Consumers May Not Hate Social Media Ads After All!

What do you know? Dynamic Logic’s 2009 Ad Reaction (PDF) survey shows that consumers may not hate social media ads after all. A series of surveys took a look at the popularity of social networking as well as ad reception across various media.

The December 2009 survey of 2000 US adults found that 59% were involved in social networking and another 16% were interested, but hadn’t tried it yet. (Email was tops with 95% actively participating and 2% interested.) The same survey asked for users’ attitudes toward advertising on various media. The top two positive responses (which I assume were along the lines of “excellent” and “good”) were reported—and social media ads were on-par with search ads:

• Opt-in email: 32%
• Online: 24%
• Online search: 24%
• Social media/networking: 22%
• Online video: 22%
• Advergames: 17%
• Non-opt-in email: 8%

But really, that’s kind of a tricky metric. If the survey had a scale of 1-5, with then we’re leaving out the people who have a neutral opinion of advertising. On the other hand, if it’s a four-point scale, that means 78% of those surveyed had a negative opinion of social media/networking ads. :\

They also asked about ad recall. Funny ads were the best remembered, with 74% claiming they remember funny ads (I remember funny ads, too, but I don’t remember what they’re selling all the time), and 53% said they remembered relevant ads. And before we talk about ad blindness, 58% of Facebook users said they’d noticed advertising on the site (above the reported MarketNorm of 39%). 70% of Facebook users (1150 surveyed), Twitter users (397 surveyed) and MySpace users (906 surveyed) would be willing to accept more advertising on those sites if it kept the service free.

What do you think? Will you increase your advertising on social media sites, or work to make your creative funnier and targeting more relevant? Do you agree with the findings of these surveys?

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Twitter Twits’ “Tweet” Trademark Travesty

I love Twitter. I’ve also personally met co-founder Biz Stone, and he’s a great guy. That said, it does appear that they’ve strayed from their normal play book and are instead reading from the lesser-known Clue(less) Train Manifesto.

If bad news comes in threes, let’s hope that the recent DDoS attack, directional blindness, and today’s trademark faux pas, complete Twitter’s trifecta of incompetence.

After scaring the snot out of Twitter application developers–with its announced plans to trademark the term "tweet"–it now seems that the USPTO has rejected the application. It appears that at least three other companies submitted their "tweet" trademark applications before Twitter, and as Sam Johnston succinctly puts it…

…Twitter has a snowflake’s chance in hell of securing a monopoly over the word "Tweet"

Hmm, I’ve not seen too many snowflakes in hell recently, have you?

But honestly, it’s probably for the best that Twitter didn’t get its way with "tweet." After all, Twitter users and developers have been using the term for years now, and Twitter really should have filed its application a lot earlier.

To be fair, Twitter’s not the only social network to suffer growing pains such as these, but let’s hope that the company is now over its "awkward" years.

Will the Wall Street Journal Take a Real Shot at Social Media?

As I like to do when a post involves some ‘creative thinking’ I am warning you on this one. TechCrunch is ‘reporting’ the Wall Street Journal’s possible attempt at creating a social community (WSJ Connnect) that could compete with the LinkedIn set. I realize that outside of the Microsoft-Yahoo nuptials there has been little to discuss in the online marketing space as of late. With that in mind, since the TechCrunch piece includes the following it seems that it has to be taken with a grain of salt.

WSJ Connect is still in the planning/conceptual stages, says one source, but there is “strong interest” to move the project forward. Importantly, it would leverage the WSJ brand but would be a separate property and unencumbered by the need for a paid subscription to the newspaper.

In the planning stages with a strong interest could be applied to the idea of just about anything in any company. That being said, the supposed “LinkedIn Killer” would be a replacement for the WSJ Community which is part of the current WSJ site. I am a fairly regular reader of the Wall Street Journal and I am a site subscriber. Those two pieces of data make the fact that I didn’t even know that the current WSJ Community even existed pretty poignant. Now that I have gone to the site to look for it specifically, I see the link but I must have developed “community blindness” or something like it.

News Corp., as a whole, is not known for their ability to capitalize on the social media space. They own MySpace and we all know how that has flourished under its guidance. They do own a company called Slingshot Labs which will be tasked with building this WSJ Connect product if it indeed does see the light of day so they will not develop this in house as they did with the WSJ Community effort.

So rather than wonder what might happen based on ex-MySpace employees seeking some mention on TechCrunch, let’s ask a few questions of you, the MP reader. Would there be any interest in this type of community for you personally? If this idea actually came to fruition and was launched, who would you see as the demographic? What can a social networking community do to set it itself apart and possibly lure away some of the 15 million visitors that LinkedIn gets monthly? Is there room for more “straight business” social communities?

These are the kinds of questions that News Corp. and the WSJ need to ask themselves before they fully commit. It will be somewhat interesting to see if there is truly an attempt made to get this type of offering off the ground. I have been told that regardless how crowded a market or an industry is there is always room for one more GOOD player. What it truly takes to be good in the social media space, however, may be a barrier to entry that few can overcome at this point in time.

Amazon to Re-Kindle Ad Revenue?

Amazon apparently has some big plans for their Kindle e-reader and it involves advertising. That’s right, advertising. After all, what would a good book be without advertising, right?

cnet news reports about some patents that Amazon has filed in the not so distant past that point to a way or them to deliver an e-book with the traditional book. By putting together ad supported e-books and bundling them at little or no additional cost to the reader Amazon moves a step closer to changing the way people read in the future.

The Kindle and other e-readers require a paradigm shift for those who are not inclined to try new technology just because it is new. Just like people who say that they always want to open a newspaper and get ink on their hands, there are folks who feel that reading one book at a time is just fine and there is no need to carry a library in their pocket. Those pesky traditionalists are the folks that Amazon needs to introduce to the e-book concept in a way that gently nudges them to a new behavior that they wouldn’t otherwise try on their own.

Amazon Technologies, a subsidiary of Amazon, filed for a patent (”Method and system for access to electronic version of a physical work based on user ownership of the physical work”) in December 2006. It was approved last month and makes it possible for buyers of a physical book to have an e-book bundled with it.

But two additional patents, filed a year later by Amazon employees (and not yet approved), are the more interesting ones: these, according to MediaPost, “clearly note that Amazon would insert advertisements throughout the e-books, from the beginning to the end, between chapters or following every 10 pages, as well as in the margins.”

I have to admit that I really don’t care if ads are inserted in books because I have developed such severe ad blindness that I might not even blink. Imagine the day though when the ad is actually part of the story, like product placement in the movies. That’s when the real fun begins.

So do you think having an ad in your book is too much? Have you made the switch yet or are you going to be OK with having a few trees die for your reading enjoyment? Now that wasn’t fair was it?

iPhone Users are More In Tune with Mobile Ads

This information comes from eMarketer by way of ReadWriteWeb and it conjures up some thoughts about why the following is found to be true. iPhone users recall advertising seen on their smartphones better than those of other smartphone providers like RIM’s BlackBerry. This probably is not a shock to many but for marketers it poses the question of how now address a market based on device in addition to other demographic and psychographic markers.

The data below shows the whole picture

While the data obviously shows a significant difference in whether various ads are recalled the big question is why? Are iPhone users smarter ‘smartphoners’? Are they just more able to process the data since they tend to skew a bit younger and are more accustomed to the pace of information flow (unlike myself who happily suffers from severe ad blindness)? Are they seeking the information in a different way thus making them more prepared to receive and recall the ads? There are a ton of questions that can be raised from this kind of data and obviously affect how marketers slice and dice the market place to reach this particular kind of ad sponge.

eMarketer does raise a good question though

But are iPhone users a viable demographic target? After all, Nielsen estimated that only 5.9% of US households owned or rented an iPhone in Q3 2008.

While appearing to be smaller what isn’t reflected in that number is the influence factor. iPhone users tend to be opinion leaders. I use a BlackBerry Storm and I do suffer from iPhone envy. Now, I have been known to give an opinion from time to time but as far as factors such as popularity and coolness the iPhone has all others beat pretty bad right now.

Frederic Lardinois of ReadWriteWeb wonders

With the impending release of the Palm Pre and the large number of Android phones in the handset makers’ pipeline, it will be interesting to see if these numbers will look similar on phones that are able to offer comparably compelling experiences

So Pilgrims let’s hear it. What makes the iPhone user more ad worthy? Is the reason due to the cool quotient or the ‘I spend too much time staring at screens’ quotient? As always your opinions are welcomed since we figure that more than a few influencers stop by here from time to time.

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