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By Liam Dowd - March 11th, 2015
Social gaming spending increases, Twitter TV engagement, why people unfollow brands, and the impact that age has on Facebook Ad tags.
Twitter TV
New research from Nielsen has shown a strong correlation between TV watching and activity across Twitter. “Now, new research shows that Twitter TV activity can also tell us just how engaged the general viewing population is with the programming it watches,” said Nielsen. “In fact, it now stands as a bellwether for general audience engagement.”
“Nielsen found that changes in Twitter TV activity are strongly correlated (79.5%) with neurological engagement. More specifically, the study identified emotion, memory and attention as the specific neurometrics tied to Twitter TV activity. This finding is notable for three reasons. First, the fact that Twitter TV activity is correlated with the combination of these three neurometrics signals that program content is engaging viewers through multiple psychological processes.
“Second, other Nielsen Neuro research has shown that the combination of these same key neurometrics is correlated with sales outcomes in ad testing. Third, Nielsen TV Brand Effect research has also shown that ads perform better on memorability in TV programs with high program engagement. Combined, these findings suggest that advertising in highly social programs could be an opportunity to drive both ad memorability and sales outcomes.”
Engagement then is now has a clear social media metric that brands need to pay close attention to. The connection that TV viewers make with their programs they are watching is reflected in their social media activity. It seems simply tracking viewer numbers to gain a popularity metric now has a powerful and strong social media component as well.
Social Gaming Spending Increases
Global Social Value report for 2015 rom Ninja Metrics is essential reading if your business is within the gaming sector. Based on the Social Value metric, the report delivers the findings from 365 million players across 250 countries and regions, and found iOS gamers are worth 1.5 to 2 times more in terms of revenue and average revenue per user (ARPU) than Android players. However, Android gamers are 15% more likely to become influential, meaning they cause other players in their network to spend more time and money in games.
Dmitri Williams, CEO and co-founder of Ninja Metrics, said: “This report confirms what many people have suspected, but has never been proven by hard data: The age of consumer to consumer marketing is here. Across the board, we’re seeing massive amounts of money being generated solely by players influencing each other to spend. Now that we’re actively measuring this phenomenon in games, Ninja Metrics is also moving into different industries to see how social connections translate to monetary values.”
Why Do People Unfollow Brands?
The unfollow algorithm is the subject of a new infographic from Fractl and Buzzstream makes for fascinating reading and turns much of the marketing thinking that brands use to promote their goods and services on its head. Asking why someone would unfollow your corporation’s brand is an important question, but one that is rarely asked.
Why people across the social media space unfollow a brand is manifold. The reasons given for unfollowing a brand in include:
- Over 20% of respondents said that they would unfollow a brand on both Facebook and Twitter if they believed the content was boring or repetitive.
- Over 15% said they would unfollow a brand on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter if it posted more than six times a day.
- Only 8% unfollow a brand on Twitter due to a lack of engagement, with even less unfollowing for similar reasons on Facebook.
- “Engagement with followers” fell behind “new content” and “on-brand content” in terms of what followers see as important social media activities from brands.
There is therefore a fine balance to be struck with the content that is pushed to a corporation’s customers. Think about the content that is being developed and whether this is really relevant to the target audience, and how much of this content is appropriate, as often less is more when content marketing is concerned.
How Age Impacts Facebook Ad Auction Price Tags
Age is a fundamental targeting criteria with Facebook Ads. While it is recommended to include age targeting in a large brand campaign, there are times when age is de-prioritized amidst other targeting options. Indeed, Facebook presents thousands of targeting criteria and any number of configurations to drive campaign precision and efficiency. However, according to SocialCode analysis, age targeting still matters as evidenced by significant fluctuations in bid cost among different age groups matched against different bid types.
Impact Of Age on Bid Cost and Performance:
MILLENNIALS (aged 15-31) represent the largest age group on Facebook, but are less likely to interact with ads. This demographic therefore has a relatively high CPA. The combination of high user counts and slightly elevated CPM suggests advertisers are highly competitive when serving impressions and achieving reach goals against this audience.
GEN-XERS (aged 32-50) engage and take actions on the platform, as seen by their relatively low CPA. They also are highly sought after among advertisers as evidenced by the higher CPM relative to their user counts. This is a high competition group, though their value and scale on the platform presents high potential for advertisers.
BABY BOOMERS (aged 51+) have the lowest user counts. Their relatively high CPA rates suggest they are less likely to interact with ads. Although user numbers are low, their CPM costs are so low that high volume impression purchasing present advertisers huge potential for reach. For instance, the targeting indicator “Affluent Baby Boomer” is among the least expensive CPM indicators in the entire dataset we analyzed.
There is a large price variance between age groups when bidding CPC versus CPM, so the value of impressions to age groups is highly variable. Advertisers must break out age groups, and test different bid types to achieve the highest return on ad spend. Advertisers that fail to segment campaigns by age risk offsetting performance and increasing cost.
For example, if baby boomers are valuable to you, there is huge efficiency in targeting them for reach objectives, versus age 17-31 where there is high saturation on the platform.
Of course, if an advertiser has creative/copy specific to a certain age group, isolating age segments is a must. However, different creatives – even when differences are subtle – may not perform uniformly against different age groups.
Lastly, advertisers don’t need to segment age groups in FB ads to see performance by age, though advertisers will be presented with Facebook’s standard age brackets. When advertisers need more specific age segments, they can be achieved from the account structure side.
New Topic Data from Facebook
All marketers know that data is power when it comes to crafting well targeted messages. Facebook has announced the roll out of topic data with its partner DataSift. Facebook explains:
Marketers want to understand what people think about topics related to their business, so they can make their products and marketing more relevant to their customers. In the past they’ve looked at the things people share online to get an idea of what people care about, but, until now, the information available offered a limited view. To make marketing content more relevant for people and more effective for marketers, we’re introducing topic data to select Facebook partners.
What is topic data?
Topic data shows marketers what audiences are saying on Facebook about events, brands, subjects and activities, all in a way that keeps personal information private. Marketers use the information from topic data to make better decisions about how they market on Facebook and other channels, and build product roadmaps.
For example, with topic data:
- A business selling a hair de-frizzing product can see demographics on the people talking about humidity’s effects on their hair to better understand their target audience.
- A fashion retailer can see the clothing items its target audience is talking about to decide which products to stock.
- A brand can see how people are talking about their brand or industry to measure brand sentiment.
While this type of data has been available from third parties before, the sample size was often too small to be significant and determining demographics was nearly impossible. With topic data, we’ve grouped data and stripped personal information from Facebook activity (not including Messenger) to offer insights on all the activity around a topic. That means marketers get a holistic and actionable view of their audience for the first time. It’s important to note that topic data provides guidance for marketers but it cannot be used to target ads directly.
Until next time….
The Useful Social Media team.
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