Web 2.0 Promotions

If you think 740 million video views sounds like a lot, prepare yourself for a shock. According to the latest comScore Video Metrix’s report, YouTube visitors (in combination with other Google properties) watched 13 billion videos in April. Yes, billion with a ‘b’.

What’s really fascinating is the rate of the climb. Look at these charts for April and February.

In three months, the list, particularly in number of videos viewed is incredible. In February, Facebook had just crossed the half a million mark. Now, they’re almost at 750 million. The difference in the number of unique viewers isn’t as drastic because, let’s face it, we have to be reaching the max pretty soon, right? But as you can see from the last column, it’s not about more people, it’s about more minutes per person.

In February, Facebook users watched 19.9 minutes, now they’re up to 25.

Google viewers jump from 362 minutes to 401 minutes. That’s over six hours of viewing per person. There’s no way that number is coming down anytime soon. Not with more people posting more videos every minute of every day. Add in all of the streaming TV and movie options, webshows, online news broadcasts. . the internet is bending under the weight of all this video.

The good thing for marketers is that a large portion of this content comes with an ad attached.

Americans viewed a record 13.3 billion video ads in April, with Google Sites ranking first with 2.4 billion ads.

Video ads reached 53 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 82 times during the month.

Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 63.

Other notable findings from April 2013 include:

•  84.7 % of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
•  The duration of the average online content video was 5.6 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
•  Video ads accounted for 25.5 percent of all videos viewed and 2.3 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

On a related note, YouTube star Felicia Day is creating her own vlogger network. She put out a call to all of the “Geek and Sundry” fans to submit their best YouTube videos and those submissions will then be evaluated by her staff and her followers. The best of the best will get to join the new vlogger channel.

The new network is a smart way to keep fresh content on the channel at all times and it’s a sweet tip of the hat to all those fabulous fan creators who don’t have the following Ms. Day has. I think it’s a great idea that will become more popular as the video-sphere continues to grow.

Target recently launched a new digital coupon app called Cartwheel that is supposed to make shopping more social. It begins with a great idea; personalized digital coupons but from there, the wheel gets a little wobbly.

Here’s how it works. First, you have to log on to the Cartwheel site and sign-up using your Facebook login.  You must have a Facebook account to use the program and that seems like an unnecessary hurdle. The point is to get more people to shop at Target, right? But if I don’t want to give you access to my Facebook account, then I’m out. Hmmm. . .

Once you’re in, you’re presented with a grid of themed, coupon flipcards. If you don’t see what you want, you can use the search box to find coupons on a specific item or browse more than 20 coupon collections such as Baby Essentials, Pet Love, Men’s Must-haves, etc. It’s a lot to take in.

Here’s a row dedicated to Memorial Day BBQ’s.

When you click a card it flips over. Now you start choosing buttons. The “add” button puts the coupon into your Cartwheel. The “share” button posts the offer to Facebook (sorry Twitter, no go). The “details” button shows the expiration date, rules for redemption and how many others have redeemed this coupon.

Right now, all of the offers I could see ranged from 5% to 10% off an item. Not bad, but not stellar, either. You can use each discount up to 4 times unless otherwise noted. What makes this a better deal is that you can combine Cartwheel deals with manufacturer coupons and Target’s Red Card discount as well. That’s what us couponers call double dipping. That’s also how you turn a good deal into a “I got this for free” deal.

Target limits the number of coupons you can load per trip. They give you ten slots to start, six a day after that. To unlock more spaces you have to earn badges (*rolls eyes*) by shopping and sharing and following the red brick road.

Now it’s time to go redeem your coupons and that’s where it gets a little tricky.  All of your current offers get combined into one bar code. The foolproof way to go is to print the bar code page while you’re still home and on the website. But printing just feels wrong – these are digital coupons after all.

If you like to live on the edge, just go to Target and shop. When you hit the checkout, call up the app on your phone. Not the Target app, from what I can see, Cartwheel doesn’t show up on the store app. You have to log-in through Facebook and pull it up on your browser. (Not sure if you can get there from the Facebook mobile app. . . ) Do Target stores have free Wifi?

Find Cartwheel, login, find your page, find your bar code, show the bar code to the cashier, wait for her to say, “huh, I’ve never seen this before, let me call my manager,” hand her more coupons wait for her to stop being confused by two sets of coupons, pay for your order and you’re done. Easy!

Target could simplify the whole process if they just included the Cartwheel barcode in the Target app. (Feel free to correct me if I’m not getting this right.)

As for the forced social sharing in order to get more coupons – that could work. Women have been known to dumpster dive for more inserts, so what’s a little sharing between friends if it means an extra 10% off hot dog buns.

Target, I’m giving you a “A” for effort but a “C+” for execution.

Twitter has had some trouble in the recent past with some high profile accounts getting hacked and the ensuing fallout from those issues. Part of their response was to say that they will be enabling a two-step verification process. At the time that was a promise but now it is in play according to the post on the Twitter blog from yesterday.

Here’s a video for you to get the gist.

So while this is a good first step it may not really be much help to those who really need it. How’s that you ask? Well, TechCrunch’s Josh Constine has this to say

However the brands and news outlets whose accounts are the most valuable to hackers may not benefit from the feature. They can only set one phone number as the recipient of the two-factor authentication codes, but may have several staff members who need to access the account. If they enabled it, whoever carried the phone registered with Twitter would have to relay the code to all the other staffers to get it to whoever needed it. That hassle might prevent shared accounts from turning on login verifications, and so the hackings may continue.

Hmmmm. It’s a nice start but this is a bit of a vexing issue. It’s hard to imagine that the AP’s Twitter account is accessed by only one person and would a large brand ever want to put that much control in the hands of just one person? Not likely.

Twitter has left the door open for improvements which many will feel can’t come soon enough.

This release is built on top of Twitter via SMS, so we need to be able to send a text to your phone before you can enroll in login verification (which may not work with some cell phone providers). However, much of the server-side engineering work required to ship this feature has cleared the way for us to deliver more account security enhancements in the future. Stay tuned.

So will you be using this feature? Will your company use this feature? Will your clients use it?

Here’s a help center link and here’s to secure tweeting!

Twitter is deepening its love affair with TV through new Amplify partnerships.

On the Twitter blog the company toots its own horn but its not like they are saying anything out of line, it’s just the truth.

Less than six months in, 2013 has already been a remarkable year for the nexus between television and Twitter. The vast majority of the online public conversation around TV currently happens on Twitter – 95 percent, according to Crimson Hexagon. Half of all national Super Bowl commercials had hashtags on them, helping guide viewers to the collective conversation. And you can’t turn on the news without hearing a Tweet referenced.

It is getting more and more difficult actually to not see Twitter referenced just about everywhere. Well, don’t expect that pace to slow any in the wake of an increasing number of agreements with properties and advertisers to create a more multi-screen environment for users. The blog post continues

On the ads side, Twitter has further amplified the social TV conversation with real-time, dual-screen sponsorships and in-Tweet video clips from broadcasters. ESPN and Ford Fusion led the way, bringing football fans Instant Replays in Tweets during every college football bowl game. During March Madness, Turner Sports, the NCAA, AT&T and Coke Zero followed suit, offering fans Real-Time Highlights of hoops action throughout the tournament. And now, during the home stretch through the 2013 Finals, the NBA is pushing the best Rapid Replays from TV, through a Tweet, to your mobile phone thanks to Sony Pictures, Sprint and Taco Bell.

An example of the NBA Playoffs and the use of this multi-screen approach is seen below.

Roy Hibbert’s BIG block. One of the nicest you’ll see #NBARapidReplay – on.nba.com/Z4vJmb

— NBA (@NBA) May 19, 2013

So how far might this reach? Take a look at the list of recent additions. Oh by the way, the cool kids are apparently calling this “Twitter Amp”.

Today we’re announcing yet another wave of multi-screen partners, from television and beyond. Along with these new partners, we now have a name for this partnership program: Twitter Amplify.

A&E (@AETV)
theAudience
Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV)
Clear Channel (@ClearChannel)
Conde Nast (@CondeNastCorp)
Discovery (@Discovery)
Major League Baseball (@mlbdotcom)
National Cinemedia (@NCMonline)
New York Magazine (@NYMag)
PGA Tour (@PGATOUR)
PMC (@Variety)
Time Inc. (@Time_Inc)
VEVO (@VEVO)
Warner Music (@warnermusic)
WWE (@WWE)
VICE (@VICE)

Screens, screens and more screens. This is a good thing, right? Well, let’s not leave you without having a video from another Twitter blog post to help clarify things (which this one does actually).

Twitter Amplify may just make social media even louder than it is already. Are you ready?

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

The psychology behind how we spend our money is a wondrous thing. I’ll gladly throw down $1 a day for a Diet Coke, but I’m reluctant to spend $1.50 on a box of pasta that would feed my whole family when I can get it for less than that on another day. I’m also reluctant to pay for additional levels on my iPad games. I’ve done it once or twice, but it’s not an easy button push.

For whatever reason, mobile users will do almost anything to keep from paying for an upgrade – including engage with ads.

The data comes from a new study by the Yankee Group called “Redefining Virtual Currency.” It’s an informative read and it’s free, so you should check out the whole report if you’re in the app biz. Disclaimer time: the survey was paid for by Tapjoy, a company that is in the mobile advertising biz. Not saying the data is biased, I just want to be clear.

The report says that 1 in 3 mobile owners are downloading 2 to 3 apps per month. 1 in 5 are downloading 4 to 6 apps a month. Almost all smartphone owners and more than 85% of tablet owners have at least one free app on their device.

When it comes to paid apps, the numbers drop. 63% of smartphone owners and 64% of tablet owners have paid for an app. Smaller, but still, very good numbers.

It gets better. 54% of smartphone owners and 41% of tablet owners have paid for an upgrade to an app.

So, we know they’ll pay – but the flipside is, they’d rather not. Free is better, of course. Even if it means watching an ad in order to get a reward.

What kind of reward is worth the effort? This is my favorite chart from the study:

71% would watch an ad in return for a free coffee! LOL. Make that a Diet Coke and I’m in. I also find it fascinating that “paperback book” was the second most popular choice. Who says people don’t read? At the top of the list is the tablet app, coming in 7% higher and a smartphone app. Why? It’s not that tablets are more popular, it’s probably because tablet apps cost more. I haven’t seen a study but that’s been my experience.

Mobile users are already warming up to the idea of exchanging time and information for digital goods. 53% of tablet owners in the survey said they already viewed commercials in exchange for a free app download. I don’t think I have but I probably would if the opportunity presented itself.

Which brings me to the point – this is an opportunity for marketers that hasn’t been fully explored. Pretend you like to hike. You get a free hiker’s guide app but to get more hiking trails in your area you must pay an additional .99. Or you can submit your email address to a company that sells hiking gear and get the upgrade for free.  It’s a three-way win. The customer gets a personalized upgrade. The retailer gets a targeted email to add to his mailing list. The app developer gets a kick-back for every email he collects.

According to the study, The virtual currency market is currently sitting at $47.5 billion in the US. By 2017, it’s expected to rise to $55.4 billion. Who doesn’t want a piece of that?

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With so much going in the Internet and social media space sometimes it feels like you just missed something. After looking at this article from AdAge I had that feeling. It looks at the problem of waste that many advertisers are experiencing in the mobile space and how an accreditation process could give advertisers some solace that what they are paying for is what they are actually receiving.

The article says

The debate over the value of mobile advertising typically focuses on what effect, if any, it has on brand lift, sales and getting consumers into stores. But advertisers have been wasting money on mobile in the literal sense because a significant portion of the ads they’re paying for never properly display on devices.

Now, networks and publishers are being pressured to more accurately report how well they deliver ads in an attempt to legitimize the industry and increase mobile-marketing spending.

When you use the words ‘legitimize the industry’ that gives you a real good look into just how broken things may be. So who has gone through this process? Apple.

Apple’s iAd earlier this month became the first major mobile-ad network to be fully accredited by the Media Ratings Council as adhering to the standards the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Mobile Marketing Association jointly released earlier this year.

During the auditing process, iAd demonstrated accurate reporting of impressions, taps, tap-through-rate, visits, views, views-per-visit, average time spent, conversions, unique devices and unique device visits. Apple said its mobile ad network is more streamlined than others and that it only charges for ads that fully render on users’ screens.

This process is not cheap with a price tag of around $100,000 but right now a few other platforms are going through it including Google’s DoubleClick.

The issue is not just for the ad servers either. Publishers are seeing their culpability in this problem.

The Weather Co.-which had the 14th most unique mobile visitors in the U.S. in March, according to ComScore-said it compensates advertisers for any discrepancies by “overbooking,” or offering them more ad inventory than they paid for with the understanding that some may fail to render. The company also said it improved its discrepancy rate from more than 20% to less than 10% after it switched to using DoubleClick for Publishers Premium for its ad serving last fall.

Weather Co.’s VP-digital monetization echoed the need for ad counting to be standardized.

“There’s no agreement about how to measure it, and that’s just not fair to anybody,” he said.

Once again our industry promotes the measurability of online advertising down to the smallest piece of data but comes up short in delivery. At some point people will get fed up with the hype v. reality chasm that sometimes exists. But with mobile growing so rapidly and change happening virtually every day maybe everyone will be too busy to notice?

Your take?

Yahoo’s had a busy week. First, they took over Tumblr and then they redesigned their old photo storage service Flickr. (Or was it the other way around?)

Flickr’s an interesting beast. Like many aging websites, there was a time when everyone knew it and used it. But in the last few years, people have slowly migrated their photos over to Facebook or Google+ and Flickr’s been on a downhill slide.

In order to renew interest, Yahoo invested in a lovely new design that even made me, the girl with only 35 pictures in her account, come back.

The new layout features a grid of big, high-resolution photos under a photo header. They also added a new slideshow option with enhancing software that finds the focal point of your photo and makes it better. The photos look great here because you can upload your pics at full resolution. You also don’t have to worry about running out of space because they’re giving everyone a terabyte of space for free. How much is a terabyte? “Well, you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.”

Flickr also added the ability to upload videos up to 3 minutes long and they redesigned their Android app to go along with the new webpage design.

Wonderful, right?

Of course not.

There’s trouble in photo paradise as evidenced by this post from the management on the help forum.

Hello again everyone. We’ve made some big, giant changes to the site, and it will take some getting used to. We are listening, and value what you all have to say.

We are also committed to making sure the new pages are working properly, and will continue to make improvements as we hear more from you. Please do your part to make sure that people coming to the Forum for help or to report bugs and site issues get a chance to be heard.

For those of you who have reported bugs or other usability concerns already, we’ll be working over the following days to take stock of ongoing issues and respond when possible.

Finally, it should also go without saying that personal attacks against Staff or other users will not be tolerated, and may prevent your ability to take part in discussion here in the Help Forum.

Bugs are to be expected with a big change like this but they have to tell people to stop attacking the staff? Wow.

Part of the problem stems from the new pricing structure and, as always, ads. Previously, if you wanted to store a lot of photos, you could get a Pro plan for $24.95 a year. Now, all users can get for free what Pro users paid for only with ads. If you want to get rid of the ads, you have to pay $49.99 a year. The only other option is to upgrade to the Doublr account with 2 Terabytes of space and all it will cost you is $499.99 a year. No, I didn’t slip an extra 9 in there. That’s the price.

The feedback on the site contains the word ‘hate’ more times than I can count. There are currently over 15,000 responses and I haven’t seen one positive note in the pack. You expect a certain amount of descent whenever you make a major change to a website but this is insane.

If you’re looking for a place to archive your massive digital photo collection – the new free Flickr account is a bargain. Just don’t get too attached to the current look. I have a feeling it will change again very soon.

There’s a song from the Lil’ Abner movie that comes to mind, it’s called “Put ‘em Back the Way They Was.”

We’ve been warning kids for years not to put personal identifiers on the internet. Still, a new study from Pew shows that 71% of teens have mentioned their school name on social media and 20% have posted their cell numbers.

Okay, maybe this is just the paranoid mom talking but these numbers scare me:

I’m shocked but not surprised by this chart or anything in Pew’s new study “Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.”

The entire report is more proof that 12-17 year olds are not only comfortable on social media, they’ve learned how to navigate the treacherous waters better than their parents. Look at these numbers:

First off, how interesting is it that the numbers flip from Facebook to Twitter. Privacy obviously isn’t a concern when Tweeting but it’s important on Facebook. I’d be bolstered by that except for the fact that these teens are hiding from the wrong people. They aren’t going private to keep from sharing personal info with a stranger, many are hiding from authority figures.

Female (age 16): “And our SRO [School Resource Officer] Officer [sic], he has information. He can see anything that we do, basically, because he’s part of the police department. And so he’s talked to my friends and I before. And he was like, anything you do, I can pull up. So if y’all tweet about a party, while you’re there, just don’t be surprised when it gets busted.”

How about friending mom or dad?

Male (age 16): “Yeah, [I’ve gotten in trouble for something I posted] with my parents. This girl posted a really, really provocative picture [on Facebook] and I called her a not very nice word [in the comments]. And I mean, I shouldn’t have called her that word, and I was being a little bit too cocky I guess, and yeah, I got in trouble with my parents.”

Male (age 17): “It sucks… Because then they [my parents] start asking me questions like why are you doing this, why are you doing that. It’s like, it’s my Facebook. If I don’t get privacy at home, at least, I think, I should get privacy on a social network.”

Even though they’re concerned about what their folks will see, 70% still said they have friended their parents. But that doesn’t mean they’re sharing everything. More than half the teens surveyed said they were confident in their ability to manage their privacy controls on Facebook. That means that mom might not be seeing half of what junior posts.

The Highs and Lows of Facebook:

Some of the teens in the survey said they have to be on Facebook if they want to be in the loop with their friends. Others mentioned how stressful it can be because you’re putting yourself out there on a regular basis.

Female (age 13): “I feel like over Facebook, people can say whatever they want to. They can message you. And on Instagram you can delete the comment really easily, and you don’t have to live with it, kind of. Whereas Facebook, if they say something mean, it hurts more. I don’t know why it does. And also [Instagram] it’s not public, so people tend to not come off so mean. Because all they really want is for people [to] like their photos.”

But there are still those who have seen the light:

Female (age 16): “I deleted it [my Facebook account] when I was 15, because I think it [Facebook] was just too much for me with all the gossip and all the cliques and how it was so important to be– have so many friends– I was just like it’s too stressful to have a Facebook, if that’s what it has to take to stay in contact with just a little people. It was just too strong, so I just deleted it. And I’ve been great ever since.”

Proving there is life without Facebook. Who knew?

Yesterday, Frank posted the news that Yahoo bought Tumblr. The big takeaway was this quote from Yahoo’s announcement:

We promise not to screw it up.  Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going.  We will operate Tumblr independently.  David Karp will remain CEO.  The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve.  Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.

Yahoo (which used to be hip. . . but this is what happens with age) attempted to replicate the kind of wry humor you find on Tumblr with an animated gif that changes from “Keep Calm and Carry On” to the words Yahoo!, Tumblr, then the final graphic you see here on the right.

Wait. Am I reading that correctly – Yahoo + Tumblr = Now Panic and Freak Out?

Let me check on that. . . ‘

Yep, it’s signed Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! Maybe tomorrow she’ll come back and say the account was hacked and she didn’t post that message.

Bizarre.

So here we are a day later and it’s all about the ads. Come on, you didn’t think Yahoo was going to take over Tumblr and not use it as an ad platform?

As popular as the site is, it’s been hemorrhaging cash for awhile and sources now say that it was months away from closing the doors if this buy hadn’t happened. Karp told Bloomberg that even so, he wasn’t shopping for a buyer. The Yahoo deal was simply providence. In that case, this buy-out is good news for all the Tumblr fans who might have had to find a new social network had things gone a different route.

Which brings us back to the ads that Karp has publicly spit on in the past. The last time Tumblr talked advertising, it was all about content marketing and visual design. None of this Old Navy ads in the sidebar biz. They were going to keep it native and creative.

Good luck with that.

Now there’s talk of building an ad exchange network for Tumblr using cookies to deliver relevant ads. In order to preserve the artsy nature of the site, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer says their considering asking bloggers for their permission before running ads on their posts. If they agree to split the revenue the way YouTube does, they might have a shot at it. But Tumblr’s audience is known for its anti-establishment stance so it’s hard to imagine that the big players will agree to random advertising.

Of course, Yahoo could always play the mommy card – do what I say or find somewhere else to play.

It’s hard to say how far the users can be pushed before they pack up their toys and leave. Tumblr is unique. It has elements of LiveJournal, Pinterest, DeviantArt and Facebook all rolled into one. There might be a similar start-up elsewhere on the web but I haven’t seen it.

If you’re an enterprising, young developer, now would be a good time to start creating another social network because with Yahoo behind it, Tumblr could be MySpace very soon.

We talk a lot about reputation here at Marketing Pilgrim. After all, our founder, Andy Beal has quite a reputation himself in the fast growing field of reputation management, monitoring and online listening.

With that in mind we often see stories a little bit differently than some. Today’s case in point is the tax avoidance story that is currently surrounding Apple. The company is already getting dinged here and there with some reputation matters, like cnet’s “Customers Not As Happy With iPhone As The Were Last Year” (which carries an alarmist headline and not much else to be concerned about but it’s the headline that people actually read so ….) and the Apple Maps concerns of last year. Also, there are concerns about the direction and general health of the company in the post Steve Jobs era which sometimes directly indicts current CEO Tim Cooke.

But back to the tax issues. Apple Insider reports

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) took particular issue with Apple Operations International, an Ireland-based entity owned by Apple that he said has paid no taxes. The issue comes from a loophole in U.S. tax law that Levin believes should be closed.

“Apple is exploiting an absurdity, one that we have not seen other corporations use,” the senator said. “And the absurdity need not continue.”

The senator is not alone in his assessment either.

Joining him in criticizing Apple was U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who said the company has avoided paying taxes on some $44 billion in income in the last 4 years alone.

“It’s unacceptable that corporations like Apple are able to exploit tax loopholes to avoid paying billions in taxes,” McCain said.

That makes for fantastic headlines and reading even the truth of the matter may actually have been more accurately described by none other than Rand Paul.

Taking a dissenting opinion on the subcommittee was U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ken.), who criticized his colleagues for “bullying, badgering and berating” a great American success story. He said that Apple has broken no laws, and is simply following the rules of an outdated U.S. tax code.

Paul characterized Tuesday’s hearing as a waste of time, both for the politicians involved and for Apple executives who were in attendance to testify. He also suggested that other members of the subcommittee do all they can to lower their individual tax rates as well.

Rather than criticizing Apple, Paul said the subcommittee should apologize to the company, and compliment them for their job creation.

So while the headlines scream about the negative Apple actually may have done nothing illegal. Some might call it unethical but it is likely not illegal (please remember that I am not a lawyer and I DID NOT stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night either).

But this is the Internet we are talking about here so the truth may have less to do with the reputation concerns that might come against Apple in this one. Why? Because it’s a chance to vilify a big winner and a chance for some politicians to look like they are taking out a corporate bully.

So this begs the question, “Will this kind of story hurt Apple’s reputation and if yes, how much?”

Any thoughts on this are obviously speculation but it is an interesting phenomenon to consider. Even if Apple has done nothing wrong legally will they now be held up as the company that skipped on paying taxes on $44 billion (yup, with a “b”) while the rest of the US tries to put food on the table in a persistently weak economy? The answer is very possibly yes and they will need to get out in front of this one because the last thing you need in this environment is to be held up as one of the lead dogs in a presumed tax dodge ploy.

Of course, they are not alone as Google has come under similar scrutiny and are not even close to being the only company doing what they are doing.

That said, we have a strange way of taking companies to the top only to wind up resenting them to the point of wanting to see them suffer. It’s like a completely dysfunctional national pastime in America.

So what do you think? Will this kind of press tarnish Apple’s reputation? Should it even be an issue? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.

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