Category Archives: digital media

June 9, 2016 · 11:43 am

Counting On Social

I can’t think of a single company with which I’ve had contact in the last year or two that isn’t somehow engaged in social media marketing. Maybe it’s a Facebook page or an Instagram account or maybe it’s just executives posting on LinkedIn. It’s always surprising when I inquire about the other end of that content funnel. How is social working? What are your goals? The surprise has to do with the lack of a coherent plan to track and measure the social media efforts these companies are making. I’d like to provide a little food for thought on that today.

First, it goes without saying that however you’re measuring social it should also integrate into whichever analytics platform you’re using. It’s really pretty easy to tag, for example, any URL with the parameters needed by Google Analytics to report social activity beyond the defaults offered along with any supporting ads you’re running or email campaigns. It’s a little more effort but possible even to track “dark social” that way using a combination of custom segments and/or third party tools. Dark social, by the way, is the term used to refer to all that wonderful content you produce that’s shared among readers via email or text messages or some other non-public platform. Some folks have figured that as much as 85% or more of content is shared that way, so you shouldn’t ignore it.

Back to our topic. Analytics measure “how much”. In addition, you need to be measuring how readers feel. It’s not a great situation to have a lot of consumers posting and sharing negative things about your brand. If you’re only measuring how much activity, that might look like a win. At the most simple level, you should be paying attention to comments and posts. There are free tools available to locate and compile this information. You can then do your own sentiment analysis or use a tool to do so if the volume is just too great (a good problem to have!).

Finally, you should try to understand how many of the people who follow you on one platform are also tracking you on others.  These “superfans” are probably your best targets and the ability to identify them in order to reward their loyalty is a massively impactful bit of research.  You can’t ignore the analytics most platforms offer as well.  They can help in understanding not only who your audience is but what resonates with them (and that’s really true if you can add the dark social shares discussed earlier).

Wha to measure?  I’m not going to tell you since whatever it is needs to reflect your business goals and the tactics you’ve taken.  There is a pretty good list in this article to help your thinking but I’d urge you to get beyond the quantitative things such as “likes” or “followers” and more into the qualitative things such as engagement.  What’s important is that you not just throw your social efforts out into the digital ozone.  OK?

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June 7, 2016 · 12:09 pm

This Is Disturbing

A little over a year or ago, Jon Mandel, who is a widely respected media maven, made a statement in front of an ad convention that kickbacks were rampant in the media and agency businesses. He alleged that agencies were receiving funds back from various media sources and these payments were never reported to the clients. It was such a widespread issue that he left a position as head of one of the biggest ad agencies in the US in part over it.

I worked with Jon in my past life and I’d certainly not cite him as one who is prone to rash groundless statements. Apparently, neither would the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the trade group that represents marketers. They commissioned a security firm to conduct an investigation of the allegations and the report came out last Friday. It’s not pretty.

You can read the report here but some topline results found non-transparent business practices employed by agencies, some of which may or may not have been contract-compliant, included the following:

  • Cash rebates from media companies were provided to agencies with payments based on the amount spent on media. Advertisers interviewed in the K2 Intelligence study indicated they did not receive rebates or were unaware of any rebates being returned.
  • Rebates in the form of free media inventory credits.
  • Rebates structured as “service agreements” in which media suppliers paid agencies for non-media services such as low-value research or consulting initiatives that were often tied to the volume of agency spend. Sources told K2 Intelligence that these services “were being used to obscure what was essentially a rebate.”
  • Markups on media sold through principal transactions ranged from approximately 30 percent to 90 percent, and media buyers were sometimes pressured or incentivized by their agency holding companies to direct client spend to this media, regardless of whether such purchases were in the clients’ best interests.
  • Dual rate cards in which agencies and holding companies negotiated separate rates with media suppliers when acting as principals and as agents.
  • Non-transparent business practices in the U.S. market resulting from agencies holding equity stakes in media suppliers.

The response by the agency community?  Because the study did not name names, many of the big players seem to be denying there is a problem.  The 4A’s, which is the agency trade group said:

Without an opportunity for agencies to assess and address the veracity of information provided to K2, sweeping allegations will continue to drive attention-grabbing headlines; this does nothing to foster a productive conversation or to move our industry forward and could cause substantial economic damage to all media agencies.

It seems to me that the “productive conversation” needs to have happened quite a while ago.  When some media buying companies realized that they couldn’t make any profit executing buys, rather than have a heart to heart with the people paying their bills they chose, in essence, to cheat. Is it painting with too widespread a brush?  Probably, but one can imagine the lawsuits that would follow the publication of a list of the offenders.

It’s a good lesson for any of us in business.  Just as our clients’ problems become our problems, a healthy business relationship should foster open exchanges of the issues we face as well.  Labelling this problem as “unsubstantiated claims” and denying there is a problem doesn’t solve anything – ask the climate change deniers if ignoring the problem is making it go away. Transparency and good communication are high on any list of best business practices.  Are they on yours?

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May 19, 2016 · 10:51 am

Publisher : Cavete

Sometimes I look at what’s going on in publishing as if someone was whispering the Springsteen lyric in management’s ear:

Those romantic young boys, they’re callin’ through the window
Hey, Spanish Johnny, you want to make a little easy money tonight?

The easy money comes from native advertising, particularly the kind that’s plug and play. Just as in the song, however, there isn’t any easy money that comes without strings attached and some research from Penn State found out just what those strings entail.

The research team found that when content was identified as native advertising, readers held a lower opinion of the media outlet it was published in. However, the reputation of the company being promoted was not affected…“We all have the idea that the news media should be objective and neutral…that’s how it works,” Wu said. “But people may see the media and companies working together to deceive us…so they change their perception toward the media more dramatically. On the other hand, people see that the company is just doing what it’s supposed to, promoting itself.”

The speaker in the quote above is the PhD student who conducted the study. While I certainly understand the importance of revenue generation in an increasingly competitive and difficult marketplace, I also understand the value of a publisher’s reputation. That reputation, like all of ours, takes a long time to establish but can be shattered rather quickly. The loss of trust is fatal for any brand and particularly so for an information service.

Maybe it’s called “native content” or maybe it’s actually identified as “sponsored content” or a “promoted post.”  Either way, it’s generally not immediately identifiable as being from a source different from the main news or information the publisher puts out.  I think most of us dislike being enticed to read something under false pretenses, and part of the decision to invest time in reading involves the quality of the content which is predicated on the source.  When we’re deceived, we’re unhappy, and when we’re unhappy, we don’t return.

Publishers need to beware.  There is no easy money to be made unless you’re in it for the short term and are reputation-agnostic.  Are you?

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