Posts Tagged Facebook
Parents with iPhones (“iParents”) more social on Facebook
According to the Retrevo Gadgetology Report, an ongoing study of people to understand the changing role of parents in this new age of technology, today’s parents have a whole new world of social tools to consider when it comes to raising their children. Leading the way in most digital activities are iPhone owning parents, or “iParents,” coined by the report.
When compared with the general parent population, iPhone owning parents are more likely to be social on Facebook than the average parent. The study found that 13% of iPhone owning parents had more than 500 Facebook friends as opposed to only 8% of all parents who had more than 500 Facebook friends. Conversely, only 5% of iPhone owners were likely to have a small amount of Facebook friends, as opposed to 20% of all parents.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Facebook, Teen Talk, Trend Tracker on July 8th, 2011
Social Network Advertising Influences But Doesn’t Drive
According to a recently released report, a collaboration between Forrester Research and GSI Commerce, social media rarely leads directly to purchases online. Less than 2% of orders were the result of shoppers coming from a social network during the holiday shopping period between November 12 and December 20, 2010.
Addressing social marketing, Fiona Dias, executive vice president of strategy and marketing for GSI Commerce, says “… buying things from retailers is maybe 10th on the list of things they want to do on Facebook… from a retail and commerce perspective, social media seems to have no effect…”
She says, though, that social media outreach is somewhat effective for distributing news about short-term deals, as 5% to 7% of purchases are influenced by social media activity.
What does seem to work, says the report, is more traditional online marketing, including email and search advertising. Most consumers in the study were exposed to some form of marketing by the retailers before they made their purchase. 70% of transactions in hard goods categories (like lawnmowers) and 82% in soft goods categories (i.e. clothing) occurred after the consumers had engaged in some interactive marketing tactic before their purchase. 40% of hard goods transactions and 60% of soft goods transactions came to retail websites directly from email and search
| Transactions That Started With Search Or Email During Key Dates (Percent Of Transactions) | ||||
| Hard goods | Soft goods | |||
| Search | Search | |||
| Holiday (excluding key dates) | 22% | 17% | 37% | 23% |
| Thanksgiving weekend | 26 | 14 | 40 | 20 |
| Cyber Monday | 31 | 15 | 44 | 18 |
| Source: Forrester Research, Inc., May 2011 | ||||
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Social Media on May 11th, 2011
Small Business Owners Liking Facebook
According to the MerchantCircle Merchant Confidence Index (MCI) survey, the total Q1 2011 MCI score is 5.1% higher than a year earlier. The largest contributor to its growth is respondents’ expectations for sales revenue growth during the next three months.
| Merchant Confidence Index | ||
| Expectation | Average Response on 1-5 Scale | % Change vs. Feb 2010 |
| Rate today’s economy compared to past 12 months | 3.00 | +11.5% |
| Change in sales revenue over next three months | 3.52 | + 4.8 |
| Change in marketing/advertising expenditures over next three months | 3.07 | +2.3 |
| Change in headcount over next three months | 3.13 | +2.6 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | ||
More than four in 10 small and local business owners expect sales revenues to improve somewhat in the next three months. 13% expect significant improvement, a combined 57% of respondents anticipating some sort of rise in short-term sales revenues.
| Expectations for the future (How do you expect your sales revenues to change over the next three months?) | |
| Expectation | % of Respondents |
| Improve significantly | 12.9% |
| Improve somewhat | 44.0 |
| Remain relatively the same | 28.9 |
| Decline somewhat | 10.3 |
| Decline significantly | 3.9 |
| Source: MerchantCircle, (Merchant Confidence Index Survey), March 2011 | |
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Advertising, Facebook on April 5th, 2011
Netflix Unfriended By Facebook TV
Facebook took some air out of the Netflix balloon when it announced its own movie streaming media service Tuesday. Working with Warner Brothers Digital Distribution, Facebook is testing a video service that will let users rent movies for $3, or 30 Facebook credits.
The first installment of the trial is the 2008 Batman movie The Dark Knight, and users can have access to the rental for 48 hours. The move was not welcomed by Netflix investors who see Facebook’s 600 million-member social media site as a formidable challenge to company’s $8-a-month video streaming efforts.
Netflix shares fell more than 4% to $199.30 in early trading Tuesday. Given Facebook’s immense reach and the apparent ease at which it can keep users on the site while they watch movies, the move certainly threatens the Netflix model. Not only does Facebook give the studios access to its vast membership, it can also deliver advertisers a big group of consumers with shared interests.
For links and more stories visit the new Streaming Media section at HomeToys.com
Credit: Bob Hetherington
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Facebook, Social Media on March 9th, 2011
Less Than Half of Marketers “Like” Facebook’s ROI
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
Despite all of the talk about audience engagement, most advertisers, marketers, algorithms, and bots, miss one overarching factor, the human psychology. The mind of a person, colored by moods, remembrances of events past, and fear of potentialities yet to be lived, can’t be predicted or relied upon.
One person’s floor is another person’s ceiling. One end-user’s idea of a compelling ad is another end users idea of garbage. We are seldom a consensus.
I believe search will always be king because it makes us feel empowered. We are taking actions that we have decided to take to find something. And that is a different psychology from the person who goes to Facebook to read their feed, and to update their status.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Facebook, Twitter on February 9th, 2011