Social Marketing

YouTube announced its first-ever Spanish language YouTube Originals projects in development.

This was not your ordinary Facebook post — if there is such a thing. 

For one thing, it was long — almost 1,600 words. That’s longer than this column. Secondly, it was raw. It was written by somebody in deep pain who laid their soul bare for their entire network to see.  I barely knew this person, and I was given a look into the deepest and darkest part of their lives. The post told the story of the breakup of a marriage and a struggle with depression. It was a disturbing blow-by-blow chronicle of someone hitting the bottom.

When there’s gold stuck in the hills, you can bet your life there will always be a few rogues attracted to a new area alongside the hardworking prospectors. Influencer marketing is the latest incarnation of a well-trodden path of those who are acting legitimately rubbing shoulders with snake oil salesmen.

Recent surveys have highlighted growing unease among consumers about the power and possible political leanings of big technology companies. In the latest episode of eMarketer’s “Behind the Numbers” podcast, analyst Mark Dolliver joins us to dig into the data.

A couple of weeks ago I was at Cannes Festival of Creativity and was struck by an interesting divergence within the creative industry. On one hand we had brands trying to hack the cultural conversation and on the other we had brands using AI to personalize their ads. But could the two trends be mutually exclusive?  by Nigel Hollis

The ad industry duopoly of Google and Facebook may not be all-powerful, but it is still feared by many advertisers.

Technology experts and scholars have never been at a loss for concerns about the current and future impact of the internet.

You’ve implemented a social media strategy—but is it effective? Measuring the return on investment for social media programs often is difficult for marketers. While many businesses are increasing resources to different social platforms, some struggle to determine whether these investments are worth it. It’s hard to see how much revenue a Facebook post has brought in, or whether a tweet has increased your bottom line. Instead of focusing on likes, shares, and followers, marketers must find meaningful data that reveals whether their content is working.

“Search has moved far beyond the traditional search bar,” says Esteban Ribero, Senior Vice President, Planning and Insights, Performics.  “While consumers still ‘search and click,’ search is no longer a channel; it’s a behavior.”  Further, search has gone beyond just plain text.  “People are searching on their voice-activated assistants like Alexa; they’re searching via visual cues on channels like Pinterest,” he adds.  His advice for marketers is to “shift the thinking around search from a channel to a behavior,” so search becomes a behavioral tool that gives great insights in consumer intentions within exact moments.

Social marketing has matured to become a robust and integral part of the modern marketing mix. It is table stakes for almost any agency—with or without traditional roots—and is demanded by today’s always-on consumer.

Jarritos’ sales are growing on the GM side, it’s becoming more and more known and loved by English dominant consumers. More people are posting about it, talking about it on social and that’s when we noticed something; they were pronouncing it all wrong.

The World Cup will account for one in ten of every new ad dollars spent on advertising globally this year. That’s the takeaway from Zenith’s report this year, which predicts the tournament will add $2.4bn to global advertising this year.

Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the 2018 FIFA World Cup RussiaTM, and Google announced a partnership that will bring Telemundo’s Spanish-language World Cup content to Google and YouTube for soccer fans across the U.S.

Music and social networking seem like a natural fit, yet when these worlds have collided the results have been disappointing. In the latest episode of “Behind the Numbers,” we explore the reasons for those disappointments and contemplate what a successful music and social service might look like.

Affluent U.S. Hispanics Drive Daily Usage of Top Social Media Platforms

Google local media revenue — search and local advertising on YouTube — is now at $19 billion, according to BIA Advisory Services.  For those scoring at home, that is virtually the same number that collectively, local TV stations pulled in local advertising, around $20 billion or so in a given year.  That should send shivers down the spines of TV executives. But from their point of view, it is a mixed bag, and one that should include — if not give prominence to — retransmission revenue.

Digital has a growing share of total media investment for global brands, and rightfully so. Mobile usage in the U.S., for example, has skyrocketed to more than three hours per day, according to last year’s Mary Meeker report. Additionally, some industry onlookers claim that brands are now spending more than half of their media spend in the digital space.

According to Asian-Americans: Digital Lives and Growing Influence, a Nielsen report released, Asian-American consumers are growing faster than the general population and maintaining income and education rates higher than any other racial or ethnic group. Asian-Americans continue to make gains as tech-enabled influencers with unlimited potential. As the fastest growing ethnic group, Asian-Americans’ consumer buying power has grown exponentially to $986 billion, up 257% since 2000, versus 97% for the total U.S.

The other week I was involved in a little email exchange with my colleagues about the power of social influence. As usual I was getting boxed into the Luddite corner until I realize that what was worrying me was the apparent assumption that social influence was universal and all powerful. If so, I beg to differ.  by Nigel Hollis

Our 2018 compilation of research explains what’s helping and what’s hurting the Internet across five issues, from personal experience to global concerns.