7 Intriguing Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

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It’s been a notable week for digital marketing stats, with new studies, developing news and industry trends. Here are the seven items that caught our eye:

1. Apple is winning against the FBI in the court of public opinion 
The Apple-FBI dustup this week has struck a nerve with many people because it represents an unusual confluence of a popular consumer brand, privacy and terrorism. Apple CEO Tim Cook rejected a court order to disable the iPhone’s auto-erase function, which removes all data from the device after 10 failed attempts to break into it. The feds’ demand was related to a phone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino, Calif., shooter who gunned down 14 people on Dec. 2.

Some saw it as a risky branding move on the part of Cook and Apple, but when Vrge Analytics surveyed 600 people on Feb. 18 and 19, it found that 65 percent don’t believe Apple should be forced to unlock the shooter’s iPhone.

2. Advertisers are still lukewarm on podcasts
Advertisers are expected to spend $35.1 million on podcasts this year, says media agency ZenithOptimedia in The Wall Street Journal. Even though the format has exploded since Serial took off a little over a year ago, that figure represents just a 2 percent year-over-year increase.

3. City of the future
CityBridge plans to install at least 7,500 of its LinkNYC smart kiosks (and possibly as many as 10,000) around New York in the next few years, making Gotham one of the largest digital out-of-home networks in the world. Brands will be able to leverage the network with ads and interactive bells and whistles.

4. Is Periscope the key to your next gig?
Tim Menko and Ingmar Larsen are 30-year-old ad creatives in Amsterdam looking for full-time gigs in their adopted hometown as well as freelance work around the world. So earlier this week, they turned to livestreaming app Periscope to drum up interest in their talents. They reached their target audience—according to the duo, more than 100 people tuned in to the live presentation on their Periscope account (@MenkoLarsen) during the 35-minute presentation, with another 20 watching the replay during the 24 hours Periscope leaves clips online after the fact.

“It went really well,” said Menko “We got some great responses and are visiting three agencies in Amsterdam. Plus, a recruiter in London says he has got something for us, and we have scheduled in a Skype meeting [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][with him]. There was even an agency in Cape Town that would like to collaborate with us.”

5. Mobile commerce continues to soar
Bizrate, a division of Connexity, asked 9,142 online buyers in the U.S. and Canada about their device habits and learned that 73 percent use their smartphones to shop and that 21 percent use them to shop when they’re actually inside brick-and-mortar stores.

6. Latinos shop more on their smartphones
Hispanic shoppers are 36 percent more likely than non-Hispanics to use mobile devices to access digital shopping tools, per Epsilon’s recent survey of 2,500 consumers.

7. Danica reps Lyft
Lyft had Nascar star Danica Patrick pose as a driver for the ride-sharing service in a prank-style video, and it’s turned out to be a nice win for the brand. The clip, which you can watch below, has nearly 467,000 views in the past 30 hours on YouTube and Facebook.

H/T: Adweek

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Why Email Is Key To Maximizing Owned Media (And Assets) In Digital Marketing

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Every company has digital marketing challenges that are unique to their industry, their selling model (direct to consumer/wholesale/hybrid), their technology stack and their organizational structure. But acquiring first-party data to create a true model of customer journey is a struggle that persists across the board.

This post will focus on a topic that I believe is at the heart of a successful addressable marketing strategy: growing email and SMS lists.

More touches generally mean more responses, which is ultimately what we’re after. To be effective, you need to maximize data collection on your owned media.

An email address is the foundational digital currency that allows you to market to individuals, not just in email, but on social networks and through addressable display. It is, therefore, the most important permission to get.

As such, the number one rule is to ask for an email address at every direct customer touch point across all your owned media — point of sale, customer service, website and so on.

A Typical Scenario

If you look at most companies, you will find:

• Fewer than 5% of site visitors transact.

• A passive “signup for email” link exists somewhere on the home page. Some are more prominent than others, but they are often buried, especially if the company is not a retailer or publisher. In the best cases, there is a Lightbox that asks a user to sign up for email, but it usually doesn’t include any real value statement.

• Customer service doesn’t ask for an email address or verify the one on file if they already have it, unless completing a transaction (think travel).

• Point-of-sale systems will be somewhat dependent upon industry, but many companies don’t ask for any information at the point of sale.

• Many use remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) and retargeting cookies, which are great. But they’re still missing a huge opportunity to collect an email address, tie it to their web analytics package for analysis and later use it for segmentation.

The Resulting Potential Drawbacks

These methods can create a number of problems:

• You are not capturing as many email addresses as you could be by making some minor changes. This not only impacts your email program directly, but it also stifles your ability to create true addressability in other channels.

• You’re not rounding out your data set with other information, such as SMS, which means that you are limiting your ability to create a multi-channel journey for your prospects and customers. If you only have an email address or a cookie, then it is difficult to create an experience across multiple channels.

• You are not optimizing your search bidding if you’re not factoring in that extra value created when people provide their email address.

What To Do

Here’s what you should be doing:

• Actively ask for a mobile number (for SMS) and an email address when visitors come to your site, and clearly state the benefits of providing them. Don’t wait for them to find your link or text box somewhere on the page. (Tip: Make it easy for them to get out of the Lightbox on desktop and mobile. Test this yourself.)

As with many tactics, there are ways to do this well. Immediately hitting someone upon entrance with a value-less signup message and no easy way to get out of the Lightbox will likely drive up your bounce rate.

But if you can improve the Lightbox timing (test delays) and the relevancy of the signup value statement based on information gathered when the person enters the site (e.g., search term), you should see good results and little to no impact on your bounce rate.

• Ask again differently if they dismiss the first Lightbox. Let people browse before asking again, but leverage technologies that incorporate browsing behavior into the message.

So if a visitor is looking at product A, product A can be featured in the Lightbox with a customized message that asks for email to learn more about that product. This tactic can easily help you double your email signup rates.

• Create a simple web application for your customer service agents to enter emails if your current system doesn’t make it easy. When customers and prospects call in, there is a capability to capture an email address and what they called about.

Almost every email service provider (ESP) can be integrated into something like this. It may not be perfect compared with a full platform, but at least you are capturing email addresses.

• Constantly ensure your customer data is current. Leverage the post-login experience to get updated email addresses and SMS information. When people log in to your site, check to see if you have an email address for that person, if it’s valid and if people are responding.

When a person logs in, ask for an updated email address or SMS number if he or she isn’t responding to email, you don’t have one on file, the one you have has been deemed invalid or the person has unsubscribed.

Your ESP has this data. The question is whether or not you can leverage it fast enough. But the rewards are that you have more complete information on your best customers — the ones who are using your site.

Final Thoughts

When people come to your site, a retargeting cookie is vital but it’s critical to create addressability and, if possible, connect your known and anonymous data for greater segmentation and personalization.

It’s important to ask for an email address, at the very least, if not SMS permission. Once you have these, you have the ability to connect with key people and segments across multiple media.

This gives you the ability to leverage most marketing clouds to the fullest. But incorporate the information visitors give you in a smooth way, not in a creepy, in-your-face way. Stay classy!

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H/T: Marketing Land.

Google: 82% Of Super Bowl Ad Searches Happened On Mobile, Up From 70%

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Pity the Super Bowl advertisers that didn’t take full advantage of mobile search this year. According to Google, 82 percent of TV ad-driven searches during the Super Bowl happened on smartphones. That’s a 12-point jump from last year, when 70 percent of Super Bowl ad-related searches across Google and YouTube derived from phones.

During this year’s game, just 11 percent of searches related to ads aired during the big game happened on desktop/laptop, and seven percent occurred on tablets.

Overall, the ads drove more than 7.5 million incremental searches during the Broncos-Panthers game, according to Google. That’s 40 percent higher than the lift last year’s Super Bowl advertisers saw in search.

Searches driven by Super Bowl TV ads were at their highest levels during the first two quarters of this year’s match-up. Ads-related searches fell in the second half of the game, in which the score remained relatively tight. Google says this trend reflects what happened during last year’s close game.

google-super-bowl-ad-searches-by-quarter

That contrasts with 2014, when audiences seemingly grew bored when the Seahawks dominated the Broncos, winning 43–8, and searches for ad content rose in the second half of the game.

Looking at the incremental lift Super Bowl advertisers received in brand-related searches on across Google and YouTube, Audi came out on top with its “Commander” ad. In fact, automotive brands dominated the chart. Four of the top five ads driving lift in brand search were from automotive manufacturers: Audi, Acura, Honda and Kia. Universal Studios’ ad for the new Jason Bourne movie rounded out the top five.

most-searched-brands-google-super-bowl

Google also released a set of Google Trends data related to the Super Bowl. While the Broncos dominated the Panthers in search most days leading up to the big game, Carolina actually held sway throughout most of the actual game — that is, until the Broncos walked away with the win

H/T Search Engine Land

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Here Are 9 Intriguing Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

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Digital marketing stats in the past week have been all about Facebook, the Super Bowl and the 2016 election, with a few other subjects sprinkled in. Check out the nine data points that caught our eye:

1. Social video continues to explode
Tucked into Facebook’s myriad of impressive numbers that came out in its 2015 Q4 earnings report yesterday was this nugget: There are roughly 100 million video views every day on the platform.

2. Apartments.com finds ‘Super’ success
None of the Super Bowl videos appear to be going crazy-viral so far. But Apartments.com’s first Big Game campaign is off to a good start—since launching its teaser clip on Wednesday, it has garnered 370,000 YouTube views.

3. The mobile election 
Sixty-seven percent of Hispanics and 60 percent of black voters visit political sites on mobile devices, compared with 49 percent of voters overall, per a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

4. Constantly looking at the device
Millennials unlock their phones 200 times a day, while the rest of us do so 150 times every 24 hours. And that’s why lock-screen advertising company Unlockd is attracting brands such as Levi’s, Starbucks and Hulu as well as investors like News Corp. co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch.

5. Smartphone and tablet search ruled in Q4
Mobile accounted for 52 percent of Google clicks (including ads and organic) in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to Merkle/RKG’s quarterly report.

6. Data-breached companies are asking for it
Nonprofit security and privacy watchdog group Online Trust Alliance (OTA) said 91 percent of data breaches in the first part of 2015 could have been avoided if the affected companies had done their technical due diligence.

7. Facebook goes native
According to Facebook, native formats now make up more than 80 percent of impressions through its ad network (known as the Facebook Audience Network) and perform as much as seven times better than standard banner formats. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has seen a fivefold increase in the number of publishers offering native ads year over year.

8. Clinton vs. Sanders on social
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has more than 2.5 million Facebook fans, besting rival Hillary Clinton’s 2.2 million. But Clinton has 5.24 million Twitter followers, easily beating Sanders (1.24 million) on the microblogging site. Meanwhile, they are generally even on Instagram—Hillary has 762,000 followers, edging Bernie, who has 635,000.

9. Trump and Cruz—the livestreaming battle
On the other side of the aisle, it’s interesting to see GOP frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz using Facebook’s new livestreaming feature. The moves seem wise considering Trump has almost 5.5 million fans on the site, and Cruz has 1.8 million fans. Trump, meanwhile, has 198,000 followers on Periscope to Cruz’s 25,000 on the livestreaming app.

H/T: Adweek Gettyimages.