First week of July is a busy one at MC&C.....

The first week of July has been a busy one for us at MC&C.  We won a new bingo client, Bingoport.co.uk and we launched an integrated campaign for them at the start of the week across TV and digital.  With MC&C's experience in this sector, and the fact that players can win a free car, it is no suprise that Bingoport.co.uk is seeing over 15 times as much activity compared to June.
You can watch the new ad here

Emmie Faust, Business Director, at MC&C said “Its really exciting for us to be working with one of the leading bingo affiliates.  Given the competition in this sector, its not often that affiliates advertise on TV, but we’re confident that we can achieve some fantastic results for Bingoport and their partners, given our expertise in this area and their offering.”  We even got a mention in EGR magazine which you can read here.

On the subject of bingo we've been doing great things for another client Smoochbingo.co.uk and they have been busy shouting about it (which is always nice!), in just a month they are already seeing a 140% increase in registrations to their site, you can read more about it here on the press release Smoochbingo.co.uk signs deal with MC&C.

We've also started working with World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) at the beginning of this month, with a TV and digital campaign, but soon to launch across multiple other channels.  As I am sure many of you will know MC&C are very strong in the charitable sector and its great to work charities that the team has a real belief in.  We had fantastic feedback from the WSPA after the pitch, and we're very much looking forward to a long relationship with them.

Samanta Eaves, WSPA UK Acquisition Manager, said, "I’m very much looking forward to working with MC&C. Their pitch demonstrated a thorough understanding of where WSPA is as an organisation and how we need to maximise engagement with both financial supporters and campaigners through the right channels. MC&C's years of expertise was evident and with a strong account team, I’m confident that we’ll deliver successful recruitment campaigns."
And it looks like the sun is here to stay for a while so all in all a great start to July!

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Offensive Facebook Posts Force Brands to Drop Ads

Recently Facebook faced what some described as a “watershed” moment for the company. The Financial Times reported that advertisers such as Nissan and Nationwide, as well as a number of smaller brands, chose to pull their advertising from the social networking site after their ads were placed next to offensive posts and images. The exodus came as a result of the #FBRape campaign led by Laura Bates, founder of “The Everyday Sexism Project", asking Facebook to change its advertising policies. Complaints on twitter followed as embarrassing screenshots of ads appearing on the social networking site next to misogynistic content, including images of abused women, were circulated.
This highlights some serious issues for Facebook’s targeted advertising, which put simply, targets users believed to be most likely to buy a product based on their likes and other profile information. Ads are placed on pages wherever the user goes and for Facebook on which there are nearly 100bn pages, the majority of which are user generated, this represents a huge policing issue. Until there is a sound technological solution the likelihood is that incidents like this will continue to happen.

The Brand Response
The contrasting response to the brands involved highlights how important swift corrective action can be. Nationwide, Nissan and many of the smaller brands were lauded for immediately cancelling their Facebook advertising until the issue is resolved. On the other hand, Santander, who were slow to react, faced criticism and even pledges from consumers to switch their banking over to Nationwide! More extremely Dove the skincare brand, have faced a heated backlash from consumers (examples below) for not pulling their Facebook ads completely.

 

From a media agency perspective it’s hard not to feel a little sorry for Dove who have limited control over the actual content their ads are placed next to. Most of the blame should sit with Facebook, firstly for allowing the offensive content on the site and secondly for the poor control over where ads are placed.
Having said that, I can’t help but feel surprised that Dove, which prides itself on empowering women and “inspiring inner beauty” refused to pull its ads completely.  In my opinion Dove should have been the first to cancel their advertising. They missed an opportunity to lead the condemnation of the content in order to turn a bad situation into something more positive.
As for Facebook, if they want to continue growing their advertising revenue, to improve on the $1.46 billion revenue figures announced in Q1, then they need to start taking a lot more responsibility for their content and advertising controls.

Written by Peter Barnes, Account Executive

Are you following the money?

Some 60 clients joined MC&C  this morning for a 90 minute seminar on the topic of "attribution in a digital world"
It may sound slightly dry, but actually it's fascinating, honestly

Essentially attribution is merely the discipline of finding out which bits of your media investment generated what sales. You can then use that insight to drop the bits that don’t work and do more of the bits that do.
Common sense really

Image from Google showing digital attribution 

What I found shocking was how few clients do this when it's so effective.
Only 54% of clients do any form of attribution, and only 35% track the online sales caused by offline media, despite the fact that 54% of them say this has very large impacts on their profits (this from research Econsultancy did in November 2012)

The biggest opportunity for clients to improve profitability in this area is probably in linking online sales to offline media investments
We offered three pieces of advice
1. The vast majority of online sales journeys start offline: typically between 80% and 95%
2. Typically our clients see some 30% of their total sales from media investments now coming online
3. If they use offline to online attribution they can improve the profitability of these sales by between 20% and 30%

Its not easy to do, but tools now exist that can help 
Clients have a choice of Econometric modelling, or media event matching software.
Our recommendation is to start with matching. It gives clients the everyday micro insight as to which bits of their media schedules worked. C4 or Sky. The Sun or The Sunday Times. And investments can be optimised on that basis

Larger campaigns (typically £3million+) will benefit from Econometrics, which can answer questions like: exactly how much impact did my TV campaign have on my search, my door drops, my press, and my retail sales. And how much can I spend before I see diminishing returns.

We use both tools as appropriate. Our view: if you can measure it, how can you manage it?

Written by Mike Colling, MD

Try not to scare old people

It’s well documented internally that a healthy proportion of MC&C’s client base have older-than-average customer profiles, Warner Leisure Hotels and Salvation Army being two of the most apparent. Combine this fact with the continuing trend for a greater ratio of advertising response coming from online mechanisms, and you could potentially be looking at losing a greater number of responders from any campaigns undertaken – especially those which involve a web call-to-action.

Please note, I’m not in the business of slurring the advanced generations’ online abilities – I’m sure there are plenty who can use a computer a lot more effectively than I – but it is generally considered that it takes older people slightly longer to adapt to technological change. This is obviously understandable if you’re used to dealing with issues such as bill payment, communication with family and friends, or booking holidays in a set way, only to be presented with an entirely foreign method many years down the line.

In fact, the Guardian has recently revealed a fairly startling fact: “There are 7.4 million people in the UK who have never used the internet, of which 85%, (6.3 million), are aged over 55” partly demonstrating elderly peoples’ caution with regard to the channel. The internet can be a daunting place, fraught with potential pitfalls, and so to eliminate peoples’ fears, it is in online advertisers’ best interests to adapt their website to accommodate the less internet savvy.

To counter this, eConsultancy have put together a handy list of safety checks that web-designers should follow, which should enable most effective navigation amongst those who need a bit of assistance:

1.       Font size should be at least 12-point (not just for senior friendliness, but general usability)

2.       Hyperlinks should be larger than general text and well-spaced from non-hyperlink text so that they are more obvious

3.       Use different colours for visited links to aid navigation and remind people where they have previously clicked

4.       Simplify form filling (especially prevalent when assisting people through the donation or purchase process)

5.       Make error messages within incomplete forms obvious, and clearly demonstrate corrective measures

6.       Avoid major navigation changes when redesigning sites

If these simple instructions are followed, then the ease with which ‘technophobes’ can pass through the donation or purchase process is greatly increased. This will lead to increased conversion rates on the site, and it would be assumed a greater return on advertising investment. Which IS my business!

Written by Alex Prout, Digital Account Manager

Round up of the Google I/O Conference

Last week Google revealed their master plan to change the world during the Google I/O conference and here is a round up of some of the key announcements:
• Android is becoming more prevalent in today’s society. Last year there were 400 million Android users. Now there are a massive 900 million.
• Google are improving their Play Store. It will work like the Game Center from Apple, allowing game saves across device and battles against your mates for the best score. Another cool feature is that you can start playing a game from your mobile phone, stop, and keep playing from another device such a tablet.

• Google officially announced their platform to compete against Spotify: Google Play Music All Access. It will be available for $9.99 a month in US (no UK pricing as of yet). 
• Google Maps will experience big changes in terms of design but also in terms of PPC. Now search ads with location extension can appear directly on the map and just below the search box. Search ads without location extension can appear just below the search box.
• Google+ has a new design based on 3 key arenas: Stream, Hangouts and Photos. It looks more like Pinterest with 3 columns showing more information about the users. Also, they added these new Twitter-like functions:
o “Related hashtags”: a feature that allows users to browse through related photos by clicking on the current photo.
o “Intelligent hashtags”: Google analyses the photo and places a hashtag on the post. For instance, if you have a photo with the Big Ben in the background, your post will automatically contain the hashtag “bigben”.
• Google+ will be on an individual app for Android and iPhone. This application keeps all photos and texts that have been shared on a stream and allows having video conversations with a group of friends. Plus (pun intended), it will be the first time that Google brings Google Talk to iPhone devices.
• Google+ will automatically discard blurry and duplicated pictures. Photo enhancements such as removing red eyes or noise in photos will also be implemented.
• A Samsung Galaxy S4 model will be released with a “cleaner” version of the operating system, so without all the extra Samsung’s functions.
• Google Now (Siri’s competitor) is going to be improved.  - set reminders, check public transport status and receive updates on TV shows.  It will also have a desktop version for Chrome and will be hands-free too.

Finally, at the end of the conference, Larry Page showed up. He gave an amazing speech about the future of the technology, but also making clear that Google is more than just a search engine. He wants to change the world!  You can watch Larry Page's speech here

You can watch the full Google I/O Conference here

 

Written by Marc Calvo Soler, Search Account Executive



Paper pounds, digital pennies and The Sun’s great gamble

It’s pretty much taken for granted now that what used to be known as “newspapers” are expected to be cross-channel “newsbrands”, with their online presence at least matching the traditional, tangible one. The problem is that unless you’re one of the biggest players on the Web, you’re more than likely to see your ad revenue drop rapidly when your readership moves online. So, what’s a newsbrand to do? The Sun recently decided to go all in.

According to The Guardian, from 1 August  The Sun will be rolling out a £2-per-week paywall. The controversial move follows a £30 million deal for exclusive internet and mobile Premier League highlights clips the publisher struck in January. Now, with internet’s prevailing “anything, anytime, for free” attitude towards content, raising a paywall means sailing notoriously treacherous waters even for quality titles, whose readerships are typically both more loyal and more affluent. For a tabloid to do so seems borderline reckless.
Is it really, though? The global rise of Guardian and Daily Mail, two poster children for “post-print” success (and identity crisis at the same time, but that’s a whole different story), cannot possibly be matched by every single UK newsbrand. For those late to the table, ISBA’s Bob Wootton’s words about ad revenue “paper pounds” being replaced by “digital pennies” ring painfully true. The only other way to harness online, he argues, is to secure exclusive, valuable, easily accessible content and charge for it. And as we’re regularly reminded, most recently by BT Sport's marketing offensive, the one kind of exclusive content to rule them all (and lure them all) is football.
It will be interesting to see how the move pays off for The Sun. Especially so for their tabloid competitors, who I’m sure won’t go anywhere near a paywall in the foreseeable future, who will be more than happy to pick up any readers who don’t make it through The Sun’s wall. It is also naïve to expect The Sun to only rely on footie highlights. Prepare for snazzy overhauls and heavy marketing pushes over the summer. Daily Mail’s premium content experiment will probably be watched very closely too, as any knowledge of what else online/mobile audiences are willing to pay for will be gold. Interesting times ahead.

Written by Adam Wika, Media Assistant

More ads anyone?

Remember the days when Facebook used to be this user-centric social network whose sole purpose was to connect you with your friends rather than selling your personal information to the big soulless companies who could then flood you with ads persuading you to buy their products, the purchase of which will have no less of an effect on your social and personal life than a princess’s kiss on an enchanted frog? No? Nor do I.

One of the reasons why might be the recent explosion in advertising developments within the social network, which appear to be kicking in at a steady rate of many-per-month.
Recent developments include, but are not limited to, mobile ads, sponsored stories, behavioural targeting, lookalike profiling, newsfeed re-targeting, and now – video.
The most recent of the above – video ads – is going to be rolled out this summer and according to some sources will allow advertisers to broadcast 15s ads to their target audiences, by also limiting individual users’  ad exposure to content from one advertiser a day only to maximise brand exposure and impact. The ads will start automatically, allowing people to choose whether they want to activate audio and restart the ad.

Estimates show that the new video format could help boost Facebook’s ad-generated income by around $1.4m a day, which would be a more than welcome new revenue stream for the company that is still trying to make up for its nearly disastrous stock market listing last year.
Facebook’s move to video ads is somehow natural and expected, given that the company has access to one of the richest and most thorough databases of personal information, which it would be crazy not to feed into an opportunity to tap into the ever-growing online video advertising market.
Furthermore, despite many online marketeers’ concerns of the new video ads being too disruptive, the social network has been quite good at subtly introducing new ad formats. (Remember how your friends’ news feeds and photos suddenly  got bigger and tidier with the introduction of the latest interface update? Did you pay as much attention to the slightly more prominent sponsored stories that appeared along as well? Didn’t think so.) This suggests that whether the new video format drives people away or not is totally dependent on execution and how Facebook rolls it out to the wider public, which we can assume (and hope) is only going to happen after a good amount of field testing.

Finally, it would be more than interesting to see how the most socially engaged online space handles one of the most engaging ad formats and what results this would produce. So while from a user’s  point of view I am slightly frustrated with yet another addition to Facebook’s advertising portfolio, the digital planner in me is interested to see whether this new development might help us find a new digital golden goose laying the golden eggs of social engagement.
I’ll keep my doubts for the time being, but only time will tell I guess…

Written by Slavina Racheva, Digital planner/buyer

Can you hear what the stats are singing?

The commercial (non-BBC) radio market has experienced increases in audience figures, according to the RAJAR quarterly report. Although the number of people listening to the radio is up by 608,000, the number of listening hours has fallen by 3%. There are however interesting trends within the market, with digital and commercial listening on the rise.

Figures show that half of radio listening adults now use digital radio but only a third of listening hours is done via this medium. In the latter half of this year we might, however, expect this to rise as Bauer Media launch two new digital stations- KissFresh and Kisstory- which will be available on mobile, desktop, tablet and Freeview.

London’s Capital and Magic 105.4 will be pleased with their results. Capital broadcast to 1.95 million people, overtaking Magic in terms of their reach to weekly listeners; yet Magic retained the highest proportion of listening hours with nearly 6%. Capital can be happy further, with Berry and Snowdon’s breakfast show attracting more than 1 million listeners.

 

Photo courtsey of Capitalfm.com

Heart’s breakfast show audience rose by a massive 120,000 listeners, putting them in second place for morning listening. Magic’s Neil Fox took a close third place, and a year on year rise of 20% for Absolute Radio slides them nicely into fifth place.
Nick Grimshaw’s Radio 1 morning show saw a dramatic decline of nearly 900,000 listeners from Q4 in 2012. This translates to a fall of 14%, and a year on year drop of almost a fifth. To add insult to injury, Vodafone’s Big Top 40 attracted a million more listeners than Radio 1.
       
From an advertiser’s perspective, what does this mean for the market and pricing? Total advertising expenditure on radio (as recorded by AdDynamix) for Q1 2013 is down 3% compared to this time last year. This together with stagnation on total listening has therefore ensured that radio pricing remains competitive. MC&C are not expecting any increases in overall pricing during 2013.

Written by Sean Stanfield, Media Intern

Google Enhanced Campaign Update

A lot has happened since Google announced the changes to AdWords in February; mixed reactions across the industry, success stories and complaints, additional features added (mobile ad group bidding changes being our favourite), and recently a confirmed date when the changes become mandatory. Many agencies have chosen to play the waiting game, holding out until 22^nd July in case of any more features being added, but we have begun testing the Enhanced Campaign settings to give us and our clients a head start. So far our results have been mixed:

• Higher CTRs coming from the more targeted Sitelinks and creative
• Higher CPAs where the site is not compatible with Tablets
• A general increase in traffic from being opted into Tablets
• A slight increase in Mobile CPCs

As we predicted, the results were always going to vary depending on the current state of each campaign and its offering. Hopefully most advertisers already have Tablet-friendly sites, or are taking steps to do so as soon as possible.   If you haven’t, we recommend you begin looking at this as soon as you can in order to avoid wasted budget and poor user experience, from being forced to bid for Tablet traffic.

In part we agree with Google that you should migrate as soon as you can, however if you are not set up to serve your site on a Tablet yet, we’d suggesting holding out until you have resolved this issue. No one wants higher CPAs from wasted budget, and poor usability!

If you have any questions or don’t feel like you’re being assisted through these significant changes, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to help - you can get hold of me via email george@mcand.co.uk

 

Written by George Byrne, Head of Search

 

 

A morning with Harper Reed

Last week I spent the morning listening to, and then talking with Harper Reed. For those who don’t know him he was one of the founders of Threadless, (one of the first practitioners of crowd sourcing) and then Obamas CTO during the 2012 election campaign.

In that later role he led the team that built the technology platform that engaged tens of millions of supporters and helped raise more than $1bn in donations.

He told an impressive story of building what was essentially a massive customer engagement system, with associated content management and donation platform, and then training and motivating thousands of volunteers to use it. One platform managed voter and supporter contact across channels as diverse as twitter, text, email, mail, outbound phone and even door knocking.

The marketing and mainstream commentators hailed this as a masterpiece of “micro targeting”, where small but coherent groups of voters were engaged on issues that most appealed to them.

Harper made two really interesting points, both of which had not been picked up by mainstream case studies.

The first was: this wasn’t really micro targeting, but actually micro listening. The volunteers who knocked on doors and called voters weren’t primarily trying to “sell” Obama. They were trying to listen to what voters needed from him, and what would motivate them to engage with the campaign. Every call, every visit was data captured using an app, and that data appended to the voters record. That listening informed messaging for that individual voter, and for cohorts matched to them.

The second point was one of integration. This was a tech presentation by a tech leader, aged under 35. Clearly he was proud of the work in channels like twitter, instant click to donate on text, and personalised emails. But he acknowledged that much of the heavy lifting with voters took place with old fashioned media, like phone, door knocking and above all in direct mail. Shock horror, paper and mail still have a huge role in this era of digital. And the insight I took from speaking with him: digital media may create the insight. Interactivity tells you in real time what voters engage with. But a real letter shows you value them and their opinions. And that changes minds, and generates money

Not what I was expecting to hear from a young tech guy. But a morning well spent

Written by Mike Colling, MD of MC&C

Shop with your eyes, not with your hands

Everyone has their own way of shopping. Some like to walk in, product in mind and walk straight out in five minutes flat; while others enjoy browsing, never entirely sure what they might leave with. For the latter group, advertisers are in a never ending battle to manipulate what people might buy; and for the former, they are constantly looking to break shopper’s nerves of steel and have them purchase something extra at a last minute impulse.

It appears, however, that the consumer battle has tipped in the advertisers favour, as interactive advertising takes a leap in the right direction. The latest technological developments at Lancaster University provide the advertising world with the Sideways project. The system allows for a single camera to track the faces and eye movements of up to fourteen people simultaneously. This can allow for the adverts to adapt to the product preferences of each individual shopper.

 

While this technology is still relatively new, previous attempts could only focus on one person at a time and the calibration process was “time-consuming and annoying.” With this newer, simpler system however, senior researcher Andreas Bulling told the BBC that he expected “this technology to become available widely in the near future”, possibly in shops within five year.

So what might we see in the future of shopping? Will we see brighter and bolder ads, images and creatives screaming for our attention? Or will adverts become more subtle, with each individual consumer taking home their own unique experience of a store. As the technology develops further in the coming years, we wait to see how this possible game changer to the world of interactive advertising will manifest itself.

Who wants some TLC?....Not me!

Last night [Tuesday, April 30^th 2013] Discovery Network International launched the brand new channel TLC in the UK and Ireland.

Billed as a female version of ‘Dave’ the channels flags-ship shows include - HereComes Honey Boo Boo (an off-the-wall reality show depicting the life of a seven year old beauty pageant contestant and her entourage family, made famous by the delightful ‘Toddlers & Tiaras’ series). A documentary that follows a woman who is addicted to eating cat hair! ‘Swinger Wives’ (speaks for itself) and a smattering of other UK commissions: Holly Valance’s ‘Ultimate Shopper’, Dawn O’Porter’s ‘Undercover Mums’ and Lisa Snowdon’s ‘Your Style in His Hands’.

Whilst the brow of these shows may be lower than the Mariana trench, there is clearly still a huge appetite for ‘women’s content’ and in a declining market (with magazines such as More coming off the shelves after 25 years, due to faltering sales) the channel does opens up new avenues for advertisers trying to reach young women.

 
My personal feeling is that TLC is a lot like a junk food binge. You’ll crave it at times, you may enjoy the hit, but you know you have done something wrong and feel just a little bit guilty afterwards.

Industry News: Blippa boldly Goes…

Love it or hate it – Star Trek has been serving up Sci-Fi to the masses for over 46 years now, making pieces of “fantasy tech” such as transporters and photon torpedoes household names. But tonight (29th April) makes a milestone for a slightly more 21^st century piece of technology – augmented reality. As the first ‘Blippable’ ad is aired this evening across the channel 5 network at 9pm. kick-starting the launch campaign for the latest film released under the franchise ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness.’

Those in the know, having downloaded the ‘Blippa’ augmented reality app made by a tech company of the same name, will be able to interact with the ad on a whole new level – accessing additional unique content, as well as being able to enter into a competition to attend the premier of the film in Tokyo.

Emily Fairhead-Keen, business director at MEC has been quoted by MediaWeek as saying:  "Screen synchronicity is not a 'nice to have' any more, it's a critical part of our planning.

"We should embrace smarter ways to engage consumers on both screens, especially with categories such as entertainment, which lend themselves so well to user engagement and the sourcing of additional content/prizing."

Of course, the same old fears associated with accessing AR content remain – namely the need to download the app, which is seen as a barrier to entry. But in this case prior knowledge of the ad is also necessary – as the spot will only last for 60 seconds, users do not have the luxury of being able to access the augmented ads at a time that suits them (such as the press ads run by Waitrose in 2011).

Despite the above concerns this ad has definitely got the agency talking today, we are always on the look-out for innovative ways to make our campagins stand out and many of us will be tuning in tonight with our phazers set to stun! Enjoy.

When will media planners start linking what with why?

It has been a bug bear of mine for nearly 30 years- almost the entire time I have worked in media- that there are very few complete media planners. Most fall into one of two groups, divided by the intellectual equivalent of the Grand Canyon.

There are the traditional “above the line” or communications planners. Focused on consumer insight they ape the anthropologists- spending hours intellectualising consumer motivations, and asking why a consumer might behave in a particular way. Have created their intellectual construct they rarely seek experimental data to prove that consumers actually did behave the way they predicated.

Across the Canyon we find the “below the line” or data planners. With their “my data is bigger than yours” datasets they can tell you to 5 decimal places what is happening in the world, but rarely why.

And its this latter group who are running the media mad house this week. Neilsen published their monthly online media usage figures for February on March 28^th. A harmless set of numbers that tell us how many unique visitors used the web per se, and then top ten sites within the major categories such as broadcast, entertainment. We learn that 41.7 million people went online during the month, and 8.5 million adults visited Sky.com. All very jolly.

But less so were the headlines that accompanied the release. “online numbers at lowest level for a year” “online uses down by nearly 1 million from January”.

No s**t Sherlock.  The shortest month of the year- 10% fewer hours of surfing than Janaury, and we are surprised when reach falls by 2.5%.  When, oh when will we manage to create a rounded media planner?

The Route to making outdoor more measurable

One of the main gripes about out of home advertising from agencies and advertisers alike is that it’s notoriously difficult to measure accurately, both in terms of number of impressions delivered and overall effectiveness. This week the industry took a significant step to address this with the relaunch of research body Postar as Route. Whilst Postar took advertising locations as its starting point, Route is a people-focused measuring system, incorporating GPS travel data taken from 28,000 individuals, who each carried a GPS meter for nine days.

 

The research was conducted over nearly 4 years and cost £19million; it created 19 billion GPS records for analysis and this will increase by a further 3.3 billion each year. Once movements were mapped, Route and its research partner Ipsos MediaCT started to calculate the number of people that would pass any of the 450,000 outdoor advertising ‘frames’ that cover the UK, while eye-tracking research was used to work out the likelihood that a passer-by would notice the frame.

 

According to Route this new tool will allow advertisers to know with much greater accuracy how many people see their outdoor campaigns on average, as well as further useful insights such as age, class, lifestyle and shopping habits. It will be possible to plan by town or to choose from one of 24 major conurbations or 14 BARB areas. It should allow us to more effectively plan outdoor campaigns around the specific routes that a given audience take. At MC&C, we already use tools such as IPA Touchpoints to map media consumption through the day, and we’re pleased to hear that this new research from Route will be connecting with this to improve the accuracy of this mapping.

 

The research has already thrown up some eye-catching figures, for example, the average person will make eye contact with 27 roadside posters and 14 bus ads each day. Even more incredibly, every time London commuters make a tube journey they will encounter an average of 74 ads! In the era of such broad exposure to media it inevitably becomes more and more important that we are able to target as accurately as possible, and as such Route should hopefully become a vital tool in how we plan out of home advertising in the future.

Are You Being Served? TV targeting joins the digital age

Although later than scheduled British Sky Broadcasting felt sufficiently confident to announce Sky AdSmart to the City recently.

AdSmart will deliver a specific commercial, within usual live broadcast streams, to a carefully targeted household based on the information provided by Sky Customers who have volunteered to share their personal data.

The service will be available across 8 Sky Channels (but not Sky News) and starts testing later this year  with 30-50 guinea pig brands with a view to launch fully in 2014.

Essentially Sky is introducing niche targeting to TV; minimising wastage and making campaigns more efficient in terms of reaching an absolute audience.

In fact the term ‘target audience’ seems woefully inadequate on reading Sky’s description of what it describes as ‘segmentation’;

‘Sky AdSmart allows precisely targeted TV buying, by combining a unique set of attributes to match the desired customer profile

Reading down the list of possible attributes it is difficult not to be impressed by the numbers;

16 Regions, 15 Cities
13 types - based on financial need, behavioural influence & preferences
15 Experian Mosaic segments of demograph and lifestyle including lifestage and age of kids
7 tiered predictor of disposable income with partners Experian

Regionality alone creates opportunities that will significantly change the way that we can plan and buy TV.

Sky estimates that the regional TV market is currently worth £800million and is dominated by ITV and, to a lesser extent, Channel 4 & Five. The ability to target large metropolitan areas suggests that TV will compete with regional Press, Cinema and Outdoor budgets too.

There are numerous product groups that are not on TV because it is too ‘mass market’.

Financial products such as Asset Management have always been the domain of Financial Press and Outdoor but could more effectively be reached through AdSmart in future. Advertising for Mortgages, Insurance and Savings can be served to the people who are most likely to purchase the product depending of their lifestage and income.

Luxury brands - from high performance cars to high fashion- steer clear of TV because it is too broad and ‘downmarket’ but ads can now be served to their more elite customers in their favourite programmes.

Brands may benefit by using their whole product range and serving a different ad to varying households. Sky uses Ford as an example of where lifestage may dictate whether an ad for a Fiesta or an SUV is served.

Most optimum use may be as an addition to a broader campaign, particularly where a secondary and more elusive audience is the target.

Of course niche targeting comes at a price. Sky is likely to trade a cost per impression, which will be at a premium to usual pricing. This move in itself could bring welcome change to the way TV airtime is traded. Advertisers are keener than ever to understand which half of their advertising works & AdSmart will have to prove its worth in terms of ROI.

The whole point of TV for some advertisers has always been its ability to reach a mass audience- not necessarily a niche one. So a fast food brand may have a buying audience of adults 1634 for example, but the target is ‘everyone’. FMCG brands use TV across the board to sell product to the whole population. Niche targeting does not appeal to everyone; wastage to some brands is additional value to others.

Once the Digital Switchover was complete many of the previous constraints on TV were removed. The technology behind AdSmart relies on a hard drive in the Sky HD Box.

Hence, Sky is not alone in driving more targeted TV ad serving.  YouView (jointly owned by the BBC, ITV & Channel 4) and Virgin Media are looking to create similar opportunities. Channel 4 are already using their database of 6 million registered users of 4OD to serve specifically targeted pre-rolls and this is common in the US with TiVo.

Sky is very much pioneering in terms of advertising in the live broadcast stream though and, should testing be successful, all of their competition will follow suit.

As advertiser insight has increased with the wider use of data TV has fallen short of the mark in terms of targeting. AdSmart will enable TV advertising to compete with the kind of relevant and personalised advertising that has fuelled the growth in Online spend in recent years.

Twitter launches “Vine” for our ever-diminishing attention spans

With the proliferation of short-form social media messages, online users’ ability to focus on a particular element of digital communications is rapidly decreasing. Twitter has responded to this trend by introducing their very own 6-second video messaging service, “Vine”.


This introduces a new and potentially very interesting media channel for online marketers, enabling them to think creatively and communicate with their base of followers in an entirely new way. Standard display advertising loops at around 15 seconds of animation so to try to conjure up an engaging ad in just six seconds is likely to be a challenge in which only the most intelligent of creative agencies can succeed.

For example, it opens up the possibility of creating entirely unique messaging, which standalone from other communications (see Diabetes UK – http://vine.co/v/b5tnVIVjt2M – who use the messages to thank donors), but help the brand to interact more personally with its customers.

The Vine activity could also be used for enhancing an existing campaign’s messaging, by integrating the video with other digital and offline ads. Dogs Trust has essentially replicated its offline and other online activity in their Vine ads (http://vine.co/v/b5UAMMaxdbY) adding credence and support to the overall campaign with an exciting additional channel.

Alternatively, there is the option of using the ads purely for viral effect, which can help to expose your brand to a wider audience than using digital campaigns could otherwise reach. A fairly straightforward yet emotionally engaging example of this can be found on Twitter’s own blog page in James Buckhouse’s video (http://vine.co/v/biTaEEwdq2n?1), which although lacking in any branded content demonstrates the level of absorption these short ads can produce.

Whilst the six-second limit may seem fairly constraining in terms of content you are able to include, the short, repetitive nature of the videos can actually play into the hands of the advertiser. Having to make your point in a short space of time encourages you to quickly get to the thrux of what you’re trying to say, and the fact that the point is repeated so rapidly can help to reinforce it in the minds of the customer.

It may be viewed as a bit of a gimmick, and there is every chance that advertisers feel this is too short a message to be able to convey anything meaningful, but it does offer the potential to add to the online marketer’s armoury, providing an alternative channel in which potential customers can interact with your brand. Just bear in mind, as with all other new channels which are introduced to the marketing sphere, that a rush of advertisers all doing exactly the same thing at its launch is likely to kill its effectiveness as quickly as it arises.

Shift to Mobile

We have had a good Christmas at MC&C. Many of our clients took advantage of consumer availability across the two week holiday to run heavy weight campaigns.  And almost without exception they were very successful.

Inevitably some were more successful than others, so in a compare and contrast session yesterday we looked for lessons.  And one jumped out at us.

Three campaigns stood out from the pack; two nearly twice as successful as expected and one some 75% below expectations.

And guess what - there’s a theme.

The two pack leaders were both totally focussed on a mobile call to action. “Do this, via SMS”

The laggard had no mobile response channel - just phone and web.

Now we have banged on about the growing importance of mobile before - our call is that circa 30% of total response can come via a mobile device and its net incremental response. But these results push the boundaries.

So we checked our ART™ database to establish benchmarks for 2011 as a whole and for calendar 2012. Not surprisingly we found that consumers are more likely to respond via mobile in 2012 than 2011. But the speed of change shocked us. The growth rate was more than 30% in just one year.

We are not suggesting that adding a mobile response channel to your business is a panacea that will cure all evils, but it does seem to be a welcome pick me up.  More on this at the end of the month when we devote our monthly seminar to the topic.