, which posed problems in terms of developing cohesive strategies.
"When you added them all together, we ended up with 11 segments. And they were not necessarily connecting to each other very well," said Cardona.
By streamlining its internal operations, Clorox has overcome many of the prior issues. But Cardona also emphasised that success in total-market communications is always a long-term "journey".
"It's not an easy thing. Otherwise, we all would have cracked the code from the get-go," he said.
Data sourced from Warc
Canadian marketers lag on programmatic
21 November 2014
NEW YORK: Less than 10% of marketers in Canada are comfortable using programmatic buying, with seven in ten being either unaware of this concept or simply having heard of the term.
When AcuityAds and Marketing Magazine surveyed 522 marketers across Canada, they found that 34% had not heard of programmatic, and almost half of the remainder (49%) rated their understanding as "very poor".
A similar proportion (45%) said their brand was below average or lagging behind on programmatic execution.
"There just aren't many marketers in Canada who would describe themselves as black belts in programmatic buying,"
observed eMarketer
That lack of understanding was the main factor holding back investment in programmatic. Almost one third of survey respondents (32%) cited this as a major impediment.
"I'm not surprised," Frederick Lecoq, svp/marketing for FGL Sports and Mark's at Canadian Tire,
told Marketing
. "We digital marketers haven't done a proper job educating our organisation and peers to make programmatic buying easy to understand."
Other obstacles to investment were more closely linked to the mechanics of programmatic, including worries over whether premium content really was premium (31%), whether ads were being viewed by the right audience (29%), whether ads were being placed on inappropriate sites (26%) and transparency over how money was being spent (25%).
The survey also found that agencies were further down the programmatic road than brand marketers, who often appeared happy to leave decisions on this subject to agency staff.
On average, programmatic-aware marketers estimated their brands were committing 15.9% of their digital spend to this activity, a figure predicted to almost double, to 30.9%, by 2017.
Earlier this year Warc published
The Programmatic Primer: A Marketer's Guide to the Online Advertising Ecosystem
, which aims to bring some clarity and understanding to this area.
Author Ted McConnell warned that the fact trading is automated would in itself bring few benefits, as success is down to how marketers use data.
Data sourced from eMarketer, Marketing; additional content by Warc staff
Family is an idea, not an institution
20 November 2014
LONDON: The notion of what constitutes a family is evolving far beyond the traditional average of mother, father and 2.4 children, with most Britons now believing that one size no longer fits all.
Future of Families
, a study of 4,000 people across the UK by media agency OMD UK and publisher Time Inc, UK highlighted the changes taking place, as 19% of respondents chose to include friends within the family sphere and 36% brought their in-laws into the circle. And 29% even viewed their pets as part of the family.
Overall, half of those surveyed believed that there simply wouldn't be a stereotypical family structure in future.
And just as the definition of family is altering, so too are the roles within it. In particular, parents were found to be sharing more of the day-to-day responsibilities and decision making than they did when a similar survey was undertaken in 2008.
This was especially true in the fields of childcare and upbringing (up from 54% to 67%), working and earning money (up from 34% to 41%) and shopping decisions (up from 24% to 33%).
Financial burdens abound, with two thirds of respondents concerned about the cost of living and one third worried about making the rent or mortgage payment each month.
But these same pressures, the report said, "have triggered the development of broader, more powerful family support networks", with, for example, two thirds of grandparents being called into action as childminders on a weekly basis.
People have also adopted cost-saving mechanisms as part of their everyday life. Thus, some 60% of mothers said they had swapped products to save money, up from 47% in 2009. And 63% of women were budgeting more carefully, compared to 43% in 2009.
The other major change in the past five years is the prevalence of technology in the home. Parents understandably worried about the sharing of personal information (68%) and privacy (67%), but most (78%) thought technology was not domestically disruptive and could even bring families back together in the living room, to watch movies on demand or to watch live TV events and tweet about them.
"It's encouraging to see that family is as important as ever - government, businesses and brands should take note of its changing face, behaviours and needs in order to effectively communicate with families across Britain today and in the future," said Lynne Springett, insight director, Time Inc UK.
Data sourced from OMD UK; additional content by Warc staff
'Unstoppable' programmatic surges
20 November 2014
LONDON: UK programmatic spending has leapt ahead during the first three quarters of 2014, according to latest figures, as it begins to extend to higher quality inventory.
Data from Standard Media Index (SMI), which captures information directly from leading media buying agencies, show year-on-year programmatic advertising spend up 61.6% during the first three quarters and by 49.5% during the third quarter.
Alberto Leyes, director of business development at SMI,
told Marketing Week
the growth of programmatic was "unstoppable". By next year, he said, some of the bigger media owners in the UK could be selling almost half their inventory this way.
"Advertisers and media owners originally used programmatic to buy and sell unsold and low-quality inventory," he added. "Now the premium and high-quality inventory is starting to be sold through programmatic too. It's here to stay and is expected to keep growing over the next few years."
While programmatic was moving ahead the overall market was marginally down during the third quarter, as the expected post-World Cup hangover kicked in. Over the year as a whole, adspend was up 4.6%.
Digital spending continued to increase at the fastest rate, up 12.7% for the year and 3.7% for the quarter. Television also performed well, up 6% for the year and 7.3% in the quarter, as it played an increasingly central role in multichannel advertising strategies.
Print spending carried on falling: newspapers were down 18.9% in the third quarter and magazines 10.1%. But SMI reported that online advertising on some of the UK's leading newspaper websites was up significantly: by 40.1% at the Guardian, 37.5% at Mail Online and 34.9% at the Telegraph.
Among digital publishers, Twitter registered the greatest growth, up 81.7% for the year to date. Facebook's 21.1% uplift was small by comparison. But Leyes did explain that SMI only measures social media spending that goes through agencies, and much of their inventory is actually sold direct to advertisers.
UK Expenditure Repor
t, produced alongside the UK Advertising Association, found digital adspend on newsbrands was up 17.8% yoy in Q2 2014.
Data sourced from Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff
China leads in digital innovation
20 November 2014
HONG KONG: Marketers around the world have much to learn from what is happening in China, according to a leading industry figure, who regards it as leading the field in terms of digital innovation and O2O.
Speaking to Campaign Asia-Pacific
, Michael McLaren, global CEO of MRM/McCann, enthused about digital developments in that country. "The China digital landscape in unbelievable," he said. The innovation he saw taking place there was "truly world class".
One reason for this may be that Chinese marketers are less set in their ways of thinking than their counterparts in more developed markets, as consumerism has really only taken off there in the past six or seven years. Consumers are similarly open to new ways of doing things.
"I think there's a receptivity to innovation in that marketplace that is not something you see everywhere in the world," McLaren observed.
He singled out phone manufacturer Xiaomi as an example that any brand anywhere could learn from, particularly its engagement with users, with feedback encouraged and the lessons learned incorporated into new products and product upgrades.
That effective use of social and digital could, he suggested, be successfully tied in with a more traditional media approach. But, he added, "there's no one playbook. You have to make some educated bets on what you can do and do them very well".
Another area where he saw China setting the pace was in O2O, with digital technology being integrated into many aspects of everyday life, from the use of apps to hail taxis to paying for items in-store using a digital wallet.
"The guys who are going to be nimble are the guys who are going to recognise that it's the marriage of digital and physical [that brings success]," McLaren said.
He added that digital technology was "probably only at the black-and-white TV stage" of development and was going to become ever more sophisticated.
Data sourced from Campaign Asia-Pacific; additional content by Warc staff
Mobile becomes America's first screen
20 November 2014
NEW YORK: The average American now spends almost three hours a day on a mobile device, pushing these ahead of television for the first time, according to a new analysis.
While time spent on TV has remained constant, at 168 minutes, for the past three years, Flurry, the mobile analytics business, charted the rise of time spent on mobile devices, from 109 minutes at the start of 2012 to 162 minutes at the beginning of this year.
Over the past nine months, time spent on mobile devices has
increased a further 9.3%
to reach 177 minutes. "As of September 2014, it is a new world in the American living room," declared Flurry.
There is of course an overlap in the time spent with these devices: Nielsen has reported that 86% of US smartphone owners use their smartphones and tablets while watching TV, and nearly half do so daily.
Earlier this year eMarketer noted that consumers were already
spending more time online
than on TV, and that more time was being now spent on the mobile internet than on the desktop as smartphones and tablets reached "critical mass".
Flurry attributed the latest development to the growth in mobile apps helping people do everything from staying fit and organised to checking sports scores. It was, it said, "only logical that they would turn to their phones more often than their TV sets".
And while this appeared to be true – time spent on the mobile web remained flat – it was not the leading apps that were driving the increasing time consumers were spending on mobile.
The top 25 apps, ranked by time spent, had seen a mere 1% increase in time spent with them (from 69 minutes to 70 minutes) during the first nine months of the year, while the rest had registered a 21% increase (from 70 minutes to 85 minutes).
Mobile overtaking television was a big moment for the app industry as well as the mobile industry, said Flurry. "Most app developers didn't know back in 2008 that they would be building the next generation of TV channels. Many consumers installing apps also didn't know that they were tuning in to new TV channels."
Data sourced from Flurry; additional content by Warc staff
Australians embrace VOD
20 November 2014
SYDNEY: Half of connected Australians, from all walks of life, are watching professionally produced film and television video content via the internet, a new study has revealed.
A report for government agency Screen Australia – Online and On Demand: Trends in Australian online video use – explored trends in current online video use, including barriers and drivers to using different platforms and the kinds of content viewers are seeking once they get there, based on a series of focus groups and a survey of more than almost 1,600 Australians aged 14 and over.
This found that 50% of Australian internet users were
watching movies and televisioncontent online
, although this accounted for only a small proportion of overall viewing which remains wedded to broadcast TV and cinema or DVDs.
Online viewing is for everyone, with students to older women, empty nesters to young male urbanites watching video online," declared Graeme Morrison, CEO Screen Australia.
"We can only expect the number of online viewers to grow with greater awareness, new services and better access developing in response to market demand," he added.
People were drawn to the convenience of VOD but didn't expect to pay much for it, the report said. Catch-up TV services and ad-supported services such as YouTube were the most popular and the most used.
The uptake of paid services remains low, with only 13% to 16% of VOD viewers currently subscribing to services or paying to download TV or movie content.
Around 30% had done so in the past or would consider doing to in the future. Almost six in ten respondents indicated they had no internet in paying for content.
That situation may be about to change, however, as Australia's existing cable and streaming services have been revising their pricing packages ahead of
the launch of Netflix
in the region, which is now planned for March 2015.
Richard Freudenstein, chief executive of cable subscription service Foxtel, told The Age that the market was "going to be very competitive" and "noisy". He did not expect that any company offering subscription VOD would make any money out of the service in the short term.
Monetising content will be the major issue to address, according to Morrison, who noted that "the shift in audience behaviours has largely already occurred".
Data sourced from Screen Australia, The Age; additional content by Warc staff
Toyota adapts multicultural model
20 November 2014
MIAMI: Toyota, the automaker, is anticipating the future growth of the multicultural audience by revolutionising how its agencies work together to reach various consumer groups.
Edward Laukes, vp/performance and guest experience at Toyota Motor Sales, USA, discussed this topic while speaking at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) Multicultural Marketing and Diversity Conference.
Given that the cohorts traditionally defined as "minority" segments are set to make up the majority of the American population by around 2050, Toyota believes a "new-mainstream" strategy is the best long-term solution.
This marks a move towards total-market communications, supported with specific messaging aimed at Hispanic, African-American, Asian-American or White Non-Hispanic shoppers as necessary. (For more, including further details of this refreshed approach, read Warc's exclusive report:
Toyota makes "total market" a primary marketing driver
For its agencies – a roster including Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, plus multicultural specialists like Conill Advertising, Burrell Communications and interTrend Communications – that has required embracing a new approach.
In formalising this idea, Toyota created the "Total Toyota" – or T2 – model, under which its shops will work together in a more integrated way throughout the marketing cycle.
"Before we created T2," Laukes said, "we had separate development paths … across each of our partners.
"This created separate creative briefs and separate media plans, along with separate production and media budgets and completely separate go-to-market plans."
"This is how we've done it for years. And, frankly, it was very successful. But it was – and is – not sustainable."
While the brand's agency teams have now achieved heightened integration from a strategic perspective, Toyota is determined that they continue to represent their distinctive cultures and perspectives.
"To be clear," Laukes said, "T2 is not a new business entity. All of our agencies retain their identity and their staffing. They work together in collaboration with all the Toyota agencies."
It has also, he continued, "enabled four creative directors from four agencies to work together to create the strongest idea."
Data sourced form Warc
Americans in tech-life balance fail
20 November 2014
BOISE, ID: Most Americans believe they have a healthy tech-life balance but in reality most can't go more than two hours without feeling compelled to check their phone or email a new survey has shown.
An independent survey commissioned by Crucial, a maker of computer memory products, polled 1,000 adults aged 18 to 65 about their use of technology and its impact on their personal and professional lives. This found that one in four became stressed by going longer than 30 minutes without access to their electronics devices as they
lived with a fear of missing out
The disconnect between how Americans see their relationship with technology and the truth was evident in the lengths to which men would go in order to stay connected.
Three quarters claimed to have a balanced or very balanced tech-life ratio, but 84% admitted to having checked a mobile device in inappropriate circumstances, such as while driving, in a movie theatre, at a funeral or during a child's play/recital.
Additionally, one in five acknowledged that they would rather go without a car than give up technology for a week, while 16% would forgo showering for the same length of time.
And 12% said they had lied about the amount of time they had spent on their mobile device.
Women too thought they had achieved a tech-life balance but they were more likely to feel guilty about the amount of time they spent checking their devices. They were also more sceptical about the role of tech, with almost six in ten (62%) fearing for the art of verbal communication and four in ten (39%) worried about the adverse impact on people's posture from continually looking down at their phones.
The millennials surveyed were, unsurprisingly, the most connected, but they didn't always welcome that. Three in ten (31%) – more than any other age group – wanted to return to a time when people were not constantly connected, a finding possibly not unconnected to that fact that one third admitted that technology had been the cause of an argument with a significant other.
Quite apart from the social fallout, technology-induced apprehension was also driven by the technology itself, with one third of respondents reporting they had to wait longer than five minutes for their devices to load or stat up.
Data sourced from PR Newswire; additional content by Warc staff