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A report that came out in mid-December from iSuppli, the electronics sector research firm, noted that year-end eReader shipments are going down to 14.9M units – a significant 36% drop from the 23.2M units achieved in 2011.
Presently, the projection for 2013 will have the number down to 10.9M units sold. That being said, none of this is a surprise – the decline in sales of eReaders has been expected for some time now.
However, instead of pig-piling on a market that appears to be drying up, I’d rather leave a note of appreciation for the role eReaders have played in raising our technological savvies over the past few years.
These devices served as a bridge to an entire population of people who had never previously felt the urge to ‘tech-up’ their lives, only to find a device that enabled them understand the utility that comes with new technology. Suddenly, here was a group of people who once were in the ‘technology-is-not-for-me’ camp, and now were evaluating whether or not this was actually true.
Count my Mom as one of those people.
Throughout this past year, I’ve spoken ad nauseam with clients and partners about my mom’s love affair with the Kindle she received for Christmas two years ago. And while it’s a constant joy to poke fun at the books she is reading (yes, I probably embellished a little – not all of it was Danielle Steel), the fact of the matter is that her Kindle had genuinely improved one aspect of her life that was important to her. She recognized it immediately and from that point on, she was hooked.
Fast forward two years, and now my Mom’s first question after the obligatory “are you kids hungry?” is “can I play around with your tablet?” Little did she know that the iPad Mini was waiting in her stocking.
So, thank you, eReader – and, well done. You proved to an entire generation that technology isn’t a young person’s game, and in the process helped turn a 60-something pre-school teacher into a technophile.
Tracking and measurement is perhaps the most important aspect of advertising.
In the display and mobile advertising world, engagement is the major key performance indicator. However, in the digital place-based world there is no such thing as click through or page views. So what do you do when there isn’t a standard tracking tool?
Recently there have been a lot of conversations about the potential ways to track digital place-based (DP-B) media. For instance, near-field communication (NFC) and facial recognition software get tossed into the mix quite often, but NFC isn’t widely enough accepted to be considered good candidate for an official tracking system and facial recognition gets a book of privacy laws thrown at it every time someone mentions it.
Yet, this segment of digital advertising warrants more than just conversation. Last fall, The Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) announced that the growth rate for the industry sector was six times that of total measured ad spending, according to data from Miller, Kaplan, Arase and Kantar Media. Digital place-based (DPb) media grew by 11.8% from Jan-June 2012 over the same period last year, while Kantar Media data revealed that total measured media for the same period increased by 1.9%.
But, for the foreseeable future, it looks like it may be a while for DP-B tracking.
In the meantime, seek strong relationships with trusted vendor partners. Make sure your vendors are DPAA members or working under the DPAA standard for audience measurement. And realize that receiving an accurate proof of performance report (read more about best practices for PoP here) for each digital place-based campaign is not the same as accurately quantifying engagement.
Just remember: The reporting and tracking may be different and evolving, but a digital place-based campaign can extend brand awareness and reach. It should be top-of-mind as a great supplement to a display and mobile campaign.
Are you willing to include digital place-based media in a campaign knowing the tracking isn’t there? How would you add it to a campaign to extend reach?
Heavy buzz continues to swirl as we eagerly count down the days to the most highly anticipated tech toy-filled days of the year. No not Christmas, silly! CES 2013, of course.
For those not familiar with what makes the CES convention such a big deal in the tech and electronics industry, I’ll share a little background.
The International Consumer Electronics Show, owned and produced by the Consumer Electronics Association, dedicates itself to promoting the growth of the nearly $200 billion U.S. consumer electronics market. The 2013 convention will follow suit in committing to CEA’s mission. Engadget, the online tech magazine, reported that 2012 was a record year for the show, drawing crowds upward of 153,000 and more than 3,100 exhibitors. Accordingly, big crowds and wondrous spectacles of tech gadgetry are anticipated to be on display in 2013.
The convention grounds will span across Sin City at both the Las Vegas Trade Center and the Venetian Casino from January 8th through January 11th. Notable exhibitors include HTC, Kodak, Nokia, VTech, Intel, Panasonic and Audi, amongst others.
Hot new products set to hit the market and be showcased at the convention will include Ultra HD TVs, or super high definition televisions with an average of 4 times the resolution of today’s HD televisions. Other popular noted products to be presented include cloud gaming, in-car voice control offerings and tech specs, as reported by tech gadget authority Stuff magazine.
Gadget and tech news authority, CNET, further reports that 20,000 products are set to be featured at the convention. As the official digital news and video partner of CES, tech enthusiasts can read and view the chronicling of the show at ces.cnet.com starting January 7th.
What are you excited to see debut at the show? What do you think will be the most highly anticipated gadgets for 2013? Share your thoughts below.
Last month during my web presentation “Viewability: What publishers need to know to compete for dollars,” there were a lot of questions from the audience about whether sites would have to drastically change their layout in order to maintain their premium inventory status once it becomes necessary to transition sites from a “served” to a “viewed” impression measurement standard.
At the time, I provided two examples – ESPN and USA Today – of sites that had found success by limiting the number of ad units on their sites and kept their ads either “above the fold” or had them “float” to follow the reader as he or she scrolled down to view content.
Today, there’s a little more quantitative information to drive the thinking about what role website design plays in driving what every brand wants: Purchase intent and consumer satisfaction.
Undertone, the digital advertising company, recently put a whitepaper titled “Understanding the Drivers of Standout Video Experiences” which looked at levels of consumer engagement with video ads based on the size of the video player, the player’s location on the page and the quality of the website in terms of the holistic environment, the quality of the content and ad visibility.
To summarize, Undertone found that:
But though their research was focused on video ads, the main takeaway from the findings speaks to a broader audience: The quality of the site a video ad appears on is the primary driver of brand perception, consumer intent, engagement and overall satisfaction.
The authors implore readers of the whitepaper to think carefully about site quality when crafting their video buys:
“While the method of video engagement emerged as the main element for driving ad awareness, the study found that the quality of the website a video ad appears on is the most important factor for driving intent to purchase. These results confirm the halo effect that exists when a brand is present among high-quality content.”
Furthermore, it’s not only a matter of the quality of the content: “The research clearly demonstrates that the more well-perceived a website is, the better the ads will be received.”
“Perception” of high quality is, by its nature, hard to quantify, but the consumer preference for it speaks to how crucial it will be for publishers to provide a superior user experience once viewable impressions become standard. In other words, now is the time to start differentiating you sites – and by extension, your advertising inventory – as “premium.”
There are different approaches to this. As mentioned during our webinar, USA Today recently “app-ified” their site by making it less cluttered and serving only one above-the-fold ad designed to follow the user as he or she scrolls on the page. Other tenets of “web app-ification” hold that the design should be light on text, image-rich and easy-to-share.
No matter what strategy you use to achieve a high-quality web experience, the goal is to drive higher engagement and ad performance overall. This should be at top of mind when working with content and marketing teams to build, refresh or re-launch a site that advertisers will flock to.
The prospect of redesigning your web site might be daunting and expensive, but there’s no substitute for the halo effect an advertiser can receive from running on truly valued content. The combination of premium content within a site designed for a truly premium ad experience will result in maximum impact for your brand advertisers.
Read more about Undertone’s study on MediaPost or download the whitepaper here.
I have always been skeptical about the role that ad executions play in mobile games. Gaming publishers often defend the space by contending smartphone and tablet owners spend a significant amount of their device time in mobile gaming environments.
Market research confirms that defense. Gaming authority Newzoo released a report in March of this year citing that the number of US mobile gamers surpassed 100 million, up 35% from the year prior. eMarketer and Comscore similarly released reports this year showcasing gaming ranking amongst the most common mobile activities.
While I have no qualms with recognizing the volume of time mobile users spend playing games, I am wary of attributing time spent gaming equaling a valuable spending environment for advertisers.
Gaming publishers may contend a gamer’s attention will transfer to an in-game ad unit, but I can’t find reason to believe it. Gamers are actively invested in one thing – completing the current level of whichever game they are playing.
I’ll share an old-school example of my own experience. When I was a kid using a Nokia ‘brick phone’ in the late 90s, I wanted to do one thing – play Snake. If I was in the middle of a tight round of slithering my way towards a hard-to-reach apple, nothing short of a house fire could distract me from my mission of game play.
Someone could counter that I am referring to a time before the birth of mobile advertising. However, I would say that the single-mindedness of a gamer largely remains the same. Gamers are unlike mobile users consuming any other form of content.
A mobile user reading an article can stop at the end of a sentence to acknowledge a mobile banner. Mobile video requires viewers to view an ad before seeing content. However, if a mobile ad pops up during game play, many gamers’ only interaction with that ad will be trying to click out or away from it.
To note, I do think there are some gaming environments where gamers are more likely to be receptive. I’ll give credit to gaming interstitial executions that interrupt users between levels and also gaming market places. I’ll even give it to in-game brand integrations. However, many integration executives acknowledge brand integrations as strictly valuable for brand awareness and recall.
Advertisers shouldn’t be wooed just by how much time a user spends in a particular mobile environment. Thinking from the perspective of a marketer, the primary concern should be on the likelihood of a given user actually interacting with a brand.
I might be coming across as a Debbie Downer regarding mobile gaming’s potential to be a valuable arena for advertising. However, I’m waiting for a gaming ad advocate to explain to me how and why I’m wrong. If you agree or feel differently, share your thoughts below.
(MediaPost.com) - In 1990, cable TV was growing and media agency executives were incorporating cable channels such as CNN, A&E, ESPN, MTV and Discovery into their national television buys. Buyers moved dollars into cable to keep CPMs low and to follow the audience that was embracing the new content. Less than 10 percent of a television budget would go to cable at the time.
Fast-forward 20 years later and ad spending on cable TV networks has grown to more than $21.1 billion — and cable accounts for almost 60 percent of all television viewing. The not-so-long tail of television grew significantly over the past two decades as new cable channels launched with everything from sitcom reruns, movies, cooking shows, reality TV franchises and more variations on news reporting.
Today, advertisers have hundreds of cable channels to place their messages. “Niche” networks like AMC can have the biggest telecast for any drama series in basic cable history among total viewers with the “Walking Dead,” while Fox News Channel can set new viewership records with a presidential debate. Television’s long tail of content has been embraced by media buyers because it was embraced by consumers who saw value in the growing and diversified choices of programming.
TV buyers had to make extensive changes to their media management systems to accept the thousands of 30-second commercial units that were necessary to advertise across cable networks. They had to reconfigure audience measurements to acknowledge the niche — yet valuable — cable viewers. They had to expand their stewardship and bill/pay processes to handle the magnitude of invoices created by advertising across many more networks and programs.
The industry made these changes because it was necessary to capture the value of the growing mid-tail of television. After top-tier large audience cable networks such as TBS and USA, there are a growing number of channels in the middle that represent loyal audiences due to appealing niche content. Networks such as Bravo, AMC, Food Network and TLC all fit within the mid-tail of cable television. It’s actually pretty simple: Consumers follow the best media content choices. Advertisers follow consumers. Agencies deliver for their clients.
Today we are looking at the same scenario being played out in the digital media marketplace but on a much greater scale. After a buyer negotiates with the top five to six sites such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Facebook, there are thousands of mid-tail sites to consider for a brand.
Read the remainder of this article on Media Post.
According to IBM’s Black Friday Report, mobile sales increased 63% over 2011 and predictions are calling for well over $1 billing in total mobile sales this year. Further reports are showing that in-store shoppers used their smartphones to search and compare bargains while battling the holiday rush.
And, according to Deloitte’s annual holiday survey, smartphone shoppers are expected to spend 72% more than those without. There is no doubt that this will lead advertisers to shore up their mobile efforts as we move into 2013, but how do you keep your brand top-of-mind along the path of purchase? Digital place-based signage, that’s how.
With its unique positioning within the work/play environment, digital place-based (DPB) media targets the active, on-the-go consumer as they make their biggest spending decisions and other, more frequent purchases, throughout the year.
From office buildings to restaurants to shopping centers, DPB leverages the consumer’s multi-screen lifestyle by bridging the gap between display and mobile within the most relevant context.
Mindset is the key – consumers are looking for retail information, so why not point them in your direction? With the explosion of mobile adoption and the growth of the digital mobile consumer, there has been no better time than right now to start rolling convergent opportunities around DPB into your media plans.
Additionally, the year 2013 will see continued release of improved technologies that will inspire increased interaction between mobile and place-based media. Near-field communications (NFC) is expected to revolutionize the payment process, but it will also allow for the delivery of media messages with just a simple tap of the device.
With 52% of audiences 12+ viewing a DPB screen every month – in health clubs, elevators, doctor’s offices, gas pumps and more – according to the Digital Place-Based Advertising Association (DPAA), digital place-based is an excellent platform for prompting shopper interactions with your brand. The consumer is ready. Just give ‘em a nudge.
Adweek has released their list of the Digital Winners for 2012 and the results prove that emerging technologies had quite the year.
While Twitter clearly was a dominate force during the election, boasting 327,452 tweets per minute and Instagram cashed in with Facebook at $1 billion, there were other best-in-show digital opportunities that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Here were my favorite three emerging technology examples from the AdWeek Digital Winners 2012 list:
The Xbox was voted the ‘Best Reason to Cut the Cord’. With more and more people moving towards a connected television viewing style, I think the Xbox has every right to be king of this category. It brings together Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and social gaming. It’s one box for everything. More people are watching video on the Xbox Live Gold service than are playing games, and they are using what was designed as a game console to do so. Media consumption is changing.
For whatever reason I missed out on Flipboard until now. But after an app download and some research I am sold. Flipboard was selected as ‘Hottest Tablet Publisher/Aggregator’. You can use Flipboard like your own personalized magazine. You can subscribe to the news content, social sites and entertainment you are interested in and it all gets pulled into one location. Good news, it’s ad enabled. It’s a great opportunity to target users. The registration data from all the sites they are pulling into Flipboard is available.
I’ve talked about ad enabled maps before, but I think Foursquare, who was voted ‘Favorite App Right Now’ will have a much more solid run with their ad integration than Waze. The ad opportunity is just being tested this year, but the value seems to be there with their geo-social ads. It seems to be a new trend that is emerging in the mobile space.
Working on a team titled Emerging Technologies, it’s so refreshing to see appropriate emerging tech pieces being executed. Check out the rest of the Hotlist 2012 Digital Winners here and then come back and share your favorite with us. Most importantly, tell us: Are you utilizing any of these digital hotties –or other emerging tech strategies – in your media planning?
eMarketer expects overall spending on mobile advertising in the U.S., including display, search and messaging-based ads served to mobile phones and tablets, to rise 180% this year to top $4 billion (previously forecasted at a slower growth of 80% in September). The jump in growth is largely attributed to “native” ad formats like Facebook’s mobile newsfeed ads and Twitter’s Promoted Products.
Read More: US Mobile Ad Spending Jumps to $4 Billion
Digital Marketing Trends
In the year ahead, digital marketing budgets are expected to increase by 50%-150%. According to a recent MediaPost article, key trends that are driving this growth include: near field communication, gamification, second screen, wearable tech, cineprint, geofencing, and augmented reality. What other trends should we expect to see in 2013? Which trends will soar and which will sink?
Read More: 2013 Digital Marketing Trends: Brand Conversation To Commerce
What’s all the buzz about native advertising? A recent study reveals that half of media planners will try native advertising in 2013. Native advertising is considered to be a natural, integral part of how people consume information vs. unwelcomed, interrupted messages; however, the debate is still out on the agreed upon definition. Regardless, the more inviting, emotionally-stimulating, and relevant the ad, the better chance it will connect with consumers. Can an ad format become too native to an environment?
Read More: Half of Media Planners will Try Native Advertising