Yearly archive for 2013

Fueled by its push into mobile advertising, Facebook this year will account for 7.4% of U.S. digital ad spending, making it second only to Google in market share.

Facebook jumped ahead of Microsoft and Yahoo in 2013 in its share of digital ad dollars, but remains well behind Google’s hefty 40.9% slice of spending, according to an updated eMarketer forecast.

The research firm had previously forecast that Facebook would remain slightly behind Yahoo this year, but the rapid expansion of its mobile business — which in the third quarter amounted to half of its total ad revenue — changed the outlook. Yahoo’s share is projected to fall to 5.8% from 6.8% last year.

Microsoft won’t see as steep a decline, dipping from a 6.2% to a 5.9% share. Its $2.53 billion in ad revenue includes not only sales related to its Web properties, but also from its Xbox and Skype services. Twitter may have garnered much attention because of its IPO this year, but the micro-blogging service this year will account for only 1% of digital ad spend.

Looking ahead, Google is expected to maintain its digital ad dominance through 2015, when it will claim 42.3% of U.S. digital ad revenues — across desktop computers, smartphones and tablets — while Facebook will take in 9%, Microsoft 5.4%, Yahoo, 5% and IAC, 2.2%. One looming question is how much additional revenue the rollout of video advertising will drive for Facebook in 2014 and after.

On a worldwide basis, Google’s share of digital ad spending remained at about one-third (32%) — well ahead of the rest of the pack led by Facebook (5.7%), Yahoo (3%), Microsoft (3%) and IAC (1%). While in the U.S. Facebook’s share of mobile ad spending surged from 9% to 16%, the gain was even greater on a global basis, rising more than threefold to 17%.

Earlier this week, eMarketer revised its forecast for U.S. mobile ad spending this year to $9.6 billion. It expects mobile Internet advertising worldwide to more than double from $8.8 billion to about $18 billion in 2013. That translates into 15.2% of all digital ad dollars spent globally, up from 8.5% last year.

Source Media Post

Social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, are becoming the go-to place for consumers to have their questions answered, yet companies are still stumbling when using social as a customer-management channel.

According to new research from Sprout Social, messages sent to brands requiring attention via Twitter or Facebook increased 175% over the past year. Meanwhile, response lag times to those messages have increased from an average of 10.9 hours to 11.3 hours from when the message was first received.

“What we’re seeing is the volume of inbound messages is skyrocketing,” Andrew Caravella, vice president of marketing for Sprout Social, tells Marketing Daily. “On the flip side, the brands that are engaging with those customers are doing a good job [but many] are still struggling with it.”

Meanwhile, response rates to requests made on Facebook and Twitter have dropped below 20%, meaning four out of every five customer inquiries are going unanswered, the report notes. In other customer service channels, the report notes, that low rate would be unacceptable.

“You don’t want to respond to the same thing over and over again, but you need to address individuals one-on-one,” Caravella says, even if many of the communications are similar in nature. In such cases, Caravella says, it might be a good idea to create a blog post or some other easily accessible solution to point customers to. “I think it’s tough to blanket respond via one tweet and not acknowledge [others coming in],” he says.

Not surprisingly, brands with the highest number of followers have the lowest response rates. However, when they do respond, the time it takes to do so tends to be faster than for brands with fewer followers. Brands with fewer than 1,000 followers took an average of 11.7 hours to respond (with an 18% response rate), while brands with more than 10,000 followers responded within 5.7 on average (but had only a 7% response rate).

“That’s probably a natural tendency given the higher volumes of [consumer contact],” Caravella says. “They’re probably doing high volumes of triage.”

To improve the rates, time and quality of the responses, Caravella recommends companies structure their social teams for responsiveness and match those people who are best at responding to customer inquiries to be on the front lines of social. “That means understanding who on your team is best equipped to answer questions, so you’re not just throwing people into  it,” he says.

Source Marketing Daily

On Thursday, Instagram unveiled a new feature for its popular mobile app: Instagram Direct. You can read all about it on the Instagram blog.

Over the past three years, the Instagram community has grown to over 150 million people capturing and sharing moments all around the globe. As we’ve grown, Instagram has evolved not only into a community of photographers, but also into a means of visual communication. From a photo of your daily coffee to a sunrise shared from the top of a mountain hike, every Instagram moment contains something you find special—something you broadcast to your followers when you tap “share.”

There are, however, moments in our lives that we want to share, but that will be the most relevant only to a smaller group of people—an inside joke between friends captured on the go, a special family moment or even just one more photo of your new puppy. Instagram Direct helps you share these moments.

From how you capture photos and videos to the way you start conversations through likes and comments, we built Instagram Direct to feel natural to the Instagram experience you already know. When you open Instagram, you’ll now see a new icon in the top right corner of your home feed. Tap it to open your inbox where you’ll see photos and videos that people have sent to you. To send a photo or video to specific people, tap the camera button to enter the same simple photo or video capture and editing screens. At the top of the share screen, you’ll see the option to share with your followers (“Followers”) or to send to specific people (“Direct”). To send using Direct, tap the names of the people you want to send your photo or video to, write your caption, tap “send” and you’re done.

After sending, you’ll be able to find out who’s seen your photo or video, see who’s liked it and watch your recipients commenting in real time as the conversation unfolds.

Photos and videos that you receive from people you follow will appear immediately. If someone you’re not following sends you a photo or video on Instagram, it will go to your requests so you can decide if you want to view it.

To learn more about Instagram Direct, check out help.instagram.com.