Smartphone Usage Grows Across Most Income Levels

by @davesniadak

I've always advocated that simply having a smartphone doesn't necessarily make you smarter. However, according to the latest numbers from Nielsen more people are at least investing in the idea.

January Smartphone Penetration numbers were released earlier this week, and there appears to be a direct connection between age and income when it comes to smartphone consumption. According to Nielsen's findings, which polled 20,000 mobile products users, overall smartphone penetration is up to 48% of mobile consumers. That's up from a comScore poll that had smartphone saturation at around 40% in September of 2011.

When we dive deeper into the demographic findings, the marketing world's idyllic bracket - the Ages 25-34 category - 2 out of every 3 mobile user has a smartphone. Compare that with income, and 25-34'ers that earn over $100,000 a year, 8 out of 10 users who acquired a new mobile device in the past three months had chosen smartphones. However, Nielsen's data also shows that 50% of consumers that fall in the 18-24 age bracket and make less than $15,000 per year have smart phones as well. One reason for the recent spike in usage could be Apple's record 37-million new iPhones that hit the market in Q4 of 2011.

So, why does this kind of information matter? It's vitally important for marketers to consider when exploring ways to reach out to consumers. The customers with money tend to have the tools that keep them connected, but yet, the younger millennial generation on the rise are spending their hard earned cash to stay connected as well. Mobile outreach needs to be a major part of any public relations, marketing, or publicity campaign.

ComScore Reveals Online Advertising Growth

by Nick Egner

It’s no surprise that the world of online video is growing. However, this also includes online video  marketing. What? People are actually watching commercials on their computers?

ComScore just released January’s 2012 U.S. online video rankings. It shows that 84% of the U.S. internet audience viewed online video. Guess what? Google sites ranked number one in unique viewers. Shocking. When the report reads “Google sites” they might as well say YouTube. Not only is YouTube number one, but they control 83% of total viewers for the month. That’s 151,989,000 people in the month of January alone! The next closest? The music video property VEVO who snagged 51,499,000 unique viewers. Something interesting about VEVO is that they also run the most popular partner channel within Youtube with a total of 50,563,000 unique viewers. People are clearly watching music videos. You hear that MTV? 

Americans viewed 5.6 billion video ads in January. Hulu is at the top of this list with 1.4 billion ad impressions with 652 million ads viewed. Video ads reached 47% of the total U.S. population! Video ads accounted for 12.2% of all videos viewed and .9% of all minutes spent viewing video. That might not seem like a staggering statistic, but when asked, consumers find on-line video ads to be 38% more memorable than ads on traditional television. Television is still king, but online video ad content is making growth. 

With over 1/2 of the entire U.S. population tuning into on-line video content, it's safe to assume that on-line video advertising will continue to be a lucrative area for marketers. 

How about you? Have you ever watched advertisements online? 

Video Post: New Twitter Advertising Policy

Tweet all about it! Businesses will now be able to create promoted tweets similar to Facebook. To kick off their new strategy, Twitter had partnered with American Express. For more on this join Natalie as she gives us the rundown in today's Daily Axioms.

Consumer Life Changes: Creating Brand Evangelists

by Mike Reiber

Major life changes spell sales opportunities. Why? Most consumers' buying and shopping habits are based on rote behaviors.

One of the key tenets of our publicity-based marketing model is to identify those occasions when consumer behavior patterns will be disrupted. Why? Consumer shopping habits and brand loyalties are likely in flux. How do we do this? We use in-depth interviews and focus groups to identify and map the key life change events for out clients' high opportunity customer segments. The problem is that major life change events such as a home purchase or new baby quickly become a matter of public record triggering a tsunami of marketing offers.

The real key, however, is being able to predict the life change events before they happen. We typically enlist our clients' customer service staff and channel partners in this process. We work with them to mine data provided by customers and use it to predict when they may be entering the pre-purchase research process. No it's not easy. Often, we enlist outside analytics resources to help us recognize patterns that are invisible to our naked eyes. In addition, we burn the midnight oil to develop and execute programs that provide meaningful and memorable rewards to consumers during their life changes. Last, we create touch points such as enthusiast clubs which allow us to follow-up with consumers and provide reinforcement for the switch they've made.

The payoff? A new customer who has the potential to become a brand evangelist.

Power of the People

by Natalie Bell

It's Friday, Friday, Friday. Just those four words make almost anyone think of Rebecca Black's music video on YouTube. A year ago most the nation would say "Rebecca Black, who?" Now she is well-known across the world. Her Friday video went viral immediately and earned YouTube's top watched video of 2011; to date there are over 23 million views. She has been invited on talk shows, her song has been performed by Justin Beiber as well as the Jonas Brothers in concert, and she even performed live at one of Katy Perry's concerts.

So what catapulted Rebecca to stardom? Well friends, it is all of us. When we see something we like we share it with each other, and social media has made this easier than ever. Send a tweet and it reaches countless numbers of people, all of whom send it to another countless number of people. This pattern continues over and over and over. . . until a normal Joe Schmo is all of a sudden known around the world. Whether or not we share videos because the performer is incredibly talented, extremely funny, or painfully entertaining, videos get passed and a star is born. Four times as many people have "disliked" Friday compared to "liked" the video, yet Rebecca Black is known by thousands of people because of the song.

In decades before it was up to the media to decide who's who and who's not. In order to be famous you had to have that "special something" that others did not. Now not having that "special something" is what can make you a celebrity. Quirkiness and flaws sell. Instead of being simply the audience, social media has made us common folk both the audience and the medium. We now are able to choose who we hear about and how often. In the words of Miss Black, "we we we so excited" to see who will be the next viral star.