Riding the Storm
Study: Cross platform advertising multiplies sales; same will hold true for widgets we believe
Advertising campaigns that use a number of different media platforms increase not only their reach but also the likelihood that consumers will actually buy the product or service, according to a new study from Integrated Media Measurement. “Until now, the value of a multiplatform advertising campaign was thought to be just an increase in reach,” said Amanda Welsh, head of research for Integrated Media. “But the impact of advertising on multiple platforms on conversion and getting consumers to engage in the target behavior is potentially more important. You can read about the study here or get the complete report from the IMM site.
What We Think
This makes sense ... because advertising on multiple platforms serves to increase not just reach but also frequency. Also, to the extent you use multiple channels of communication, consumers may start to experience your brand differently, by hearing your brand on radio, for example, or experiencing your brand in a more visceral hands-on way when they engage with a widget or social application. What we find interesting about this research is that it has clear applications for the widget space. For some time now, we’ve been working with agencies and brand marketers who are forward thinking enough to recognize to move beyond the “GMOT” phase - when some one in management has barked “get me one of those” and in response the agency or marketing manager hopped to and built a widget as a knee jerk response. Instead, companies that work with us may start out by building a widget or social application for a single platform - say Facebook, the web, or MySpace, but end up taking what they’ve built and morphing it just a few clicks to support multiple platforms. The benefits of doing this are enormous. Yes, they expand their reach, but also they increase their frequency for virtually no additional cost, something that is increasingly important in a media world that is fragmented and cluttered and where younger and more influential targets tend to consume multiple kinds of media at a time. The old rule of thumb in media was that it took a frequency of 3 to break through the clutter and get heard. The new rule? Who knows. A frequency of 6-7x is generally recommended but may not be sufficient. Which makes the new imperative not “GMOT” but “BIO DIE” - build it once and deploy it everywhere, from Facebook, to OpenSocial, to the web, to mobile phones such as the iPhone.
Study: PCs Steal TV’s ‘Share of Screen’
When thinking about video, think horizontally about how the media is consumed - on television, on the computer at various sites and inside of widgets, on mobile phones (likewise), versus vertically by technology. This lesson was underlined by recent market research coming out of Ipsos that points out that consumers are watching more video online and - as they do so - consumption on TV tends to drop.
People are still watching programs, but not necessarily on their TV screens. The amount of video consumed on TV has dropped 5 percent among people who actively stream and download content, per a study conducted by Ipsos MediaCT, New York.
Meanwhile, movie theater consumption fell 2 percent while personal computer viewing grew 8 percent. One out of every five hours spent watching video is now done online.
Still, TV is the place the 1,102 respondents surveyed online in February went to watch video 70 percent of the time. However, Adam Wright, director of Ipsos MediaCT, said marketers need to be mindful of this subtle shift.
“Folks that are downloading and streaming are clearly adopting the activity, they are not just experimenting with it,” said Wright. “If you don’t already have a plan to reach consumers online via video, you are missing a big tool in your kit when you put together your media plan.”
More than half (52 percent) of Americans over the age of 12 have streamed or downloaded a digital file. Consumers 18-24 spend the largest percentage of their time (27 percent) watching video on their computers.
Relevant Links
Study: PCs Steal TV’s ‘Share of Screen’ as reported by Kenneth Hein, Brandweek, June 20, 2008
Mobile Insider June 19, 2008
Widget Web Expo recap
I had a blast at the recent Widget Web Expo in New York. The show was smaller than some I’ve been to lately, most likely because corporations are cutting travel budgets in response to a tighter economy. Still the people who came to the show were there to learn more about widgets and social applications and those that I talked to felt like they walked away from the show with actionable knowledge they could use. Sessions that were particularly popular were Josh Bernoff’s from Forrester Research and Linda Abraham’s from Comscore, both of which were very data rich.
- Josh Bernoff of Forrester underscored that the people who post widgets and social applications are different than the average person on the internet, they tend to be younger and are much higher up on what Forrester calls the engagement ladder. (I’ll post an update when Josh’s fact-filled presentation becomes available.)
- Linda Boland Abraham of comScore pointed out that widgets have wide reach not just in the US but internationally. Two of our competitors that focus on the consumer space are working with comScore to standardize widget measurement and comScore is standardizing on a methodology and starting to report on widgets as a routinized part of the reports it provides to advertisers and marketers. This shows that widgets are moving into the mainstream.
I’ll provide links to these presentations when they become available ...
To view this widget live on your iPhone just point your iPhone to http://iphone.musestorm.com/wwe and bookmark the site
If you don’t have an iPhone handy - you can preview this at http://iphonetester.com/
MuseStorm participated at the show in three ways
- We were a show sponsor, providing the official widgets including the iPhone widget (see above) that provided the show agenda.
- I spoke on the Widget Platform panel on Day 1 that was chaired by Richard J. Krueger of AboutFaceDigital. Rich did an excellent job chairing this panel, trying to make the differences between the 5 of us crystal clear. (If anyone still doesn’t understand how MuseStorm is different, feel free to drop me a line.)
- On Tuesday afternoon, I also spoke in what I thought would be the “dead zone” ... the very last time slot on Tuesday, the last day of the conference. About 15-20 people showed up for my presentation on the Top 10 Widget and Social Application Mistakes - which was gratifying. There isn’t a lot written about widget best practices and many people are looking for the kind of hands-on advice we find ourselves providing to our clients day in and day out - as a free - but important (!) part of the MuseStorm service. If you missed my talk, you can download the slides over on slideshare.net.
One advantage of an intimate show is that you get to interact with everyone multiple times, so that by the time you leave, you feel like you really walk away knowing what companies and the people are all about and that was the case here. Highly recommended if you want to truly understand the dynamics in what is emerging as one of the hottest spaces in emerging media: widgets and social applications. Note that this was not a show about technology. Instead, speakers focused on thoughtful discussions of what the future holds for social networks, what is a widget versus a social application, how to select a widget platform, the business case for widgets, how to measure success, and presentation of case studies that highlighted both success and failure.
We’re in New York at Widget Web Expo
I’m here in New York speaking at Widget Web Expo, the conference formerly known as Widgety Goodness, in Brooklyn. I’ll be speaking on the goodness of Widget Platforms on Monday from 12:15 to 1:00 and then again on Tuesday from 5:00 to 5:45 on the Top 10 Widget Mistakes in a Hands On Session. The show is only a hop-skip and a quick subway ride from Manhattan at the Brooklyn Marriott on Adams Street. Highly recommended. Hope to see you there!
iPhone fever here at MuseStorm
Yes, I know it’s a tad early for iPhone fever. (Although we do hear rumors that people are lined up in front of the Apple Store in New York - for no apparent reason!). Here at MuseStorm, we recently announced that we extended our Engagement Platform to include support for the iPhone as a core part of the platform. We made the announcement on June 3rd but really it is the culmination of 3 years of work building out a cross-platform widget strategy. Today, MuseStorm is the only player in the widget category with a platform that supports all 5 types of widgets popular with customers today:
Here’s just some of the nice things people have been saying in response to this announcement:
Musestorm raised the game and it should be enough to play against the recent Clearspring Update that aims to fight not only to musestorm but everyone in the widgetsphere...Now the ball is the court of the rest of the Big players. now we only need to wait for Widgetbox, Gigya and SpringWidgets response to all this new development in the widget market. Whatever happens. i will sure remember may as the month that changed Boosted the prospects of the widget market yet again.
— WidgetLabs, May 23, 2008
The small screens of mobile devices are blurring the lines between webpages and widgets. So it should come as no surprise that MuseStorm, hitherto a platform for developing widgets for syndication across the web and onto desktops, is coming out with a tool for making iPhone-ready websites. ... The creation of MuseStorm widgets for the iPhone consists of the same PowerPoint-like interface users have come to expect. ... Consumer-oriented alternatives to MuseStorm include WidgetBox, Wix, and Sprout (although good luck getting the latter two working on the iPhone; they’re based entirely in Flash).
— TechCrunch, May 19, 2008
The widgets clearly are coming to phones across multiple operating systems. Today, online social app platform MuseStorm announced an extension to its Widget Studio that quickly develops widgets for the iPhone. CEO Ori Soen tells me that brand marketers, agencies, and media clients have been pressing for tools that port widgets to the phone, specifically the iPhone. Publishers can use the same tools that also produce their Facebook and Bebo apps and save it as an iPhone app. Soen tells me that one retailer will be rolling out a cross-platform widget campaign that will distribute tips and how-to videos.
The strength of using a consistent widget platform on mobile is measurability. You can track distribution and engagement, sharing, page impressions, stream usage, etc. Soen says that media companies like CBS are using their daily metrics to adjust programming and update content.
— Mobile Insider, June 3, 2008