DIGITAL MEDIA DIGEST: JAN ‘19
A monthly look at the world of digital from NORTH’s point of view
Introducing “In-Car Commerce” Brought To You By Cargo
By Caroline Desmond, Director of Media Strategy
As of 2018, Gallup reported that approximately one in three Americans have used ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft and that these riders are more likely to be young (18–29; Gen-Z/Young Millennials), from affluent households (HHI of $90K+ per year), and living in cities or surrounding suburbs. The growth in rideshare adoption presents an incentive for brands trying to reach this coveted demographic. (Forbes reports that between now and 2020, Millennials and Gen-Z represent a combined spending power of $350 billion.)
Being able to integrate into the rideshare experience also addresses the challenge presented by Millennials and Gen-Z consumers— they are elusive targets that are difficult to reach because they tend to eschew traditional advertising channels. For example, under-34s are more likely to be “cord cutters” that abandon traditional cable in favor of streaming TV platforms (if they ever had cable at all). Additionally, Millennials and Gen-Z expect experiences from brands tailored to their tastes/behaviors. This is likely the result of being a generation that either came of age with the Internet or that has always identified as a “digital native”. Notably, both Gen-Zs and Millennials are open to accepting some advertising in exchange for something they want like free, premium content (e.g., Hulu, Spotify, etc.). Brands that deliver a great experience are therefore poised to appeal to this audience. 2018 syndicated research data from gfk MRI further supports the the notion that Gen-Z and Millennials value experiences over things. According to MRI’s 2018 National Doublebase survey, 73% of affluent, 18–29s say that having stimulating experiences is very important to them, while less than half agree that wealth or material possessions are “very important”.
So, how can we target these valuable rideshare consumers? Now, brands have a new channel—“in-car commerce”—that seeks to offer added value to ride-sharers courtesy of a company called Cargo.
The idea is this — Cargo enables rideshare drivers to offer a premium ride experience while earning some additional income (on average an additional $100 per month). Drivers who opt-in receive Cargo’s in-car product cases that are outfitted with goods supplied by various snack, beverage, electronic, and beauty product brands. Riders download Cargo’s app and can order product from the Cargo Store app while in transit to receive product at the end of the ride. Whether brands choose to make product available as a free sample or charge is up to them.
As an added benefit to brands, Cargo can also prompt riders who have sampled product to go on to fill out a short survey, watch a short brand video, or click to buy more product like the one just sampled on Amazon. Cargo is able to report back to brands how many riders engaged with any one of these features. Moreover, by using unique offer codes for Amazon linked transactions, brands can identify exactly what ROI resulted from a Cargo sampling program. Cargo also captures data from app users to be able to retarget riders who sampled a particular product later in social feeds with promotional offers related to sampled product.
Cargo’s growth also appears strong to date with substantial reach for interested brands. Last July, Cargo and Uber unveiled an exclusive partnership. Even though Cargo is not quite two years old, it has already amassed a fleet of 12,000 drivers, which, as Cargo points out, represents more unique storefronts than 7-Eleven operates in North America. Bloomberg covered Cargo in an article last November reporting that products reach 9 million passengers per month across 10 US markets (and counting). Additionally, Cargo reports that riders have already ordered over 2 million products through the Cargo Store app.
As Cargo continues to grow, it is also continuing to think about ways to expand its offering. In a recent call between North and a Cargo representative, we learned that Cargo will soon begin placing mini-fridge-style cases in-car in an appeal to beverage brands seeking to sample cold product.
In short, this is something we definitely think is worth keeping in mind as a potential mechanism to drive trial beyond traditional sampling tactics.
Indispensable Twitter
By Izzy Kramer, Media Planner
Twitter is planning to evolve in 2019. For a platform that has remained relatively unchanged as compared to its sister platforms, this is big news.
After thirteen years, AdWeek reports that Twitter “is thinking about adding features that will bring it back to its roots” — the days when Twitter was just a text-message based social network. According To AdWeek’s coverage of CES, “Keith Coleman, Twitter’s VP of Product, said that the social network was considering rolling out new products that would make the platform look and feel more like a messaging service.” These features include chat bubbles, indicators that friends are online, read receipt settings, and “status update-like tweets”.
We are seeing a trend of social media platforms transition to messaging platforms. Take Facebook Messenger for example. When the Facebook Messenger app came out, Facebook required all of its users to download a completely separate app in order to use their messaging services. Social networks understand the whole reason social media exists is because of relationships between people. These networks are making it easier to connect by focusing on direct messaging. So it makes for easy reasoning on Twitter’s part to evolve toward a messenger-based platform.
Coleman says a main reason for these potential changes are that “making Twitter look and feel more like a messaging platform will contribute to the company’s efforts to clean up the conversation on the platform and crack down on abuse, which has long plagued Twitter and other social media sites.”
While Twitter’s reasoning for potential changes directly reference the daily political horseplay now common to Twitter, it also stirs up speculation of other repercussions caused by these changes. Changes would completely change the culture that has been developing on Twitter over the past 13 years. No matter what, when drastic changes are made to the user experience of a social media platform, the people revolt!
Think of the backlash Snapchat received when they changed their UX in early 2018. It was hated so much 600,000 people signed a Change.org petition to revert to the old version.
Or even more recent, in late December Instagram updated their app that required users to swipe through a limited feed instead of being able to scroll endlessly. It was disliked so much Instagram changed it back to the old format within hours of the launch. (Instagram employees said the new layout release was meant to be a small A/B test that accidentally went broader than anticipated. Sounds like a cover-up for a faulty new layout.)
With that in mind, it’s notable that Twitter is the very platform users flocked to in order to vent about unwarranted changes on their favorite social platforms. Take the Snapchat revolt for example — a fake tweet purporting to be from Snap said it would change back if it got 50,000 retweets. It now has over 1.3 million.
Where will people go to vent their frustration if Twitter actually does transitions from a “one to many” messaging platform to more of a “one to one” messaging platform?
Twitter needs to realize the indispensable position they have achieved by being the network where you can endlessly stream your thoughts and aren’t required to be perfect. While that brings about ugly parts of the internet, aren’t they going to exist somewhere else anyway?
Overall, social media networks are bred to be ever-changing having been created in a time of persistent change. Twitter has adopted multiple, small changes over the years (remember going from 140 to 280 characters?) However, it is a fine line for social media networks to walk between staying top of mind, staying relevant, and completely losing it all by alienating users.
Four Steps To Test Audiences On Facebook and Instagram
By Devon Brown, Performance Marketing Manager
It’s a new year, and relevance is still king. Finding the right audiences for Facebook and Instagram is imperative for success, but knowing where to start can be daunting. In a few steps, I’ll explain the basics of audience testing, how to evaluate audiences, and what to do once you’ve found ones a few that work.
1. Set Up At Least 3 Ad Groups With Varying Audiences
A good rule of thumb is to have one “cold” audience, one lookalike audience, and one retargeting audience.
A “cold” audience should incorporate the demographics and psychographics that came out during pre-campaign audience research.
For example: Males, 21–48 who love the outdoors, camp regularly, buy organic, and live in California.
This is also where you would want to add competitor targeting and any other relevant core truths that the strategy team deems important.
Lookalike audiences are best based on the deepest actions within the conversion funnel as possible. For example, a lookalike audience based on purchases would be more valuable than audiences based on video views.
Finally, retargeting should be based most closely on the current audience you’re trying to target. For example, if your ads are introducing a new product that compliments a current product, build the retargeting audience based on those current customers. If you don’t have anyone relevant to retarget, use the opportunity two test two cold audiences against each other.
2. Evaluate Based on KPI’s
This seems obvious, but it is the crux of the whole thing so it does deserve mention. Evaluate each audience based on how well they meet the campaign KPI’s. For an awareness campaign, this would most likely be efficient CPM’s, ad recall rate, frequency (to ensure you’re not spamming people) etc. For a purchase level campaign, this would be conversion rate, cost/ conversion, etc.
3. Tweak and Optimize
Now’s the time to test and play and take risks. If an audience isn’t performing, add or subtract targeting parameters, make them narrower or broader, base the lookalikes and targets off of different actions, and do whatever you need to do. Generally, changes take about a week to take effect, so give each ad group some space to do its thing after making significant changes. Evaluate the outcome of the changes, and keep making tweaks as needed.
4. Structure The Campaign Based on How The Audiences Compliment Each Other
One audience may give you a stellar ad recall rate but might be very expensive, while another may have a steller metrics across the board, but it may be very small and isn’t served as much as the other two. Remember, this is all one campaign, so how these audience work together to bring overall metrics is what’s most important. Hopefully, they all work together to meet all of your KPI’s.
And that’s it. This process should be continuous for as long as the campaign is running. As long as the audiences are evolving and maintained, metrics should never fall flat. And over time, you’ll build up a big, healthy library of lookalike audiences, retargeting audiences and cold audiences, so audience targeting will be further dialed in with each initiative.
