Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

It’s not a surprise Facebook and Google have stayed ahead of everyone else. The two platforms have focused on two key areas: personalizing advertising and those mobile trends we just examined.

Last month, Facebook announced that they have a billion mobile-only users -- not a billion users of the mobile app, but a billion people for whom the entire Facebook experience takes place on mobile. Google has invested its vast resources into mobile search, and in May 2015, more than 18 months ago, it said that “More Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.”

The Top Thirty Global Media Owners report is a unique ranking of the world’s largest media companies by media revenue, as estimated by Zenith. The report was launched in 2007 and was last published by Zenith in 2015. Zenith defines media revenue as all revenue deriving from businesses that support advertising, to determine which companies are most important for the marketing industry.*
 
There are four media giants among the top 30 global media owners – Facebook, Baidu, Yahoo and Microsoft – and all have risen up the ranking this year. Facebook has moved up from 10th place last year to 5th place this year; Baidu has moved up from 14th to 9th; Yahoo from 18th to 15th; and Microsoft from 21st to 17th. Facebook is the fastest-growing media owner in our top 30, with media revenues up 65% on last year. Baidu is second-fastest (up by 52%) and Alphabet is third (up by 17%).
 
Between them, the five digital giants generated US$88bn in media revenue, which is 34% of all the revenues generated by our top 30 companies, and represents 65% of the entire global internet advertising market. Their collective dominance of digital advertising means that these five companies have captured most of the gains from its rapid growth.

Digital adspend has grown at an average of 18% a year for the past five years, driven by the spread of mobile technology, the rise of social media and online video, and improved advertising technology, such as programmatic buying and local real-time search. Adspend across all other media has grown by just 0.6% a year....

...People young and old are becoming more aware of the role advertising plays in their lives. This is a good thing because the internet has brought the advertiser and consumer closer than ever. No longer is the marketing realm confined to static magazine inserts or two-minute TV slots. Brands are sponsoring events, generating discussion, and taking part in all kinds of crazy activity in the name of generating brand awareness.

Because of a growing understanding amongst people that they are ‘being marketed to’, advertisers have had to turn down the volume on their own material. Instead, storytelling is becoming more of a central feature than ever for advertisements and marketing videos alike. This is the stuff of now and of the future – delivering big and unique ideas and tapping into emotions and dreams. It’s all about marketing that is so enchanting you forget there is a price tag.

But another trend is also gaining in popularity, and its the complete opposite of subtle – meta-advertising. This is marketing that is entirely self referential in quality, it involves a complete renouncement of subtlety, its a reaction against traditional advertising and a nod to the increasingly self-aware and savvy minds of the audience. Meta-advertising has the power to hold our attention, to make us laugh, be original and creative. But its most important and powerful attribute is honesty (or the appearance thereof).... It's an intriguing trend....

In the Gartner hype cycle, advertising technology is firmly stuck in the “trough of disappointment.”

This is, in many ways, patently unfair. The shift from manual and inefficient ad buying practices to automated and data-driven ones is a no-brainer. There’s little doubt that automation will play an ever-larger role in advertising. Yet ad tech in 2016 is a victim of its own success. Few people fight its ascendency, but nagging questions have arisen based on outsized expectations.

Talk to brands and publishers, and the formulation is basically the same. There are plenty of tech vendors but not enough standards, driving marketer frustration to an all-time high. Consumers don’t trust ads, as evidenced by the rise of ad blocking. Meanwhile, venture capitalists are pouring less money into ad tech.

Too much complexity
The LUMAscape lays bare the sheer amount of fragmentation in ad tech: “There are too many vendors claiming they do too many things for too many people. It’s turned ad tech into a commodity market,” said Brian Ferrario, vp of marketing at programmatic ad company Drawbridge.

Social_Spam_Advertising: Buy From Me!!!

It feels like everyone in the social universe has something for sale. Attend my Twitter Chat Subscribe to my blogPurchase my bookLike my Facebook page

While I am certain (certainly cynical) that every one of these chats , blogs, books, and pages are the single most informative, game changing, and perhaps life altering ways that a person could spend their time, I am beginning to question when Social Media platforms turned into other more intrusive marketing methods?

May I ask… when is it appropriate to revisit the rules of professional selling or perhaps just civility?...