Resurrecting Media Demand Measurement A Technology Driven Approach

In tune with changing consumer demands and preferences, media providers have been generously encouraging and fuelling the need for individualistic and truly personalized media consumption. The consumer can choose the time, platform, device, content, and location for viewing media, and even whether to pay a subscription fee or watch an ad-supported model. With significantly eroding revenue from the traditional channels, advent of social media as a marketing tool new over-the-top and technology companies, and the shaping up of a new explicitly individualistic consumer demand, media enterprises are in a quandary. It is imperative for them to know what exactly their consumers would want to view, at what price, at what time of the year or day, and in what package, to stay competitive and retain market share. Thus the entire media value chain from content production to distribution to monetization is now looking for a quantitative and qualitative measure of the consumer behavior. Media companies are already embracing advanced analytics, Big Data technologies, statistical modeling, social media marketing pricing and machine learning, which are the key tools to handle large volumes of diverse data and draw significant insights from them. This will prove to be the backbone for the next generation of data driven media business. However, there are still challenges in establishing a direct connect with the consumer and in the collection of larger and more reliable data around digital media consumption.

Tragic News Demands Marine Corps Social Media Leadership, Not Retreat

Moments after I posted my sympathies about the loss of two Marines in Afghanistan on their unit's Facebook page, it was gone. Deleted. Arbitrarily removed as a violation by their public affairs office. The Department of Defense had published a release about them, but the unit rarely mentioned combat casualties on their page. One of the public affairs Marines with Regional Command Southwest scolded me in a private message and said he took social media marketing blog it down. What were the reasons? Did it violate any of the official terms of use of military social media sites? “Frankly, it does because we say it does... it read as pointless, shallow and unprofessional.” the staff noncommissioned officer said. I tried to parse that exchange with the words of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who said we must be seen as the good guys “... (not by) some slick PR campaign or by trying to out-propagandize al-Qaeda, but rather through the steady accumulation of actions and results that build trust and credibility over time.” A base level of transparency and honesty must be kept in order to remain a source of information for both our troops and the public. That line is challenged most often in the case of Marines killed in the line of duty. It is not a bad news story, but is an unfortunate reality of a nation in the midst of a decade-long war. Our nature in the military is to keep our darkest moments to ourselves, social media marketing experts but if we wish to establish a foothold in this social space, we must accept that those habits need change. A unit may lose a Marine, but the nation can and should mourn that loss. This is a place much different from the one our leaders were brought into. Twenty-some years ago when they were commissioned, the internet did not exist. Reporters came on base for a story now and then, but the military was not engaged in long wars. We weren’t the center of attention.

Social media demands brands change their ways

People - your customers and mine - are using the tools provided by social media to great effect in their purchase decision-making process. While consumers have always shared their opinions on products and services, digital amplifies their ability to communicate these to their peers, and not only friends and family, but also to friends of friends of friends. News and views travel fast these days, and consumers are rating the advice they social media marketing articles receive from people they trust (or whom their friends trust) very highly. Many marketers would say this spells nothing but a communications nightmare, but here's a tip: social media isn't going away. It's going to grow exponentially, thanks to the rise in adoption of smartphones and tablets; it's going to get noisier and more opinionated; and, if you can't embrace the opportunities and address the challenges it brings about, well, you're toast. Forrester Research estimates that online and web-influenced offline sales are already accounting for 42% of total retail sales in the US (Forrester Research: US Online Retail Forecast, 2009-2014). That will grow to 53% of total retail sales by 2014. That equates to US$1.409 trillion in web influenced offline sales - in the US alone! Here in South Africa, research by World Wide Worx shows that online retail sales hit R2.028 billion in 2010, with 40% growth predicted for this year. Last year, 3.6 million South Africans social media marketing dallas had been online for five years or more, meaning they are well-adapted to and comfortable with digital, a number that will increase to 6.8 million by 2015. That is more than 10% of the population comfortable with using the digital tools such as social media available to them. The Mobility 2011 research project, also by World Wide Worx, shows that 39% of urban South Africans and 27% of rural users are now browsing the Internet on their phones, meaning at least six million South Africans now have Internet access on their phones.