Mobiles and games consoles account for 12% of online video ad viewing

Well, it's that day again. Valentine's Day is here yet again to the delight of retailers everywhere. No wonder, when online sales in the US and the UK have continued to rise year-over-year in the run up to Valentine’s Day and retailers have had to learn to scale for seasonal surges.  

The folks over at Rakuten, the online marketplace that's quickly catching up to Amazon and eBay, shared a few stats and a lovely infographic (don't say we didn't give you anything for Valentine's!) detailing the global spending trends surrounding this love-sick holiday. 

According to Rakuten, US shoppers plan high end purchases in advance with a peak in jewelry sales on February 3rd compared to February 8th in the UK. Though this could be more of an indication of the speed of the US postal service, the top five purchases on Rakuten.com leading up to Valentine's were all pieces of jewelry, especially engagement rings. With 10% of proposals falling on Valentine's, this would make some sort of sense and is not an unusual trend.

What is interesting is how much US consumers spend on their pets for Valentine's. Some would estimate thousands but actually it's over $300 million that is spent on our furry friends. $367 million in fact. Also 15% of americans buy themselves flowers. I like that we're feeling the love for ourselves AND our pets.

With spending ranging from $271 per person in Asia down to $92 per person in Germany, there is a lot of money up for grabs for the crafty online retailer. Here are a few more stats for you. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

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Majority of consumers are aware of online tracking

A new survey by TRUSTe has found that 86% of respondents in the Netherlands were aware of internet browser cookies compared with 81% in Great Britain, 78% in Germany and 59% in France.

The top 50 French websites are dropping nearly twice as many third party cookies (434) as Dutch websites (237).

71% of French respondents were very concerned about their privacy online compared with 69% in Great Britain, 62% in Germany and 48% in the Netherlands.

The study included over 4,000 consumers (conducted online via Ipsos MORI’s iOmnibus survey in France, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands) and 200 top websites.

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A Very Revealing Look at Paid Facebook Ads

Image via CrunchBase

With the use of social media outlets as a trend for personal, business, and other uses, Facebook PPC ads are a noteworthy promotion method all-around. Exploring the foundation of these ads can prove to be extremely revealing regardless of your industry.

Limited information may be available on certain social media analytic tools, but examining paid Facebook ads provides an in-depth abundance of information. To research the numerous facets of Facebook PPC and complete an analysis, we are going to utilize both SEMrush Facebook data and additional resources.

Is ROI an irrelevant metric for Facebook ads?

Facebook has said all along that CTRs are irrelevant as a metric for social ads, instead trotting out the line that “you can’t click on a TV ad, but we know that they still work.”

If you were cynical you may think this was a way of masking the fact that people don’t click on Facebook ads in huge numbers.

But should social ads be treated differently to other digital channels such as display ads found on other sites or Google’s PPC ads, which are judged to a varying extent on their CTR?

A recent infographic from Wordstream compared the effectiveness of ads placed on Google and Facebook, highlighting that the average CTR for Facebook ads is 0.051% compared to 0.4% for Google.

But this discrepancy is to be expected, as Google ads are presented when a user is actively searching for information about a particular topic or product while Facebook ads appear when the user is essentially socialising.

Facebook would counter that the longer term impact on brand value is more important and that can’t necessarily be measured in clicks. But does that mean CTR should be ignored?

A new report released by TBG Digital shows that Facebook CTRs in the UK are 0.32%, rising to 0.41% in Germany.

This roughly tallies with a report that Marin Software published in May which set Facebook CTRs at 0.04% in the UK.

However TBG’s report states that Facebook’s Sponsored Story ads, which basically flag up the fact that a friend has liked a brand or product, led to a 53% increase in CTRs.

This indicates that social ads do have a higher resonance with consumers, but the fact that TBG used CTR as a measure of success shows that it is still a relevant metric.

Read Full Article Here

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Seven tips for maximising engagement with online video ads

Online video has grown massively in the past two years to the point where it is no longer a ‘nice to have’ and is instead a vital part of many brands’ marketing strategies.

Statistics included in our new Online Video Best Practice Guide show that more than 200m people in the EU7 (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia and Turkey) watch an average of 20 hours each of online video every month.

And as people are becoming more comfortable watching video online, the power of video advertising is also growing.

To help brands take advantage of this opportunity, social web video platform Ebuzzing has put together seven tips for maximising engagement with premium video advertising...

1. Keep branding discreet

People have an unconscious aversion to being persuaded, so they are more likely to be turned off by video content that includes huge corporate logos.

Rather than immediately going in for the hard sell and shouting the name of your brand, include logos discreetly.

2. Story matters most

With video advertising, engagement is key. You need your audience to feel involved enough with the content to keep them watching for the entire ad.

Therefore, marketers need to think more about the enjoyment a video offers to a viewer instead of how well it serves the brand.

While product managers may not agree, with online video the story matters more than the product.

3. Kick off with a bang

The window of opportunity for grabbing the consumer’s attention is small, so video ads need to hook people in within the first five seconds.

The best way to do this is by creating an emotional connection, so give them either joy or surprise. People get bored easily and long drawn-out stories can cause people to stop watching.

4. Build an emotional roller coaster

Even if your video is quite short, your audience will quickly lose interest if the emotion is constant throughout the ad.

To maintain engagement, the video must briefly remove viewers’ feelings of joy and surprise and then quickly restore them again.

5. Have multiple scenes

Having multiple scenes/mini stories is more effective than only having one or two.

Each scene should have its own dose of emotion - great examples in practice are VW’s The Force and Evian’s Roller Babies. 

 

6. Surprise but don’t shock 

While surprising the viewer will help keep them engaged with the ad, people won’t share something that is too shocking or crude.

To give your content the best chance of gaining shares online, it needs to be something that people will be willing to have their name associated with.

7. Target people that are prone to sharing and have a voice

There are tactics that marketers can use to ensure that there content is viewed by the widest audience possible, such as hosting it on YouTube, but ultimately the most effective way of building an audience is by getting viewers to share it.

Social influencers are often the best people to target when it comes to distribution as these people have extroverted and egocentric personalities on the social web and are most likely to share content.

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What sites has Google been asked to remove from its index?

Who says Microsoft doesn’t play a significant role in Search?  According to Google’s latest Transparency report Microsoft makes the greatest number of domain and URL removal requests to Google (over three times more than number 2 on the list).

Google says that, in the past year, Microsoft, and agencies working for the company, have requested over 2.5 million individual web addresses be removed from Google’s search index from a total of 23,463 websites (the most recent of which was made today).  Apparently Microsoft makes over eight removal requests a week.

In the past month alone Microsoft requested that over half a million URLs (543,378) be removed by Google; this is over three times more than the second largest organisation on the list- the British Phonographic Industry, which asked for 162,601 URLs to be removed.

URL Removal Requests made by Microsoft to Google per week

The data was released as part of Google’s biannual Transparency report.  With the report Google releases information on the number and type of requests it has received asking for the removal of data from Google’s search index.

But this report is significantly different from previous releases – this is the first time that Google has released information on companies rather than just governments.

And the numbers are just amazing – in the last month alone Google received over 1.2 million URL removal requests targeting nearly 25,000 sites from 1,300 copyright owners.

Previously Google only let us see which countries requested that data be removed;the type of complaint (defamation, national security, copyright) as well as the reason for the removal request (e.g. court order, government request).

Companies 
Most of the requests for content removal coming from companies such as Microsoft are against file sharing websites, such as The Pirate Bay.  Looking at the data, most of the complaints are against music sharing – the British Phonographic Industry is one of the largest complainants on the site (although they’re joined by Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI, the Recording Industry Association of America, Ministry of Sound, and even the Estate of Michael Jackson).  NBC Universal was also highly active in requesting file sharing sites and data be removed.

The data in this release covers 95% of copyright claims made to Google since July 2011 using the company’s web form and only covers Search – removal request made against YouTube and Blogger are not included (so the copyright claim by AVG that forced YouTube to block the classic Rick Roll video for 24 hourswon’t be included).  Perhaps not surprisingly Google reports that an increasing number of removal requests are being made.

Removal requests made to Google each year

Countries
As for countries Google’s report, which covers the period January to June 2011, shows that the US made the greatest number of requests to access user data(5,950 – 93% of which were complied with), India came second with 1,739 requests (70% of which were complied with). France was third and also the highest ranked European country that requested user data, making 1,312 requests (47% of which were complied with).  The UK was close behind with 1,279 requests, 63% were complied with.  Germany comes third, with 1,065 requests, of which 66% were complied with.

If our calculations are right, this means that the UK (with 806 successful requests) then Germany (with 703 successful requests) placed a greater number of successful requests for user data than France (617 successful requests).   Collectively European Union countries placed 5,712 requests for user data, placing the Union a close second behind the US (with 5,950 requests).

Google says that it is seeing an increasing number of requests for user data for criminal investigations each year which it says “isn’t surprising” as its user base grows.

“The number of requests we receive for user account information as part of criminal investigations has increased year after year. The increase isn’t surprising, since each year we offer more products and services, and we have a larger number of users.”

Transparency
Google has been placing a significant amount of effort in releasing this data; this time last year the company activated realtime updates to its country-level transparency reports and in June 2011 they added even more data to the reportsproviding more information on the type of requests and the individual Google services which were targeted.

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