Many hearty thanks are owed to Dave Knox of Hard Knox Life for compiling a genuinely must-read post. Using reams of data taken from the Nielsen Global Online Media Landscape, Dave paints an empirical picture of the future of online media. If you’re in the interactive marketing space like YMC is, it’s full of some pretty interesting numbers. The post — and the Nielsen Report — are certainly worth reading in their entirely. But here are the key take-aways as I see them: marketers need to ready themselves for integrating mobile, digital and physical media. In this brave-new-world, it’s going to take all three, working in tandem.
Digital Content / Online Video are among the fastest growing areas of the Online Media Landscape:
The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.
Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.
In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.
One of the more interesting trends in online video is the increasing attraction to long form videos: the total minutes spent watching long-form (average of six-to-eight minutes) is considerably more than minutes spent on short-form, and has grown about 20% in the first two months of 2009.
Mobile is finally taking its rightful place in the spotlight:
In the U.S. today, nearly 50 million mobile subscribers access the Web via their devices on a monthly basis. In the U.S., the mobile Internet audience grew 74% between February 2007 and February 2009.
While historically US has been behind in mobile adoption, the US is now one of the leading markets for mobile Internet penetration, with more than 18% of subscribers accessing mobile Web. This is the highest penetration of mobile subscribers among the markets Nielsen reports mobile Internet adoption.
Penetration of smartphones doubled between Q4 2007 and Q4 2008, from 7% of U.S. mobile subscribers to 14%. Penetration of faster 3G devices now stands at 37% of handsets in use in the U.S
iPhone users are unique in their use – a hint at the mobile media behaviors of users of next-gen phones to come. iPhone users, for instance, are more than four times as likely as a typical subscriber to use mobile Internet, six times as likely to use mobile applications and six times as likely to consume mobile video.
12 million U.S. mobile subscribers access their social networks over their phone. At the end of 2008, Facebook was just slightly ahead of MySpace in terms of unique mobile users: 7 million compared to 5.7 million. Mobile usage of social networking sites grew 260% during 2008 in the U.S.
I should begin by saying that, yet again, the fine folks at YPulse have made me stop and think. Their most recent post chronicles Gatorade’s attempt to rebrand (and score media attention) through their cryptic and much-discussed “G” campaign. (If you need a refresher, you can view a clip here. Essentially, Gatorade ran a series of unbranded, star-studded commercials in an effort to build buzz.) And it worked. For weeks, curious viewers flocked to the web, asking the Google Gods who was behind the ads. A few weeks later, the ruse was revealed, and just about everyone gave a collective nod and said to themselves, well, that sounds about right. Most media watchers agreed that it was a success — if a short lived one. One point Gatorade.
In an effort to build on the success, Gatorade has created a stand-alone microsite for the “G” brand. The site is designed to house a wealth of Gatorade-made video content, which, at least in theory, Gen-Y-ers will spend hours pouring over. This attempt is of particular interest to YMC since we’re in the business of helping brands connect with their consumers both physically and digitally. Now, to be sure, Gatorade (or rather, Gatorade’s creative agency) has made some excellent content. This stuff is stunning. I mean, they have access to Kevin Garnett, Tiger Woods, those weird masked dancing guys from that dancing show on Fox, and they have a budget, I’m sure, that rivals NASA’s. In that respect, Gatorade is just about the ideal client to develop a digital campaign for.
And of course, like any smart brand, Gatorade makes it possible to share the content they make on just about every conceivable platform. Add a video to your blog, your Facebook page, your, er, LiveJournal. It’s yours! Do whatever you want with the content, Gatorade tells us. But I wonder: is there enough opportunity for dialogue with the consumer? Sure, you’re allowing those share-happy Gen-Y-ers to send your 30-second video to their friends, but are you giving them a chance to really interact with the brand?
So, I’m going to open this up to y’all. What do you think of Gatorade’s efforts? Do you think this will resonate with Gen Y? Or is Gatorade not going far enough?
This is going to be an unusually short post (as it’s nearly midnight and youth marketers need their beauty sleep, too), but I wanted to note that Skittles is now forwarding to Wikipedia. For those keeping score, that means Skittles’ homepage on Tuesday was Twitter, Wednesday was Facebook, and Thursday is devoted to Wikipedia. (One can only guess that YouTube is on tap for Friday.) I think this confirms that yesterday’s move by Skittles to redirect their website to Facebook was not, as some claimed, a response to the occasional foul language that appeared on the Twitter feed, but a calculated decision to ride the buzz wave. (It remains to be seen if pointing their homepage towards Wikipedia is good enough for another day of news.) I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again: I think this represents a bold and well-executed embrace of social media by Skittles. Will it reap long-lasting benefits? No, not necessarily. But it certainly got us talking. Just do a Google Blog search for “skittles” and you’ll see what I mean.
(While we’re on the topic of Google searches, I would also suggest doing a Google News search for coverage of the Skittles campaign. I was surprised to find that “traditional media” was really quiet on the topic. There were a few articles — one in The Wall Street Journal, for instance — but they essentially stopped paying attention after the Twitter-linked version of the site went live. This is definitely one of those stories where blogs are hands-down doing it best. I haven’t found a single “real” news story mentioning the move by Skittles from Facebook to Wikipedia.)
For those of you who are just stumbling upon this now, check out our posts about the Skittles social media campaign from Tuesday and Wednesday which provide background and (in our humble opinion) some analysis worth reading about the implications for youth marketing and the Gen-Y set. Oh, and as always, let us know what you think about this new development. You’re going right now to write on Skittles’ Wikipedia page, aren’t you?
This happens to me every so often, and when it does, I’m always a little awestruck. It goes like this: It’s nearly noon, I’m trolling the web, hitting my usual list of blogs, sifting through my RSS reader and sending the occasional email while finishing lunch (a superb salad from Chop’t, if anyone’s curious). I consume a lot of content during these casual strolls across the web, and most of it barely registers. I glance over a few lines of text, I smile or furrow my brow, and I move on. In these moments, the fact that 99.99999 percent of the content I take in is free makes perfect sense to me.
But sometimes, like today, I cross something so clear and cogent, that I have to stop and give thanks for the awesome power of the internet. And all of it for free! Oh, world wide web, how did we exist without you?
Without further hyping, I give you the above mentioned clear-and-cogent-thinking-that-made-me-stop-and-think. It’s a short presentation from Shiv Singh, VP of Global Social Media at Razorfish. It’s a genuinely worthwhile look at the evolution of the social networking universe — and what is means for the future of brands. The major take-away may not come as a shock to most. Essentially, Singh echoes what many of us in the marketing universe have been saying of late: that social networking means that communication has to be a two-way street between brands and consumers. It may be an old-news message, but the context Singh provides is really valuable. So read it, and then take its message to heart and start interacting in an authentic way with your consumers.
There’s one constant in presidential politics: every four years, a newer, bigger, better election strategy is unleashed on the voting public. In the 90s we saw a youngish, hip, saxophone-wielding Democrat hit the late-night talk show circuit to acquaint himself with America’s budding new crop of 18-to-24 year olds. And it worked. In 2008, we’re witnessing a new first. The use of social media to galvanize support for presidential candidates.
In the past few years, sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube have changed the way people communicate with each other. So it’s no surprise that they are also changing the face of the 2008 presidential race. With instant and easy access to millions of potential voters, each of the major players in this election has quickly jumped on the social networking bandwagon. With the click of a button you can see McCain’s official campaign on his YouTube channel ‘Country First.’ Or read about Obama’s background and positions on his MySpace page. There’s no more digging around, or riffling through (gasp!) newspapers to find out about each candidate’s position on key issues. Because they’ve already done the work for you.
In fact, two of the country’s leading news organizations, CNN and ABC News, saw the value that social media brought forth. They respectively partnered with YouTube and Facebook to bring two rounds of election debates to us. And in the process redefined America’s town meeting.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the social media phenomenon in this election year – especially to those of us in the business of marketing to today’s youth – is that the voters themselves are doing much of the legwork on their own. And today’s “legwork” is much more effective than yesterday’s pamphlet-distributing, sign-toting, bumper sticker-sticking, protesting kind of legwork. It’s the viral kind. The kind that can infiltrate hundreds of mailboxes in a minute and influence thousands of “friends” with the click of a button.
Take for instance the soldier who posted ‘Dear Mr. Obama’ in support of McCain. At 9.8 million views as of 9/29/08, this amateur 1 minute 55 second video has reached more people than CBS’s broadcast of ‘Two and a Half Men’ the week of 9/15/08. What it’s worth in media dollars is something that anyone with a calculator can quickly figure out. What it’s worth qualitatively, well, that’s what we’ll all be waiting to see. Because this is just one guy in a military uniform with a simple message. Multiply that by all the Gen Y-ers looking to make a difference this election year, and we’re talking something else entirely.
So, will social media define the 2008 election as Florida did in 2000? That remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the rules of communication have changed in this brave new world. Messaging, whether it’s about a candidate or a brand, isn’t just coming from the top these days. The millions of web-savvy youth that make up Generation Y are armed with a digital bullhorn, and they’re using it each and every day to express themselves and influence their peers. While it may not decide the election this time around, its obvious that brands (and candidates) ignore social medias power at their own peril.
