It's still the wild west when it comes to mobile ad tracking and ad serving. Although some agencies have started to test out various third party ad serving solutions, the delivery of many campaigns are still reported on by publisher, ad network, and rich media company ad servers. Many of these ad servers are proprietary ad servers with a range of capabilities.

There are also companies that are in the process of developing their own "mobile cookie" or proprietary tracking solutions. Some of these solutions require the implementation of third party tracking tags that are Javascript tags. Javascript tags are not yet widely accepted by mobile publishers and ad networks for various reasons from concerns over security to lack of ability to implement it in the ad server. It is much like the early days of online advertising (think circa 1999) when online ads were still primarily gif and jpgs, only pixel tracking was common, and publisher ad server reporting was the norm. We are in a very similar stage right now in mobile and we need to come together as an industry to be open to new methods so we can start to provide better measurement solutions for our clients.

Naturally as more Smartphones come into the market, we will see more rich media advertising in mobile which will help drive ad serving improvements just as we saw online. Until then, let's push for testing new tracking options in the market so we aren't stuck partying like it's 1999.

It’s obvious, but sometimes it takes a mother to show us that the well-worn path is not always the right path. And this is why your mother can actually buy media better than you.

Some Historical Perspective

See, here’s what she knew that can help online marketers right now. All online ad tracking systems used today are legacy systems built 15 years ago.  They erroneously give all credit for a conversion to the very last ad in line.  So if 10 ads were involved from the top of the conversion funnel to the bottom, the bottom one gets all credit.  You’ve heard of line cutters (folks who cut in line), these are funnel cutters—stealing all the credit by jumping in at the end. Why do we still measure everything this way?  Because that’s the way it was done, and we’re following everyone right off the media cliff.

We Are To Believe What?
Today, all those tracking systems have just one slot for which an online ad is credited with success (display/search social media/affiliate, etc).  Just one?  Are we to believe that college-educated media buyers pouring many hours over optimization should accept there’s only one ad responsible for a conversion?  Only one?  Even though the advertiser may be investing in five channels…there’s only one ad responsible for a conversion?  There are never two, three, or perhaps 17?

Are we to believe that even though the purchase funnel was created in 1898 by E. Lewis there’s no purchase funnel online…beginning with Awareness, Intent, Desire, and Action.  None?

Committing Media Suicide
Of course, anyone who looked at this situation with some perspective (like your mom) would  draw some parallels.  Your mom knows it takes many dates before you get married in the real world--and in the online world, it takes many impressions and clicks to convert.  Not just one.

What would your mom say?  In a slightly surprised and slightly irritated tone, she’d say, “What are you doing?  Just because everyone else is doing it that way, why would you do that!!  If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?  Of course not; you’re smarter than that!”

Your mom is or was smarter than every online advertiser who’s not using an attribution model.  And if your mom can see it, your client and your boss are going to see it very soon.

Now What?
What moms do is take a very complex problem and make it simple.  Same thing with attribution. It involves millions of views and clicks and thousands of transactions and attribution when used with a two-way communication platform, makes it easy enough that even your mom could buy media better than you (if you continue using legacy ad tracking systems).

Here’s how.  In a fractional attribution model, 100% of revenue, say from a Zappos transaction, is split and attributed among Originators, Assists, Converters plus what we call a Roster.  This can be done so that all four pieces of the pie equal 100%, and each of these four has a very different pie percentage--by industry, and by client.

Each ad player deemed worthy of attribution credit is tied to purchase funnel chronology with algorithms, like skipping brand term search credit when in last position and skipping credit for non-viewable impressions.  The fractional revenue is apportioned to the ad players on the team, which become the numerator of a fraction--and the cost of the ad player becomes the denominator of the fraction.  Divide them, and you have a trademark number called attributed value-to-spend-ratio.  A ratio of 2.0 means:  for every $1 you spent on a certain ad you get $2 in attributed revenue back.

With this one number, attribution modeling takes complex, big data and simplifies it.  You just gave birth to a new way of measurement:  an accurate way of measurement.

Growing Up
But as your fractional attribution baby grows up, its capabilities grow, too.  You might want to run sensitivity analyses or even conjoint analyses in C3 Metrics’ attribution sandbox as your data set gets more robust--or have our team of award-winning marketing scientists and Ph.D.s validate and adjust weights at finer levels with transaction-stream detail.  But for now, by not jumping off the media cliff with everyone else, your mom can buy media better than most.

You’re smarter than that.  Your mom knows it, too.

Mark Hughes is CEO of C3 Metrics

Reviewing the previously discussed policies, (Assign each touchpoint a specific objective & task to carry out) and (Use consumer passions to design your “Digital 4P’s”), discloses a common theme. That is, consumer centric research provides the foundation for a better digital marketing ROI.

Now that your thinking is prompted after covering the first two policies, do you still think you can afford to ignore consumer perspectives when designing a digital marketing initiative? We have seen the outcome of digital marketing without consumer centric research lead to wasted time, resources, and capital as depicted in the case below.

Mobile Site Gone Astray
In one such example, when going to market without a digital marketing insurance policy, a brand had to rework an entire mobile experience that was the first to market for the category. The mobile experience was originally designed for accessibility and utilization while the consumer is at the point of purchase. Naturally taking these whereabouts into account, the design of the mobile site featured information and tools surrounding an in-store experience. However, research uncovered that 92% of mobile site visitors actually surf the site from home (directly after seeing a TV commercial). Interestingly, 49% of visitor motivation was to find store locations for purchasing the product, followed by another 26% who wanted product information. Thinking back to the initial design of the site, the facets of info that the visitor expected were completely missed. With the mobile strategy gone astray, consumers left the site unable to find where to purchase the product, resulting in drastically low future purchase intent scores.

The above case is an example of breakdown at each factor of production (time, resource, and capital). Furthermore, when visitors do not connect with the interactive experience, KPI’s are significantly damaged, along with the potential loss of brand recommendations and purchase consideration. The breakdown in factors of production resulted in:

--Wasted time slowed down brand progress and growth. Adjustments made within a fast paced environment is at times detrimental for a competitive foothold, leaving room for competitors to slip in with an optimized experience during the time period reworks are taking place.

--Man hours spent fixing the wrongs using temporary band-aids and re-working efforts waste resources.

--When a complete overhaul/redesign is needed, profits decrease while capital investments increase.

Key takeaway for policy #3: It is particularly important to gather consumer feedback prior to bringing the digital initiatives to market, but if that is not possible, these policies still can be applied when already in market. The result? Time, resources and capital are allocated in an appropriate manner and there are now answers to the many unanswered questions that occurred during the design phase.

Wrapping Up: The “Insurance” Quote
In exchange for the security of insurance, each brand team/agency are required to look at the ecology of the digital medium from a consumer perspective: Touchpoint preferences and touchpoint behaviors. Only at that time will the insurance kick in to develop direction for each touchpoint, guide content refreshes and define the role of each touchpoint within the media mix (working to remove in-market risk and optimize at each factor of production).

A large part of being successful within the digital arena is to be in the right place at the right time according to what consumers are already engaging with. Following the three insurance policies provided does not to attempt to change consumer behavior, but instead plays upon existing passions and connects with them on their own turf. It is about reaching consumers where they already are and giving them something new to fuel their passions.

In summation, said best by CRM Metrix President, Hemen Patel, “Communication hinges on what you say and how you say it, but within Online, it also matters where you say it”.

A special thanks to CRM Metrix President, Hemen Patel, for inspiring the content of this post with his concept for the process toward a better digital marketing ROI.

There are plenty of debates regarding the best tactical means to connect with B2B buyers. The effectiveness of these tactical means, as reported by once again the likes of IDC and etc., show that many B2B leaders believe these tactical efforts such as content marketing and marketing automation may only be effective about a quarter of the time. It does represent a big gap and it begs for a rephrasing of the challenge – this a big disconnect with B2B buyers. Enough to keep any sane B2B CEO and their senior management team scrambling for answers. Part 1 and part 2 of this series pointed out that conventional funnel thinking is woefully inadequate in today’s B2B buyer landscape and is limited in the ability to address new and evolving complexities.

Determining new strategies as well as tactics that can meet the challenge of connecting with today’s B2B buyers revolve around understanding new buyer psychology and dynamics that are in a state of continuous evolution. B2B businesses can do three things to help grasp the connection issue and make plans that close the gap:

Buyer Modeling To Understand Buyer Choices and Scenarios

Business executives today are using the concepts of buyer modeling to understand as well as visually illuminate buyer choice. Buyer modeling incorporates the elements of attitudes, beliefs, values, goals, perceptions, needs, and motivations. By modeling buyers, buying scenarios, buyer experience, and decision journeys, B2B executives can then map strategy as well as tactical marketing and sales activities that enable them to connect with B2B buyers on a relational level. Buyer modeling is based on qualitative research that addresses choices being made versus inadequate interviewing that is done in the context of the funnel.

Focus On The Total Brand and Buyer Experience

B2B businesses are learning how to think outside the context of the funnel and how to encompass the total view of the brand and buyer experience. The invisibility of buyers who are in explore and network mode of the buyer choice model makes it an imperative for B2B businesses to better understand how different buyers interact with different channels that create impressionable brand and buyer experience. The emphasis here is on identifying critical Buyer Moment of Truth™ impression points that contribute to the overall brand and buyer experience. For example, does the web channel brand and buyer experience stay true to form when buyers interact with either the social media, sales, resellers, partner, or service channels? HP, for instance, has a strong ecosystem of reseller and partner channels where the brand and buyer experience has many potential pitfalls and has several challenging Buyer Moment of Truth handoff points that can make or break their involvement. B2B leaders today can conduct buyer experience mapping that identifies critical Buyer Moment of Truth and ensure that the brand and buyer experience stays true to form throughout.

Descriptive Buyer Segmentation Based on Buying Behavior and Opportunity

By integrating the benefits of predictive analytics with that of predictive buyer modeling, B2B leaders are gaining smarts on taking segmentation to a new level. With the use of visually illuminating B2B Buyergraphics, buyers can be segmented descriptively by explore and buying behavior and also by modeling buying scenarios that identify where the organization can reach a “best fit” level with buyers. This can be especially useful in industries where there is a strong company or account focus as well as complex buying scenarios that involve lengthy buying cycles. Descriptive means of segmentation helps to illuminate the many elements related to choice, needs, goals, attitudes, behaviors, values, and experience. This approach enables both marketing and sales to focus on resonating with buyer segments that have similar goals and buying behaviors where knowledge in doing so is dynamic and enriched with each company or account interaction. In essence, allowing B2B businesses to build strong connections with B2B buyers in buyer segments that have higher winning percentages.

When B2B leaders can do these three things, they can be better informed on how to guide the overall trajectory of their organization. Their focus is on identifying the buyers and buyer segments that they can best establish a connection within the context of understanding choices being made. More importantly, they can learn how to connect with B2B buyers today in ways that resonates and invites participation into the buyer driven world of goals, challenges, issues, uncertainties, and growth objectives that orbit them continuously.

Next up: Transforming B2B Business

Follow @TonyZambito

Related articles

• The Buyerology of the Buyer: How B2B Leaders Respond to the Psychology of Buyer Choice (buyerology.com)
• Slow Death of the Funnel: Why Buyer Choice Matters to Revenue (buyerology.com)
• Revenue Growth by Choice and The Buyer Orbit (buyerology.com)
• How B2B Leaders Are Understanding Buyers Better With Behavioral Buyergraphics (buyerology.com)
• The Single Buyer Model: A Dangerous Road Towards Competitive B2B Marketing (buyerology.com)
• Predictive Buyer Modeling Is Changing the Future of B2B (buyerology.com)

Surveys On the Go

It's advertising a mobile survey app. A couple of thoughts come to mind after seeing this:
1) I wonder how effective panelist recruitment is using an OOH ad like this? I'm sure average New Yorkers consider themselves "Opinionated" but would they actually stop and read this ad? And if they did, how effective can it be when the branding so terrible? There is a shot of the app with the "Surveys On the Go" logo and very small text at the bottom saying to search for the app. Why not add a QR code to this ad? (For the record, it was in an area where cell phone service was still accessible).

2) I wonder where else they are recruiting panelists/users. Are they specifically trying to recruit urban respondents? How representative would their users be for research purposes?

3) Has mobile research arrived? There are more and more survey apps popping up in app stores. Common online panels are asking their panelists to download apps and take surveys on their mobile devices. Are mobile survey apps the future for market research? Many companies are investigating how and when to use mobile for surveys. We are still learning and haven't quite figured it all out yet. But if companies are taking big strides like this to advertise their survey apps, maybe the future is closer than we think....

Most traditional forms of research are typically conducted with a few premises that present some gaps in understanding human intention and behavior, including:

1. Asking a select group of people to provide their true opinions about a brand or product.
2. Surveying a large sample size of randomly-selected people a large volume of questions, hoping to get a “true” understanding of their behavior.
3. Posing real-time questions about their experience post interaction or purchase (in-banner surveys in web forms).

Looking at some of the principles of psychology and sociology, people often don’t know why they do what they do, or say what they say and find it difficult to answer such questions in a group setting. Most times they act on feeling, impulse or habit.  It’s the way they’ve always done it or what they’ve always thought. To provide some context, think about the last time you brushed your teeth. Did you think through the process of getting your toothbrush, rinsing it off, grabbing the paste, opening the lid, putting it on your brush, closing the lid and then start brushing your teeth? It’s safe to say that you probably did not. It was habit, instinctual. Another good example might be the last time you went to a restaurant, had a wonderful (or awful) experience and wanted to share it with your friends on Facebook. Did you put a lot of thought into what you said then wrote and rewrote it while fine tuning your position throughout? Most likely you wrote what came into thought, shared your true and honest opinion as a result.

The unaided, unbiased, qualitative information provided from watching consumers in action in their own environment can be extremely useful – sometimes more so than web analytics – in driving both online and offline marketing strategy. Brushing your teeth may seem like a mundane, habitual act, but for companies that are able to watch, it can offer numerous insights that can drive product design (how do they hold their brush), packaging (is the tube easy to open) and product type (is there too much foam in the paste, do we need to alter the ingredient mix) just to name a few.

All forms of research are valid and can provide brilliant ideas. That means organizations can’t become narrow-minded in their approach and not see the bigger picture that comes from getting too mired in digital numbers and prompted questions. In order to fully understand the consumer, marketers must also observe actual behaviors, listen to their unaided opinions and understand the context of the situation. Taking this into account along with the more popular forms of research (survey, focus groups, statistics) will help companies understand the complete picture of human behavior in order to develop the most effective plan.

In these cultures, digital marketers will test variations of demand generation approaches to attract more of the segments they’ve pre-determined as “qualified” consumers based on their similarity to past consumers. They will test variations of marketing pages to drive these same consumers into a purchase funnel. And they will test variations of purchase funnels to tweak conversion rates by a few points of a percent.

What such cultures will not test is whether what’s being done now is really the best approach, or if there are ways to expand on the current approach. It will not test whether the segments of the market that aren’t being targeted, or those that are have been dismissed as “unqualified” based on attrition in the path to purchase could actually have become customers with a different approach to demand generation or their experience in the conversion funnel.

Clearly, what such organizational cultures miss in their approach to testing is what makes successful businesses successful – the willingness to take risks and pursue new strategies in response to changing conditions and new opportunities. In biased cultures, rather that testing being an independently operated method for exploring opportunities for strategic change, testing becomes more operations than marketing research, simply a mechanism for doing more of the same at a rate of regular increase.

The Data-driven Dilemma
All truly effective marketers are aware that their effectiveness and impact in marketing is driven by the data they have around their consumer base and their market. Thus, while no decent marketer would work without data, there are unfortunately many marketers working with insufficient data.

While good decisions can often be made with limited data, the real dilemma in this latter situation come when marketers believe that their limited data actually tells them the whole story about their consumers and their paths to engagement and purchase.

Digital analytics functions in organizations have seldom been seen as consumer insights disciplines in a primary capacity. Instead, digital analytics have traditionally been founded and organized around performance analysis, i.e. as the source of reports and dashboards showing click-through and conversion metrics.

Such performance metrics are of course critical to an organization’s management. The issues for a marketing organization arise when the measures of performance are in and of themselves leveraged to justify the optimization of conversion tactics without further ongoing testing and research dedicated specifically to the continuous validation of the marketing strategy in general.

This approach becomes an issue because this moment when the organization becomes more sophisticated in testing to optimize its current approach to generating awareness and channeling purchase intent to conversion is potentially the same moment that it may begin limiting its capacity to consider ideas of other customer segments, demand generation methods and conversion paths.

Since the practice of testing and optimization is often highly venerated in digital analytics circles, it may initially seem surprising that organizations that become highly sophisticated in such approaches may actually be more backwards than others when it comes to recognizing and responding to changing consumer segments, their multiple paths to purchase, and the ever-expanding options in marketing channel mixes.

Cracks in the Foundation
Unfortunately, the establishment of a testing culture is often a difficult political process for analytics functions, and one which often results in the funding for tests being “owned” by managers outside of the analytics function. This means that analytics teams often cannot establish truly independent approaches to testing, but are instead constrained to testing that seeks to confirm multiple (and occasionally conflicting) product managers’ theories about what works best for their product.

Thanks to the always present influence of confirmation bias in human thought and decision making, often, those management theories on what works best for a product that form the basis for optimization tests are based on rear-view analysis of what has worked until now, an analysis which in an ongoing feat of perfect circular logic, is justified by the performance metrics, which of course only measure what has been done, and offer no comparison or context to what could have been done.

It is no small individual career risk for managers to consider implementing strategies which have not been proven out over time. Of course, it is a massive risk to organizations to let the risk-aversion of managers limit their consideration of future marketing strategies, especially in the digital marketing arena where consumer segments and their engagement with technology are always changing.

Breaking Away
Therefore, companies with digital marketing practices that seek to sustain ongoing competitive advantage must ensure they support processes (such as the BIO digital research process) that involve independent testing of digital marketing strategies and evolving systems of marketing performance evaluation which align with other ongoing consumer insights and market research. These organizations must allow their marketing managers to consider marketing strategies that explore new approaches, utilizing testing to evaluate these strategies and implement the winners as effectively as possible.

Those organizations that enable their managers to explore opportunities to capitalize on an ever shifting digital marketplace will have an ever increasing advantage over digital marketing organizations designed to test nothing other than how to do the same thing slightly better than before.

This week, Disney not only got an exceptional overall engagement rate, of .27% of their fan base, but did it with a post that also generated the highest Share rate of the week: 24% of Disney’s engagements on that post were people Sharing it with their friends. For comparison, of the Ten most engaging posts featured here, the next highest Share % was 14%, and the average was 9%. Pretty impressive.

BTW, if you aren't subscribed to our free weekly Top Ten email highlighting the top posts from the top ten brands on Facebook, please subscribe here.

Here's the image Disney posted, with the headline "Smile! Pass it on."

And here are this week's top posts from the top ten brands. If you'd like to see more data like this to help with your Facebook page content strategies, sign up for a FREE TRIAL of Zuum by simply registering.

It is key to look at the digital medium as a whole, but while doing so also explore the space through the mind of a consumer. Investigating how each touchpoint is used by consumers will identify the market activity strength for each touchpoint to then map touchpoint performance within four critical dimensions:

• Web equity: Which touchpoint is most trustworthy?
• Pre-purchase research: Which touchpoint is relied on for product research?
• Post-purchase support: Where do consumers go for customer service support?
• Relationship building: Which platform is best suited to maintain the interest in ongoing brand communications?

Only through this process does the role of each touchpoint become clear, taking into account how the consumer is interacting with and conceptualizing each one. From there, each touchpoint is assigned an objective or task to carry out within the broader media mix.

The results in the chart above show that the influencing power of the brand website leads other touchpoints by an expansive margin. This is true even when revisiting the “dot com boom” and still in this exact moment; yet Social Media still dominates the mindshare of marketers today.

As shown in the example, Social Media typically performs well in the relationship building dimension, but does not for any others. This is critical to understand when building brand objectives, as it is important not to assign an unachievable task to the fan page such as customer service or product support priorities. So what this exercise tells us is that if you prefer to use Social Media, associated strategies should be built out by looking at the ideologies of consumers (which reveal that it should be used only to develop and maintain customer relationships).

This exercise is essential when creating a placement plan that hits with a relevant reach, relevant message and relevant strategy to improve ROI. Once this is established and a formidable plan begins to form that will improve digital marketing ROI, related decisions will satisfy the main challenges with rising confidence that should free up digital budgets. This is just the first insurance policy of three (to be discussed in subsequent posts) that will make the days of “CYOA” soon a relic of the past.

We are all familiar with the concept of insurance to protect our own personal assets, but it is important to remember that a similar principle can also be applied to our role as Digital Marketing professionals. The upcoming series of blog posts address this very topic, providing policies that will help underwrite improved returns moving forward.

Buying into an insurance policy for better digital marketing ROI is unheard of without taking a proper precautionary principle, which in this case is done through several phases of measurement. Despite the fact that digital marketing is the most measurable medium, moving towards a better digital marketing ROI is not easy. Digital datasets are so vast and yet digital analytic resources are so minute that forward growth is slow-moving. When speaking with multiple organizations about their top digital marketing challenges, since the turn of the decade consistent themes have arisen:

1.) Budget allocation, fighting against traditional spending
2.) Accountability, proving digital marketing works
3.) Low confidence in digital marketing

Naturally, there are both internal and external factors feeding into these challenges. Externally, digital marketing initiatives are struggling to reach consumer eyeballs as there are many many platforms one can interact with (not only within the digital arena but the offline space as well). From an internal standpoint, digital marketing is often undervalued as it is not always a priority within an organization. Why might this be? It is our inkling that we must do a better job proving ROI within the digital space, but doing so with metrics that will make Senior Management comfortable investing further into the medium.
Let’s establish the current state of affairs before moving into policies that will help us “do it better.” Since the turn of the decade the digital marketing marketplace has been involved in a game of CYOA:

2010: Hurry up, launch something!
2011: Eek, make sure it’s working!?
2012: Wait, how well is it all working together?

This indicates that planning for the outcome (ROI) of the digital initiative is side stepped, and the outcome of that outcome is there are still many unanswered questions. This scenario is pioneering a change in how Marketers are Marketing, how Marketers are Measured and how Marketers are Measuring.

With that said, this series of posts should safeguard the path to better leverage the digital medium by teaching how to systematically engage in a consumer-centric digital marketing process that sets the stage for a successful ROI.

When evaluating the digital marketing universe, there are two areas to cover:
1.) The digital medium as a whole.
2.) Each digital touchpoint as a standalone.

Using this approach both up front before launching initiatives as well as post-launch will lead to better planning and development for your digital properties.

In the following weeks, I will post three policies that will lock you in with insurance so you are strategically aligned with market desires the first time around.

Key findings include:

• Industries with emotional subjects tend to have higher engagement rates
• Page engagement rates within an industry often vary significantly
• The more Likes a page has, the harder it is to get high engagement
• High posting volume often aligns with high engagement rates

Some things I expected, and some I didn't.

Stay informed. Looking for the latest digital strategies for iconic branding? Attend the iMedia Brand Summit, Feb. 5-8. Request your invitation today.

1) K.I.S.S. - Keeping it short and simple is certainly the golden rule to conducting a mobile survey. No one is going to take the time to complete a long survey on their mobile device. When conducting a survey from a mobile website or app, no more than 10 or 12 questions are recommended. Additionally, don't make the survey too difficult to complete. Eliminate or limit open ended questions and keep question and answer choices short so too much scrolling is not required.

2) Offer an incentive - Where possible, offer an incentive for taking your survey. Even if it's a small incentive, it helps to grab attention and gives users a reason to complete the survey through to the end. On a mobile website or in an app, incentives can increase response rate by as much as 5X when compared to non-incentivized surveys.

3) Optimize survey display - Use a survey platform that detects device/browser and optimizes the way the survey is displayed. By using a survey platform designed for online surveys, the font size may be way too small or the way that the survey shows up on a mobile device may not easily be viewed. For example, a mobile-specific survey platform should recognize a touchscreen device and use enlarged radio buttons and checkboxes for easier survey completion.

4) Maintain user experience in apps - When trying to launch surveys in mobile applications, it's important not to disrupt the experience by taking users outside the app to another browser to complete a survey. Users do not want to be navigated away from their desired tasks.

These are some simple guidelines to follow to launch successful mobile intercept surveys. So go ahead and get out there and do more than KISS!

First, we found that social gamers are highly receptive to in-game ads, especially when offered real-world rewards or virtual currency in exchange. 42% of social gamers say they would be more motivated to play a social game that offered real world rewards (eg: a coupon or gift card); 55% of players would rather earn virtual currency than purchase it with real money; and 24% of players report they have clicked on an ad in a social game and made an online purchase. Ads placed within games are indeed very effective, particularly when they are paired with incentives that players appreciate, like real world rewards.

Second, the study found that social gamers are avid consumers and are valuable customers in the real world. Many spend frequently on clothing, consumer packaged goods, entertainment, and more. In the past 3 months: 75% purchased clothing, apparel or jewelry; 77% purchased household products; and 72% purchased health or beauty products. Social gamers also enjoy entertainment --having watched an average of 3.6 movies in a theater and 11.4 films total in the past three months. On top of this, many gamers are already in spending mode while playing—they are pulling out their wallets to purchase over a billion dollars a year of in-game digital goods.

Another notable finding was that social gamers are the most social of all social media users. They spend 13 hours per week on social networks and they average 16.5 friends who play the same social game as them. Many play with friends but also meet new people and build new friendships through social gaming. Social gamers make up a valuable network for advertisers since they share information and communicate often with peers.

The survey also found that social gamers are motivated by in-game achievements. They increasingly prefer more in-depth gameplay and do not view social games as merely “time killers.” 22% of social gamers say that the fact that their online friends can see their score drives them to play more and perform better in-game. 56% love the sense of accomplishment that comes from finishing a task or meeting a goal. This also presents the opportunity for advertisers to sponsor free points or in-game items for players, which can give brands valuable exposure while enhancing players’ experience.

Lastly, the study segmented social gamers into four distinct archetypes in order to better understand the market. “Premium Paul” spends money on in-game currency to get ahead. Pauls typically stay up to date on new trends, are career-focused, social and have busy lifestyles but still find the time to play and spend on games. “Competitive Charlie” plays to win and broadcasts his achievements. Interpret found that Charlies are the biggest purchasers of consumer packaged goods and clothing—48% of them agree with the statement “shopping makes me happy.” “Newbie Nancy” social gamers are less tech-savvy than the other player types and prefer free content. Nancys may be budget conscious but they spend frequently on health and beauty products. The fourth archetype is “Devoted Danielle,” a power user. Danielles spend the majority of their online hours gaming and are especially willing to click on ads to earn virtual currency because they prefer free play.  Advertisers can utilize this audience segmentation information and create customized in-game advertisement experiences that cater towards specific player types.

The study surveyed a range of over 2,000 social gamers in the US aged 18 and older, 60% female and 40% male, who play at least one hour a week. If you’d like more details about study results, including the audience segments, please email socialgamerstudy@rockyou.com or call (650) 421-2037.

A new study by Nielsen shows that cross channel TV and online campaigns have the highest overall brand impact.  According to the research, people who view a campaign both on TV and online are more likely to remember it as compared to those who only viewed the online version.

The study was conducted in Nielsen’s media lab, where users were shown ads across TV, computer, smartphone and a tablet.  The ad was a 15-second video promoting a premium sports sedan.  One group viewed no ads, while other groups were shown ads on different combinations of devices.

Out of the people who were shown ads on TV alone, 50% correctly attributed the ad to the brand.  However, out of those who saw the ads on all four screens, 74% attributed the ad to the right brand. Furthermore, users who viewed the ad on multiple screens were more likely to remember details from the ad.  For example, only 22% of users who viewed only the TV version were able to remember that the ad was for a four-door sedan.  When the ad was shown on all four screens, the share of users who indicated a four-door sedan jumped to 54%.

This Nielsen research, which was commissioned by Google, still shows that TV is the largest driver of brand awareness as a stand-alone channel.  However, the combination of TV and online delivers the highest overall brand impact.  The good news is that advertisers don’t have to choose between channels, but rather leverage a powerful combination of both to boost ad recall.

A Look at the #INC500 Hashtag Twitter Conversation Assessment

A lot of folks want to speak of the future of media and advertising these days. In fact, I recently wrote an article for Media Magazine and MediaPost’s Future of Media Conference titled, “The Future of Media is Not About the Future of Media at All.” While writing the article, it got me thinking: what about the future of something as standard as an event, a conference or a symposium?

Recently, my company attended the Inc. 500 conference, an annual conference hosted by Inc. Magazine to highlight and award some of the fastest growing and most dynamic businesses and entrepreneurial leaders in the country. Disclosure: my company, Levelwing, was named the 481st fastest growing private company in America on the Inc. 500 2011 list.

At the conference, it was clear that Inc. wanted attendees to offer their thoughts about the conference digitally, via Twitter. In fact, it was hard to move about the conference without seeing the hashtag #INC500 somewhere in the building.

Now, if you have ever been part of putting together a conference or even a booth at a conference, you know it can completely occupy your time and energy – it will consume you. A ton of effort goes into managing a conference or booth sponsorship. So at the Inc. 500 conference, we decided to measure the conversation taking place via the hashtag #INC500 and put some context behind that conversation as a way to measure the value of the event and what attendees learned, liked and disliked.

Some interesting conversation was had via the #INC500 hashtag: Messages and themes that resonated with entrepreneurs included Giving Back, Being Happy, Having Faith, Investing in People and Being Vulnerable. Additionally, one theme strongly noted (perhaps as a message to Washington DC politicians) that companies on the Inc. 500 added 300,000 jobs in 2011 while the Fortune 500 cut 80,000.

Levelwing created a mini-analysis / infographic document on the conference #INC500 hashtag themes and conversation. Download the full analysis document: #INC500 Assessment.

Key takeaway:  Measurement via Twitter hashtags, QR codes (also extremely prevalent at the Inc. 500 conference) and other digital tools are presenting businesses that create and manage events, as well as the companies that host and sponsor them, a new way to measure the value of the event and the content most valuable to attendees. Analysis of the resulting themes will help to clarify value and assist direction of future events.

Web surfers do not want to have constant interruptions during their site visitation. However, they are also very willing to voice their opinions and value the ability to access content online for free. Careful consideration for user experience should be taken by website owners as well as research departments/companies. Here are my five best practices for administering web intercept surveys and invites:

1) Use a survey invite that is noticeable but appropriate
Choosing the right invite format is important. Audience and site content considerations should be taken into account. For example, younger or more technical audiences may use pop-up blockers so other methods may be more effective. Invites like overlay units should launch at the appropriate times. In the case of ad effectiveness research, they should be set to launch after, not while the advertising is showing. Invites should also be set to launch in the appropriate places. They should avoid launching over important content. Launching invites over video content for instance, would not be a good user experience. In general, the more "intrusive" invites, like full-page units, get extremely high response rates but consider the trade-offs with your audience.

2) Set the frequency and caps for invites appropriately
A website should have control over how many people or percent of page/ad impressions they want to launch invites to/from. A site may want to only launch invites from 5% of page impressions. And on an individual user level, a good rule of thumb is one invite per user per day, which is effective but not irritating. It would also be best if a user receives only one invite per day in total across all surveys running on a website, not just across one research vendor or survey. Additionally, if a user has already completed a specific survey, they should never see an invite for that survey again, instead of screening them out upon entry.

3) Use relevant and fresh creative content in the invites
Just as creative strength in advertising is important, the same principles apply to survey invites. Use imagery that might be more appealing to your specific audience. Is your site for pet enthusiasts? Include images of pets! Use simple and direct copy. Make it clear that opinions are wanted or feedback is needed. If using third party research vendors, co-brand the invites with the website name so visitors know the survey is approved by that site. Invite creative should be updated and refreshed often so repeat site visitors do not get accustomed to ignoring invites to new surveys that might be running.

4) Give consumers the opportunity to control their own experience or opt-out
Site visitors should be able to easily close a survey invitation if they do not wish to take a survey. The close or continue button should be prominent and easy to find. They should also have the option to choose how many survey invitations they receive or opt-out completely from surveys from research vendors.

5) Keep surveys short and engaging!
Finally, the best survey invites and methods can garner the highest click through rates, but if the surveys themselves are too long, you won't get the completes desired. In a web intercept environment, you are by nature interrupting a browsing or other web experience. Surveys should take around 5 minutes to complete in this environment. Keep survey instructions and survey flow very clear and as engaging as possible. Refresh the survey look and feel as often as possible as well.

You can find examples of much of the above in practice and additional solutions for helping manage web intercept surveys at my company's website, Safecount.net.

As a long time reader (and failed contributor I might add) of Y Combinator's (YC) HackerNewz, I was very excited to attend their first annual Ad Innovation Conference in Mountain View, California yesterday.  I saw some familiar faces around the conference room, but mostly, it was a room full new media and technology geeks like myself who for some reason or another, are passionate about new ways to get consumers engaged with brands, aka the evolution of advertising platforms.

First a bit of background on the show you are hopefully going to continue to read about.

Y Combinator:

A group of Y Combinator-funded startups working on ad-related technologies have joined forces to create a new event focused on the future of advertising.

Topics to be discussed include: NFC advertising; the use of Twitter and Facebook content in display ads; ad/game hybrids; embedding ads in the 3D space of videos after they’ve been shot (i.e. retroactive product placement); geolocal ads and offers; audience polling; the evolution of SEO; marketing on Facebook; monitoring competing AdSense campaigns; landing page optimization; ad-based alternatives to paywalls; the future of QR codes; and advertising on the iPad.

In the next housand words or so, I attempt to capture and share my thoughts on each company and presentation from yesterday. It's really nothing more than a stream of consciousness brain dump written during the conference, as it was happening, presented back to you after nothing more than a cursory proof read while on a plane back from SF to Dallas.  I say this not as a humblebrag, but as a pre-emptive plea to the spell checkers, grammar fashionista's or word tense connoisseurs to take it easy on me in the comments.  Hopefully, some of you will find some of the information helpful or interesting and we can engage in witty banter instead and become internet BFF's.

Ready? Begin present tense writing...

From the Opening Remarks: What to expect to come down the innovation pipe for advertising

1. Tablets are very important. Not a gimmick, not a fad, and will affect how people interact with ads.  Think paradigm shift within the next 10 years in terms of how people engage with not just ads, but with brands.
2. “Apple is going to take over the world…they are even more powerful than they look. Ignore their market share of devices sold, and instead look at their share of profit..ridiculous..they have as much of the market as they want…they are in a position to take what they want, when they want…which is frightening as one company dominating is normally bad news for startups….they control the platform and set the rules, which are set to change at any time, for any reason, at their discretion “
3. All data will be stored in the cloud and live “in the web”.  This will free up computing resources and place less emphasis on specs like the size of the hard drive you are packing. What that means for advertising is that all of the information you could ever want and have dreamed of is sitting there, on some server, in the cloud.  But will you be able to access it? Who will grant you access it? How much will you have to pay? How will consumers react to this?
4. The peer to peer economy moves into the real world as micro economies (isnt this the same as local?) emerge.
5. There will be even more startups.  There used to be 2 things you could do as a young programmer right out of school: get a job, or go to grad school.  Now there is the option of creating your own company, aka a startup.  If 10% of the best brains are creating their own paths, big companies, like advertisers and brands, are going to have to start paying attention more to that guy who you make fun of for working out of his garage.
6. Facebook is even a bigger deal than you think. They havent even tried to start making money yet, they are still focused on user acquisition and have an entire team dedicated to this quest. Think about what happens when they create a Financial Growth group and begin to monetize the data they have collected on us all for nearly a decade.  Plus, Zuck is young and healthy (read: not Steve Jobs). He will be there for years to come.
7. More and more companies will become “software companies”.  People often talk about how Amazon is really a software company that sells things. Expect more and more disruption as tech based startups enter over more and more markets and out innovate incumbents.
8. Ad Targeting is still in its infancy. As more and more data is collected, and ad platforms evolve to take advantage of this information and act upon it, Minority Report is not too far away.
9. If you had to bet  on creative vs measurement having the most impact on ad performance in the next decade , bet on measurement.  We have so much data, and our ability to analyze, target and serve is only limited by our computing power…welp, remember Moore’s Law?
10. Creative will fuse with generated.  Something about stories becoming more important, but not in the generic way we usually talk to brands about the importance of a story based marketing campaign, but instead like how stories play out in video games: branched story lines/arcs with many ways to get to the same place.  An “Execute your user” line was used in this part of the preso and I like it in this context.

Ginzametrics:

Next generation SEO optimization platform.  They seem to be very focused on the quality of content to affect search rankings along with enabling your visitors to promote your content via the social graph. They do this through an automated platform that allows enterprise level, content driven companies manage their site, and by that they mean content, through a user friendly and simple web interface.

What they never talked about was the fact that in the end, producing good content should always be the first step.  ”Once you have that down, come talk to us” is something I would have liked to hear them say. I really think brands and publishers need to start putting quality back at the top of the list of “things that will help me grow my business”.

Tagstand:

An NFC (near field communication) platform that makes it easy for developers and businesses to incorporate near field communication into their apps. This becomes extremely relevant to advertisers as the next generation of smart phones will be NFC enabled. The opportunity, according to them, is in physical tags that when tapped with a phone, make something happen for lack of a better imagination on my part to come up with a metaphor: launch a web page to find out more, subscribe to a mailing list, set your dvr to watch a new show, purchase an mp3 or movie and have it loaded into your cloud drive for viewing across all sorts of connected devices, etc.  The possibilities are endless.

Tagstand wants to help you manage all of this.  It is a management platform for advertisers to manage their soon to be 1000’s of tags in the wild. This of course includes tracking them, always important to brand and media folk who like their excel spreadsheets to optimize their campaigns.

But what makes NFC so interesting, is that In Real Time is no longer the gold standard for managing media campaigns.  With NFC, you can manage them in real life. This is called micro-location analytics: not just that one mall display is better than the other mall, but that one display location within a mall is better.

Vidyard:

Simple: YouTube for business.  ”YouTube is the dead end of the internet” “You have to put ads on your own content just to get them back to your site”.

Vidyard handles the it all, serving, updating, tracking and syndicating of web based video.

Coca-Cola (their agencies) is an early adopter of their service.

This presentation cemented it: the new kids on the block are looking to fill in the gaps left by the big ocean liners in the technology/media world.  In this case: YouTube. It’s easy to call it an acquisition strategy, but since Vidyards clients are paying customers, they might actually be able to turn a profit, something that YouTube, in its quest to subsidize every one on the planets video storage and viewing habits in exchange advertising opportunities.

By the way, these guys get extra points for their “Rage Face” tshirts. “Y U NO USE VIDYARD?!”

Crowdbooster:

“The first intelligent social media dashboard”.  Claims to save social media managers drowning in data and reliant upon expensive analysis and reactionary strategies.

I think this is a great start to a pitch as they are addressing a real problem to grab the attention of potential new users in the room.

Like other social media management tools available for brands, Crowdbooster has all the data that you want. If you get off on graphs, be it pie or line, they’re there.  But what separates CrowdBooster is that they present analysis and recommended actions to take based on that data in a very easy to understand format.  And it does this in real time.

By removing you from the overwhelming and pretty much unusable firehose of information, CrowdBooster allows the Brand Social Media Manger to focus his or her  attention on what actually helps you achieve your social media objectives.

Optimizely:

Dan, a former product manager at the Google (Chrome) who left to join Barak Obama’s campaign in 2008, returns to the start up scene with Optimizely, which promises “website A/B testing and personalization for non technical users that you will actually use.”

Our live demo tests whether or not users like MIke Arrington’s right or left side. I think half of the crowd gets this joke. I like that he user interface looks a lot like what one would see on a blogging platform, be it wordpress or tumblr.  Not that the functionality is the same, but the familiar feeling is a very important feeling if you are trying to get non-technical, often impatient and hypercritical users to use your product.

Optimizely has quite the client list: Techcrunch, Starbucks and other things I use to not work during the day.

Loopt:

One step beyond engagement - motivating someone to move their feet. Their big idea: letting businesses bring in customers when they need them with dynamic pricing.

“It’s a rainy day, business is slow, I will give people half off if they come in to the store today.” But how to get that word out?

Loopt gives merchants the ability to self manage deals and push notifications to opted in users in their area. But taking it further, Loopt has a massive set of location data at their disposal that they can use to predict user behavior and in the future, they hope to be able to use this information to help connect merchants with receptive customers.

I keep having a recurring thought that a lot of these start ups are really in the data collection game and a lot of these marketers are in the data buying game. Nothing surprising there, but what is surprising is how no one so far has mentioned how a consumer might feel about all of this data being made available to marketers and what they do to mitigate this risk…

Mixpanel:

“The most sophisticated real-time analytics platform that companies can use to understand how users behave.”

Per Mixpanel, the most underserved and not paid attention to metric in data analysis is retention. Think about it, a video or app or feature goes viral and explodes across the web.  Thousands to millions of users flock to a destination on the web, but then the real problem sets in: keeping users interested.

The inspiration for Mixpanel’s solution to this problem began from looking closely at gaming, who has dealt with short attention spans for decades.  You level up to level 67 but then a new shiny object appears in the app store, you download and you forgot why you played World War in the first place.

And then the presentation ends….kind of left me hanging there.  Ummmm thanks?  They have a very nice client list but I’d like more info on what your solution actually is as I think you are trying to solve a very important problem for brands and publishers.

Ohhh I get it! Mystery! You are marketing to the marketers! Now I have to chase you down to find out more info.  Clever Girl.

Paperlinks:

Paperlinks wants to be “The QR code infrastructure for business.” and own the back end of “Proximity Commerce”.

While this company focuses on QR codes to bridge the gap from the real world to the digital world right now, they recognize that there are other flashier things in the near future that may replace them.  But they aren’t spending time trying to chase down shiny objects like NFC enabled tags.  They want to be the first to provide a mature and usable back bone, technical infrastructure, and management system for marketing campaigns that use QR codes, NFC tech, etc.

They end their presentation with a few QR code best practices:

1. Use designer codes, 4x more likely to be scanned
2. Offer a payoff for the consumer (give an incentive for engaging)

PageLever:

Analytics that help businesses be more effective on Facebook.

Insight: “People don’t really revisit fan pages after becoming a fan of them.”

When Paperlinks helped the Washington Redskins become the fastest growing Facebook page for a few weeks last year, they realized they had no idea why the growth was happening.

In their research to find out why, they learned that a brand’s fan page is simply not that important after the initial acquisition of a fan.  What really keeps the community alive, engaged and growing is the content you share with your fans via status updates. While knowing this important fact is half the battle, the other half is finding out that each status update you and your brand send out only reaches 25% of your fan base

So how do you get the other 75% engaged and to see your status update?

PageLever of course! PageLever finds the sweet spot between posting to much and not enough.  Too much and you get 2 status updates in the stream at one time and the user gets annoyed and unfan your brand.  Not good.

PageLever works to ensure you always have a status update in the feed without annoying your fans.

I like where this company is going.  It’s trying to solve a very important problem, but I cant help but think that making sure you are always present in someone’s news feed is a great second step.  The first step should be to actually have some great content to share that is worth me looking past the fact that you keep asking me to keep paying attention to you with multiple status updates per week/day/hour/what have you.

GazeHawk

“Webcam based eye tracking to accurately measure and increase display ad effectiveness.”

Interestingly enough, they see opportunities to help brands/advertisers find the most effective ads to serve, but conversely, they want to help publishers accurately place a value on their inventory.

The founders plan to have a big product announcement within the next few weeks.

MixRank:

OMG! THEY HELP ADVERTISERS SPY ON THEIR COMPETITION!

Definitely saw a lot of people perk up with that opening line. Per the founders, Mixrank brings the competitive intelligence for online advertising.

They want to answer questions like, “Where is the best audience?” “What ad format / creative works best?” “Does the whole “below the fold” really matter all that much anymore?”

I think that this is a company that will get a lot more interesting to marketers down the road as they will have the data on what works and what doesn’t to give agencies and brands, and their competitors the leg up they need to make a quick improvement in their online advertising. For direct marketers online, this could make or break a quarter in terms of monetary performance.

Hell, they might even have it now.  If they do, I think that is how I would be selling my product rather than focusing on how it works.

Polleverywhere:

Poll Everywhere: Live audience polling via mobile devices. Their platform promotes audience engagement in real time via the users own cell phone.  Think: immediate feedback.

They consider themselves a disruptive technology that costs 10X less than their competitors in the space (i.e. the clickers you used to see on America’s Funniest Home Videos). The instead leverage the users existing cell phones and interact with the user via text messages and offer their clients a robust analytics platform to help them manage and optimize their campaigns as it is happening.

Still considering themselves a startup, they have half of the fortune 500, not to mention thousands of educators already signed up and track over 17,000 responses a day.

DoubleRecall:

A new captcha like ad type that monetizes 12x better than banners aka atool to combat banner blindness as well as offer publishers an alternative to paywalling their content.

Instead of logging in or paying for content, users have to engage with an ad to read the content they want to see.  More valuable to sell for publishers, keeps content free on the web for users.

The user interface looks a lot like a Tweet, with familiar “buttons” or calls to action like Favorite and Retweet.

They are looking for 5 beta partners, preferably media buying agencies this month to prove their worth to the world of adverting and digital marketing.

This is a real problem for publishers and brands that sell and buy advertising space on the web, but I can’t help but think that new ad formats that interrupt and delay gratification are just not the sustainable permanent solution for funding content on the web.

Twitch.TV:

A last minute, unannounced addition to the lineup.

From the founders of Justin.TV comes a platform that allows gamers to upload their “gamecasts” (highlights of their gaming experience) to a platform that not only monetizes the content (brand sponsored content), but cuts the gamer in on that revenue!

But video of people playing video games you say? Really?

Dude, get over yourself.  Your bias is showing.  It’s the 2nd largest category of videos on YouTube with over 800million views a month.

I personally love this idea as there are incentives for every stakeholder. Uploaders get a piece of the revenue. Brands get to sponsor fan content, endearing gamers to their brand and spectators can be entertained!

I was wondering if TwitchTV was behind the North American Starcraft League, and it turns out they are.  Thank you Reddit for keeping me in the loop. FML.

End note: Thank you to my employer, UEG for the opportunity to attend this conference.

ABOUT UEG:

UEG has unparalleled access to influencers in the fields of movies and TV, music, sports, gaming, fashion and beauty, art, publishing, technology, digital content and engagement, with a track record of seeding influencers with product and, more imperatively, developing strategic partnerships that create validation and awareness among consumer targets. Created as a joint venture with Hollywood powerhouse United Talent Agency, UEG works with the best talent throughout Hollywood and the world. UEG’s executive team has developed some of the biggest and most successful branded entertainment platforms in the industry.

In my experience, I have found the decision to conduct research can become political because the outcome is an unknown, meaning that the results may or may not bring forth something intriguing to learn.  In other words, research is not always substantiated and even more frequently devalued among the very set of individuals who might benefit from it.  This political struggle is the reason why researchers are pressed for actionable insights, ensuring a wise investment from an organizational perspective and from the main stakeholder’s standpoint.  Furthermore, the era of Digital continually introduces new ways of marketing on various platforms: It is not always certain that teams will have the bandwidth to put the research into action, bringing us full circle as to why research is sometimes pushed aside.

Due to the collaboration of these marketplace factors, the research must find ways around these barriers.  With budgets shifting more towards Digital spending, researchers have the ability to leverage technical capabilities of the Digital environment to bring the research results alive.  If made a priority, this will save clients time and resources while guaranteeing a positive research ROI (making the research a ‘need to have’ in the marketer’s tool box).  In time, the research process will no longer end with results and recommendations but instead researchers will be held accountable.  If X equals the research dollars invested, then those very same dollars will need to translate into Y as research action and implementation with the end goal to bring forth a positive research return.

With that said, the MR industry is knee deep in co-collaboration with customers, especially with the recent rise of Social Media.  Consumers are expecting and demanding to be at the forefront of brand successes, and companies are aligning with this trend whether they are pleased about it or not.  However, it is the due diligence of the research industry to merge the two together to form a graceful B2C dance.

So now, how can we use research as a tool and not just to obtain insights?  But more importantly, to present the research community with a challenge:  How can we think outside the box of traditional methodologies to go beyond reporting, placing the actionable results into actual action?  As a joining force, we should be able to prove that there is a ‘research ROI’ where the findings alone will make an impact on the bottom-line.  This type of execution has the ability to create a bold industry movement.

I believe it can be done, but it requires that researchers have the ability to merge the technical capabilities of the Digital environment with existing online methodologies to bring the research results alive.  In other words, the goal should be to immediately adapt to and execute on the study findings.  As I present this challenge, I will attempt to set the stage for how we should be shaping research methodologies that bring in a solid return through the explanation below.

As I am currently working with this new form of research, I am finding it is applicable to more and more situations within the Digital Marketing Analytics arena.  In this example, the research is designed as a phased learning approach that is grounded in three phases.  Phase one gathers the ‘rationale’ behind consumer behaviors, phase two ‘reacts’ to them, and phase three ‘re-captures’ respondent’s attention, delivering on consumer expectations and in hind sight driving business forward.  Most research stops at phase two, but this model comes alive in the reactionary phase.   It is within phase two of the research where a stimulus based on previous findings from the survey responses (in phase one) captivates the respondent/customer, who can in turn make an instant decision about the possibility of continuing on for re-engagement with the brand.

To provide a more detailed description of how this works, in one case study, a simple lapse in linking a Digital brand extension (microsite) to the parent site led to failure until the reactionary research came to the rescue.  The research identified that visitors surfing for a microsite with a low “URL name recall” typically landed on the parent brand website because the visitors remembered the name of the brand but not the unique name of the microsite and campaign.  The parent site housed no mention or link that connected visitors to the microsite.  Regardless, these visitors were hoping to make their way over to the microsite to redeem the promotion featured within TV advertising (intent to action was high but visitors could not follow through on their intent). To the brand’s dismay, the research uncovered the disconnect between the two platforms, which was found to be a critical problem showing that KPIs dramatically decreased by an average of 15 percentage points as a result of the missing link to the microsite campaign.

Simultaneous to this bad news, there was good news as research findings sprung into action.  Respondents who claimed they could not find the microsite (and took the survey on the parent site) were now presented with a link to the microsite at the end of the survey.  Without waiting on agency fixes, the survey allowed visitors/respondents to carry out on their original motivations, immediately reconnecting the brand and the customer. These results from this three phased approach to research that was executed in this manner increased promotional conversions, returned KPIs back to positive levels and contributed to a new best practice within the organization.

Moreover, the click through rate for this type of stimulus averages 56% and outperforms industry rates by 56 to 1.  How can this type of research bring in such high levels of CTR?  The research technique is equipped with instantaneous personalization and optimization.  The research itself now has a purpose other than just gathering insights; it activates and executes the findings right as they happen.  This is an approach that defines the difference between survey research and a survey ‘remarketing’ tool.

What this means for our clients is that there is no more guesswork (the rationale phase explains it), there is no more execution (the reaction phase automatically takes action) and there is no more lost time or opportunities (the recapture phase continues the line of communication, right then, right there).  Additionally, there is peace of mind with the justification of a true ‘research ROI’, as the brand can walk away knowing it has the highest form of customer service: Problems addressed without delay.

The point here is that perhaps researchers are fit to advise about business decisions and goals because we can think from both a research and marketing perspective.  Additionally, it is the researcher who is most well informed about the customer perspective.  So again, I challenge my fellow research community to discuss, think about and invent ways to deliver a true research ROI. It is my fear that unless we researchers find the solution, then our work may be viewed as a “nice to have” rather than a ”need to have” by our clients.

In recent years, smartphone use among Americans has skyrocketed. As consumers become increasingly more reliant on digital outlets for shopping, information gathering and social interaction, advertiser engagement through print media has become a challenge to say the least. That’s where integrated marketing, specifically QR codes, come in. By placing a QR code on print material, consumers can use their smartphones to scan the code which can then lead to a website, contact information, pre-determined text and more. But QR codes have left a lot of marketers questioning – do people know what they are? Do consumers actually use them? And which audiences are they most effective on?

In July, Levelwing, a data-driven digital agency, performed an online survey to gauge consumer awareness and usage of QR codes. Coincidentally, two separate studies were released around the same time – one reported by Advertising Age and one by comScore – that actually found emerging trends similar to those found in the Levelwing survey. Both studies found the demographic for barcode scanners was more likely to be a male between the ages of 18 and 34. The study reported by Advertising Age only looked at magazines and found scanning percentages ranged between 4-17% of all readers. The comScore study, on the other hand, looked at codes scanned across all mediums and found 6.2% of the total mobile audience scanned a code in June.

Using a short questionnaire, Levelwing surveyed 928 respondents on their awareness and use of QR codes as an emerging mobile technology. The respondent demographic profile was mostly male, educated beyond high school (71% had earned a college degree of some kind), and earned less than $100,000 annually.

The survey found that, while respondents were familiar with and using mobile technology, many of them had yet to scan a QR code. This could imply QR codes have not yet attained optimal tipping point level of exposure, despite the fact that respondents noted seeing QR codes from an average of three sources (mostly magazines, on the Internet, and on in-store displays).

Not surprisingly, 76% of respondents who had scanned a QR code did so using an iPhone or an Android smartphone. The most common reasons for scanning the code were to obtain more information, visit a website, get a coupon, or acquire contact information. Interestingly, of the respondents who have scanned a QR code, the 22% who have made a purchase after scanning did so similarly via online and in-store channels.

Levelwing was also interested in finding out about the likeliness of future scanning. When asked how likely they were to scan a QR code in the future, respondents who had never scanned a code before had mixed reactions, with responses closely split between likely, neutral and unlikely.

Because QR codes are still gaining traction among US consumers, continued research must be performed to gauge ongoing awareness and usage. As with any new technology, educating consumers about how and why to use them should remain a top priority for digital marketers incorporating QR codes into their integrated marketing campaigns. Click here to obtain a full copy of the Levelwing research report, QR Code Mobile Technology: Consumer Awareness & Usage.

Image Source: Levelwing

This report analyzes the Facebook engagement trends for the following bands:

• Black Eyed Peas
• Green Day
• Lady Gaga
• Linkin Park
• Metallica
• Bob Marley

Yes, we realize Bob Marley's dead. But he lives on, partly through his Facebook page.

Three of the big takeaways for the music industry are:

• Bands should be posting more content
  • Strong correlation between posting volume and engagement level
• Weekends are a big opportunity for bands
  • It's a time when bands can engage with their fans when they're most free to check out new music or buy concert tickets. Bands in this report aren't posting much on Facebook.
• Offline events can be used to drive considerable fan growth
  • When Facebook is THE place to go for information from the band, it encourages fans to Like the page.

You can review or download the entire report here:: http://bit.ly/bands0831

And if you register for Zuum, you'll have free access to the data we've used to crunch this chart. Access will remain open for the next week. You can register for Zuum here:

http://www.zuumsocial.com/register