Will UGC and Marketing Mix?

Ads may not be the best tactic.

The US trails emerging markets such as China, Brazil and Russia in the adoption of activities including blogging, social networking and video-sharing, according to new Universal McCann data presented at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:think 2008 conference.

The agency said that China had already passed the US in the number of people starting their own blogs, at 43 million compared to 26.4 million in the US. Online social network membership in countries such as Brazil, Russia, Taiwan and Mexico was said to be growing at more than 70% annually, compared with less than 49% in the US.

“We tend to think of ourselves (in the US) as leaders, but we’re just catching up with the rest of the world,” said Graeme Hutton, senior vice president at Universal McCann. “The markets that are leading don’t have the same panoply of media, so they leapfrog ahead.”

In the US, the fastest-growing user-generated content categories since the start of 2008 were watching online video, downloading podcasts, and subscribing to an RSS feed.

As for other new media, Mr. Hutton said that social networks were not necessarily a great new venue for traditional ads.

For now, he said that “it’s really about promotions, sponsorships, and bringing in different forms of participation rather than trying to do classic advertising.”

Even if advertising in particular doesn’t end up as the main marketing tactic for user-generated content, the content’s popularity is likely to keep marketers interested.

For instance, user-generated online video views continue to grow by about 50% annually, according to recent Accustream iMedia Research data.

eMarketer estimates that 39% of online video viewers watch user-generated videos at least once a month. That’s more than watch full episodes of TV online.

The same percentage of respondents to a December 2007 ChoiceStream study said they watched user-generated video on devices other than television sets, compared with about two-thirds who said they watched professionally-produced content.

While UGC usage continues to rise, marketers are still feeling out the best way to use the medium. Most user-generated videos on YouTube still have no advertising, but that doesn’t mean that other tactics won’t be a good match for homegrown content.

Courtesy of http://www.emarketer.com

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