Archive for April, 2008

All hail Facebook…

 

Imagine a median that attracts globally 250,000 new subscribers every day, with over 64 million people in total. Back on home turf, Facebook has 2.8 million registered subscribers with about 200,000 people accessing their account daily.

Some refer to Facebook as the median of choice for people with brains – we tend to think it fits a separate group of socialites needs, being a little more secure, a little more professional, and slightly easier to manage and communicate with. These people tend to be slightly older, more towards 22

- 35yo as opposed to the 13-22yo’s that frequent Myspace.

We view Facebook as a transition website, as people move through different stages life, their needs albeit social, economic, lifestyle and so on, change. The same thing occurs with social networks.

We tend to believe that people’s needs for social interaction changes with age, seeking a more controlled environment that still captures the true essence of a social network – fun, interaction, communication between users etc.

What to watch out for:

There’s this concept floating around the industry at the moment called ‘Facebook Fatigue’, a trend

that is starting to occur abroad (particularly in the UK), where major social networks are starting to

loose members at rapid levels for the first time. We believe that people are starting to get ‘sick’ of having to update their profile and interact with the media – due to other lifestyle demands. In September 07, the average social network user spent 23min 30sec on social networks, in January 08 this had dropped to 21min 15sec, with a slight rise in February.

From our perspective, we believe there are still legs in both media, however creativity and unobtru

siveness social network front!

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Doin’ it digital at the Melbourne Motor show…

 

Recently whilst in Melbourne I treated myself to the Melbourne International Motor Show for a quick squiz of the latest and greatest toys to be released. Am disappointed that I

didn’t take my camera, as the Ford display was absolutely fantastic – their use of digital marketing and new media concepts was first class!

Avid b*Fresh (our monthly report) readers will remember past issues where I have raved on about Bluetooth marketing via localised hot spots – some may recall the example I talked about when Trans

formers was released in Australia, using localised hot spots in shopping centres. Well Ford have introduced these ‘touch’ panels on their motor show displays whereby people can come up and receive the latest information, photos and wallpapers direct to their handset.

The line up of fellow Gen Yers along with Xers using this technology was a testament to this campaign element’s success.

Further to this, they had an interactive panel/game on the floor whereby people can kick Ford ‘footies’ across a white screen to display an image of the latest Falcon. Whilst in the US this form of interactive advertising was reasonably prevalent at shopping centres and as

well at places like Universal Studios. It’s an innovative way of getting your advertising message across!!

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User generated advertising

Are my fellow industry members going to be out of a job in the future?? The rise in user generated advertising – ie. encouraging a brands users to create and develop their advertising is rising! Recently, Sony ran a competition with the launch of their Alpha A100 camera to encourage budding photographers to submit their photos to the Sony gallery, of which the best photo would feature in the Sony advertising.

 

The campaign was incredibly successful reaching over 3,000,000 people and

 

 

 

achieving click through rates (CTR’s) 4-6 times the Australian average. In addition,  the average website view stay time hovered around 13minutes with 35% of visitors submitting their photos!!

So what do all these analytic measures mean? Well, a fantastic result backed off a shoestring budget! More and more we realize that by throwing ‘dollars’ at your advertising problem won’t necessarily sell products or change opinions – campaigns that rely on creativity and uniqueness along with user interaction is what get’s people hooked!!

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Reaching a virtual audience… game advertising

At June 2007, the Australian cinema box office did approximately $200m in turnover whilst the Australian games industry cracked a little over $1bn! Internationally, US males between the age of 18-34 spend on average 41.7hrs playing video games each week. We don’t have available recent data from Australia, but would assume we’d be a little less, somewhere around the 30- 40hr mark one would assume.

To give you another idea of how much loot the gaming industry is generating here in Oz, when Spider-Man 3 hit screens, it did $150m in its first weekend compared to when Halo 3 was launched which did $170m in the first 24 hours.

In- game advertising is an area that is starting to emerge more in Australia, with some specialist agencies from abroad stepping into this space, but as a result, data on its effectiveness here in Oz is still quite limited. US data is quite  romising though, brand familiarity increased by 64% with average purchase consideration up by 41%, same as ad retention.

The big benefit of in- game advertising is the captivity that it creates – on average Australian users spend between 1-3 hours on each game they play, playing at least three times per week – there’s no risk of channel hopping so you’ve got a captive audience.

Essentially, the main opportunity presented by gaming is ‘in- game’ advertising using billboards, brand placement and other signage. With the integration of the internet into gaming consoles, these ads can be refreshed and updated just like we find in advertising conducted online.

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