editor, Author at Mediastreet

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‘Definitely a concern’: Influencer fraud is on the rise again on Instagram

January 31, 2020 No Comments

Influencer fraud continues to be a problem for marketers, particularly on Instagram, per a new report.

Despite the company’s efforts to rein in influencer engagement fraud, a report from influencer marketing measurement firm Instascreener has found that fake engagement on Instagram is on the rise again.

According to Instascreener’s data, initially in May after Instagram removed the likes and comments of users from third-party apps, fake influencer engagement rates declined from 1.7% to 1% on certain accounts with the least authentic audiences. But from September to December 2019, the fake engagement rate for those accounts increased from 1% to nearly 1.2% because some influencers who report fake engagement rates were able to figure out workarounds to circumvent Instagram’s methods.

According to agency executives and brand marketers, the problem results from the fact that engagement has been prioritized as the a top metric of success for influencer marketing. Some media buyers and brand marketers say, however, the engagement rate should be considered as only one of many metrics. They said they need to do deeper research to figure out if their influencer marketing practices are working. And marketers said they need to ask influencers to share more of their data directly with advertisers and agencies.

“You can’t necessarily count on Instagram to solve this fake follower program,” said Sean Spielberg, co-founder of Instascreener. “Fake followers and fake engagement is kind of like an arms race. When Instagram creates a new fancy algorithm to detect fraud, someone immediately begins working on ways to get around it,” he added. “Then fraud creeps up again. It won’t ever go to zero if brands and agencies wait for Instagram to solve the problem.”

Instagram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Media buyers told Digiday they are not instructing their clients to pull back from using the platform or influencer marketing. That’s reflected in Instascreener’s report: In 2019 companies spent $1.9 billion on influencer marketing in the U.S. and Canada, with $1.4 billion of that going to influencer marketing on Instagram. Yet, as much as $255 million of the $1.4 billion spent on Instagram was lavished on accounts with fake followers, per Instascreener.

“Engagement fraud is definitely a concern amongst brands and agencies alike,” said a media buyer at a digital agency who requested anonymity. “That said, we have not recommended — nor do we typically see — brands shying away from influencer tactics solely because of engagement fraud concerns.”

Instead of shying away from influencer marketing, media buyers and brand marketers are deeming engagement just one factor in their decision to select influencers to work with rather than the sole reason. “We still use engagement rate as a metric of success,” said a marketer at a major consumer packaged goods company that uses influencers.

“All of us marketers are trying to figure out what is the right metric in the space,” she continued. “We look at likes and comments diagnostically, but we have much more advanced measurements that are closer linked to sales that we leverage as well.” This marketer declined to share which advanced measurements her company relies on to measure the success of influencer marketing.

“Engagement is still an important metric because we want to make sure that our influencer partners are driving conversations with their followers about our brands,” wrote Kristin Maverick, 360i’s vp of social and influencer marketing at 360i, in an email. “We dig into comments to see if the brand is resonating with an influencer’s audience and driving consideration and conversion.”

She added, “But, we also look at other metrics to tell the full story. We use a mix of tools such as tracking sales data from DCM tracking on our clients’ e-commerce sites, discount codes and paid social results.”

Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing shop Village Marketing, said the engagement rate is the wrong measurement for marketers to use in measuring influencer marketing effectiveness. Instead, Segar said marketers should ask influencers to share story views and sticker taps. Segar’s clients also use affiliate codes, enablingmarketers to attribute sales data to influencer marketing.

“Influencer marketing is an industry where people are so confused by the scale,” Segar said. “It’s really hard to look at an influencer and understand what they are doing [for a client]. Marketers need to ask the right questions to fight fraud. Ask for screen grabs of past stories and [length of] story view averages. Ask for one from last week and a month ago.”

Other media buyers said that agencies and advertisers need to adjust how they think about influencer marketing altogether. Instead of using influencers’ on Instagram to realize a direct sale at a particular moment, companies should keep a more “long-term focus” and use influencers’ activity to understand more about their brands and what their consumers want, said Lauren Dubinsky, director of social media for The Variable. That’s something the Clorox Company might be trying to achieve right now as it develops an influencer advisory council.

Shifting their focus to analyze longer-term metrics could be critical for marketers. “In the world of influencer marketing, brand and creator relationships are still key,” said the media buyer. “If a brand can find an advocate who they know has a qualified, passionate audience, engaging in long-term relationships with that creator can lead to better content and confidence in knowing their dollars are not being wasted.”

By Kristina Monllos

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

How Can Internet Marketing Make A Business More Effective?

January 31, 2020 No Comments

By Dmitrii Kustov.

Today’s business environment is full of scrappy entrepreneurs and large, established corporations battling it out for market share. Increasing globalization, the rise of disruptive technologies and significantly more consumer choice have ramped up competition.

Luckily, the internet provides a wealth of tools to even the playing field for every business. Regardless of the sector or industry, internet marketing is today’s “killer app” that brings efficiencies and opportunities to both brick-and-mortar and digital businesses.

Even though internet marketing isn’t exactly new, we continue to see its sheer power in helping businesses accomplish their goals. Whether you aspire to see more revenue growth, brand awareness or both, it is worth your time to study how internet marketing can make your job easier.

Increased Revenue

Today’s internet marketing tools go a long way in helping all types of businesses increase their revenue. While there are many reasons for this, a primary one is targeting. Whether you are leveraging Facebook Ads, using Google AdWords, or collecting emails for your newsletter, internet marketing can help businesses develop closer connections with their target audiences.

Releasing a television ad or billboard ad may seem promising, but there is no guarantee that interested prospects will see the ad. The targeting capabilities of internet marketing, however, can substantially increase the odds that your ideal customer sees your ad. Naturally, getting your product or service in front of interested prospects can help increase your organization’s top-line growth.

To make targeting more efficient, companies have started to leverage the rising sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI). By analyzing customer behavior, search patterns and engagement with your targeted ads, AI can help businesses better understand customers who are more willing to buy. Less time is spent on those who are least likely to make a purchase, allowing businesses to place more attention on prospects who are likely to convert.

To drive revenue growth, internet marketers like me are also increasingly relying on content personalization. Years ago, marketers simply didn’t have the capabilities to offer personalized content at scale. But times have changed. Internet marketers can leverage many tools that make it easier to deliver personalized, relevant content to all audience members.

One great example of personalized content comes from a video marketing campaign by Cadbury. The company saw an opportunity to use personalized videos to better connect with Australian consumers. As part of the campaign, Cadbury matched one of its 12 flavors to users based on certain variables in their Facebook profiles. Some of those variables included location, interests and age. After obtaining consent from interested users, Cadbury automatically created videos that matched audience members with one of Cadbury’s flavors. These personalized videos not only showed the flavor, but were based on photos and personal information from the user’s Facebook page.

According to media reports, the campaign was successful: 90% of viewers watched their personalized video to completion. The company obtained a 65% click-through rate and had a 33% conversion rate of viewers.

These kinds of results don’t have to come at high costs either. You can get started personalizing your own content, even if you have a low budget, by segmenting your email list or creating simple Facebook posts using the same easily accessible user data.

Building Brand Awareness

Internet marketing isn’t just for driving increased revenue. It can also be a game-changer when it comes to building brand awareness in a sector or niche. Building brand awareness is more of a long-term investment, yet it can pay off in spades when your company is releasing a new product or service.

In my opinion, one of the most exciting uses of internet marketing to build brand awareness today centers on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). While both of these technologies are still in their early innings, several companies have already used AR and VR ads to build brand awareness in their sector.

Michael Kors actually became the first brand to try AR ads on Facebook’s Newsfeed. In its AR ad, Facebook users were invited to virtually “try on” a pair of Michael Kors sunglasses. After “trying on” the glasses, participating Facebook users were able to quickly purchase the sunglasses while on Facebook.

As AR and VR technology improves, companies of all sizes will be able to get even closer to their audiences. They can offer unique experiences that introduce audience members to the company’s products or services.

Besides AR and VR ads, internet marketers can rely on live video to build brand awareness. While digital video itself can be extremely effective in building closer connections with prospects, companies that leverage live video can give viewers an intimate look into the company, its employees, and its products and services. Through live video, audience members can see that the company is a collection of people trying to create value in customers’ lives.

As an example, Buzzfeed was one of the first publishers to effectively leverage live video to build brand equity. One of its most famous live videos involved two people using rubber bands to crush a watermelon. With this simple premise, Buzzfeed was able to gather approximately 800,000 live viewers at the end of the video.

The exploding watermelon video was quintessentially Buzzfeed. Viewers tuning in quickly discovered that Buzzfeed released content that was fun, entertaining and educational. The brand was able to get closer to its targeted audience, which it could then use to grow its social media following.

Helping Accomplish Your Business Goals

Internet marketing is just one part of an overall marketing strategy. Nevertheless, it continues to be relevant as we enter the new decade. Whether you are just implementing an internet marketing strategy or have been doing so for some time, paying attention to these trends can help take your business to the next level.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Dmitrii Kustov

Dmitrii Kustov is the Internet Marketing Director and Founder of Regex SEO located in Houston. Read Dmitrii Kustov’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How Publishers Can Find Pockets Of Growth Amid Drop In Ad Spending

January 31, 2020 No Comments

By Rob Williams

Many media channels can expect a banner year in 2020. The Summer Olympics and the presidential election will help drive ad spending to new records. Unfortunately, newspapers and magazines won’t participate in that growth without developing their digital outlets.

Magazine ad revenue will slump 9.7% this year to $9.8 billion, a steeper decline than the 9.1% drop to $11.8 billion for newspapers, according to estimatesconsulting firm Winterberry Group published last week.

The forecast shouldn’t surprise anyone in the publishing industry, following a year of consolidation, widespread job cuts and dozens of stories about the threat of “news deserts.” The trends are disheartening, but there are some pockets of opportunity for publishers, as the Winterberry report also suggests.

U.S. digital ad spending will expand by about 15% to $166.4 billion this year. It is becoming more fragmented as newer categories such as influencer marketing and digital video carve out a bigger share.

While search and paid social will be the biggest categories, publishers can find room for growth in display ads and possibly in digital audio formats like podcasts.

Winterberry forecasts that digital audio advertising will expand by 15% to $3.4 billion, a market that publishers are well positioned to dominate by repurposing written content as spoken-word audio.

Even in the realm of offline advertising, publishers can find growth in experiential marketing and sponsorships of live events, where spending is forecast to grow by 3.1% to $48.5 billion, making it the second-biggest category after linear TV.

Aside from offline and online advertising, publishers can build their revenue from subscriptions, paywalls, licensing and affiliate fees from online marketplaces. Building those businesses requires specialized expertise, but it can be done.

By Rob Williams

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

Netflix is still saying ‘no’ to ads

January 30, 2020 No Comments

By Sarah Perez

Despite ongoing speculation and investor pressure, Netflix is still declining to adopt an advertising-based business model as a means to boost its revenue, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings confirmed on Tuesday. The company on its Q4 earnings call again shot down the idea of an ad-supported option, with Hastings explaining there’s no “easy money” in an online advertising business that has to compete with the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Explained the exec, “Google and Facebook and Amazon are tremendously powerful at online advertising because they’re integrating so much data from so many sources. There’s a business cost to that, but that makes the advertising more targeted and effective. So I think those three are going to get most of the online advertising business,” Hastings said.

To grow a $5 billion to $10 billion advertising business, you’d need to “rip that away” from the existing providers, he continued. And stealing online advertising business from Amazon, Google and Facebook is “quite challenging,” Hastings added, saying “there’s not easy money there.”

“We’ve got a much simpler business model, which is just focused on streaming and customer pleasure,” he said.

The CEO also noted that Netflix’s strategic decision to not enter the ad business has its upsides, in terms of the controversies that surround companies that collect personal data on their users. To compete, Netflix would have to track more data on its subscribers, including things like their location — that’s not something it’s interested in doing, he said, calling it “exploiting users.”

“We don’t collect anything. We’re really focused on just making our members happy,” Hastings stated.

That’s not exactly true, of course. Netflix does track viewership data in order to make determinations about which of its original programs should be renewed and which should be canceled. It also looks at overall viewing trends to make decisions about which new programs to greenlight or develop. And it tracks users’ own interactions with its service in order to personalize the Netflix home screen to show users more of what they like.

The company also this quarter introduced a new viewership metric — “chose to watch,” which counts the number of people who deliberately watched a show or movie for at least two minutes. That’s far longer than Facebook or Google’s YouTube, but isn’t a great way to tell how many people are watching a show to completion, as on TV.

However, none of this viewership tracking is on the scale of big tech’s data collection practices, which is what Hastings meant by his comment.

“We think with our model that we’ll actually get to larger revenue, larger profits, larger market cap because we don’t have the exposure to something that we’re strategically disadvantaged at — which is online advertising against those big three,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Netflix’s CEO has had to repeat the company’s stance on being an ad-free business. In Q2 2019, Netflix reminded investors in its shareholder letter that its lack of advertising is part of its overall brand proposition.

“When you read speculation that we are moving into selling advertising be confident that this is false,” the letter said.

Analysts have estimated Netflix could make over a billion more per year by introducing an ad-supported tier to its service.

To some extent, the increased push for Netflix to adopt ads has to do with the changes to the overall streaming landscape.

Netflix today is facing new competition from two major streaming services, Disney+ and Apple+ — both of which have subsidized their launch with free promotions in order to gain viewership. In the next few months, Netflix will have to take on several others, including mobile streaming service Quibi, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and NBCU’s Peacock. The latter features a multi-tiered business model, including a free service for pay-TV subscribers, an ad-free premium tier and one that’s ad-supported.

The service was introduced to investors last week, where it was well-received.

Other TV streaming services also rely on ads for portions of their revenue, including Hulu and CBS All Access. Meanwhile, a number of ad-supported services are also emerging, like Roku’s The Roku Channel, Amazon’s IMDb TV, TUBI, Viacom’s Pluto TV and others.

Netflix’s decision to keep itself ad-free is likely welcome news for its subscriber base, however, who see the lack of ads as being a key selling point.

Feature Image Credit: Ernesto S. Ruscio/Getty Images / Getty Images

By Sarah Perez

Sourced from TechCrunch

In Uncategorized

Google’s latest search results change further blurs what’s an ad

January 30, 2020 No Comments

By Deanna Ting

Users of Google search on desktops may have noticed a slight change over the last week and that change is affecting what they perceive as an ad. This represents a further blurring of the lines between ads and organic sources in search.

Beginning Jan. 13, Google redesigned its desktop search experience to feature favicons, or preferred icons, next to every single entry, including an ad. Always shown at the top of a page of search results, ads receive the same favicon treatment: the word “Ad” appears in bold, yet small black lettering. Site owners can also choose their featured favicon.

This redesign first appeared in May on Google search for mobile devices. At the time, Google said the move was prompted by a desire to help users “better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what [they’re] looking for.” Bringing that same design to desktops this month adds to the consistency of the search experience, regardless of the device, according to Google.

This isn’t the first time Google has changed the look of ads in search.

“What an ad looks like has gotten more subtle over the years,” said Brooke Osmundson, associate director of paid search for NordicClick, a pay-per-click agency. “It’s started to blur the lines between what users thought was an ad or wasn’t.”

Search Engine Land has posted a helpful infographic showing how Google’s design tweaks in search have evolved, so users find it heard to distinguish between what’s an ad and what is not.

The concept of banner blindness loosely applies here, said SEO consultant Bill Hartzer. Now that all search results and ads have favicons, “searchers will see the favicons and overlook them, also ignoring the ‘Ad’ favicon as well,” he said. “So, they’re going to be more likely to click more on ads, which will benefit advertisers. But, in the long run, it will also benefit Google.”

Early results from NordicClick seem to support that theory. Osmundson pulled data for four different clients, comparing their respective search engine ads’ click-through rates (CTR) during Jan. 7 to 13 with those during Jan. 14 to 20, after Google’s desktop search changes went into effect.

For all four clients (a local health care company, two business-to-business companies and an e-commerce company), the desktop click-through rates increased and ranged from 4% to 10.5%. All clients had slight declines in the click-through rates on mobile devices.

Last May for three of those four companies, after Google made its mobile search changes, mobile click-through rates increased 17% to 18% for two companies during the May 24 to 30 stretch, as compared with the May 17 to 23 period.

“If we see increased CTR, we might be spending through our budgets more quickly than we realized,” Osmundson said. “That’s great for our clients but in marketing we need to do more due diligence in our jobs to make sure they have a good user experience on the site to see our dollars work a little bit harder for us.”

David Ogletree, owner of the WME Training pay-per-click training company, however, did not find a significant increase in click-through rates when he pulled similar data for his clients. “There was essentially hardly a change at all back in May and now in January, too,” he said, referring to data he pulled for his 50 clients.

And RPA Advertising has also not detected a change. “We haven’t seen a noticeable impact on our clients’ paid versus organic search traffic,” said Anthony So, group director of search for RPA. “Favicons will have a stronger impact in verticals that consist of a lot of affiliate marketing partners.”

Following the changes made to mobile search in May, Hartzer conducted his own experiment to see what would happen if he used the same “Ad” favicon on his own website. (The “Ad” favicon was active in search for three days in May until Google removed it.)

“When I added the ‘Ad’ favicon on my site, and Google showed it in the organic search engine results, there were less clicks, as the ‘Ad’ text (favicon) was next to the listing in the search engine results,” Hartzer said, adding that the results did not surprise him because right at that time people were still becoming accustomed to seeing the “Ad” favicons next to search results.

Over time, however, banner blindness will take hold, Hartzer suggested. And when users unconsciously ignore the “Ad” favicon, advertisers will see higher click-through rates, he said.

Banner blindness is also something RPA’s SEO lead Ethan Hulbert is concerned about. “Google points to its non-English searches to show that the translated label is more differentiable,” he wrote by email. “For instance, a French search on google.fr will bring up ads labeled with the full ‘Annonce,’” Hulbert said. “But since most searches we care about are English, this gives us little comfort.”

Added Hulbert: “I think this trend is worth paying attention to, and expect it to have a muted effect over time.”

While Ogletree did not see any change in click-through rates for his clients following Google’s search design changes, this will ultimately benefit advertisers and, of course, Google, he observed.

“Every decision they make is to get more money from advertisers,” Ogletree said. In the third quarter of 2019, Google parent company Alphabet made nearly $34 billion from advertising alone.

By Deanna Ting

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

Brands of the Future Will Thrive By Operating With a Higher Perspective

January 30, 2020 No Comments

By Hayley Romer.

It’s the most efficient route toward long-term success

When was the last time you looked up? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately.

Amid endless to do lists and nonstop distractions, we spend our days overwhelmed with urgency. We’re so focused on what matters right now that we rarely take the time to look ahead and consider what will matter next.

What we all need is more time to spend thinking, to prove an idea, to do the things that inspire us. But time is the one thing that we’re not often afforded.

As business leaders, our success is often measured by delivering immediate results. So it’s no surprise that we spend the majority of our time focused on the day to day. According to a recent CMO survey, two out of three marketing leaders tend to focus on “managing the present” rather than “preparing for the future.”

Of course, we all know we need to look further ahead to promote long-term success for our businesses. History has proven this again and again.

Think of Disney. The company that launched as an animation studio took the notion of entertainment and film and brought it to life across experiences from theme parks to travel to stores. Today, nearly 200 years after launching, Disney is one of the most successful companies in the world. Or consider IBM. A decade ago, they made a decision to stand apart from competitors and stop selling hardware. Instead, they focused on their intelligence products like Cloud and Watson that imbued that hardware with value and functionality.

Disney and IBM have one thing in common. They looked up from the present, and in doing so, they charted a path to long-term success. This is what I mean by having a higher perspective and how you can apply these principles to your own ways of working to drive success in the decades to come:

Investigate deeper human truths

It’s easy to get caught up in trends, but brands of substance that endure can separate fads from fundamental shifts and uncover the underlying drivers of change.

We can all do this with a mindset shift. Rather than fixate on the present, create space for higher order thinking. Get into the habit of asking why an issue or story is resonating, why certain behaviors are changing. What you are missing about your audience and how their attitudes are evolving.

Find the answer to these questions and apply the learnings to evolve your brand to meet consumers’ changing needs.

Stand apart from competitors by taking a bolder, unconventional approach

A recent study shows that 63% of global consumers prefer to purchase products and services from companies that stand for a purpose. That shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this, as purpose has become paramount across the industry.

However, it’s becoming increasingly harder to stand out. Only 12% of consumers can link brands and the causes they support.

Purpose-driven brands need to take a bolder point of view and apply unexpected perspectives or lenses, to stand apart, even on mainstream issues.

Remember the medium is the message

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” The media landscape is vastly different today than it was 50 years ago, but we’d all be wise to remember McLuhan’s advice. The channels through which a message is shared can say a lot about a brand. Choose credible partners that not only elevate the perception of your brand but connect with an audience using a conscious, engaged mindset.

Create time for clarity

As leaders, we need to create space for our teams for higher perspective thinking. An average worker spends 1,700 hours a year in front of their computer, but great ideas don’t come from sitting still. They come from experiencing the world, collaboration and cultural insight.

Encourage your teams—and give them the time—to leave the office. Schedule an offsite devoted to hacking an issue that’s been unsolved. Go on a field trip to inspire more creative thinking.

The beginning of a new decade creates the opportunity to look up and look ahead. It is essential we not only make the time do so but absolutely hold ourselves accountable; we are creating and living our own future now.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images. The beginning of a new decade creates the opportunity to look up and look ahead.

By Hayley Romer

Hayley Romer is the publisher and chief revenue officer of The Atlantic.

Sourced from ADWEEK

In News

Google Ads Makes Parallel Tracking Mandatory for Video Campaigns

January 29, 2020 No Comments

By Matt Southern.

Google Ads is making parallel tracking available for video campaigns, which is optional for now but will soon become mandatory.

Parallel tracking is designed to improve mobile site speed by bringing visitors directly to the landing page while measuring the ad click in the background.

Due to the importance Google places on site speed, parallel tracking is already mandatory for Search, Shopping, and Display campaigns. As of March 30th it will also be mandatory for all video campaigns.

Google emphasizes the benefits of parallel tracking:

“Your mobile site speed matters now more than ever. In fact, retail advertisers saw that a one-second delay in mobile load times can impact conversion rates by up to 20%… On average, we’ve seen that advertisers who adopt parallel tracking have reduced page load time by up to 5 seconds.“

How to Turn on Parallel Tracking

Advertisers can turn on parallel tracking by following the steps below:

Sign in to your Google Ads account.
In the navigation menu, click All campaigns.
In the page menu on the left, click Settings.
Click Account Settings.
Click Tracking.
Click the switch next to “Parallel tracking” to turn it on.

Before turning on parallel tracking, Google advises advertisers working with a click measurement provider to make sure their system is compatible with it.

Compatibility with parallel tracking will vary based on which features are enabled. A click measurement provider will be able to advise on what to do if there is an incompatibility.

By Matt Southern

Matt Southern has been the lead news writer at Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a degree in communications, Matt … [Read full bio]

Sourced from Search Engine Journal

In News

What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Experiential Content

January 29, 2020 No Comments

By Lane Ellis.

Experiential content will help drive 2020’s digital agenda, and savvy B2B marketers should take notice.

Experiential is a word with subtly differing meanings depending on which setting it’s used in, however at the core of each definition is the fact that it all boils down to experiences.

Experiential content makes us a central part of a story, and not just a passive subject receiving a one-way brand message.

Use of experiential content has grown over the past several years as online technologies have reached a level capable delivering vibrant and engaging motion and sounds alongside clickable, swipable, and all other manner of interactivity to put you front and center.

TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden recently mentioned experiential content in his annual list of the top ten B2B digital marketing trends for 2020.

“Visual, experiential content that is easy to find and satisfies business buyer’s needs to be informed, entertained and inspired will continue to be areas of focus.” @LeeOdden Click To Tweet

With 98 percent of consumers more likely to make a purchase after an experience (Limelight), and 77 percent having chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that delivers a personalized service or experience (Forrester), why haven’t more B2B marketers begun to use experiential content?

Experiential Content’s Advantages

In a seemingly million-message-a-minute online world, experiential content offers a number of advantages.

It removes us from all other messaging, if only for a short while, and allows us to enter a world under our own control, where we can interact as we see fit, learning or buying at our own pace, all while creating a story that intertwines us with brand information and messaging.

In 2020 experiential content comes in many forms, no longer limited to just the real-world selfie booths and similar elements of the past, with just a few examples listed here:

Virtual Reality (VR)
Augmented Reality (AR)
Cloud-Based Digital Assets from Ceros and Other Platforms
Quizzes and Polls
Interactive Flipbooks and eBooks

In a way online gaming has been leading the way for decades when it comes to digital experiential content, and only recently have brands and marketers started to bring this power to B2B advertising campaigns.

An example of experiential content comes in the form of our Break Free of Boring B2B Guide, featuring interactive insight from a variety of B2B marketing industry influencers. Click here to enter the full-screen experience.

Experiential Marketing Embraces Digital Storytelling

Experiential content is also intertwined with both storytelling and customer experience (CX), together forming an extremely powerful triptych of B2B marketing strategy.

As a key component of experiential content, storytelling becomes even more personal and memorable when you’re a key part of the messaging experience a brand is sharing, and being remembered is more important — as well as more difficult — today than ever, which is why forward-thinking B2B marketers are utilizing experiential tactics in their 2020 tool-kits.

The importance of storytelling in the customer journey has become less of a secret in the past five years, as marketing experts and the data to back up the fact have combined to make brand storytelling a trend for the decade ahead.

“Experiential content’s role in powerful storytelling will be an increasing theme among B2B marketers looking to drive next-generation brand efforts.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis Click To Tweet

Experiential Marketing Embraces Great CX

The other key element of experiential content — CX — appears to offer an ideal match, combining to form two important facets of successful B2B marketing.

What better way to deliver a stellar customer experience than by creating memorable brand storytelling using experiential content?

Two years ago we saw the rise of real-world physical pop-ups from the likes of 29Rooms achieving considerable success on Instagram and other social media platforms, however a shift to creating these worlds virtually online as immersive experiential content has taken place in 2019 and into 2020.

Experiential content also appears in WARC’s recently-released ninth-annual marketers report for 2020, which places it alongside purpose and product as three of the most important elements needed for brands to achieve greater success this year.

Some marketers and brands are pulling back from an over-investment in technology that has taken a certain amount of focus away from creativity, the same report’s survey data shows.

Indeed, among the survey’s respondents — almost 800 global client and agency-side executives — one of the top elements comprising experiential content, VR and AR, was seen as being one of the most important emerging technologies in 2020.

Another big part of experiential content is online video, a near-unanimous selection on most top marketing trend lists, as it continues to receive the type of swift growth in ad spend dollars that has helped make online video a big success for Instagram, YouTube, and increasingly TikTok.

Over 80 percent of marketers plan to increase spending for online video in 2020, with 33 percent planning to boost spending on TikTok this year, according to the WARC survey. In the U.S. alone digital video spedning is expected to increase by over 31 percent in 2020, to $5 billion. (Winterberry Group)

“Being creative while retaining consistency of brand is key to unlocking the benefits of brand-building: from forging emotional attachments, to driving long-term brand equity and sales influences.” — Simon Cook @Cannes_Lions Click To Tweet

Cloud-based experiential content platform Ceros offers both an overview guide and an on-demand webinar for learning more about the technology, and offers up their own take on just what the term means.

“Experiential content is digital content that is purposefully designed to create an immersive experience for its consumers through some combination of interactions, animations, embedded media, and storytelling. It encourages active participation in an effort to form memorable, emotional connections between the consumer and the brand or creator,” Ceros notes.

“Experiential content makes us a central part of a story, and not just a passive subject receiving a one-way brand message.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis Click To Tweet

Bake More Experiential Goodness Into Your B2B Efforts For 2020

via GIPHY

We’ve looked at what experiential content is, explored a few examples of how B2B brands are using it successfully, and showed how it is likely to see growing adoption in 2020 and beyond.

It takes considerable time, effort, and resources to implement a standout experiential content campaign, which is why many brands turn to a dedicated agency.

TopRank Marketing had the honor of being named by Forrester as the only B2B marketing agency offering influencer marketing as a top capability in its “B2B Marketing Agencies, North America, Q1 2019” report.”

Finally, here are several additional related resources we’ve put together to help you build your own interactive content:

By Lane Ellis

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In News

New study: Majority of consumers are unaware of how search engines work

January 29, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Search Engine Watch.

As brands and their marketing departments deploy strategies to capitalize on record ecommerce spending — which soared to $586.92 billion in 2019 — new research from leading provider of brand protection solutions, BrandVerity, has brought to light important findings and hidden risks pertaining to the journeys consumers are taking online.

In order to give brands a better understanding of the search experiences their customers are having and how they are impacting brand perception and customer experience, BrandVerity commissioned the “BrandVerity’s Online Consumer Search Trends 2020” research study in Q4 of 2019 to over 1,000 US consumers, balanced against the US population for age, gender, region, and income.

Amongst the many findings, three main themes stood out:

Consumers confused by how search engine results work

Only 37% of consumers understand that search engine results are categorized by a combination of relevance and advertising spend.

The other 63% of consumers believe that Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are categorized by either relevance or spend, or they simply “don’t know.”

Additionally, nearly 1-in-3 consumers (31%) say they don’t believe search engines (e.g. Google) do a good job of labeling which links are ads.

Consumers more inclined to click on the result that appears first

Without a clear understanding of how search results are served up, consumers are more inclined to click on the result that appears first, believing it to be the most relevant option.

With 54% of consumers saying they trust websites more that appear at the top of the SERP, this isn’t just an assumption.

Consumers feel misled by the websites they find in the search engine results

51% of consumers say that when searching for information on a product, they sometimes feel misled by one of the websites in the search results.

An additional 1-in-4 report feeling misled “often” or “always.”

Even further, 25% also say they often end up somewhere unexpected that does not provide them with what they were looking for when clicking on a search result.

“Against a backdrop where consumers have increasingly high expectations of the brands they do business with, and are holding them to equally high standards, companies must ensure that the entirety of the experiences they provide meet customer expectations,” said Dave Naffziger CEO of Brandverity.

“As these findings show, a general uncertainty of how search engines work, combined with the significant occurrence of poor online experiences, mean oversight of paid search programs is more important than ever for brands today.”

Sourced from Search Engine Watch.

In News

Big Tobacco wants social media influencers to promote its products – can the platforms stop it?

January 28, 2020 No Comments

By Andrew Rowell

Big Tobacco likes to stay ahead of the curve – it has to in order to survive. Its fundamental problem is that one in two of its long-term users die from tobacco-related diseases. To hook a new generation into addiction, it has to try every advertising and marketing trick in its playbook.

And it has to be innovative. As one ex-marketing consultant remarked: “The problem is how do you sell death?” He said the industry did it with great open spaces, such as mountains and lakes. They did it with healthy young people and iconic images. So the Marlboro Man became a symbol of masculinity and, for women, the industry promoted smoking as a “torch of freedom”.

For years, the industry fought the regulators who slowly and belatedly restricted the places and ways it could advertise and market its products. Then came the internet, which was a dream come true for a tobacco marketeer. The industry could run riot in an unregulated haven. One commentator noted in Wired magazine in 2017 that the internet was a contemporary incarnation of the wild west.

As old rules no longer applied, Big Tobacco began using internet platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, to bypass advertising bans. They began paying social media influencers to promote traditional tobacco products as well as e-cigarettes online. And they were very successful at it.

In August 2018, the New York Times investigated Big Tobacco’s social media and Instagram influences. The paper found 123 hashtags associated with companies’ tobacco products, which had been viewed a staggering 25 billion times. Robert Kozinets, a professor at the University of Southern California, told the newspaper that what the industry was doing was a “really effective way” to get around existing laws to restrict advertising to young people.

Cease and desist

The pressure on the industry to act increased in May 2019 when 125 public health organisations called on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat to immediately end the promotion of cigarettes and e-cigarettes. This included banning the use of social media influencers. The industry ignored the request.

In December 2019, in a landmark decision, the UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled against British American Tobacco and three other firms for promoting their products on Instagram, after a complaint by ASH, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and STOP, of which the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath is a partner.

In a follow-up statement, Facebook and Instagram announced what many saw as a long-overdue update to their policy on tobacco. It said that branded content that promotes goods such as vaping, tobacco products and weapons “will not be allowed”. The statement made the bold claim that their advertising policies had long “prohibited” the advertisement of these products. The platforms promised that enforcement would begin on this in the coming weeks.

Headlines touting the new policy made it clear that the platforms will ban influencers from promoting e-cigarettes and tobacco products. For example, a BBC headline announced: “Instagram e-cigarette posts banned by ad watchdog.” But they missed three crucial points. First, Facebook’s policies are designed for companies that play by the rules, not for tobacco companies whose playbook is to find ways around them or flout them.

Second, those who track the industry’s activities online say it is notoriously difficult to tell what Facebook calls “branded content”. On Instagram, Big Tobacco’s influencers post glamorised images of vape products with hashtags such as #idareyoutotryit and captions such as “feeling Vype AF”. They don’t post content that simply says “paid promotion of British American Tobacco,” for example.

Finally, serious doubts remain about how any of this will be enforced. The reality is that Big Tobacco needs Instagram to survive and can’t afford to be excluded. A market research company, Klear, recently noted that 96% of all brands have incorporated Instagram into their influencer strategy and that global Instagram influencer marketing activity increased by 48% in 2019.

One of those who has tracked the industry’s use of social media is Caroline Renzulli of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. In an email, she told me: “In the weeks since the announcement that influencers would be banned from promoting tobacco and e-cigarettes, tobacco companies have continued to exploit influencer marketing on Facebook and Instagram to advertise addictive products to young people without consequence.”

She added that: “Facebook and Instagram are uniquely positioned to cut off Big Tobacco’s easiest access point to kids and young people around the world – but without swift enactment and strict enforcement of new policies, the announcement is yet another hollow statement from a company that no longer has any excuse for inaction on this issue.”

By Andrew Rowell

Sourced from The Conversation