Social media data Archives - Page 6 of 8

April 17, 2012

Facebook CPMs Climb Despite Falling Clicks

Click-through rates on Facebook are going down even as the cost of advertising on the dominant social network continues to rise. Average CPM rates for non-premium display ads on Facebook in the first quarter are up 41% from a year ago, and up 15% from the fourth quarter of 2011. At the same time, click-through rates dropped 8% from the prior quarter.

The new findings from social media marketing firm TBG Digital are based on an analysis of 268 billion Marketplace ad impressions served on Facebook across five major markets: the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Canada. (The firm did not disclose the actual value of ad rates.) Cost-per-click rates on Facebook rose even faster than CPMs, increasing 25% over the last quarter.

Underscoring that point, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell that client spending on Facebook advertising would double to about $400 million this year.

A separate forecast by Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group released last week takes a more measured view, estimating that Facebook’s ad revenue will increase about 30% overall in 2012 from $3.1 billion last year.

Still, how does TBG explain ad rates continuing to climb on Facebook while click rates slip?

April 17, 2012

How Customers Can Rally Your Troops

How did a five-minute meeting motivate university fundraisers to increase their weekly productivity by 400%? How did a photograph drive radiologists to improve the accuracy of their diagnostic findings by 46%?

Was it managers who inspired such enormous results? Perhaps they gave an amazing speech or set clearer goals or tracked performance more carefully. In fact, in both situations, managers were not the catalysts. They did not assume that they alone had to bear the burden of motivating employees with inspiring messages. Instead, they tapped in to a powerful force that encouraged workers to go the extra mile. They outsourced inspiration to those who were better suited to the job.

A growing body of research shows that end users—customers, clients, patients, and others who benefit from a company’s products and services—are surprisingly effective in motivating people to work harder, smarter, and more productively.

A brief visit from a student who had received a scholarship motivated the fundraisers to increase their efforts. A photograph of a patient they had never met inspired the radiologists to read X-rays more accurately. By serving as tangible proof of the consequences and value of employees’ efforts, end users such as these can be important allies for leaders in motivating and inspiring their workforces.

Outsourcing inspiration to end users focuses employees’ attention squarely on the ultimate impact of their products and services.

April 11, 2012

Consumer Trust In Traditional Media Ads Fall, Confidence In Mobile, Social And Online Rise

Word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews, either from someone they know or a stranger’s opinions online, are the most trusted sources of information for buying decisions, according to the latest Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising report, The findings speak highly for information gathered through social media or other forms of user-generated content.

Meanwhile, though traditional paid media still are trusted by a great number of consumers, their influence is on the decline. Nearly half of consumers around the world say the trust ads on TV (47%), in magazines (47%) and in newspapers (46%), but those numbers dropped by 24%, 20% and 25% respectively, in a relatively short period of time — between 2009 and 2011.

April 11, 2012

Google + Gets a Facelift and New Features

With over 170 Million registered users but dismal usage stats, Google + was in need of CPR

Google just announced a major redesign of Google+ “to make the social network “more functional and flexible.”

According to the official Google blog, the redesign is part of its plan to make Google+ easier to use.

“By focusing on you, the people you care about and the stuff you’re into, we’re going to continue upgrading all the features you already know and love—from Search and Maps to Gmail and YouTube,” says Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra in the blog post. “With today’s foundational changes, we can move even faster—toward a simpler, more beautiful Google.”

It looks like Google took a hint from critics and finally recognized that they did not need to reinvent the wheel just make it better. Did they succeed, it’s a little early to say since the new look and features are being deployed as we speak but we can already see that the home page looks pretty familiar, actually, a lot like a mix of the pre “Timeline” Facebook and the new Facebook interface.

Every Facebook redesign draws a lot of criticism and discontent, but will that be enough to breathe life in Google + and increase time spent on the site, which has been seriously lagging ( a few minutes a month, versus Facebook 7+ hours) and recent CNet statistics showing that March time spent increase 27% over February do little to close the gap.

The redesign does not seem to address the botched integration of Google’s other services particularly when it comes to YouTube, and Picasa

March 30, 2012March 30, 2012

Top B2B Firms Gaining 230% More Leads via Social Media Than Peers

Best-in-Class B2B companies generate on average 17% of their leads from social media channels, roughly 230% more marketing-generated leads than other companies (5%), according to a new report by Aberdeen Group, which examines the social marketing strategies of top-performing B2B companies.

In the new report, titled “B2B Social Meeting Marketing: Are We There Yet,” Aberdeen uses four key performance criteria to distinguish the Best-in-Class (top 20% of aggregate performers) from the Industry Average (middle 50%) and Laggard (bottom 30%) organizations.

The top 20% of companies (i.e., Best-in-Class) have achieved the following performance metrics:

Average annual company revenue growth of 20%, compared with 8% for Industry Average and -3% for Laggard firms.
10% average year-over-year improvement of marketing leads resulting in closed business, compared with 3% for the Industry Average and -1% for Laggard firms.
44% of sales-forecasted pipeline generated by marketing, compared with 10% for Industry Average and 5% for Laggard firms.
73% annual customer retention rate, compared with 27% for Industry Average and 7% for Laggard firms.

Overall, 84% of all surveyed B2B companies are using social marketing in some form.

However, Best-in-Class companies are more likely to use social media primarily for lead-generation purposes, and more likely to integrate social marketing with other core channels and processes, the study found.

March 20, 2012March 22, 2012

Consumers Prefer Reading News From Aggregators

The Pew Research Center has come out with a massive new report on the state of media as part of its Project for Excellence in Journalism, and it comes to a number of conclusions about where the industry stands—including the fact that Twitter and Facebook are still driving a fairly small amount of traffic to media outlets (although this segment is growing quickly) and that such tech giants as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft control almost 70 percent of online advertising. But one other thing that becomes clear from the Pew report is just how big a role aggregators of all kinds—both human and machine-powered—are playing in news consumption.

Despite the growing evidence to the contrary, many newspaper companies and other traditional media outlets still seem to think the vast majority of their audience comes to them directly and prefers to read their content above all other sources. More than anything else, this is the core philosophy behind the rise of paywalls—which more and more papers are implementing—and also the millions of dollars media companies have poured into developing iPad apps and other walled-garden-style approaches to news delivery. The assumption is that readers will want only the content that comes from that specific outlet.

March 16, 2012

Social media is about social science not technology.

A Pivot study conducted in 2011, asked brand managers and marketers if they had a clear picture of who their Social Consumer is. An astounding 77 percent said yes.

When asked specifically if respondent organizations asked Social Consumers what they expect from engagement, most responded, “No.” This is intriguing because we have 77 percent of organizations who say they know what their Social Consumers want, but 53 percent haven’t really asked. They do not—cannot—really know how to deliver value in social and mobile networks. On the other hand, 35 percent did note that they asked Social Consumers about their expectations.

February 28, 2012February 28, 2012

Google + a virtual ghost town?

Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with Facebook. PC users spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between last September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook.

It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there.

Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn’t have data on mobile usage.

February 13, 2012February 13, 2012

What happens to your online profile when you’re gone?

Three Facebook users die every minute for a total of 1.78 million Facebook users in 2011, what is the future of your digital self?

You might not know what happens when you die but you can control what happens online!

You are filling the internet with status updates, image and video creating new digital dilemmas such as:

Whether you want to live forever online?
How to protect your privacy after death?
How to maintain your digital legacy?
Who to appoint as your digital executor?
Whether You Would Want to Be Digitally Resurrected

Do you know the death policies of all your online accounts?