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Nearly 1 out of 2 of the Most Shared Instagram Videos Are from Brands

social media iconsIn September 2013, Unruly Media conducted a study to learn more about the video content being published on Instagram, which launched its video publishing feature in June of this year. Yesterday, on the Corporate Eye blog, I shared statistics about how many videos Fortune 500 companies are publishing on Instagram as reported by TrackMaven. Now, let’s take a look a closer look at brand videos on Instagram using the Unruly Media report.

According to the Unruly Media study, 40% of the top 1,000 most shared Instagram videos during September 2013 were published by brands. In fact, more than 80 different brands appear in the list of the top 1,000 Instagram videos developed by Unruly Media, including Instagram brand leaders like Nike.

Unruly Media shared the following key learnings from its study about Instagram video content:

  • Most Shared Brand on Instagram: MTV followed by the NBA
  • Most Popular Vertical on Instagram: Entertainment followed by Clothing and Apparel
  • Most Shared Branded Video on Instagram: Snoopygram from Peanuts followed by FIFA 14 real-time from EA Sports
  • Most Shared User-generated Videos on Instagram: Justin Bieber with 14 of the top 20 most shared user-generated videos

Applying this data to brand marketing strategic planning, it’s important to note that Unruly Media also found nine out of 10 Instagram video shares were on Facebook. Considering Facebook owns Instagram, this isn’t surprising, but it’s important for brand managers to understand that nearly all Instagram video sharing is happening on a single platform.

Furthermore, the study found that the total number of unique Instagram videos that were shared on Twitter during September was equal to 10% of the unique YouTube videos shared on Twitter during the same period of time. Remember, Instagram video hasn’t even been around for half a year yet, so that 10% is significant.

Clearly, brand marketers whose target audiences use Instagram and Facebook should be looking at publishing Instagram videos as well as at Instagram video advertising as Instagram broadens its advertising options for brands in the future.

As Phil Townend, MD EMA at Unruly Media explained in a press release, “Smart marketers are no longer measuring success based on a YouTube view count and advertisers understand that it’s people first, platform second.”

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts about Instagram and brand marketing.

Image: Nurudin Jauhari

1 out of 2 Marketers Believe in Multi-screen Advertising but Only 1 in 4 Have Done It

multi-screen media marketingThere is a significant gap between the goals of multi-screen advertising and the reality. That’s according to a study conducted by Nielsen and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA): 2013 ANA/Nielsen Optimizing Integrated Multi-Screen Campaigns.

The study found that 48% of marketers believe multi-screen advertising campaigns are very important to delivering their brand marketing messages to consumers yet only 24% have actually executed a multi-screen ad campaign. Given the fact that 88% of marketers believe multi-screen advertising will be very important within the next three years, they better get moving.

The Problem with Multi-Screen Advertising

Despite the expected skyrocketing growth of multi-screen media and content viewing, there is a reason why multi-screen advertising isn’t growing as quickly. The biggest problem according to this study is performance measurement.

Overall, 71% of marketers use a variety of tools and metrics that are specific to each “screen” to track campaign performance, which causes a decrease in productivity and measurement inaccuracies. Similarly, 71% of marketers are not managing multi-screen campaigns in a fully-integrated manner. It’s not surprising that 73% of respondents to this survey want a single, standard set of metrics that they can use to measure campaigns across all screens.

Missing Multi-Screen Metrics

Based on this study’s findings, marketers want five specific metrics to measure the performance of their multi-screen campaigns more effectively:

  1. Consistent methodology across media = 73%
  2. Real-time measures for optimization = 69%
  3. Ability to understand the competitive landscape = 69%
  4. Ability to determine if the campaign produced the desired effect = 67%
  5. Ability to determine if the campaign was delivered to the right audience = 66%

The Future is Multi-Screen Marketing

The world has gone multi-screen, so marketers need to widen their “screen focus” despite the massive fragmentation challenges that multi-screen viewing creates. This isn’t a new discovery. In fact, one of the 2013 brand marketing trends that I discussed here on the Corporate Eye blog this year is multiple screens. There is no going back to single screen media consumption, so your marketing plan should reflect a fully-integrated strategy and should include multi-screen advertising.

What do you think? Have you integrated multi-screen campaigns into your marketing plan yet? What challenges have you faced? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the future of multi-screen advertising.

Image: Sean MacEntee

Mobile Changes the Media Landscape – There’s No Going Back Now

mobile graph increaseIn June 2011, I wrote an article on the Corporate Eye blog discussing predictions that mobile content consumption would surpass online content consumption in the near future. Fast forward to July 2013, and it happened.

According to research conducted by eMarketer last month, the average time per day that U.S. adults spent with major media using mobile devices was 2 hours and 21 minutes, which is two minutes more than they spent consuming online content.

The eMarketer study also revealed that the growth in mobile content consumption has led to digital content consumption (including online and mobile) surpassing television content consumption for the first time. Together, U.S. adults spent 5 hours and nine minutes per day during July 2013 consuming digital content compared to 4 hours and 31 minutes consuming television content. Coming in third place was radio at 1 hour and 26 minutes followed by print at 32 minutes. The full breakdown follows:

  • Digital = 5:09
  • Television = 4:31
  • Radio = 1:26
  • Print = 0:32
  • Other = 0.14
  • Total = 11.52

Clearly, mobile has changed the media landscape. Looking at the data another way, eMarketer found that mobile surpassed desktop for the first time based on the share of time spent per day with major media by U.S. adults. In this study, digital came out on top followed by television with mobile accounting for 19.8% of time spent with major media per day and online (desktop) accounting for 19.5%. The full breakdown is below:

  • Digital = 44.4%
  • Television = 38.1%
  • Radio = 12.1%
  • Print = 4.5%
  • Other = 1.0%
  • Total = 11:52

Not only are people consuming more content using mobile devices, they’re also sharing it more frequently using their mobile devices. Research by ShareThis conducted in June 2013 found that globally people are twice as likely to share content using mobile devices than desktop computers. iPhone users topped the list with 12.4% of this group sharing online content using their iPhones, which is significantly higher than the 7% of Android users who shared content through their devices. The top three sites that drive a lot of mobile shares, according to this study, are Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

It’s hard to believe that it was just two years ago that I wrote the article about predictions for mobile media consumption to overtake desktop content consumption. Mobile changed the media landscape and there is no turning back now. Your brand is either ahead of the mobile curve or you’re already trying to figure out how to catch up. One thing is for certain, we might not be at a place where brand marketers need to follow a mobile-first marketing strategy yet but that time will probably get here sooner than you think.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment below and share your opinion.

Image: Sergio Roberto Bichara

Mid-2014 Global Brand Rankings Announced

aldiIn YouGov’s mid-2013 global brand rankings, brands from the technology sector dominated the brand buzz lists in the United States, and the same is true in the 2014 Mid-Year Global Brand Ranking. In fact, if you look at the U.S. and U.K. brand rankings, little has changed since 2013 or 2012.

The Brand Index ranking measures thousands of brands in fifteen counties each day. Global brands fared better in the mid-2014 list than they did in the mid-2013 list, but regional and local competitors aren’t far behind.

Overall, Samsung ranked as the most buzzed about brand. It ranked in the top 10 lists for all 15 countries included in the ranking. Google/Google+ and Apple/iPhone each appear on eight of the 15 lists, and Facebook and Google’s YouTube each appear on three of the top 10 lists.

The most buzzed about brands in mid-2014 in the United States according to YouGov’s Brand Index are:

  1. Amazon
  2. Subway
  3. YouTube
  4. Ford
  5. Netflix
  6. Samsung
  7. Walgreen’s
  8. Apple
  9. Lowe’s
  10. Google

The most buzzed about brands in mid-2014 in the United Kingdom according to the Brand Index report are:

  1. Aldi
  2. John Lewis
  3. BBC iPlayer
  4. Lidl
  5. Dyson
  6. Waltrose
  7. BBC.co.uk
  8. MoneySavingExpert.com
  9. Samsung
  10. Sainsbury’s

The biggest brand buzz improvers in mid-2014 in the U.S. according to the Brand Index are:

  1. Carnival
  2. Bank of America
  3. Facebook
  4. NBC
  5. ABC
  6. Nike
  7. Red Bull
  8. AT&T
  9. Goldman Sachs
  10. Wells Fargo

In the U.K., the biggest brand buzz improvers in mid-2014 in the U.K. according to the report are:

  1. Findus
  2. Aldi
  3. HMV
  4. Lidl
  5. Tesco
  6. Starbucks
  7. Starbucks VIA
  8. Iceland
  9. Santander
  10. BP

In the U.K., two of the biggest improvers made it to the top 10 list, and they were new entrants to the list as well—Aldi and Lidl. In fact, nine of the 10 brands on the top improvers list in the U.K. were new entrants (except Santander).

Keep in mind, the Brand Index buzz rankings are created using a Buzz score, which is calculated based on respondents’ answers to a single question, “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news, or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” In other words, this ranking is far from a perfect science.  However, the results do paint a picture of which brands have been capturing people’s attention in fifteen different countries around the world.

You can follow the link at the beginning of this article to read the full report, which includes rankings and supporting details for the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, The Netherlands, and UAE.

Image: Mike Mozart licensed CC BY 2.0

Connecting Brands and the Mobile-Only Audience

iphone mobile consumerMarketers are quick to ask each other if they have a mobile-first strategy in place. Although we’re getting closer to widespread adoption of mobile-first strategies, most companies are still trying to catch up with a mobile-always strategy (comScore reported that we had a multi-platform majority last year). Now, there is data from comScore that suggests brand marketers also need a mobile-only strategy for a growing segment of the consumer population.

Using the comScore MMX Multi-Platform tool, comScore analyzed the mobile-only audiences of the top media properties and found that brands which only advertise through traditional display advertising are missing tens of millions of consumers each month. These are people who never visit websites so they never see ads displayed via desktop. For example, comScore found that each month 73% of Pandora’s audience, 54% of Buzzfeed’s audience, and 49% of Apple’s audience are mobile-only.

The demographic profile of the mobile-only consumer audience might not be what you expect. According to comScore, an analysis of Amazon.com mobile-only visitors revealed that more than 25 million of those visitors are between the ages of 35-64. If you thought only young audiences of tech-savvy millenials are mobile-only consumers, you’re missing a very large number of people across all age groups. However, it’s important to point out that the majority of Amazon.com mobile-only visitors are actually between the ages of 18-44. Here is the breakdown:

  • 18-24 = 10.8%
  • 25-34 = 14.4%
  • 35-44 = 12.1%
  • 45-54 = 7.8%
  • 55-64 = 6.1%
  • 65+ = 1.6%

Statistics support the development of a mobile-first strategy. For example, did you know that global mobile data will increase 11-fold by 2018? In the United States, one out of two online consumers made mobile purchases in 2013, and in the United Kingdom, nearly one in five smartphone users have made mobile purchases. These are trends that are not going to change. Once a consumer goes mobile-only (or mobile-dominant), it’s unlikely that they’ll go back to being desktop-only (or desktop-dominant) ever again.

Are you measuring your mobile-only audience correctly? If not, you might be allocating your digital advertising budget ineffectively. It’s no longer a matter of if you need a mobile-only strategy for a segment of the consumer audience. Today, it’s a matter of when you can develop it and roll it out, because every day that you don’t prioritize mobile marketing is a missed opportunity.

Image: Karola Rieger

The Rise of Social Logins and Its Importance to Brands

enter key loginIn September 2013, I published an article here on the Corporate Eye blog discussing a study Gigya had conducted about social identities and social logins during the third quarter of 2013. At the time, Facebook dominated social logins (52%) with Google+ coming in a distant second (24%).

Fast forward through the fourth quarter of 2014, and little had changed. Gigya found that Facebook still reigned supreme with 51% of consumers using it for social logins versus just 28% using Google+.

The infographic below provides more details about how social login preferences are playing out among consumers according to Gigya’s study. It’s also interesting to note that 63% of mobile logins during the fourth quarter of 2014 came from Facebook versus 25% for Google+. For both desktop and mobile social logins, Google gained a bit of traction in the social login space. However, aside from media/publisher sites where Facebook and Google+ were slightly closer in social login share, Facebook social logins were nearly double Google+ social logins in all industries tracked as part of the Gigya study.

Also, take note of Facebook’s social login dominance around the world. As shown in the infographic, Facebook dominates social logins in North America, Europe, Central America, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In other words, Google+ and other social networks have a lot of work to do to catch up.

Social Login Infographic

The value of social logins for brands is in the data. When a consumer uses a social login to log into a brand’s site, it can open the doors to a significant amount of information and data about that consumer. This data could potentially be used to deliver targeted offers. Gaining access to consumers’ email addresses, locations, marital status, education, interests, social network connections, preferences, and more is extremely valuable to brand marketers.

It’s not difficult to add social logins to a brand website, and the benefits can be significant. However, as I mentioned in my article in September 2013, it’s important to consider consumer online and social behavior before you implement a social login process on your brand website. For example, social logins from Google+ might be growing, but sharing on Google+ is still much less than it is on Facebook. In fact, Google+ sharing is still less than Twitter and Pinterest, too.

It’s also essential to have a team in place to analyze the data you gain access to so the brand marketing group can turn it into actionable marketing programs that drive positive results for the company. Implementing social logins without the skills and talent on board to turn data into effective action is akin to putting the cart before the horse—the results will be extremely disappointing.

Image: Musuvathi J Ubendran