Manhattan Marketing Maven

The State of Media Mixology

If I had a dollar every time a client asked about media mix or tried to define which channel accomplishes a particular marketing task or objective, I’d be as rich as Mark Zuckerberg. 

In spite of an explosion of channels, media and marketing strategies, there are no rules of thumb and there is no consensus on what does what. This gets confusing quickly when you consider the continuously evolving array of digital, social and mobile options. As a result, marketers chase this illusive beast in search of a framework for allocating time, effort and money and for measuring key performance indicators (KPIs). 

In theory, most channels can accomplish a variety of tasks from creating brand awareness, to generating leads, sales or buzz or reinforcing brand loyalty and advocacy. The tricky part is crafting and parsing the key message and then delivering it through multiple channels at the right time to the right people in the right way at the right price. 

Media mix modeling tends to focus on media efficiencies and getting the best prices. They are generally used as a planning and negotiation tools. I haven’t seen a model that can accurately predict consumer activity or that can produce a behavioral (or sales) forecast that can be measured. The challenge is to build a model that considers business goals and consumer behavior and then ranks or weights the relative impact of messages and media versus the relative investments during a fixed campaign time frame. 

In the old days, TV was the universal reach tool. Print extended reach, added frequency and vertically reinforced the message. Radio was the mobile reminder medium with a local personalized appeal that reached hard-to-find audiences, like teenagers. Out-of- Home was the LBS of its time. Direct mail got you one-to-one targeting and FSIs delivered coupons. Life was simple and satisfying. 

Now that’s all gone. Writing in The New York Times, David Carr says we live in “an age of individualized media cocoons … each of us is building our own little campfire on our phone, tablet and big screen at a time and place of our own choosing. “ 

Consumer media use, which used to be predictable by demographics, has gone ka-fluey! Finding and aggregating a sizable audience at a decent price at the right point in the customer journey now takes much more time and effort than ever before. Orchestrating messages and media to achieve widespread penetration and persuasion is still much more of an art than a science. The alchemy changes product by product and target audience by target audience. No wonder agencies, media firms and marketers are trying to isolate and package discrete audiences so that they can replicate or adjust the formula to achieve cost efficiencies and profit margins. 

Marketers are faced with the need to orchestrate campaigns where attitudes, behaviors and devices are dependent variables. Reach frequency and impact/activation are still the critical objectives.  But like Mozart, marketers have to construct the symphony from the ground up. Most use search as a baseline and call on TV, web or print to express the melodic line.  Then message variations and alternative channels  (apps, online display, mobile and social media) have to be creatively integrated in time. 

And while I don’t have a simple one-size-fits-all solution, here’s what I’m learning along the way. 

TV/Cable/Video. These media are becoming almost indistinguishable from one another since consumers use them all and use them idiosyncratically. TV still can reach millions, especially live broadcast events like the Super Bowl, but finding the right mix of programming and time slots to resonate with a tight psycho-demographic and to leverage the multi-channel viewing/commenting/tweeting phenomenon is still a big challenge. 

Longer form video resonates with a range of audiences who view them at random times on a broad array of devices. This is where the potential for virility and massive earned media exists, if you can hit the right sensibility with the right meme at the right time. Organizing a “road block” to slam home a message or introduce a product or service is a very difficult task. TV and video messages are effective at driving web, #hashtag and 800 number traffic if the CTAs are prominent and the timing and frequency are right.    

 Online Display. Banners are the default medium touted by publishers and widely ignored by consumers. Brands load up on these to fill TRP goals and to “go digital” without regard for their lack of impact and attention. Rich media, page takeovers and inventive combinations of units do a little better in gaining attention, but no sober marketer will bet a campaign on these media units. 

SEM/SEO. These are twin channels that need to be synchronized for maximum impact. Search is a “do or die” proposition since 91% of all consumers searching never look beyond the first search results page. If you don’t rank on the first page, you are invisible. 

SEO and SEM should be the baseline of every campaign. Keyword strategy should inform copywriting for websites, TV and radio spots, banners, social and mobile ads and postings. But the ability to keep up with -- and psyche out -- Google’s ever-changing algorithms is very limited, even using sophisticated automated tools. Therefore smart paid search needs to augment vigilant natural search to be sure brands rank high and are found using the terms and sensibilities of their most likely customers and prospects. 

Social Media. Like print, social media is split into editorial (postings, tweets and content) and ads (in Timelines, on the right rail, using Twitter Cards and an evolving array of units). Understand the distinction and plan a tactical approach that links the postings to the ads. Facebook, and the others, purposely limit the reach of editorial content to sell ads. Brands are locked into their game and their system.  This is a test-and-learn environment where the bigger spenders can push the social networks to try new combinations of creative messages and units. 

Print. Print is both print and the online properties of publishers, which frequently include websites, mini-sites, content distribution, search and email newsletters. Print is still a powerful medium, especially when used against vertical demographic or subject matter targets. Publishers have become savvy at packaging and merchandising properties and larger firms like Hearst, Time or Meredith can assemble multi-property deals that accumulate large audiences and deliver frequency and impact. The trick is to structure these deals to achieve brand business and communications goals rather than just the lowest cost per thousand. 

Email. Email is consumers’ preferred medium for brand interactions. Virtually everybody uses it and many brands have a house subscription list. There is a robust market for 3^rd party lists, which range widely in quality and in CAN-SPAM compliance. There is considerable research on which email templates and landing pages work best and similar data on what, when and how to send email for maximum impact. Keep in mind that more than half of all email is opened on mobile devices, so readability and the ability to take action with 1-click is crucial. 

Generally email communicates deals and offers or solicits leads and opt-ins. Email transmitted under an umbrella of or at the same time as other ads generally gets higher open and click rates. Multi-media synergy lifts email performance. 

Websites. Consumers expect every brand to have a website. A decent website is marketing table stakes. There are two schools of thought on websites. One school, especially eCommerce players, argues that a website should be an encyclopedic compilation of everything a brand is and does. The other school takes a more surgical and UX-driven approach arguing that a site should drive consumers to a specific desired action and that design and content should be organized strictly to achieve that objective.

There are many sites that achieve both objectives. Often second school thinking will prompt marketers to create a campaign mini-or micro-site to focus exclusively on a campaign, product or service during a set time frame. 

Apps. Every brand wants an app even though there are millions of branded apps that die of loneliness.  Apps must either provide significant utility or entertainment to fly. What’s more they require a substantial marketing effort and investment in order to gain traction and generate a critical mass of downloads and usage. Brands that reach critical mass create a virtual private network (VPN) in the pockets of brand loyalists that can be exploited to stimulate repeat purchases and brand advocacy. 

Popular widely used apps, especially games, offer an advertising platform that can be both immediate and intrusive. The promise of triggered messages or offers in-apps exists. There’s lots of talk about offers triggered by GPS or purchase history. But nobody has realized this potential at scale yet. 

Other Media. Out-of-home, direct mail, text/SMS messaging, word-of-mouth marketing and PR, all contribute to a well-conceived integrated campaign, Each has strengths which can be vectored into a media or creative flow and timed to create added weight, frequency and impact or to flesh out a story, add an engaging creative dimension or attract a niche audience. 

Figuring out what does what is not easy. There is no set formula or repeatable recipe.

Everything starts with business objectives. Second are media and marketing efficiencies. But like great composers, brands that focus on the desired outcome, dig a little deeper and carefully use engagement planning can find a mix of messages and channels that reach and resonate with audiences and drive business results.

4 Marketing Predictions for 2014

It’s the end of the year and every pundit, yours truly included, has an open opportunity to predict the future. So here’s my best guess at four critical factors that will be driving innovations, insights and interactions for brands, advertisers and marketers in 2014. 

Mobile Matters Most.  A majority of searches, email opens and Internet access either is, or will soon, be via mobile devices. On-the-go is the new normal. Brands need to create assets that are easily rendered, clear and easy to use on smartphones, phablets and tablets. Consumers have zero tolerance for broken images or links or microscopic unreadable copy. UX design of brand assets for mobile devices is mandatory. So is design that synchs with all the mobile operating systems. 

Different devices are used for different tasks. Tablets are dominant for shopping and entertainment, often used at home on the couch while channel surfing or multi-tasking. It will become increasingly important to develop variations of campaigns aimed at different devices and different mindsets, since each segment uses devices with different intentions, at different times and with different agility. Hand-eye coordination is a big differentiator. Teenagers and old ladies won’t share the same expectations or the same content. 

Follow-Me Media. We now have the technology to track behavior across channels. We know when you open and click on an email and this data triggers the banners you see as you surf the web or scroll through your Facebook timeline. This works in reverse and in several other novel variations, which will get increasingly granular, personal and sophisticated. 

Some consumers find this intrusive and creepy. But as a marketing tool this version of pixel tracking allows us to efficiently follow up on the slightest expression of interest. It also allows products you looked at or clicked on to follow you around until you take a desired action. For the most part the high conversion rates that result from this re-targeting outweigh the small numbers of opt-outs. 

Social Goes DM. Social networks are artificially limiting viral reach in favor of pay-for-play. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and everybody else are splitting platform functionality between editorial posts and paid advertising. Increasingly, the networks are manipulating the algorithms to favor paid advertising and monetize their huge audiences. They are becoming hardcore direct marketers.

Social networks are developing and evolving ad units and targeting channels designed expressly to collect opt-ins, generate leads and eventually sell products and services directly. They are positioning themselves against online publishers and are becoming savvy database marketers and eager collaborators with high spending brands. They have a direct financial interest, large segment-able audiences and considerable technical resources to easily trump sites selling both classic banners and rich media units.

Expect lots of content, cadence and contextual experimentation and significant shifts in spending from online display ads to social network ads. This will dramatically alter editorial social strategies for building audiences, generating likes and using content to engage followers and fans. Brands will have to finesse network greed to reach and interact with audiences they’ve already paid to aggregate. Native reach or virility for posts and tweets will fall significantly. 

Engagement Gets Real.  Bombarded by commercial messages, busy multi-tasking, anxious about money and either empowered or distracted by technology, consumers are skeptical, demanding and not easily manipulated. Changing behavior is almost impossible. So brands and marketers are working harder to develop segments, understand natural behaviors and find credible ways to intersect and intercept customers and prospects doing what they normally do.

This requires a keen understanding of how brands are perceived and what standing brands have to enter the conversation. What we’ve learned about gaming, channel selection, devices and preferences is being fit into patterns of creature behavior and attitudes. Moms, caregivers, gamers or college students have distinct routines, behavior patterns and common perspectives, which can be identified and mapped to communications goals and activities. 

This emerging science of engagement strategy is being married to traditional insights about brand awareness, positioning and preference. The creative executions or campaigns that result will be measured and monitored with an eye toward validating the assumptions or models and/or optimizing consumer interaction and response. Grasping the motivations, the mental and the mechanical aspects of consumer behavior will separate the successful brands from the also-rans. 

Big Data Meets Programmatic Buying

The pace of automation, interconnections and change in digital media buying is staggering. And while there’s still considerable blabbing, handwringing, stalling and excuse making about programmatic buying, reality is way ahead of the rhetoric even if media firms and their clients aren’t leading the charge. The days of armies of young media planners and buyers wielding spreadsheets are being replaced by a business rules that instruct computers to buy and optimize in real time.

Think about it. Americans are spending much more time online than on TV, yet most of the ad dollars flow to TV. Similarly people are using mobile media extensively yet there’s just a trickle of brands experimenting with mobile advertising. The likely reason is the continuing need for efficient reach, measured in gross tonnage of eyeballs, mixed with 6 ounces of conventional wisdom and 2 tablespoons of inertia. 

As social and mobile media ascend to dominance, advertisers will be looking for transparency (who saw their ads) and performance (who clicked, signed up or bought) according to Sephi Shapira, CEO of Massive Impact. These rough equivalents of general and direct marketing will become increasingly important as smartphones and tablets merge into Phablets, which in Q2 2013 have 25MM units in market. 

Ultimately everything on the phone/phablet will talk to each other and be available to marketers to enable ad serving. Consumers will be targeted by device, by apps installed, by the games they play, by names in their phone book, by browser or even by the pictures they take. And while this has a 1984 feel to it, the concentration and mining of data will make messages more relevant to each individual. 

To accommodate these needs real-time bidding (RTB) is accelerating and becoming more sophisticated. In terms of inventory control and access, auction style bidding puts each unit and each potential customer up for bid. Prices are determined moment by moment in relentless auctions managed by demand side platforms (DSPs). 

In terms of targeting or retargeting, by using contextual data rather than demographics as the principal targeting criteria, brands can track what consumers do and where they go in order to direct the messages served to them.  Ads can be directed by device, by location, and by collaborative filters that, like Amazon, infer what people want based on what they’ve done or what their friends do. 

“For a generation that live their lives entirely online, there’s no such thing as TMI,” in Sephi’s opinion. “And while this may feel creepy to some, younger consumers appreciate the behind-the-scenes filtering that delivers information and offers about things they actually like and care about.” 

Facebook, on the strength of FBX units, has gone from zero to sixty in record time transforming both the timeline and the right column ads into direct response and pay for performance vehicles. With the number of Facebook users accessing the platform on mobile devices now approaching 50%, real time mobile ads are likely to play an increasing role for brands. 

Ninety percent of the automated inventory is now being sold on a cost per action basis. Publishers display messages as often as necessary to drive a guaranteed number of actions. Brands pay only for performance; less for a click and more for a sale.  But with guaranteed performance and predictable costs, there’s very little risk. Automated performance based ads, which can course correct on their own like heat-seeking missiles, are transforming eCRM which enables repeat sales, upsells and cross selling. 

Data swapping is a refinement on its way to the US, says Shapira. In Europe and Asia it’s not uncommon for a telco to share data with an insurance company in order to mutually enhance databases and improve segmentation, targeting and conversion. 

Sephi’s message to brands is “Don’t miss the revolution. Social and mobile platforms, games, apps and real time bidding are emerging tools that savvy marketers are embracing and mastering to gain first-mover competitive advantages.  If you are buying banners and hoping for the best, you’re not really in the game.” 

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Why Real-Time Bidding Is Going To Completely Change The Equation For Mobile Advertising

By 2017, it projects that programmatic buying (Real-time bidding) will account for 87% of display, 69% of video and 88% of mobile advertising buys. (U.S.)

Remarketing & Retargeting Revisited

Retargeting, also called remarketing, begins by dropping a cookie on site visitors. This enables marketers to follow them as they search, do social networking or flit from site to site. A person coming to your site can then be discretely followed by ads reflecting the content they viewed or reflecting their psycho-demographic profile. 

This tactic is particularly powerful because 90 percent of retail site visits don’t yield a sale. But consumers exposed to remarketing messages are 70 percent more likely to convert than those who are not exposed. And consumers who convert after retargeting generally spend 50 percent more than those who convert initially. So, marketers, who take a second or a third bite of the apple, by using retargeting, succeed better. And CPMs are much lower than banner advertising while the yield can be dramatic, as high as a 37% conversion rate. 

This has to be done carefully and with discretion and considered timing. Since many consumers find this very creepy and quickly abandon the brand retargeting them. If this feels like the Tom Cruise movie, AI, you are getting the point. 

Marketers can follow prospects as they search Bing or Google, socialize in networks or as they surf the Web. The mechanics of retargeting are done through third party networks. And there are a bunch of them including Google’s Display Network, the Facebook Exchange, AdMeld, Pubmatic and Rubicon. 

Similarly there are a bunch of emerging demand side platforms (DSPs) to manage this process. The leaders include AdRoll, AppNexus, Brandscreen, Criteo, DataXu, MediaMath, Nanigans, Kenshoo, Optimal, RocketFuel, Tellapart, TheTradeDesk, Xasis and X+1. 

The newest entrant in the DSP fray is Pinpoint, from Blue Fountain Media. Pinpoint claims to offer retargeting based on search history, demographics, geography and recency (within 24 hours), which, according to Gabe Shaoolian, is a proxy for consumer intent. 

“Pinpoint captures expressed interest and intent. It enables a brand to target a 40-year old upscale Mom on Long Island who wants a specific ring setting, with a specific gemstone, “ Gabe opines. “Because Pinpoint tracks online behavior and marries it to aggregated data, marketers get much more precision in terms of reaching interested consumers, identifying consumer intent and capitalizing on timing. It’s a retargeting trifecta.” 

Pinpoint clams to be “a new frontier in advertising.” It was beta tested with Oppenheimer Funds who found “better than expected results” that compared favorably to other DSP platforms they tried.  Shaoolian is positioning this tool as a “big data play for medium and small marketers” than will provide “real-time bidding at the best prices.” 

There is no question that retargeting is effective. There is evidence that third party networks can provide the right inventory and that various tools can plan, buy, optimize and report on retargeting buys. What’s yet to be determined is who will survive the coming shakeout and what will be the emergent best practices.

Optimizing the TV-Twitter Connection

 

Twitter has become a companion medium to TV. People watch their favorite shows, with a computer or mobile device at hand, tweeting reactions to the characters, the plot, the action sequences and the story line. They also tweet about brands while they watch. 

The volume of brand tweets can now be correlated with specific TV shows to create a new double-barreled channel for brands to engage their fans and more selectively target likely customers or brand advocates. Bluefin Labs, the social analytics firm associated with MIT Media Labs, has been keeping track of tweets as they relate to TV viewing. 

They found links between brands and the shows their fans watch most, which they call Social TV Analytics. For example Wal-Mart fans are most likely to tweet about America’s Supernanny on Lifetime or the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on CMT or Las Vegas Jailhouse on TRUTV. In contrast, Target buyers tweet about or during CMT’s Top Secret Recipe or HGTV’s My Yard Goes Disney. 

It has always been assumed that there is lifestyle linkage between TV shows and the people who opt-in to watch them. Apparently this affinity dynamic is true for Twitter as well. 

The data can be correlated by brand and by category according to Bluefin.  For example,  3 of Coke’s Top 10 tweeted shows are on ESPN. But there are no sports shows among the Top 10 tweeted shows for the Pepsi faithful. Some of the results are predictable. Beer drinkers tweet during sports shows and wine drinkers tweet during fashion and relationship programming. TV programming and commercials have always prompted talk. Now everyone is a TV and a social critic with instant digital access to an audience on Twitter and beyond. 

It’s a chicken-and-egg question; do people with lifestyle preferences tweet about brands because they advertise on these shows and networks? Or is there an organic subject matter trigger that drives brand tweets within specific content? 

The relationship between TV and Twitter provokes 4 new thoughts. 

1. Should brands better align with highly tweeted shows and invest in added commercials and product placement to optimize fan engagement? 

2. Should brands anticipate heavy brand tweeting during particular shows and staff social communities to respond in-context and in real-time to fan comments and posts? 

3. Should networks merchandise tweets as a way to expand fan bases and better harvest brand advertising budgets? 

4. Should consumers expect increasingly integrated commercial messages in programming that intertwines their TV watching and tweeting habits?

Twitter is adding a new dimension to TV. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out and which brands leverage this dynamic inter-media relationship. 

 

A 2011 Perspective on Media Mix

It’s a new year and a new fiscal budget cycle. Marketers now must turn those approved yet swag numbers into operating tactical plans, purchase orders and cash flow models. This necessitates choices focused on channels, media mix and targeting strategy. Creating the right mix is a puzzle that is unique to each brand. 

In approaching the task, several truths need to be considered:

• Each channel has its identified strengths, weaknesses and optimal uses.
• Business objectives must drive the process.
• Clarity is critical. You have to know what you’re going after at the outset.
• Matching target customers and prospects with media use yields efficiency.
• Social and mobile media are ascendant.
• Smartphone penetration, prompted by tablet PCs and Android, will drive use.
• Search and E-mail are proven performers year over year.
• Facebook advertising, promotions or engagement is on everyone’s list

A new way of conceptualizing the marketing mix is emerging that looks at three lines of attack orchestrated to operate independently and inter-dependently. Online and offline marketing are planned together and synchronized to insure that the brand speaks with one single voice to achieve maximum reach, frequency and impact. 

Owned Media are brand assets and tightly controlled real estate represented by brand websites, Facebook or Twitter pages, unique games or functionality deployed across the web, a consumer database and its attendant opt-in permissions. These assets become the canvas for presenting the band story in all its nuanced detail and for creating or using content to systematically and continuously engage customers and prospects. 

Paid Media are a variety of ad units in a mix of contextual landscapes purchased from third parties, that give brands the opportunity to integrate themselves into customer lifestyles and/or work flow patterns. Paid media can be integrated or interruptive and can use a wide array of tactics, including content creation, to drive traffic to owned assets or engage and enroll customers directly. 

Earned Media is the result of consumer engagement and resonance; those added impressions and viral pass-alongs that happen when a brand genuinely connects with it’s customer base. This can be partially planned but is often serendipitous. Earned media is the report card for how well a brand orchestrates its owned and paid media. 

This new model is being implemented against a cautious economic outlook for 2011. A StrongMail survey of 900 businesses found that only half expect to increase ad spending in the new year. In a similar survey of agency and client executives, RSW/US found that 56 percent of clients expect spending to be flat or down. In this environment dollars will be shifted from traditional channels (e.g. TV, print, radio, direct mail, events, banner ads) to emerging digital media. The question is --- how much and where to? 

The disparity between consumer media usage and the flow of ad dollars as documented last summer by Mary Meeker is confirmed by data assembled by eMarketer which shows sharp increases in mobile use (though from a low base), increasing use of the Internet, mostly driven by social networking, and steady but morphing TV/video patterns, especially among Generation Y, 42 percent of whom watch TV, movies and online video on their computers. These patterns are roughly the same whether you count percent of total media use by medium or absolute time spent with each medium. 

That said some of the growing channels are not instantly available or fully mature. Mobile access is growing exponentially as is the desire for deals, yet not all audiences are eager to check-in or download coupons and many phones aren’t yet equipped to facilitate these interactions. Demographics dictate mobile readiness. The older your audience; the less likely they are ready for mobile campaigns. 

In the same vein, only 5% of Americans have used location based or check-in services so being an early adapter necessarily means targeting a niche. Similarly there is no standard for QR codes nor is there any real penetration of QR code readers so brands using them will trade off first-mover bragging rights against modest reach and uncertain customer experiences. 

In the race to grasp new advertising opportunities, the likely reach, frequency and effectiveness must be evaluated in terms of the overlap between channel users and a brand’s most likely customers and prospects. Then the trade-off from what worked in the past to what might work in the future must be forecast. In this context, Facebook, with its enormous reach and selective targeting capabilities, looks like a safe bet in spite of their aspirations for ultimate control of advertising and their lack customer service and data sharing for most advertisers. 

As you structure your marketing mix for 2011, consider four vectors for evaluating the effectiveness of your choices. 

Business Effectiveness. Nothing counts if you don’t sell what you need to sell. Marketing expenditures need to be measured against business goals by plotting the return on investment, calculating the margins and assessing the cost of sale in comparison to the anticipated profit. 

Communications Impact. Is your message getting through? These are the classic brand measures of message relevancy and persuasion, A&U, brand awareness, preference and intention to buy. 

Media Efficiency. Are you getting the most bang for each buck?  Measure the effective reach by counting the cost-per-thousand and the click-thru rates. Then calculate the impact by looking at the cost-per-acquisition/retention/sale and by comparing this data ith cost-per-click. 

Brand Equity. Are you winning hearts and minds? The Net Promoter Score is becoming the benchmark although many marketers also assess customer satisfaction and calculate brand loyalty based on repeat purchases, referrals or redeemed offers.

 

Radio Redux

When I was a kid everybody listened to baseball and rock and roll on portable radios. From the time I was 12 till I went away to college I fell every night asleep listening to the radio tucked under my pillow. I had favorite stations and personal relationships with disc jockeys. 

Years later as a radio network and radio industry executive, I sold radio as a highly personal, targetable, mobile, local medium that was eclipsed but not killed by TV and cable.  I argued that radio has a unique psychological connection with its listeners that other media can’t duplicate. Now in the digital age, radio’s exclusivity on mobility is gone and its place as the launching platform for bands and musical artists has been steadily diminishing, but radio continues to morph and survive. 

And if you don’t believe me, take a look at recent national telephone survey of 1753 people (12+) conducted by Edison Research and Arbitron. Where 78% of respondents agreed that people will listen to as much AM/FM radio as they do now and where 27% or 70 million people admitted to listening to radio online in the last month. 

Other salient and life-affirming (at least for radio) facts that emerged are …

40% of young people (12-24) would listen to more FM radio if their cell phones had an FM tuner. More than half said they’d be very disappointed if their favorite station went off the air. 

Radio listening is done primarily over the air (74%) versus 23% online via computer audio streams. A third of respondents had heard of HD(high definition) radio and 3 out of 4 were familiar with SiriusXM satellite radio. 

39% still expect radio to introduce them to new sounds, new artists and new musical genres, though the Internet with 31% is closing fast. Pandora is a big factor. 

43 million people listened to online radio in the last week. Yours truly is one of them. Evidently listeners like me, who tune in on their computers at work, can cherry pick the best stations in their favorite format from across the dial and across the globe. It’s about control, variety and fewer commercials. 

Online radio is attracting 15% more listeners than AM/FM listeners combined. Cars, MP3 players and cell or smartphones are the preferred reception devices. Not surprising, big radio listeners listen more over the air and online than the average listener. Yet only 1 in 3 have ever visited a radio station web site. 

The online radio audience is worth selling to. More than half of online listeners (55%) are college-educated men and two-thirds are 25-54 and employed full-time with almost 1 in 5 earning $100K+ HH Incomes. 

As a guy with a face made for radio, there’s goodness here. Nothing has ever killed off the radio star because the audio medium has a distinctive psychology which pushes buttons and provokes memories and stirs emotions in ways other media don’t. Radio has a unique and personal  “method of action” which is its hedge against invention, fads and technology.

6 New Insights Into Media Usage

In a world of continuous, always-on media consumption and endless media hype, most marketers think they know what consumers like, what consumers use most and how often consumers are engaged with different media channels. Yet every-so-often new data challenges our assumptions.

 

That’s case with L.E.K. Consulting’s 2009 Media Consumption Survey, an online survey of 2000+ households, conducted in December 2009, that addressed media use in 28 media types. This study sought to identify changes in media consumption habits, find opportunities in new media and cast light on how the recession has affected media consumption. The data and the implications weren’t what I expected and made me think.

 

Here’s quick summary:

 

Channels Cross-Pollinate. Thirty-eight percent of consumers said they’d pay an extra fee to get content from cable channels on their computers or on their smart phones. This data validates the “content is king” notion and supports the business strategies driving Yahoo, Google and others. It also implies that marketers should orchestrate and integrate campaigns across channels and that video-to-go will soon become a common expectation which will dramatically increase demand for portable bandwidth.

 

Radio isn’t Dead It’s Gone Online. One third of respondents listen to Internet radio services for 5.8 hours each week; a third more than listen to satellite radio. Interestingly 83 percent still listen to traditional radio for an average of 8.1 hours each week. Neither TV, cable nor the Web killed the radio star which is a testament to its portability and targeted content offerings. Fifty-two percent of survey respondents listen to the radio and listening to music is second only to TV, ahead of the Internet, in terms of time allocated to media. Americans craft individual soundtracks to their lives and use music as a mood elevator.

 

E-Readers Are Heavy New Media Users. Not only do E-Reader owners drive the market for books but they consume significantly more new media than iPod owners and the general public. It’s probably not much of a stretch for educated literate readers to invest more disposable time and discretionary income using emerging media. E-Readers are four times more likely to see movies online, play more Web-based games and listen to more Internet radio than iPod Users, Facebook fanatics or the general public. Think of E-Readers as the vanguard of the digital proletariat.

 

50+ is the New Black. Don’t forget or ignore the power of the Boomers who still wield great numbers, great enthusiasm for new or revolutionary ideas and great wealth even as they age. The 50-64 year old age group uses new media almost twenty percent more than 25-39 year olds. Boomers do the most e-mail, play the most online games and pace every other age group in doing online tasks.

 

Everyone Multi-tasks. It’s no longer just teenagers who text and play online games with opponents in China while watching TV. One-third of consumers responding to the survey, watch TV and go online simultaneously. Nineteen percent listen to the radio while surfing the Web and eleven percent talk on the phone. Look for smart marketers to design campaigns to leverage and capitalize on this behavior in real time.       

 

TV is Still Our Mass Medium. Online TV is just starting and in spite of the growth of DVRs and time shifting, TV represents the biggest gross audiences and the most time spent with media. The margin is big – 38 hours per week for TV versus 7.6 hours online. TV is still the place to launch new ideas and revitalize brands.

Valuing & Validating Video Online

If video online is any indicator; on the web, seeing is believing. The number of videos viewed on YouTube -- 10.3 billion -- in September 2009 exceeded the number of core Google searches by a full billion. That's billion with a "b". 

Then consider the scale of use. More than 168 million US internet surfers watched nearly 26 billion videos online in September -- an average of 154 videos per viewer. Where did they find the time? That's roughly 84 percent of the total US internet audience (comScore says 81 percent) watching an average of 9.8 hours of video during the month where the average length was 3.8 minutes. Imagine how many of others tasks, demands, attractions and people vie for 10 active hours a month of your time! 

The number of people watching video online is up year-over-year by 46 percent. And the use of video on mobile devices is up 70 percent to 15 million Americans watching 3 hours and 15 minutes of mobile video each according to The Nielsen Company. And all this is going on while TV usage hits an all time high of 141 hours per month. We are more addicted to the tube than ever before but now the tube is following us around, available 24/7 and luring us with more memes every day.

The implications of this data suggest that every marketer better grab a video camera and get cracking. Consider these realities.

Video is the expectation. People expect to see it and hear it. They use YouTube heavily for search and younger people default to YouTube as their first point of web entry. 

Video is ubiquitous. Facebook, MySpace, Hulu and hundreds or thousands of sites feature all kinds of video. Production is cheap as is distribution. Anyone can shoot, produce or edit and grab 15 minutes of fame and many achieve different levels of virility.

Video validates. If you aren't producing video you aren't serious, real or as big as you claim to be. Video is becoming table stakes for online marketers. Presence trumps production values. Marketers are re-purposing all kinds of video assets in service to a growing appetite for online viewing. 

Video varies. Production quality ranges from childish to expert. Angles, animation, narration and new forms of story telling are emerging all the time. Reality can be dissected or distorted in service to abstract points of view or commercial messaging. 

OLX.com Aims for the Global Classified Listings Crown

French born Princetonian Fabrice Grinda built hiscareer as a serial entrepreneur by taking online business concepts developed in the US to global audiences. Now as Co-CEO of OLX.com he aspires to offer the best free global listings site on the web; "a Craigslist 2.0 for the world with functionalityy as good or better than listings on vertical subject sites."

With online marketing experience in southern and eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin Americaand $23 million in venture capital from the likes of General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, OLX.com is operating in 39 languages and countless dialects providing strong competition for newspapers all over the world.  

The global recession, eBay's consistent missteps with sellers and Craiglist's move to charge for high value listing categories all give Fabrice reason to believe he can build a consistent growth business on the back of this universal transactional utility. By asking for just an e-mail address, providing cross-site AJAX search tools and enhanced tagging, a fast WAP application that circumvents limited infrastructure in many countries and empowers zillions of cell phone users and by keeping everything free to both buyers and sellers, he expects to take share from the US leaders even though OLX is hardly known in the US. Simultaneously he is expanding the reach of his classified sites to under-served and under-penetrated geographies. His strategy of PPC-driven growth combined with seven acquisitions in places like Spain, Denmark, China, Argentina, Italy and Russia, position OLX to exploit emerging markets and take on established western European classified leaders.

The business model is hedged by providing white label listings applications to as many as 20 social networks around the globe. OLX is behind classified listings on Friendster.com and Sonico.com;the Facebook of Latin America. Using these tactics and revenue streams the site expects to break even by early 2010.

From the search-and-find perspective humans are "shockinglysimilar globally when it comes to using classified sites," Fabrice says.  And while there are local differences among categories and different kinds of merchandise or services are more active in different areas, the utility model offers scale at predicable operating costs and margins. Bad times accelerate the number of listings and the number of searches in selected categories; especially jobs and real estate. But the biggest challenge or complication is digital security to ward off endless attempts at spam and scams. On a global basis OLX deletes 66 percent of the 2 million listing attempts made each week and uses a wide array of security tools and tactics to protect users and escape hackers. 

The bottom line?

To be a successful entrepreneur you don't have to invent or re-invent the wheel. Sometimes you just have to expose it to people who haven't seen it yet or can't get or make one themselves.