Consumers in the UK are mostly supportive of online advertising, with a majority recognising its importance to supporting free websites and content.

The IAB, the trade body, ValueClick, the advertising company, and Kantar Media, the research firm, polled 2,000 people, 61% of which agreed a lot of digital material would “disappear” without ads.

A further 52% were “happy” to see commercial messages on the net because they funded services and content which could therefore be enjoyed at little or no cost.

Only one out of every ten respondents displayed a willingness to pay for access to the same services and material if this meant they were not exposed to advertising.

Elsewhere, 59% of adults would rather see fewer ads with increased relevancy than a greater amount of less targeted alternatives, and 55% expressed a preference for more personalised communications from brands.

More broadly, 45% of interviewees aspired to control the type of internet advertising they saw, while 40% wanted to access any data being shared about them, and 36% desired information about the organisation showing them an ad.

Privacy is an issue of wider importance, cited as a matter of concern by 62% of consumers. An even more substantial 67% of contributors were confident they knew how to protect their online data.

As an example, half of the individuals surveyed had deleted cookies from their computer at some point in the last six months, and one in five did so each week.

Despite this, some confusion existed over the purpose of cookies; while 64% of the panel claimed to know what these were, just 57% actually identified the correct definition.

Overall, however, a relatively modest 19% of the sample failed to take any steps in an effort to manage their internet privacy.

Another 61% of participants stated that the net helped them live more cheaply, 46% thought web access should be a human right, and 42% would feel like a “second class citizen” if they could not log on.

Source: Warc.com

When one looks at social media, today it seems more appropriate to take gender into consideration than age. The digital landscape seems to have eliminated generational boundaries, but how do the genders compete in this space?

After looking at a recent research report published by Nielsen, it’s glaringly obvious that women are making their mark and staking their claim in what used to be considered a male driven territory.

A force to be reckoned with

Looking at the numbers, it seems that women have a tendency to engage more than men. But that should have been obvious considering their heightened sense of emotional capacity. Think that’s just being feminist? Well, have a look at the stats:

1. Brand following Women are 18% more likely than to follow a brand on Facebook or other social media sites. In contrast, men are 21% less likely to do so.

2. Traditional media conversions to online purchases Women are 12% more likely to purchase a product featured on TV online.

3. Online presence Six percent of women are more likely to create at least one online profile compared to men who are seven percent less likely to have done so.

4.Blog profiles Women are eight percent more likely to create a personal blog, while men are nine percent less likely to do so.

5. Social media activity 65% of women use social media at least once a week, while only 51% of men do the same.

6. Facebook updates On average, women update their status up to 11 times per week, where men are only likely to have up to six updates per week.

Looking at the figures, you can see that it would be foolhardy deny that women have become a force to be reckoned with online.

Although women have been known to be the key decision makers in many purchasing trends within traditional media, it appears that they are becoming a lot more influential online. Perhaps marketers need to consider this as they go forward and develop social media marking strategies. In fact, research company Gartner reckons that tech firms need to hire more women in high-powered positions if they are to take advantage of this very trend.

Fish where the fish are

The key thing about women having such a predominant presence online is not just that they are more likely to purchase online, they’re more likely than men to be online. As is the case in the real world, they are more likely to talk to others, share their opinions, and write a blog about it. All online. Women today have a strong focus on creating an online presence for themselves and this generally encompasses using a number of different social media and digital platforms.

Globally, women spend on average two hours more than men online each month according to a 2010 ComScore study, and the Neilson report shows that the they are a lot better at multitasking than their male counterparts. Something to bear in mind before investing millions into you next TV ad.

Source: Memeburn

Pity the poor banner. Maligned by millions and attacked by the very people whose paychecks they (largely) make possible, the banner is perhaps the most criticized little workhorse in our culture.

But do banners let our harsh words affect their self esteem? No. Banners proudly hold their ground — shrinking for no one. They know that other people’s opinions of them are none of their business. They know that, like the periplaneta americana, they will be here long after their detractors have returned to ashes and dust. Perhaps with little smirks on their faces as their last attackers return to the earth.

Why can the little banner rest easy knowing that it will get the last eight-second (max) laugh? Because no matter how much we poseurs pretend to despise them, they serve a critical purpose in the internet environment — and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Why can these quietly smug little messages be so certain that their future is bright? Let’s take a look at five reasons.

Effectiveness

Banners work — hard, in fact. People wax philosophic about banner blindness. They point to remarkably small click rates and studies that suggest that large numbers of people don’t interact with them.

But empirical evidence proves that they work plenty hard. There are lots of studies that demonstrate their efficacy. I’ll confine this discussion to just one. The IAB did a study several years ago that demonstrated a broad range of positive impacts from banner ads. Fielded across 12 leading websites with 16,758 respondents, the study demonstrated significantly strong impacts on awareness, brand measures, and purchase.

Further, the in-market experience of thousands — hundreds of thousands of advertisers — also proves their effectiveness. Digital is arguably the most accountable media available. And every year, more companies spend more money on banners. Why? Because they deliver against concrete business objectives. The results and reporting show this over and over again.

Banners work well despite serving in an environment with remarkable clutter. It’s not at all unusual for there to be 12 banners on a page — pages they might also share with video players, articles, and other forms of content. Despite this plethora of distractions, banners continue to deliver cost effective means to drive sales, awareness, and brand perceptions. Would they work better in a less cluttered page? Probably. But they do their jobs even in environments filled with myriad distractions.

Necessary evils

They’re like death and taxes — inevitable. Not every ad can explode on a screen in expanderiffic intrusiveness. Multiple interstitials between every page wouldn’t make for much of a consumer experience. If you accept that it is unrealistic to expect consumers to seek out all of the marketing experiences necessary to keep the economy going — if you accept that we need loads of revenue to keep the lights on at content sites — then ads on pages are going to be part of the web experience for years to come.

Am I suggesting that they are better than rich, involving, multimedia experience that consumers actively seek? For some brands, yes. Not every communication challenge requires depth. And most brands cannot afford to do everything with bells and whistles.

Banners are limited in their ability to communicate complicated stories. But for many companies and brands, they are the most cost-effective means of delivering a graphical message. Publishers will continue to leverage them as a means of monetizing pages in lieu of spawning foreground experiences every time the user moves a mouse over text or a photo or another page element.

Hey, if you are a brand that can afford to do everything rich and big and bold, fantastic. Knock yourself out. But in order to monetize the hundreds of millions of pages of content out there, we need a standardized, simple-to-execute solution that doesn’t totally tick consumers off.

Revenue and technology advances

Banners are marvelous foot soldiers in the battle for revenue. They deliver great results in direct response programs, which continue to comprise fully half of digital advertising. While the click and interaction rates for banners have always been rather low, so too are their typical prices.

Premium publications can command high CPMs precisely because banners on their sites deliver results that warrant these costs. But the even bigger story is that the vast majority of banners sell for remarkably low CPMs. These low rates more than make up for the small response rates they spawn. Further, when the view-through impacts are computed, the value per dollar spent on banners is even more apparent.

Finally, the advent of affordable attribution analyses is demonstrating that banners are even more powerful components of direct-response programs, helping to drive far more sales than can be directly attributed to them through click-through analysis.

They just keep getting smarter

Minimally targeted dirt cheap tonnage will probably play an important role for lots of brands for the foreseeable future. But the explosion in available targeting data, coupled with exchange-based purchasing platforms for these targeting aids, has transformed the banner business into a world in which highly refined messages can be delivered to specific audience segments cost effectively and with minimal waste.

That’s a key way banners have gotten smarter on the back end. On the front end, new technologies have dramatically expanded the range of capabilities and interactions possible within the confines of these small commercial spaces. Video, dynamic content, multiple hotspots, and more — these elements all drive more and different interactions amid declining third-party technology costs.

A sound business model

It doesn’t matter that people don’t like them: You’d be hard pressed to find a consumer who looked forward to seeing more banners as he or she surfed the web. But when push comes to shove, consumer preference doesn’t matter much here. Banners are providing a huge portion of the revenue for content creators online. And a decent web designer can create templates and pages where banners have noticing value but don’t drive viewers off.

Hey, someone has to pay for all this content and access, and banners appear to be a way to balance the need for revenue with consumers’ reluctance to pay for content. People understand the need for ads and revenue. While they may not relish the experience of seeing these ads, they understand that, without them, a lot of the content they enjoy would disappear.

For the foreseeable future, there appears to be no alternative to these little buggers.

Source: iMedia Connection

Continuing to lose face among marketers, new research shows that clicks and total impressions are far from the best way to measure online conversions.

Rather, new findings from comScore and Pretarget — both of which market ad targeting services — show a stronger correlation between ad “viewability” and hover time, and conversion rates.

The findings indicate that the traditional way of buying mass impressions and hoping for conversions, i.e., “spray and pray,” is not the most effective approach, according to Kirby Winfield, senior vice president, corporate development at comScore.

“It once again demonstrates the perils of relying on click-throughs for measuring the performance of display ad campaigns, with this metric showing virtually zero correlation with total conversions,” Winfield said.

To arrive at these initial findings, the “intent targeting” specialists at Pretarget analyzed 263 million impressions over nine months across 18 advertisers in numerous verticals. Pretarget then used comScore validated Campaign Essentials to collect “viewability,” and hover data and a DSP to collect click and cookie-based conversion data.

Pretarget performed a Pearson correlation analysis of the data, including gross impressions, “views” — 75% of ad within screen, either above the fold or after scrolling — time in-view, hover/engagements and total hover/engagement time, clicks and conversions.

“This study shows why other non-click metrics of engagement, such as interaction or hovering, may be much more important in evaluating campaign performance than the click ever was,” Winfield added. “It’s time to start measuring the impact of campaigns using metrics that really matter, not just the ones that are most easily measured.”

According to Winfield, traditional display ad impression measurement and reporting simply verifies the number of ads that were sent by an ad server to a user’s browser. For a variety of reasons, this way of counting impressions does not ensure that the ad was ever rendered within a browser.

In addition, ads can load below the fold, which means that most users will probably never see the ad unless they scroll down. In the worst cases, some ads load within 1×1 pixels and therefore never render as viewable impressions.

The results showed that ad hover/interaction (correlation = 0.49) and viewable impressions (correlation = 0.35) had the highest correlation with conversion, while gross impressions (correlation = 0.17) was significantly lower.

Perhaps most interestingly, clicks (correlation = 0.01) had the lowest correlation with conversion, far under-performing all other metrics analyzed in the study. These findings suggest that advertisers and media planners ought to break their addiction to clicks and instead look to more meaningful metrics for evaluating campaign performance.

The Pretarget analysis supports several third-party studies with consistent conclusions, Winfield noted.

MediaMind “2009 Benchmark Report” released in July 2010 found that “on average, increasing Dwell [hover] from 5% to 15%, increases conversion rate by 45%, from 0.4% to 0.6%.” Also of note, Casale Media’s 2011 “Ad Visibility Report,” found that “ads appearing above the fold were 6.7x more effective at generating conversions than those appearing below the fold.”

Pretarget previously found that approximately 89% of display ads on its network load above the fold or appear after a user scrolls down, creating an opportunity for a user to see the banner.

Not only are consumers watching television on multiple screens, they are also more likely to make a purchase and remember a brand when an ad is served across TVs, tablets and smartphones, according to a new study from the Nielsen Co.

Nielsen worked with mobile video company AdColony and ad agency Ignited to conduct the “CrossPlatform Video Ad Effectiveness” study, which looked at how consumers interact with second and third screen-advertising while watching TV.  The study measured consumers’ reactions to the Universal Pictures’ film “Contraband.”

“Both tablets and smartphones performed very well independently of each other when looking at recall of the film for the target advertisement indicating a strong fit for the ad on both platforms in general,” said Vineet Pathak, executive director  of strategic marketing sciences at Nielsen, New York.

“However, the true value lies in the synergistic effect of running a campaign on both devices when complementing TV media,” he said.

Mobile recall
The study sampled 400 consumers who watched a 30-minute TV show. During the show, a 15-second ad for Contraband ran both on-air and on iPhones and iPads that the respondents were given.

Eighteen percent of consumers surveyed said that they were interested in buying tickets to Contraband after seeing only the TV ads. However, 31 percent of consumers said they were interested in buying tickets after seeing the ad across TV, smartphone and tablet mediums – indicating a 72 percent increase.

Additionally, the mobile portion of the test helped consumers remember the ad. Fifty-five percent of TV-only consumers remembered seeing the ad afterwards compared to 93 percent of users who saw the ad on TV, smartphone and tablet platforms. This marks a 69 percent increase and points to the effectiveness of using mobile video ads as a second or third screen for advertisers.

Due to the small size of mobile devices compared to TV screens, mobile video has the potential to be a powerful way to drive an advertiser’s message.

Not only are consumers more likely to remember an ad when shown on TV and mobile mediums, they are also more likely to act on it, per the study.

Twenty-six percent of consumers who watched the ad on TV, smartphone and tablet screens said they were interested in searching online for more information about the movie versus only four percent of TV-only viewers.

The study also found that the TV, smartphone and tablet sample were 2.6 times more effective for increasing recommendations for the film. Ten percent of TV-only viewers said they were likely to recommend the film to family or friends compared to 26 percent of TV, smartphone and tablet users.

For advertisers, the study is proof that mobile marketers need to have an ironed-out strategy for both their advertising and search efforts when using mobile as a second screen.

Dual-screen viewers
Although using mobile video advertising in general can be effective, the study points to the increased power in using mobile with TV to get the most out of a campaign.

However, it is important that the mobile portion of the campaign gives users something additional that they cannot get elsewhere.

For example, the Contraband ad included links to let users find out more about the film or replay the trailer.

The study also rides on similar research that points to consumers watching video content on multiple devices.

Last year, Nielsen found that 40 percent of mobile device users in the United States watch TV on multiple screens (see story).

“The benefits of multi-screen advertising are clear,” said Will Kassoy, CEO of AdColony, Los Angeles.

“This study shows that mobile video drives impact and consumer demand,” he said.

“But, note that all mobile video is created equal  – brand lift and other impact metrics will not be realized if the multiscreen video ad campaigns are not executed quickly, intelligently and creatively.”

Source:  Mobile Commerce Daily

Africa has the fastest growing internet usage in the world
Internet growth has increased at over 2 500% between 2000 and 2011, largely driven by incredible growth in mobile phone use (695-million mobile subscriptions in Africa, according to the latest GSMA statistics). But with around 12% penetration, Sub-Saharan countries still have some of the lowest internet penetrations in the world and internet growth is likely to continue growing fast, particularly with smarter, more affordable and more intuitive phones becoming more accessible and with cheaper data costs

Africa is a youthful continent and so internet users are young
At least two out of every five people are under the age of 14 years in most Sub-Saharan countries according to the CIA factbook. This has implications on how much more mobile can realistically grow in the short term and on what the priorities for internet use should be (think education and access to knowledge). It also means a lot of new people coming online each year for the first time. One survey found that 43% of internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa are aged between 16 and 24 years, compared to a global average of 27% (the survey excluded people under 16 years). The main message for anyone looking to push anything here is that online engagement needs to be focused on a youthful audience.

The internet is increasingly mobile
Four out of five internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa access the internet via mobile phone, similarly, three quarters of people say they would be happy to do all their internet surfing via mobile phone. The internet will increasingly be dominated by mobile phone access, and marketers need to prioritise consumer interaction via this channel and optimise their internet experience for mobile phone.

The internet is social
Four out of five internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa use Facebook to connect to each other. In fact, for many, social networking is their most important online activity, with 58% saying it trumps everything else. Any communication strategy has to have social networking as a key element to connect and leverage online word of mouth and go viral.

But, internet use beyond social networking is somewhat limited
The cost of internet access is still very high for most internet users, meaning they don’t experiment or try out new things very much. While this is partially due to inexperience, with many internet users doing so for the first time, costs and download speeds limit use of the internet to its full extent, particularly video streaming, with only 13% watching online video on a weekly basis, compared to 62% globally.

Although video is forecast to be the dominant use of the internet in the future, it still has a way to go in Sub-Saharan Africa. Other comparisons include 45% of Sub-Saharan Africans using Google search versus 75% globally, 48% downloading Apps vs. 66% globally, 47% rating or “liking” something vs. 71% globally, 26% visiting an online news site vs. 75% globally. In terms of transactions, use of the internet is even lower with only 9 percent paying bills online vs. 60% globally and only 12% accessing their bank account online vs. 65% globally.

As such, brands don’t feature much, yet…
But, a third of internet users have searched online after seeing an ad on TV. While this is still low compared to Global average of 73%, it is encouraging and speaks to the need to integrate traditional media with online in the African context, making it relevant to the audience.

Brands still have a long way to go in interacting with the online audience in Sub-Saharan Africa, with only 10 percent of internet users having done pre-purchase browsing, compared to 37% globally and only two percent having done any online shopping, compared to 24% globally. In addition, 61% have never clicked on an ad banner and 66% have never clicked on a sponsored link. Part of the reason for this is that people are accessing the internet via a mobile device and the online environment is thus different, and generally not optimized for mobile. While just under a quarter of social network users have befriended brands, the encouraging news is that 70% of internet users say that social networks are a good place to learn about products and brands — so the opportunity is there, brands are just not utilizing the mobile internet effectively yet, or making it locally relevant.

So, if marketers don’t get their act together they will get left behind
The “mobile” internet will very soon overtake TV as the primary media channel in Sub-Saharan Africa and marketers can no longer wait to make “Digital” central to their brand communication strategy. While TV and radio still feature large in terms of media consumption, globally, the internet has passed them and Sub-Saharan Africa is not far behind.

But remember, Africa is diverse, and one size doesn’t fit all
While the numbers provided above are generalize to the Sub-Saharan African context and the general trends are quite similar, each country has followed its own “digital” development path and is on a slightly different journey. Marketers need to know and understand the individual markets in which they wish to operate and tailor their digital strategies to suit the needs of the local audience. Above all, making it locally relevant and providing localised content is key.

Source: Memeburn.com

Consumers value videos that educate, demonstrate

Product videos are proving their utility to consumers on the hunt for information online. According to a November 2011 study by the e-tailing group and Invodo, US consumers who encountered product videos on websites watched them 60% of the time. And 36% of respondents said they had watched five or more product videos on brand or retail websites over the preceding three months.

Retailers should not worry that videos packed with information will drive customers with short attention spans off—in fact, the survey found the opposite to be true. Fully 85% of those polled said they would watch a video that educated them about a product they were interested in for at least 1 minute; 87% said they would spend the same amount of time watching a video that included a demonstration. However, the percentage of customers willing to spend a minute watching a video that specifically lacked a demonstration dropped to 65%.

Videos with useful content also led to repeat viewings, according to the survey. Two-thirds of respondents said they would watch videos containing large amounts of information about a product several times before deciding whether to buy it. Forty-seven percent of consumers also equated videos with high production values with being more reliable, according to the survey. And good videos had the effect of increasing consumer engagement among 53% of those surveyed.

The poll found that a large number of consumers were also willing to watch product videos on platforms other than retail websites. Forty-seven percent of respondents have viewed product videos on YouTube at least sometimes, while 39% of those polled have done the same on Facebook. The e-tailing group also examined 100 companies and found that almost three-quarters of those with a Facebook presence used video to aid F-commerce efforts.

Retailers’ use of online video is increasing as consumers are becoming more likely to watch clips online. eMarketer estimates that nearly 170 million Americans will watch videos online this year—more than half the total population. The most growth in online video viewing over the next several years will come from currently underpenetrated audiences like seniors, a population that’s also turning more and more to online buying.

Source: www.emarketer.com

Users not only click on more ads with video or rich media, but also tend to visit brand sites long after seeing the associated ad.

Many marketers have moved past a direct-response-centric model for online display advertising, recognizing that despite low clickthrough rates, banner ads also have a branding effect. And research suggests that adding rich media or video to those banner ads can improve both types of response—increasing the likelihood users will click the ads as well as boosting the lingering brand awareness that results from viewing.

Ad solution provider MediaMind found that web users in North America who were exposed to a campaign that included rich media display ads were nearly three times as likely as those who saw only standard banners to end up at a marketer’s website—either by clicking on the ad directly or by navigating to the site at a later date. Those exposed to banners that included online video were about 5.6 times as likely to visit a marketer’s site as those exposed to standard banners.

The study indicated that rich media and video boost metrics on both the direct response and branding sides. Rich media and video made users significantly more likely to click directly on display ads—in the case of video, the likelihood of clicking on an ad went up more than ninefold.

The branding effect was smaller, but still evident. Web users exposed to a campaign who did not click on the ad when first exposed to it but who later visited the marketer’s site were about twice as likely to be driven to do so by video or rich media as compared to standard banners.

eMarketer expects strong growth in spending on display advertising, especially video, this year. In the US, eMarketer projects advertisers will increase video ad spending by 54.7% and up investments in standard banners by nearly 20%. eMarketer predicts much lower growth for rich media ads, however, at just over 4%, as brands turn to true online video instead.

December 2011 research from digital ad agency ValueClick Mediafound that video was second to mobile as the leading channel marketers said they would increase spending on this year.

Source: www.emarketer.com

The latest Effective Measure statistics reveal South Africa’s largest websites and mobile destinations

The March 2011 DMMA/Effective Measure website statistics were released recently, showing thatNews24 continues to rule South Africa’s online environment.

According to the Effective Measure statistics, News24 attracted 2,827,011 unique browsers in March 2011, beating IOL with 2,114,220 unique visitors and Howzit.MSN with 2,044,016 total browsers.

When looking at only South African traffic, the same three websites reigned supreme, but IOL and Howzit.MSN traded place for second and third.

News24 was also the top mobile website with their News24 mobile, followed by Supersport mobi andVodacom mobi.

The following tables show South Africa’s largest websites. It should be noted that only DMMA registered websites which run Effective Measure code are listed.

Source: MyBroadband