Your Digital Marketing Update

As Halloween and Bonfire night are behind us, it’s now officially Christmas according to all shops. The festive season is our favourite 2 months of the year. As a result, welcome to the first of two festive monthly round-ups that will keep you up to date.

Shocking and unexpected news: millennials love Netflix.

We’re sure you’re as surprised by this news as we are. It turns out that the millennial generation bloody love streaming films and TV. According to YouGov’s annual BrandIndex rankings, it is the most positively regarded brand for those ages 18–34.

The brand survey interviewed over 2.5 million consumers this year. The findings resulted in score of 73.8 (which is even more impressive when you remember they’ve signed another 4 film deals with Adam Sandler.). Other honorable mentions go to Facebook (73.5), Apple (73.3) and Airbnb (70.5).

The inclusion of Ikea, Spotify and Wetherspoons in the top 10 show that millennials value technology, streaming and value in their purchasing decisions and preferences.

Video advertising overtakes banner ad spend

It’s been the best, worst-kept secret in the marketing industry for quite some time that video marketing is the future. Google continues to look favourably on video content when it comes to SEO.

For the first time ever, spending on video marketing has overtaken banner ad spending, winning by a hefty £14m (£699m vs £685m). Video marketing is the fastest growing display advert format.

For a beautifully written, informative blog on the subject, check this out.

Shhhh, Facebook might be listening

Facebook has been forced to once again deny that it uses the microphones in smartphones to listen to conversations in order to make hyper-targeted ads. Rob Goldman tweeted: “We don’t — and have never — used your microphone for ads. Just not true.”

It’s probably true that Facebook isn’t listening to your conversations. This would be a fantastic amount of drivel to have to wade through. Especially if some of the rubbish that we talk about in the office is anything to go by.

The main argument against Facebook listening in is the fact that they don’t really need to. The amount of data that they monitor and the complex algorithms that they employ mean they have a very good idea about which ads you’re going to be interested in.

Facebook is set to take on Linkedin with the introduction of a CV feature

In a totally uncharacteristic move, Facebook is copying features from a rival and taking on a competitor in their own area (Instagram copying everything Snapchat anyone?). Facebook is set to take on Linkedin by testing a CV feature. This allows users to list their education information, job history and other professional achievements.

You may dread the prospect of potential employers reading that you’re a responsible, hard-working individual in your CV, whilst simultaneously seeing photos of you on Saturday night. Don’t worry though, the new feature seems to separate would-be employers from your potentially debauched personal profile. It packages your details into a package that could make (almost) anyone look professional.

Brands are moving into GIF marketing

We’ve just told you that video marketing is growing rapidly. Well, whilst that’s true, the next big thing could be GIF marketing. Brands such as Wendy’s in America are creating branded GIFs for users to share to express their emotions.

Tenor (a GIF company, not the discreet waterproof underwear brand) says it has large amounts of user data that brands can take advantage of to create ads linked to specific emotions. Providing a branded way for users to share their emotions across social media and iMessages clearly has potential. On New Year’s Eve, a Domino’s Gif was viewed over 10m times. That’s a lot of brand exposure.

Whilst this is still fairly niche, we think it’s got the potential to be huge. Who knows, in a few round-ups time, we could be reporting that GIF marketing spend has overtaken video.

Pinterest received $20m investment

Image-sharing social media platform Pinterest has raised over $150m in its latest round of funding, this includes a $20m investment from the brand technology company, You & Mr Jones. This is particularly significant when you consider that the average amount the company typically invests is a ‘mere’ $2m.

The social media platform recently reached 200m active users and can take confidence from the fairly hefty backing it’s just received. We’re looking forward to seeing what developments the platform introduces over the next couple of years.

Is Pinterest part of your marketing strategy. Many people seem to forget about poor Pinterest when considering their social media accounts. It regularly slips into 5th place behind the usual suspects: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.

That’ll do for this month. We’ll be back in December to give you another update about the goings on in the world of digital marketing.