Did you hear Star Wars is coming out? By now most people by now have seen the movie, and nearly everyone has seen at least some of Disney’s advertising for it. No matter how in your face Disney was with the Star Wars promotion, most were harmless (though perhaps overdone) and some even clever. There a few special occasions that they may have gone overboard though….
Recently, Facebook decided to compete more directly with YouTube by adding a video section, including searchable videos. Now, just seven months later, Facebook is seeing an average of 8 billion daily views from 500 million users. This is up from just 4 billion views in April.
This month we celebrate Women’s History Month. Since the beginning of advertising, women have made a significant impact, whether they were recognized for their successes or not. As a female in the advertising, I look up to those women like Mary Wells Lawrence who paved the way for women in the industry. To this day, the world of advertising remains a male-dominated field. In fact, only 3% of creative leadership positions are held by women, while ironically women control 80% of consumer spending in America.
With that being said, in honor of Women’s History Month I would like to celebrate women today who are making a difference in the field of digital media advertising. You may have never heard their names, but their work more than likely impacts your day-to-day activities.
When first joining Facebook in 2008, Sandberg’s first goal was to make it profitable. This lead to the creation of Facebook’s first advertising platform of “ads discreetly presented” and by 2010 the company become profitable. Today Sandberg oversees all of Facebook’s operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy and communications. As a reward for her great efforts, she was invited to the board of directors. The first women on Facebook’s board.
Before landing her current position as Product Consultant at LinkedIn, Kim was the Director of Mobile and Emerging Media at Pandora. There, she was partially responsible for the company’s $100 million-plus in mobile advertising sales revenue. Currently at LinkedIn, she works to help higher education institutions leverage LinkedIn media effectively to achieve their marketing objectives. The social network, which is primarily used by business professionals world-wide, has over 300 million active monthly users (and counting.)
Susan become Google’s 16th employee and marketing executive in 1999. She was able to license their search technology and led initial development of Google’s image search. Later on, she advanced to Vice President of Advertising & Commerce and created the advertising and analytic products offered by Google including: AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick and Google Analytics.
Arianna boldly took on the world of digital media in 2005 with Huffington Post, an American online news aggregator and blog. Today, her creation has flooded our Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter timelines to become a household name with viral post after viral post. It’s likely worth an estimated $100 million.
As Chief of Strategy at Pandora, Sara works towards global expansion along with perfecting the internet radio company’s business strategy. Prior to landing her Pandora gig, Sara held leadership positons at Greylock Partners, LinkedIn and Microsoft.
Lisa certainly has an impressive resume, which presumably helped her land the job as Senior Vice President at Yahoo in February of 2014. She started out as a General Sales Manager at Microsoft where for ten years she led several advertising initiatives for product development and sales. Lisa then joined Amazon in 2008 as their President of Global Advertising. As President of Global Advertising, she assumed the role of operating all of the company’s owned websites including Amazon, IMDb and DPReview. She developed long lasting sales strategies and advertising solutions for the ecommerce conglomerate.
With previous experience from Walt Disney Imaginnering, MTV Networks and Microsoft, Carolyn brings innovation and leadership to Facebook. Her efforts have cultivated Facebook into the leader of mobile advertising. She’s responsible for growing Facebook’s ad revenue, which recently accounted for 62% of the $2.7 billion the social network made last year-not to mention mobile ad revenue alone was up 151% from the year before.
The women above represent some of the most successful digital brands in the world. Not only have they helped lay the foundation for digital media success, they continue to build up to make the internet more enjoyable and entertaining. We’d love to hear about more women who are making an impact in digital media advertising! Please leave a comment below to continue the conversation.
According to Facebook, between 2013 and 2014 the quantity of videos on News Feeds increased 3.6 times – or – 360%. The vast majority of the time, these aren’t Vine, YouTube or other videos — users upload videos to the site themselves typically from their mobile device.
Facebook is seeking to cut into the $66.4 billion TV advertisement market through their new Premium Video Ads. Let’s take a look at how these ads will work, who they’re designed for, what tangible benefits have already occurred, and what the cost will be to run one of these ads on a Facebook users’ News Feed.
How it works:
Facebook Premium Video Ads begin to play without sound as you are scrolling through your News Feed. If you don’t want to watch them, they’ll stop once you’ve scrolled past the screen. However, by tapping on the video, sound will emit and the advertisement will go into a larger screen outside of the news feed.
Facebook has changed its algorithms around not only to determine who is watching these Premium Video Ads, but for how long they are watching as well. Those who are more likely to open the videos based on previous behavior will find more ads within their news feeds than those who consistently scroll past the videos.
Who they’re designed for:
Premium video ads are designed for large brands’ awareness campaigns that are meant to reach a mass number of people in order to increase interest in a brand, product or content in a short amount of time. For example, the first premium ad that was shown on an experimental basis was a trailer for the movie “Divergent,” which was created by Lionsgate Summit Entertainment.
Facebook contends that while TV advertisements typically reach 38% of their targeted demographic, they often over-deliver to the wrong people and can’t reach others. Premium video ads, on the other hand, can be narrowly targeted to an ideal consumer (based on the wealth of personal data within Facebook) and can be converted with 89% accuracy.
Benefits:
One major benefit that Facebook Video ads seem to have over other digital marketing channels like YouTube is the aspect of free will. The insights gathered from Facebook video ads infer that a user sat through an advertisement voluntarily, instead of scrolling past it. This is in contrast to the advertisements on YouTube, where a user must sit through them in order to gain access to the desired content.
One specific example of where Facebook video ads have already outperformed TV advertisements is with Coca Cola reintroducing their iconic polar bears to their French market in 2013. In a dual campaign where the Facebook video ad ran at the same time as the television ad, Facebook and Coca Cola executives both reported that every euro spent on Facebook returned 2.74 euros in additional Coke sales. That was 3.6 times better than the ROI attributed to the TV advertisement. Although this is only one isolated example from a study of 10,000 people, it is clear that the ability to hone in on a target market via Facebook is extremely effective compared to taking a shot in the dark with TV advertisements.
Cost:
Although the information has not been released publicly, it is widely speculated that due to Facebook’s enormous and active daily user base of 1.28 billion people, Premium Video Ads will cost advertisers’ ~$1-$2 million per day. The ads are bought based on Targeted Gross Rating Points to reach a specific audience over a short period of time. And while they have been proven to be effective for brands like Coca Cola, small brands will have to wait for such an opportunity; they are unfortunately tailored exclusively to elite brands and are not yet available for smaller brands and businesses.
StrataBlue’s own Director of Digital Media Marketing, Julie Perry, will be moderating a panel at the upcoming ReelSEO ReelSummit taking place in San Fransisco on July 24 and 25, 2014. This two-day summit features insights from the foremost influencers in video marketing, video advertising and video analytics/results. The conference offers attendees a chance to learn from the experts in video advertising, commerce, marketing, production, SEO and more.
A regularly featured speaker on YouTube marketing topics at BlogWorld & New Media Expo (Oct 2010, June 2011, Nov 2011), New Music Seminar 2012 and Social Media Marketing World in 2013, Julie Perry moderated the “Best Practices to Optimize the Video Advertising Opportunity” panel at the inaugural ReelSEO ReelSummit a year ago. The panel included TubeMogul’s VP of Marketing, Keith Eadie; Google’s Head of Industry-Retail, Alex Barza; Essence’s Media Director, Mary Griffin; and Mediasmith’s Director of Insights and Technology, Marcus Pratt. Check it out:
And this year’s conference promises to be even more information-packed, with workshops, panel discussions and a “Grill the Gurus” session that offers attendees an opportunity to learn, network, and share information with their peers and industry professionals.
Here are some of the video marketing experts and industry leaders taking the stage at this year’s 2nd Annual ReelSEO ReelSummit:
The first half-day of the conference also offers two workshops for attendees to gain practical advice and tips and tricks they can put to work right away. The two workshops are as follows:
Thursday, July 24 Training Workshops at the ReelSummit:
For those wishing to attend the two-day video marketing extravaganza, tickets are still available. Attendees can choose from the following options…
ReelSEO ReelSummit Ticket Options:
If you are registering, be sure to use the code “vmarketing” upon registration checkout to save an additional $100.
In the meantime, have a look at this sweet video promo created for the ReelSummit by BonFireLabs — it’s “The History of Video Marketing” in under a minute:
Catch Part 2 on July 24th at the ReelSummit in San Francisco… And be sure to say hello to Julie Perry while you’re there!
(Remember: Use the code “vmarketing” upon registration checkout to save an additional $100.)
Did you know videos increase people’s understanding of your product or service by 74%? Click-through rates increase 2-3 times when a video is included in an email. Let’s go over some do’s and don’ts when creating video content marketing for your company.
Video will be a vital part of your marketing plan, if it’s not already. If you are finally taking the plunge into video content marketing and still have questions we would love to talk.
