Corporate Eye

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Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius

The Value of a Facebook Like in 2013 to Brands Reaches $174

facebook fan likeIn 2010, the value of a Facebook like was $136, but within three years, it climbed 28% to reach $174 in 2013. Those statistics come from a report from Syncapse, a social performance management platform. The company conducted its Facebook fan value study in 2010 when there were 610 million monthly active Facebook users. Today, there are 1.056 billion monthly active users on Facebook, and those users are driving revenues for Facebook. In 2010, Facebook revenue was $1.974 billion, and those revenues grew by 158% to $5.089 billion at the end of 2012. That means the average revenue per Facebook user is $5.32.

What do all of those Facebook users, likes, and page fans mean to brands? To find out, Syncapse studied 20 leading consumer brands, such as Coca-Coal, Walmart, H&M, McDonald’s, Nike, Disney, BMW, Xbox, Levi’s, and more.

Six primary factors were included in Syncapse’s Facebook fan value calculation:

  1. Product spending
  2. Loyalty
  3. Propensity to recommend
  4. Media value
  5. Acquisition cost
  6. Brand affinity

The analysis of the data revealed that fan counts doubled or even tripled between 2010 and 2013, and the average fan value in the consumer brands category increased by 28% to $174.17. The Facebook fan value ranged from $70.16 for Coca-Cola to $405.54 for Zara. According to the Syncapse analysis, brands with smaller retail prices have comparatively smaller fan values. Furthermore, brands with high equity or longevity in the marketplace have lower fan value.

Fan behavior has a significant effect on Facebook fan value to brands. For example, Facebook brand fans are 80% more likely than non-fans to be brand users, and they spend 43% more in categories they’ve liked versus non-fans (even if they don’t have higher incomes). Fans are also more active in social media. They spend more time on Facebook, believe that social media is more important to them, and believe it’s critical to helping them research products and services, share information with other people, and connect with brands they like.

Syncapse identified several fan and non-fan behaviors that impact fan value:

  • Fans spend more than non-fans.
  • Fans advocate brands more.
  • Fans typically use a brand before they like a brand’s Facebook page.
  • More people like Facebook brand pages for personal expression than to access coupons.

You can follow the link at the beginning of this article to download the complete report. It’s filled with details about each brand, fan versus non-fan behaviors, brand recommendations, and more.

Image:  Owen W. Brown

CPG Mobile Advertising Spending Triples in One Year

shopping cartBetween 2011 and 2012, consumer packaged goods (CPG) advertisers tripled mobile advertising spending. That data comes from the Millennial Media Mobile Intel Series released this week which tracked its own ad partners and combined that data with research from comScore. According to the report, mobile ad spending among CPG advertisers increased by 235% from 2011 to 2012.

During the research period, 82% of CPG mobile ad impressions were tracked on smartphones while 18% were tracked on tablets. Mobile advertisers most frequently targeted consumers in five demographic buckets: foodies, pet owners, parents, avid shoppers, and household shoppers. Furthermore 40% of mobile advertisers tracked in this study used location targeting to maximize campaign ROI.

The biggest CPG mobile ad spenders identified in the Millennial Media research were beverages (43% of campaigns), cosmetics and hygiene, food, household products, and pet products. For the majority of these campaigns (46%), the primary goal was to raise brand or product awareness. Interestingly, Jack Neff of AdAge points out that this is a significantly higher percentage than is seen in overall mobile advertising where just 14% of campaigns have a primary goal of raising awareness.

The most interesting data for CPG mobile advertisers revealed in this study offers insights into how consumers use their mobile devices to gather information about consumer packaged goods as they’re in a store and actively shopping. According to the report, men are more likely to use their mobile devices while in a store than women to check product availability (47% of men versus 39% of women), compare prices (51% of men versus 38% of women), and find coupons or deals (47% of men versus 40% of women). On the other hand, women are more likely to use their mobile devices while in a brick-and-mortar store to take a picture of a product (29% of women versus 21% of men) and text or call family or friends about a product (51% of women versus 37% of men).

Based on these study results, CPG mobile advertisers are missing opportunities to get the right information in front of consumers when they’re in a store making a purchase decision. By focusing primarily on raising awareness, the 235% increase in CPG mobile ad spending between 2011 and 2012 was over-invested in awareness campaigns. A more balanced approach of awareness campaigns and campaigns that drive in-store purchases by providing the right information at the right time directly to consumers’ mobile devices will deliver better results.

Many CPG advertisers have figured this out and are making the necessary strategic shifts in their mobile advertising plans. Is your company one of them?

Image: Murat Cokal

More Devices Lead to More Media Consumption

multi-platform content consumption dataMulti-platform media consumption and the battle of multiple screens has been a growing concern among brand marketers who fear that one device will cannibalize the audience and engagement on another device. However, the fear is unfounded and completely wrong according to research from comScore and NBC. In fact, the study reveals that more devices actually leads to more media consumption.

The study analyzed media consumption habits for the 2012 London Olympics among an audience who used multiple devices to consume NBC Olympics content on television, computers, laptops, smartphones, mobile phones, and tablet devices. The results showed that using multiple platforms actually led people to view more NBC Olympics content, and engagement levels went up as the number of devices a person used increased.

Eli Goodman of comScore pointed out that not only did participants in the study view more Olympics content, but for individuals who used mobile devices, the amount of time they spent consuming video content on television (the primary channel) and computers (the secondary channel) went up as well. Goodman explained:

“Looking at TV (in this case the primary consumption channel), the average time spent per day consuming Olympics content for TV-only users was 4 hours 19 minutes. But that figure for TV begins to increase among segments accessing content via multiple devices, all the way up to 6+ hours for those who viewed the Olympics across 4 screens. While those who consumed Olympics content across multiple devices may inherently be more engaged viewers, it would also seem that the supplementary channels served to reinforce engagement with the primary channels.”

The image above shows the average time study participants spent per day engaging with Olympics content (click the image to view it at full-size). Goodman points out that brand marketing strategies must be “integrated multi-platform strategies” in order to expand their reach and increase branded content consumption overall.

As with most strategic marketing planning, an integrated strategy is the best strategy. Silo marketing is dead, and today, one element of the marketing plan should feed off of the next. This includes both strategies and tactics related to multi-platform content delivery and consumption.

Do you agree? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

You can download the complete research report on the comScore website.

Image: comScore

The Competitive Facebook Marketing Landscape for Brands – It’s Worse Than You Think

facebook pagesAccording to research by Socialbakers, a Facebook user liked 4.5 pages on average in 2009. Four years later, that number has jumped to 40 pages per user in 2013, and in some countries it’s even higher. For example, an average Facebook user in the U.S. likes 70 pages, and Facebook users from the U.K. or France like 48 pages. In Mexico and Turkey, Facebook users like an average of 41 and 40 pages, respectively.

In other words, across the globe, Facebook users like a lot of pages, and those pages create a lot of clutter for their audiences. Socialbakers reports that in 2009, brands published an average of five posts per month, but in 2013, that number is more than seven times higher. Today, brands publish 36 posts per month on average.

How do all of those posts on brand Facebook pages affect Facebook users? Based on the data from Socialbakers, the flood of posts is bigger than you might think with the average Facebook user, who saw 22.5 updates per month in 2009, now inundated with 1,440 updates per month.

Of course, all of these brand Facebook page updates are just a small part of the daily posts Facebook users are actually exposed to. When you add posts from friends, family, and so on, the number is even higher. As a result, brands have a lot of competition to capture consumer attention and to turn that attention into engagement.

When you take a look at those numbers, it’s clear that simply publishing more posts on your brand Facebook page won’t deliver stellar results. Adding more clutter to your audience’s Facebook experience won’t make them like you more. In fact, it will probably make them dislike you more. Instead of multiplying the clutter, break through the clutter with better messages that are specifically targeted to your audience. Use images and videos that stand out in the revamped Facebook news feed, and offer something of value in your updates.

Facebook is no longer the place for brands to publish useless updates. Staying on consumers’ radar screens requires more than meaningless updates that don’t deliver value to your audience. Rethink your Facebook publishing strategy and make sure you’re not adding to the clutter. If an update could be perceived as clutter, don’t click the Publish button.

You don’t want to gain a reputation as the “annoying brand.” Instead, you want to gain a reputation as the brand that piques your audience’s interest each time they see your name in their Facebook news feed.

Image: Miki Yoshihito

Brand Video Buffering Equates to $2.16 Billion in Lost Revenue

video camera hdBrand video is an important part of a content marketing plan, but the opportunity that brand video presents is significantly reduced if the quality of those videos is low or the viewer experience is damaged from buffering and slow load times. Specifically, video buffering or low resolution video lead to $2.16 billion in lost revenue for online video publishers in 2012.

That figure comes from the Conviva Viewer Experience Report, but the $2.16 billion loss is just a drop in the bucket compared to how much revenue will be lost due to video buffering and low quality in the next five years. By 2017, the revenue loss is expected to reach $20 billion.

Conviva studied 22.6 billion video streams in 2012 from 150 broadcasters which were seen in 190 countries around the world to create its Viewer Experience Report. From its research, Conviva found that 124.8 billion minutes were spent in video buffering. Nearly four out of ten views experienced buffering and nearly two out of three views were impacted by low-resolution in 2012.

All of that buffering and low quality is having a direct effect on consumers. In 2012, the 1% increase in buffering led to an eight minute loss of viewing time per view of long form video content. For short form video content, approximately one out of two viewers abandoned videos between two and three seconds. On the opposite end of the spectrum, viewers who didn’t experience buffering or low quality in the videos they watched were found to watch 250% more video content.

The infographic from Conviva shown below provides many of the highlights from the study.

Video Experience Report Infographic

Botton-line, brand video is a great marketing tool, but if the quality isn’t excellent, you won’t get the results you want and need.

Image: Julien Boulanger

EBay Unleashes a Goldmine of Data to Brand Advertisers

ebay trade showCan EBay join the ranks of digital advertising success that Google, Facebook, and Amazon have dominated in recent years? It certainly looks like the company expects to answer that question with a resounding, “Yes,” in the near future based on Stephen Howard-Sarin’s (head of eBay digital display in North America) announcement to the audience at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference yesterday.

Tim Peterson of AdWeek reports that eBay will enable advertisers to use the data about how visitors browse the site, what they buy, and more, which the company kept as proprietary until now, to target ads and increase return on investment. It is expected that big brands will be more than willing to pay for access to this new data, and it’s not hard to understand why.

Even though personally identifiable information won’t be provided to advertisers, eBay visitors’ search and purchase data alone could be a goldmine to consumer product brands. Suddenly, brands have an exponentially greater ability to get the right ads in front of the right audiences.

In other words, eBay (like Amazon before it) is monetizing its customer data by allowing advertisers to retarget the eBay audience. Ads must be purchased through eBay in order for brands to access this customer data, and eBay will handle its own ad buying as well as the ad buying for all of the third-party marketers accessing its data.

For customers, this isn’t a new concept. Most are already part of ad retargeting even though they might not know it. When someone looks for a product on Amazon or in a Google search and later sees ads for that product or competitor products on other websites, they’re probably seeing a retargeted ad. Since the content of these ads is usually relevant to the consumer, these ads are typically welcomed (or at the very least, they’re tolerated).

For eBay and advertisers, the announcement is absolutely welcomed. In fact, the only surprising thing is that eBay waited so long to do it.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Karlis Dambrans