YouTube has officially hit a HUGE milestone….. every second and hour of video content is uploaded to YouTube! That means 24 hours every 24 seconds
That means a decade a day!
That me….. you get the picture.

Video content is still a digital marketers paradise.

“If you want an Internet where human rights, free speech and the rule of law are not subordinated to the entertainment industry’s profits, I hope you’ll join us,” said Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing.

Internet entities such as Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr said the two bills would force them to be online police and hold them responsible if users of their sites link to pirated content. Not an easy task!

“While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don’t believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world,” said Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google, in a December post on Google+.

Here at The Digital Agency we are on the fence with this one. Copyright infringement is a serious offence and we do whatever we can to ensure our client’s digital properties and intellectual property is protected against any piracy acts, however holding some of the world leaders in digital innovation is not the ideal solution. Although this is a US ruling, it will effect the internet as we know it (as in it’s essence it is the WORLD WIDE web and not just the USWEB!). By passing this bill, search engine optimisation and back linking projects will be effected world wide and could disrupt internet usage as well as your own website ranking quite significantly. If you are worried about how this could effect your site or want more information on PIPA or SOPA just give the team here a shout or discuss it with us on Facebook or Twitter!

Check out Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorows explanation in this video -

Social media has infiltrated the purchasing funnel helping consumers make purchases from what to have to lunch to where to go on holiday! Depending on what you need to know, sometimes you turn to Google and sometimes you turn to your social graph. Is your brand available across the relevant online channels in order to target your perfect audience? Regardless of what type of consumer you are targeting, people will either search or ask a friend so your SEO/SEM must be focussed on in order to turn those in the search stage of the buying cycle towards your brand. In order to target those in the social funnel it is essential that you know the different types of consumers on platforms such as Facebook. An interesting study by MBooth and Beyond analyzes the differences between high and low sharers.

The social consumer -

53% use Facebook to interact with a brand.
40% liked a product on Facebook
20% use Facebook to Research products at least once a week
42% wrote an online post about a product or a brand

The analysis compares the ‘high sharer’ with the ‘low sharer’. If you are likely to ‘share’ a lot on Facebook, what does that mean about you as a consumer? High sharers only represent 20% of the users on Facebook as opposed to low sharers. What does that mean for you?

High sharers are -
Younger
They recommend products
They are generally brand loyal
They own multiple internet devices

As opposed to low sharers -
They are older
They research high involvement products
Care more about quality than brand (less likely to share to be in the ‘cool group’)
Open to change…
More likely to make a purchase on a researched product.

As you can see, people will trust their friends recommendations or a brand with consumer interaction (where they can ask a question) for personal products like baby and beauty) – however review sites or blog posts are less relevant as a consumer cannot tell if it is a genuine statement or a subjective advertorial. Notice the importance of search throughout the social funnel. By disregarding the bread and butter of consumer research (search) you put your brand at risk of not being exposed to the consumer through their decision making process. Facebook – has the most influence on ‘baby’ brands, YouTube – has the most influence on ‘music’ brands, Review sites – have the most influence on ‘electronics’ brands

The emphasis on search as being still the main way people research products might be a reality but it’s fast being challenged by social, word-of-mouth referrals from the people we trust must in our lives, our friends/family. The advent of Sponsored Stories in Facebook’s new plans may continue to erode the dominance of search as the means by which people research products as prep for purchases however it is always going to part of the cycle.

Knowing where your consumers are is essential… you can’t target them if you don’t know how to get in touch. For advertisers, business owners, marketeers or anybody wanting to acquire new customers – socialmedia/digital offers great opportunities to get in touch with them. Talk to us today to find out more.

Facebook’s new strategy aims on turning partners (brands/advertisers) into better social media communicators and gets Facebook members to start recommending and sharing advertisers as much as they do their holiday pics or what they are having for lunch.

For the Google vs Facebook comparisons? Google built an empire, however that empire started with a tool which although offered a great service – it didnt generate any revenue. Google at first didn’t know how it would make money. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin figured that if they built a better mousetrap, the money would eventually flow. And it did. Facebook have done the same. Facebook figured out that if it got enough people on board and continually improved it’s social network, eventually it would figure out how to make money.

In 2007 they introduced their first, clumsy advertising platform – which has not evolved much howeverr Facebook are certainly cashing in. Now, however, Facebook’s ad strategy is becoming clear. And it’s not only brilliant, it’s unexpected. Facebook’s strategy, like Google’s, is to not only improve its network and experience, but improve the advertising as well. Now, that’s not so clever, admittedly. The really interesting part is the way Facebook plans to improve it: by making brand Pages better.

Why? Facebook doesn’t make a dime on any of the Pages set up by advertisers. As a marketer, you could do quite well for yourself by running a brand Page and never buying a single ad. But you could only do so well. The reason you will have to buy ads on Facebook goes to the heart of why you need to advertise in the first place. The Digital Agency are always learning and researching the best ways for brands to capitalise on the growth of social media and the changes that Facebook put in place. Contact us today to discuss what you can do.

Last week Facebook are announced 2 new updates to their platform. No 1 – Expandable ad units. No 2 – new metrics to tell you ‘what people are talking about’. We will continue to utilize these new tools with our clients and let you know how it goes!

In 60 seconds -

• 700K search queries are typed into Google
• 168 million emails are sent
• 700K Facebook status updates are made
• Firefox has over 1700 downloads
• Over 13K iPhone applications are downloaded
• 320 new Twitter accounts are created and over 100K tweets are sent
• 25 hours of video content is added to YouTube

We could go on…..

The team here at The Digital Agency believe that all of this activity is a direct result of the connectivity we have in today’s world. According to Steve Bennett, this global mobile device surge has led to - “a perfect storm of technologies coming together that combine local, social, photo and mobile (or said another way LoSoPhoMo).” Steve continues: “with the market for smart phones significantly larger than PC-based models, mobile – particularly LoSoPhoMo – is where we’ll see the greatest innovation in the years ahead.”

Is your business ‘losophomo’ accessible?

When trying to spread content around the web, where you post your links really does matter. A recent study by link-shortening service Bit.ly reveals some interesting statistics about the rise, fall and fizzle out time of these links depending on what platform they are posted on.

Bit.ly Chief Scientist Hilary Mason has used a scientific concept from nuclear physics ‘Half Life’ to explain the patterns on how people clicked on 1,000 popular bit.ly links across Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Mason deciphered half life as being – ‘the amount of time at which a link will receive half of the clicks it will ever receive after it reached its peak’ – as reported by Mashable.

We all accept that links to popular stories will become irrelevant and unimportant after a certain period of time, that is why we use micro blogging services like Twitter to make short, snappy statements that we hope will spread to a wide audience in a short amount of time. If they don’t, they fall down the pecking order of importance and fizzle away. However, what if the message is really important and we want it to last as long as possible? Is Twitter, or Facebook, the best option?

Mason and her team discovered that the only predictors on the longevity of the life of a link, is where it gets shared and what the content of the link is. The ‘half-life’ of a link on Facebook is, on average, 24 minutes longer than the same link on Twitter.  Links in emails and instant messages remain even slightly longer than those in Facebook!

Good to know! As an individual or a business trying to spread a message quickly, to a wide audience  whilst still maintaining some longevity of traffic – the above are decent options…. but what about YouTube? YouTube, it has been discovered, has an entirely different kind of linking pattern – ‘Whereas the average half life for the 1,000 links on Twitter, Facebook and email/IM was three hours, the average half life on YouTube for the same links was 7.4 hours.’ – Mason

We don’t believe that YouTube is necessarily better than Facebook, or Facebook better than Twitter to post something that you want people to see quickly – all platforms have different dynamics. All of the platforms above can co-exist and work at their best when utilized together. It is time you considered YouTube and Twitter into your entry level social marketing activity – if you haven’t already.

With the new Facebook for iPhone 3.5, you can tag your friends and places in posts, and share external links from the web view. It also makes it easier to control who can see each post you make (like on Facebook.com). With a huge percentage of users now accessing social networks through their iPhones,these updates were essential for the continued safety of its users as well as driving sustained usability into the pockets of people all over the world.

With Facebook now saying that over 250 million unique users visit the site  via their phone monthly, the market for mobile Facebook is not small! We here at The Digital Agency HQ think these new upgrades are only another step in the right direction for Facebook and that number will continue to grow on a hourly basis!

The recent battle between bricks and mortar traditional retailers and ‘clicks’ and mortar online retailers has come to a serious peak! With their backs against the wall, retailers are feeling forced to employ ‘charging to try on clothes’ strategies as they can no longer afford to have the casual shopper spend time trying on, sizing up, questioning the sales assistant then heading home to purchase online from overseas retailers often, for a lower price.

We can blame it on online shopping, the global financial crunch or the dynamically changing value of the dollar, however, no matter what we blame it on the facts are simple – Australian clothing and footwear sales declined 4.8% in 2011. Is charging try-on fees that consumers get back if they make the purchase the right approach? Are bricks and mortar stores offering enough service to warrant this fee? The fact is that retailers can no longer just fill their racks and wait for the customers to come rolling in, they need to offer a point of difference that defines their brand and gives consumers a taste of something different when they visit their store.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Katherine Milesi, a partner at Deloitte’s online practice, believes that high street retailers can happily co-exist with e-commerce offerings in the new digital world. They simply need to differentiate what they provide and the way in which they provide it.

At The Digital Agency we firmly agree with Katherine Milesi. We don’t believe that it is a battle between the two that somebody needs to win, but more simply a new dimension that all retailers should explore in offering to their loyal consumers. A combined ‘package’ of offerings that includes online, offline and social networking. Our belief is that nothing will replace that sensory factor of trying on a new outfit or ‘touching’ a new pair of shoes, something which online cannot offer. However, it needs to be combined with your retail online offering to make that sensory factor just part of the overall shopping experience and not the only enjoyable part.

High end, couture fashion doesn’t face the risk of shoppers leaving the store and making the purchase online to the same extend as high street stores selling mass produced labels however, does that mean we need to punish shoppers who walk into our mid-level retail stores by charging them to try on clothes then leave them out of pocket if they can’t find the ‘right fit’?

As marketers and retailers we need to work together to get the online e-commerce offering in line with our offline traditional incentive and drive both brand and digital leadership in this online generation.

According to the IAB PwC Online Expenditure report for Q2 2011 – ad spend is up 19.46% year on year to a total of $84.15m. If you think that figure is startling… it is up from $68.12m in the first quarter of the year, that’s an increase of 22.94%!

New Zealanders are really beginning to grasp the potential that is held in paid search, with search and directories accounting for the biggest increasing channel of online media

Up 34.39% from Q1, 2011 ($25.81m)
Up 34.58% from Q2, 2010 ($21.65m)

Search and directories remain the channel leaders with a 41% total share of the online spend in Q2 2011. There are a lot of contributing factors, but the team here at The Digital Agency firmly believe that the increase in users searching from mobile devices (due to the growth of smartphone and tablet use – particularly with iPhone, Android and the iPad) is certainly helping search engines, particularly Google, increase their foothold in digital media consumption.

With budgets being tightened around the world, marketers are needing to re-assess the way in which they grow their consumer database. Contextual search campaigns with clear and defined acquisition KPIs are allowing marketers to continuously take their learning’s from search advertising and optimise and improve for the future. The Digital Agency are firm believers in CPA based advertising through search and believe it is only going to continue to grow as an essential line in any marketers media budget.

As a marketer, where are you taking this budget that you are using for search from? It is clearly not from online display, with the market still maintaining a solid growth of 29.6% year on year.

Digital media is changing the way we market our business. Talk to us about how we can help you!