DIGITAL MEDIA DIGEST: DEC ‘15
A monthly look at the world of digital from NORTH’s point of view
Dec 2015 Edition
The New ABC’s: Always Be Connected
By Stacey Gallarde, Senior Media Planner
We’ve heard all the mobile consumption stats before. Our phones are rarely ever more than 3 feet away from our person; 65% of us look at our phones within 15 minutes of waking up and we’re connected to our devices almost 3 hours per day. We’re addicted and it is not a secret.
This huge surge in mobile consumption has been largely aided by “found time.” Time during our day where we previously did not access media…in line at the grocery store, waiting for an order at a restaurant, traffic on the commute home. But what about those times where we still do not have easy access to the online world? Fear not, companies such as Gogo, Facebook and T-Mobile are looking to fill all those holes.
Slim In-flight Connectivity Packages
In-flight wifi is practically a given now. An expensive given. Though the temptation is always there, I personally always try to restrain myself from paying $15+ for a choppy connection. However, Gogo, the leader in the inflight internet space, is now offering a slim package of sorts dubbed “Messaging Pass” The pass will cost less than $3 and will allow access messaging apps such as iMessage, Whatapp and Skype, on their mobile devices. Though not a groundbreaker, this gives passengers a simple and low cost way to be connected in the air, if only for their sanity.
Pushing the Offline Envelope
There are times when being offline is inevitable. Whether you’re in a tunnel, elevator or on the top of a mountain peak, Facebook is making moves to ensure there is always fresh news in your newsfeed. The company has announced that is beginning to test a new update that indexes what stories are already on your phone and populates those that you have not yet seen according to relevance. In the background, the update will also periodically grab new stories while your phone has a good connection. On top of that, the update will offer users the ability to comment/like when offline, and will sync your account once you have a connection.
Data Dearth
Data plans are the holy grail for mobile phone users, as it is the tether to the online world. Not surprisingly, many users are protective of their monthly stockpiles because without it, they might as well be back in the stone age. T-mobile made a huge step to relieve some of these stressors in late 2014 when they rolled out Data Stash, which allowed users to roll-over unused data. Improving upon that, T-Mobile announced this month that they will roll out a new service called Binge On. Binge On exempts streaming mobile video (from publishers such as HBOGo, Netflix, AMC) from user data allotments.
Implications
Connectivity every moment in every environment highlights the idea that our world is becoming increasingly information rich, but attention poor. From a marketer’s perspective, it is important to keep in mind that consumer time is more precious than ever and attention is earned. To stand out, marketers must look to provide value to consumers, whether that be through entertaining, informing or providing utility.
Pinterest Enhanced Discovery
By Caroline Desmond, Director of Media Strategy
Recognizing the global trend of mass personalization, Pinterest announced this Tuesday the acquisition of two technology platforms, The Hunt and Pext. These acquisitions are aimed at delivering more relevant image search results (both paid and organic) based on an individual’s search behavior within the app, and ultimately drive stronger ROI for brands investing in Pinterest’s ad products.
The Hunt
A community powered mobile app that enables its users to post pictures of product along with specific requirements like budget and size in exchange for feedback on where to find it from other members of The Hunt community.
Implications: enhances Pinterest’s mobile shopping and product discovery making it even easier for Pinterest users to find what they’re looking for whether it’s a home remodel or fashion item.
Pext
An app by OMG Labs that helps find photos to match your text messages and easily turns them into memes.
Implications: improved “image indexing” — the ability to recall images from text-based queries within the Pinterest app.
A Leader In E-Comm
Pinterest has already demonstrated its prowess as a traffic and sales driver, especially for big ticket items. Compared to all major social networks it delivers the highest average order values.
According to Shopify data:
- The average order value of sales coming from Pinterest is $50 — higher than any other major social platform.
- Pinterest is the #2 overall source of all social media traffic to Shopify stores.
- 2MM people pin product pins per day (20x more than there are daily shoppers at the Mall of America)
- 93% of Pinterest users use the platform to plan purchases
Ultimately the goal seems to be to use these new technologies to improve the relevance of pins discovered both organically as well as through Promoted and Buyable Pins. This in turn could mean even higher average order values and conversion rates for brands within Pinterest as more users are able to discover product at the right time based on previous searches within the app.
Dwell Time and the Fast-Scrolling Millennial
By: Crystal Stanford, SEM / PPC Manager
I’ve done my fair share of online shopping. One might even say I’m good at it. I can remember a couple of occasions where I’m “co-shopping” with my boyfriend online and he’s protested at how quickly I scroll through the products. “How do you know whether you like something if you barely even look at it?”
The rationale behind the rollout of a new Facebook advertising capability explains just why I, online shopper extraordinaire, am able to discern hits from misses as I scroll quickly through a product feed.
Introducing Facebook Brand Awareness Objective
Facebook’s director of ad product marketing, Graham Mudd, explained to Digiday that the recent rollout of the Brand Awareness Objective for Facebook Advertising was brought about by observing millennials scrolling through their feeds at lightning clips. According to Facebook, millennials and teenagers consume content 2.5 times faster than older audiences, and the new Brand Awareness Objective optimizes for the golden moment when people suddenly stop scrolling and start “dwelling” on an ad.
Lifting Recall Rate
Both Facebook and Nielsen (who partnered with Facebook to research and develop the new capability) say that dwell time relative to how much time is normally spent on other content is the “most significant driver of ad recall discovered to date.” Simply put, when Facebook users encounter that golden moment when they finally stop scrolling feverishly through their Facebook feeds and start dwelling, they’re more likely to recall the content when surveyed two days later.
“When you see someone slow down and consume the ad in ways that’s different from his or her previous behaviors, that’s a very strong predictor that the person will remember seeing the ad,” Mudd said.
So how exactly does it work? Digiday says that “it automatically finds users who spend the most time with an ad above their typical engagement time, and then it gets in front of more people with similar attributes.” Mudd further adds, “For a given ad campaign, if they’re spending twice as long looking at that ad as they typically look at ads, then that signals to us that this must be relevant and we go and look for more people like that and use all the data we have about people, their profiles, to go find audiences.” The campaign then becomes optimized toward more people who are more likely to hover for longer and dwell on your ad, with a resulting lift in your brand’s estimated recall rate.
Passive But Attentive
This capability is intriguing to digital marketers and brands who have long noticed engagement rates drop off precipitously when marketing to younger demos versus older ones. Anecdotally, millennials and teenagers often appear to be more passive on social media, choosing to forgo the likes, clicks, shares, and comments we see at higher rates with older audiences. And yet we know millennials are still listening, retaining and acting based on the influence of social media. With the introduction of the Brand Awareness Objective, we now have the capability to optimize campaigns for this watching and listening behavior. The new metric for success in these campaigns will then be improved Ad Recall Lift Rates, where Nielsen’s data is leveraged to estimate the number of people who will recall your ad if surveyed two days from their most recent impression.
As for my boyfriend’s astonishment over how I could possibly scroll through a product feed so quickly and still be an effective online shopper, Mudd has some insight that explains both my behavior and that of the fast-scrolling millennial: “If you think about it, these people are a generation that has grown up on mobile devices and spend a large percentage of time looking at them, and they just got very good at parsing information in those devices in a quick way.”
I’m just really skilled at online shopping. It took years of steady practice.
Managing Consumer Expectations
By Nathan Johnson, Assistant Media Planner
The Scenario
Imagine this scenario, you just went to your local RedBox to pick up that award winning film you’ve been itching to see. You stick the movie into your DVD player and sit down with your ice cold drink and popcorn, ready to partake as your thumb hits the play button. Nothing…You see a black screen and a DVD error. Now you’re upset because spent money on a movie you don’t get to watch and so you take to social to tell RedBox. Shortly after you receive a notification from the company apologizing and giving you a code for a free movie.
This exact situation happened to me and I honestly wasn’t expecting a response, but I was impressed when suddenly I had a message trying to rectify the issue shortly after I had brought it up with the company.
Customers Expectations
It turns out, I’m not the only one who turns to social when purchases don’t go according to plan. According to Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media Report, nearly half of social media users engage in what they call “social care” or customer service via social media. To further emphasize the point, the same report states that a third of social users prefer social care over contacting a company by phone.
If users are using social as a customer service platform, what type of expectations do they have for response time? Possibly sooner than you may have thought. If we have a spectrum from email response to phone response, think of social as being somewhere in the middle. According to a study being released in The Social Habit, 42% of respondents said they expect a company to respond within 60 minutes of being contacted. Taken a step further 57% of respondents said they would expect the same response time at night and on weekends as they would during normal business hours. That’s likely intimidating for many brands.
Facebook’s Role
However, social giants such as Facebook have recognized that meeting consumer expectations is key. Recently the company announced additional features to Pages that make communicating with customers even easier. A few of the updates include:
- More communication controls: Businesses will now be able to change their publicly displayed response time that is auto generated to between “within minutes,” “within an hour,” or “within a day.” Additionally, brands can choose to set their messaging status to “away” and even have auto generated messages.
- Redesigned inbox: The inbox received a makeover that provides more context about users such as past conversations and publicly displayed information about them (i.e. current city). Admins will also be able to create notes and tags to help them stay organized.
Implications
Social media has opened the door for brands to really engage with their customers, though this comes at a cost. Customers have expectations and being able to provide a quality experience will make or break a brand’s reputation. While this may sound scary, there’s actually a lot of opportunity. The key is to set the expectations so customers have a frame of reference for when to expect a response. Here are a couple recommendations for brand’s using this new feature:
- Set your response time: While the auto-generated time may be fairly accurate, it’s always best to give yourself a little wiggle room. Let’s say you normally respond within an hour — try setting up your response time to “within a day.” This will help deter customers from becoming upset if you are unable to respond within an hour. On the flip side, customers will appreciate the “fast” response if you message them in less than a day.
- Make an auto-response FAQ message: Unless the brand can afford to have a 24/7 customer service team, it’s best to set an away message to further set expectations. To be even more helpful, create an away message that provides users with a link to commonly asked questions. This may help them find what they are looking for even when you’re catching some Z’s.
Always remember to put yourself in your consumer’s position and figure out how you can best provide them the answers they need in the quickest and most efficient way possible.
