Hope you’ve been enjoying a great weekend—and are looking forward to a holiday Monday tomorrow–I know I am. I’ve been on vacation this past week, spending time with my family in Florida and celebrating the life of my mom, who lost her battle with leukemia two years ago on January 15th. It’s a ritual we’ve established since her passing, spending that time together, and it’s always filled with lots of love and much laughter as we reflect on how lucky we are to have had her in our lives. My girls and I left 75 degree weather this morning, and returned to zero degree weather in the Midwest. But with the non-winter we’ve had, you’ll not hear any complaining from me. No matter what I’m doing, I’m always paying attention to what’s happening in the worlds of tech and marketing, and here are some things interested me this past week—maybe they’ll be of interest to you as well.
When Do Digital Buyers Research Products?
According to a survey of digital buyers from comScore, more digital buyers are researching products on the day of purchase than before or after. It was also high up to a week prior to purchase. Overall, research activity begins to heat up a month before purchase and continues for about a month after. Not surprisingly, many shoppers report that mobile is an essential part of that equation.
A recent Y&R survey looked at the demographics of U.S. shoppers and found that they skew young and that they’re female. And they are absolutely using their mobile devices. This cohort reported they use devices to get information, compare prices, get coupons, and make purchases. What are you doing with regard to your marketing strategies that targets this group, and makes buying easier for them?
Online Retail
Poor Service Found as Main Reason Consumers Stop Doing Business with Retailers
Think customer service doesn’t matter? A recent study by Aspect and Conversion Research revealed that 52% of U.S. Internet users have stopped doing business with a retail company due to poor customer service. Looking at how the data breaks down across demographic groups, 54 percent of Millennials, 50 percent of Gen Xers and 52 percent of Baby Boomers said they stopped doing business because of poor customer service. What it appears we hate most of all? Wasting time and having to go through many steps to solve a problem.
Mobile
Smartphones Continuing to Drive Mobile Video Consumption
The Adobe Digital Index showed that in the 2015, the share of smartphone digital video starts worldwide was just over 18 percent, an almost 5% increase over last year’s 13.6 percent. Videos viewed on a tablet saw a slight decrease from 13.5 to 12.6 percent year over year. Since phones are getting so big that they are almost tablet sized, that data isn’t at all surprising.
Separate research from Ooyala also found that the share of mobile phone digital views worldwide has increased, from September 2013 through September 2015. In September 2013, the share of mobile phone digital video views worldwide was at 7% percent. By September 2015, that share was at 39 percent.
Are Consumers Starting to Warm Up to Mobile Payments?
According to December 2015 research by Retale, consumers are starting to warm to the idea of mobile payments. I know I am! Those surveyed reported they were seven percent more likely to use mobile payments for in-store purchases—unsurprising considering overall mobile proximity payments adoption trends.
Internet users surveyed reported they think mobile payments are convenient, and are interested in retailers offering mobile payment options at checkout. eMarketer expects mobile payments to take off in earnest in 2016, as retailers continue to adopt mobile payments services like Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay. For this consumer, that can’t happen soon enough. Where are you on that front?
Digital Video
This is Why Internet Users Abandon Digital Videos
A survey from Limelight Networks found that there are many reasons why Internet users in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the U.S. abandon digital videos. Advertising was one of the main ones. As an example, almost 62 percent of respondents said that if they thought there were too many ads during the video, they would stop watching.
Similarly, just under 27 percent of Internet users said that if there was an ad before the video and they couldn’t skip it, they would not continue watching that video. That’s interesting. If I can’t skip a video, I often get slightly annoyed, but I usually just ignore the ad until the video starts. What about you? Bottom line, while users may not be too fond of advertising, most digital video monetization still comes from ads.
eMarketer estimates that U.S. digital video ad spending will climb to $14.38 billion in 2019, from $7.77 billion in 2015. Even though growth rates are slowing for this maturing category, they are expected to remain at double-digit levels.
Social Media
Oracle To Buy Publisher Audience Platform AddThis
About a week ago, Oracle announced that it signed an agreement to acquire AddThis, a social bookmarking firm. AddThis describes itself as a provider of publisher personalization, audience insight and activation tools that “powers 15 million Web sites and enables unmatched audience segment quality, scale and insight,” according to the letter.
This is a smart move on Oracle’s part and I suspect the data the AddThis acquisition can provide will make Oracle’s Marketing Cloud product even more appealing to customers.
800 Million Monthly Active Users Now Using Facebook’s Messenger App
In April, Messenger was upgraded with video calling. In June, Facebook opened up the Messenger app to people without a Facebook account. That meant anyone with a mobile phone was able to use Messenger, gave it the opportunity to reach more users than it was able to before.
Facebook’s David Marcus predicts that in 2016 we’ll see a decline in traditional SMS messaging in favor of apps that allow people to express themselves more creatively. Marcus also believes people are interested in apps that allow them to accomplish multiple things in a single place, such as buying airline tickets, or arranging for a ride with Uber.
I’ve been a Messenger user since the beginning, and use it as much as, if not more than, traditional SMS messaging. Whether it’s free (and untrackable) voice calling (a hit with the kids for sure), video and photo sharing (and archiving), the ability to send money, and even use it for business (as in providing customer service), it’s no surprise to me that it’s a widely used, widely popular app.
Brands Fall In Love With Facebook Native Videos
According to data from quintly, these days, brands prefer to upload their videos directly to Facebook. Of all the brand video being posted to Facebook, 65 percent were Facebook native and 24 percent were links to YouTube.
The reason? Native video generally performs better. A separate study from Locowise conducted last June found that Facebook native video reach is higher than for YouTube videos posted to the site, with an organic reach of 13.2, compared to YouTube-sourced videos, which come in at just under 8 percent.
Twitter Considering Expanding The Default 140 Character Count to 10,000
Why 10,000 characters? That is the current maximum size of direct messages on Twitter, which is likely the inspiration. Other networks like Facebook actually allow for much larger posts of up to 60,000 characters.
The big question is: will current Twitter users welcome this change? It may not matter as Twitter needs to do something to boost growth. Twitter as yet to officially comment on this report but according to Re/code sources, 10,000 Tweets may start showing in your timeline as early as late this month.
Twitter, once my favorite all platforms, has become one of my personal least favorite, for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is the spammy messages that proliferate. What about you? Do you use Twitter for personal or for business use? What value is it delivering for you? Do you see this change—this upping of the character count—impacting your use? Is it a smart move on Twitter’s part? What do you think?
Snapchat
Snapchat Shuts Down Its Lens Store
Snapchat has not been slow to reverse direction when products or services don’t appear to resonate with users or advertisers. I like that—it’s smart business. That’s likely behind the recent decision to shutter its Lens store, coming just a few months after it began selling lenses for 99 cents each. In a similar move, the company also recently pressed pause on its original content offering, suspending Snap Channel. It also disbanded the 15-person team behind the effort.
These adjustments appear to be paying off. Snapchat is reportedly generating 6 billion daily video views, which represents a three-fold increase since May. Those numbers aren’t far off from the 8 billion daily video views that Facebook presently sees across mobile and desktop.
As part of its broader business strategy, Snapchat is also reportedly in the process of selling its lenses to select sponsors. As sources recently told the Financial Times, the social network could soon charge up to $750,000 for a brand to reach its entire audience of roughly 100 million users on a “peak day,” like Halloween or the Super Bowl, and closer to $450,000 on average days.
Miscellaneous
Photo Credit: Grace-ful Cakes via Compfight cc
