by Temel Aksoy
78. The
Inevitable Rise of Video
Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440 was the most radical communications revolution the world had witnessed up until that time. The rapid spread of the printed word brought an end to Church domination and heralded the birth of free thought, which resulted in the advance of science at unprecedented speed and the spread of knowledge to the masses. The Reformation and the Renaissance began after the invention of the printing press. There were revolutions in science. Europe and the world were changed forever.
Almost four hundred years later the invention of the photograph, and in the late nineteenth century the invention of film technologies, marked the advent of the visual age in communication. When television was invented in the early twentieth century, visual and audio communications became the driving force in the sector. When the Internet entered our lives in the late 1980s, video pushed all other forms of communication aside. Now, everyone reads less and watches more.
In the future, video will occupy an even more important place in communication. As smartphones become more and more widespread, video will become a permanent part of our lives. The time is coming when every message that any company wants to share with its stakeholders will be communicated through video. Company websites, product user guides, and almost all of the information shared on the Internet will be in video format. Written blogs will decline in popularity, and video blogs will proliferate.
At the companies I work for, I recommend that CEOs communicate their messages to employees, suppliers and dealers with short videos instead of emails. My observation is that company leaders who take this approach receive very positive feedback.
Every brand must embrace video’s inevitable rise. To dismiss the impact of video today is akin to people in the fifteenth century dismissing the increasing popularity of the printed word.
79. “En
gagement” Is a Marketing Myth
The heavy use of social media websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has forced companies to view these websites as communication channels. Today, almost every company works not only with an advertising agency, but also with social media agencies responsible for managing the company’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Companies put tons of effort into social media: not only increasing the number of followers, but also getting people to interact (like, share, comment) with their brands. Having an online presence is an area in which companies can’t exactly measure the result of their effort and expenditures, but they don’t want to be left behind either.
According to those who say that social media is the “most effective” medium:
Television no longer has an impact; the youth in particular watch no television.
Being “liked” on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is extremely important for brands.
Brands must “engage” people by sharing interesting content on social media websites.
Advertising on the Internet and social media websites makes it possible to bring the message directly to the target audience, so the advertising budget is employed more effectively there than elsewhere (such as TV and radio).
Instead of “wasting” money on an “obsolete” channel like television, companies should move most of their advertising budget to the online channel.
As a consultant who encourages brand communication on the Internet and social media websites, I must say I disagree with all of the statements above.
First of all, there has been no significant decline in the amount of time that people spend watching television in most countries around the world (details in chapter 74). Furthermore, there is absolutely no cause-and-effect relationship between the positive engagement people have with a brand on social media and their likelihood of purchasing the brand.
Research conducted by professors Leslie K. John, Daniel Mochon, Oliver Emrich and Janet Schwartz has proven that just because people like a brand doesn’t mean that they’ll buy the brand—or that it will have a positive effect on their friends’ buying decisions either. The buying behavior of people who like a brand on social media websites like Facebook and Instagram is no different from that of people who haven’t engaged with the brand.
Liking a brand on social media, commenting on the brand, sharing the brand’s message with friends—in other words, engaging with the brand—has no effect, positive or negative, on sales.
Just look at the numbers. Michael Leander, a social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) analyst, says that a brand should expect an interaction rate (follows, shares, comments) of between 0.5% and 1%. As many researches demonstrate, most people aren’t that excited about bonding with brands. It’s painfully apparent from these numbers that most people have no desire to “engage” with brands. People want relationships with their family and friends, not with products.
Exceptions do exist, of course. There are some users of certain technology and hobby brands who are knowledgeable and fanatic enough to be brand ambassadors, and they may even follow the brand’s new product plans, but the brand’s normal users don’t behave like these people. Assuming that the passion displayed by a small group of users on social media is characteristic of all users is a delusional departure from reality.
Engagement is a concept with no meaning. It is a marketing myth.
What brands must realize is that people spend a lot of time on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and that social media is now an important part of people’s lives. As Byron Sharp notes, if social media is an appropriate venue for a company’s advertising campaigns, then it should be used not for “engagement,” but as an advertising channel, much like television and radio.
80. Uns
olved Problems with the Online Advertising Channel
According to IPG Mediabrand’s Magna, in the United States spending on online advertising outpaced television expenditures in 2016. (See Jeanine Poggi’s article in Ad Age.) In countries like Sweden and the United Kingdom we observe the same pattern. The reason that online advertising is taking over an increasingly large share of total advertising expenditures is that this channel offers certain important advantages:
It’s possible to target a narrow audience.
Users can interact with the brand by clicking on the ads.
Companies can track users and show them ads on the websites they visit after viewing the product on a website (re-marketing).
Because data is collected and reported almost instantly, it’s possible to measure the impact of online advertising more rapidly and more accurately than in other media (at least theoretically).
The Google/YouTube media group receives the largest share of global online advertising spending, followed by the Facebook/Instagram group, and both groups push propaganda that boasts about their advantages. In marketing publications around the world, articles every day tout how people no longer watch television, how invaluable social media is for brands, and how extremely effective online advertising is. This propaganda is the reason that almost every company, big and small, wants to engage in online advertising in an effort to keep up with the times and have a presence on social media websites.
However, there are critical problems with online advertising that have yet to be resolved. Mistakes are made any time a new technology is introduced, and the mistakes that have been made in this field can’t be taken lightly. Complaints about online advertising from large companies have mushroomed, particularly in the last two to three years. We can summarize these complaints as follows:
When the online channel was first introduced, it was assumed that people would engage with online ads (like, share, comment) by clicking, but, over time, it became apparent that people weren’t that interested in developing a relationship with brands. In fact, these expectations never did have any justification, because it was obviously delusional to expect that people who skipped televisio
n commercials by clicking the remote control would engage with brands by clicking on online ads. Now, everyone realizes that people almost never use this feature of online advertising that was so exaggerated in the early years. (See Bob Hoffman.)
Although small brands with limited advertising budgets are forced to target a narrow group, big brands gain nothing from such an approach. The global companies that have spent the most money on online advertising in recent years are beginning to question these decisions. In early 2017, Procter and Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard released a statement saying that the company would cut its budget for online advertising because it had been hurt by targeting a narrow audience, and that it would instead do more TV advertising.
Companies that buy spots on classic channels like television, radio and newspapers know in advance approximately what type of shows or news stories they want to place their ads with, because they know the content policy of these channels. However, if they buy advertising space from a channel like YouTube, they’re at the mercy of the software. When a brand buys advertising placement from YouTube, for example, a software program (Adtech) determines how this brand placement will appear—what content the ads will appear before or in the middle of. The company placing the ad only finds out later what content its advertisement was associated with. In fact, many of them never learn where their ad was published. They only get a general idea from the reports. In early 2017, several international companies were shocked to learn that their ads had been shown at the beginning of videos uploaded to YouTube by terrorists. Google, YouTube’s parent company, apologized and said that it would take care of the problem. (See Vaish and Holton, “Google Apologizes,” in References.)
The technology that programs online ads (Adtech) also tracks which ads were watched by which target group and provides a report. One of the issues that platforms like YouTube and Facebook have received the most criticism for is the fact that they’re the ones selling ad space and the ones measuring the performance of the ads. In conventional media, research companies measure performance, and the companies placing the ads have independent organizations audit these research companies. This is the method used to measure consumer behavior related to TV, radio and newspaper consumption. In recent years, global brands have insisted that independent organizations measure people’s behavior in the online channel, but there has been no concrete progress on this issue.
The methodology used by Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to produce metrics is exaggerated. When a report says that a company’s ad was “viewed,” this includes displaying the ad at the bottom of someone’s smart phone screen as a small square for one second. The terms used by this channel, such as “views” and “impressions,” mean something different from the concept of “view” that marketers are accustomed to from traditional channels. However, none of the advertisers know how these measurements are made, so it’s only natural for marketing executives to make mistakes in their assessments of these concepts, since their evaluation is based on the definitions they learned from conventional channels.
The brokers that purchase online channels and market them to advertisers massage the metrics using software they’ve developed to ensure that the advertisements are “viewed” and clicked by robots. Although no one has an accurate number, various organizations that do research in this field claim that at least half of online ads are viewed and clicked by robots and not people. The middlemen who engage in this fraud are getting filthy rich off of the money companies spend on advertising. Advertisers want online platforms to take measures to stop this.
The algorithms that online platforms have developed (namely, Adtech) track what websites people have visited and their areas of interest to gather their personal data, information that’s then leveraged in “re-marketing.” However, this tracking is a violation of personal privacy. According to ad-blocking authority PageFair’s 2016 statistics, more than 600 million devices around the globe use ad-blocking software to stop this violation. This number is growing astronomically every year. In countries like Ireland, Denmark and Canada, 25% of users employ ad-blocking software. This is clearly a massive boycott.
Some of the resellers in the online advertising sector not only trample personal privacy underfoot, they also produce fabricated sensational content to get people to watch news stories that are shocking and astounding. This is how they get more impressions and consequently report more ads as having been “viewed.” These intermediary companies are the number one reason for the information pollution on the Internet.
Companies that do a lot of advertising on television, on radio, in newspapers and outdoors receive discounts or refunds from the owners of these channels. This used to be an issue that put channel owners, middlemen and advertisers at odds, but it has become more transparent, and the parties have begun to trust each other more. But now there are demands that online channel owners be held accountable. Advertisers are demanding more transparency from companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram when it comes to discounts and refunds, but these dark corners have yet to be illuminated.
Clearly, advertising in the online channel has gray areas and unanswered questions. Many company executives don’t really know how online advertising operates, but they feel compelled to spend money in this area just to keep up with the latest trends. What’s more, the fact that small companies can advertise on this channel with budgets that are, relatively speaking, tiny compared to those needed for mass media like television means that almost all brands in every country are making an online showing. Therefore, prices on this channel continue to rise, but so does the controversy over effectiveness.
The real objective of platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube is for people to connect with other people. This is why it’s called “social” media. Social connection is the reason that celebrities in every country have far more followers than even the biggest brands.
It’s only natural that brands would advertise on this channel that’s used by people to connect with their friends, family and celebrities they like. Every brand wants to advertise where the people are. Still, there are many unresolved problems with this channel. As “Ad Contrarian” Bob Hoffman says, we must deal with these challenges if brands are going to make effective and proper use of this technology, which is so beneficial to people.
I support brands having a presence on social media. I recommend it to the companies I work with, but I also think that every company that buys from this channel should educate itself about the problems that do exist and take measures to ensure that it doesn’t waste limited resources.
81. Bra
nds Must Obey the Rules of Social Media
It’s an astounding and incredible thing that every minute of the day, 365 days a year, hundreds of millions of people in this massive place called cyberspace are creating and sharing content, forming relationships, having fun, buying everything from shoes to diamonds, applauding those they appreciate and protesting those they dislike.
Although online shopping is still a tiny portion of total trade, the effect that the Internet has on shopper behavior is increasing exponentially. Every brand now faces a consumer who learns all of the facts about a product from the Internet, even if they don’t buy it there, and compares a brand’s features with those of the competitor using their smartphone right there in the store.
Given this reality, it makes sense that brands have leaped into this digital landscape. However, some brands have unfortunately failed to understand the ethos of social media. Social media websites have their own peculiar rules, not just technically but also in terms of philosophy. Marketing specialist Guy Kawasaki encourages brands not only to understand this new world, but also to adapt themselves to it. Some of his tips:
The number of followers on social media is not, in and of itself, a measure of success. Most brands view the number of followers as a sacred number and are thrilled when this number passes that of
the competition. However, just because a brand has a lot of followers doesn’t mean they’re able to convey every message to these followers. Social media websites like Facebook have gotten to where they now allow very few brand communications to reach followers. Facebook shows a message published by a brand to approximately five to ten of every 100 followers, and it’s steadily reducing this number every year. Therefore, even having millions of followers doesn’t ensure that a brand will be able to communicate its message free of charge.
Social media includes more than Facebook. It’s essential that brands carefully choose the social media websites that they use and give each one the attention it deserves. In addition to Facebook, brands should be leveraging platforms like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. In view of the fact that people watch a lot more videos than anything else, they should pay attention to channels like YouTube as well.
The traditional channels of television, newspapers, magazines and radio are in a “monologue” relationship with the millions of people the publication or broadcast reaches. The Internet, on the other hand, allows for real-time and interactive (like, share, comment) communication, so it’s more of a “dialog” with millions upon millions. But just because the Internet makes dialog possible doesn’t mean that people will interact with brands on social media. The vast majority are happy to simply view online content. Brands must accept this fact and not expect interaction.
