August 2, 2018 — Published by: Steph Bennett
All Posts in advertising
May 5, 2016 — Published by: Sophie
The demise of newspapers, and what it means for digital media
November 25, 2015 — Published by: Drew Benvie
Data: brands spending 500% more marketing to Millennials than all other demographics put together
April 29, 2015 — Published by: Drew Benvie
How digital is reshaping the world of advertising
If you read one thing today, make it the Connected Business supplement in this morning's Financial Times. It explores how digital is reshaping the world of advertising, from a high level how technology is changing the way brands sell, to the new social media influencers, five future marketing trends, a half-page graphic (see below) expanding on the different advertising avenues on offer from the main social networks, and my favourite piece - 'the future lies in number crunching' - a piece on the influence of smart data on the brand.
The full report is available online here.
All images courtesy of the FT.
November 26, 2014 — Published by: Janey Spratt
YouTubers: brand endorsement crack down by ASA
We recently blogged about the rise of YouTube celebrities and for years now brands have been tapping into their highly engaged audiences through brand endorsements.
The influence of these YouTubers has been picked up by the media this year, uncovering that YouTubers can earn in the region of £100k in return for a day of product endorsement on their channels.
The latest revelation comes from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) who have noticed that some YouTubers have been breaking advertising standards. Today, the ASA have ruled that Vloggers must clearly declare when a brand has paid for a product to appear in a video.
YouTubers must now clearly mark ‘advert’, ‘promo’ or add a symbol onto the video or in the title. Simply saying ‘this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of *brand*’ isn’t going to cut it anymore. These changes are to protect the YouTuber's audiences who are often very young in age.
In our experience, we’ve managed relationships between brands and YouTubers where both parties have been keen to endorse the campaign message while making it look as natural and as discreet as possible. So these new rules will be a significant change for YouTubers as they work hard to maintain relationships with their loyal subscribers.
With this standardised approach to YouTuber endorsements being enforced by the ASA, the crucial effect yet to be seen will be the impact on subscriber loyalty and engagement. Does this new ruling change the commercial opportunity for brands and YouTube partnerships?
YouTubers owe their success to their loyal fanbases - they know better than anyone that the right content tailored to the audience has the potential to draw in mass support and engagement. As YouTubers grow their fanbases, commercial opportunities begin to appear and the line between fan loyalty and financial gain can become blurred. If the new ASA ruling jeopardises fan loyalty, we predict YouTubers will simply minimise the volume of product placement on their channels to avoid losing subscribers. It may be that YouTubers move over to brands' owned channels when promoting products in return for payment.
April 15, 2014 — Published by: Fereshta Amir
Facebook break up: brands and young users move on
Every month we number crunch to find out how many active users each social network has and every month since we started doing this, we see Facebook is still on top with over a billion users. Yet research tells us that despite these stats, many brands and young users have broken up and moved on from Facebook, mainly due to the clutter of ads that have taken over the social giant.
A recent study by ad agency Ogilvy showed that as of 2012, Facebook limited the organic reach of content to around 16 percent and as of February this year, the organic reach for brand pages was between 2 and 6 percent depending on the number of fans per page. As The Next Web reports, this means that even if your brand page has a million fans, only around two percent of those fans will see anything you post unless you pay for it. No wonder then that brands like Eat24 have officially broken up with Facebook to move to other social networks like SnapChat, Vine, Tumblr and Instagram - which are not yet saturated with ads.
Research shows that more than 3 million teens have left Facebook since 2007, while the 55+ demographic has seen growth of 80.4 percent and according to the KPCB Internet Trends Report from 2013, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram all saw boosts in popularity, while Facebook showed decline. Snapchat, in particular, grew from under a million snaps per day in May of 2012, with more than 140 million as of April 2013. Read more about this here.
January 7, 2014 — Published by: Drew Benvie
