Facebook is approaching 500 million users worldwide.
Its been reported Facebook’s 900 employess generate revenues of close to $1 Billion annually.
With average annual revenue per user of $2.00 ($1 Billion revenue / 500 million users = $2.00) and a daily income production of .005 per user, Facebook.com’s revenue potential looks to have nowhere to go but up.
From Nielsen:
With most U.S. homes connected to broadband, the viewing of online video has never been easier. Whether watching a short clip on YouTube or an entire TV program, almost three-quarters (72%) of Internet users view videos online — amounting to 144 million people. To marketers, this presents a huge – and largely untapped – audience to reach. And while online advertising fell overall in 2009, ad spend on online videos grew 41%.
In a recent presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual RE: Think conference, Dave Kaplan, Senior Vice President, Product Leadership at Nielsen IAG, and Beth Uyenco, Director of Global Research at Microsoft, discussed the ins and outs of online advertising and how to effectively reach video viewers. Evaluating 238 brands encompassing 412 products in 951 ad executions in streaming full-episode TV programs, Nielsen IAG used the key brand impact metrics of ad recall, brand recall, message recall and likeability to determine the effectiveness of ads. More than 14,000 surveys were conducted.
The patterns they uncovered were consistent: video ads run during online full-episode TV programs yield deeper brand impact than corresponding on-air TV ads, with the difference most pronounced among younger viewers age 13-34.
Online Ads Vs. TV Ads
What accounts for this variation in impact between online video and traditional TV? Data shows that web video viewers are more engaged and attentive to the programs they are watching, which is likely a function of the viewing environment and the oft-required active mouse-clicking to initiate nd continue content. Online video is also still a relative novelty compared to traditional forms of media. Further, and most significantly, reduced ad clutter and the inability to easily skip ads are considerable recall-enhancing factors.
While creating a unique ad specifically for use in online video may be desirable, advertisers might want to consider that TV ads repurposed for online full episodes actually generated the top results. It may be that the TV executions possess higher production values, or that online full episode viewers still prefer the absorptive and passive nature of traditional-style TV spots.
“Advertisers might be able to save money by utilizing those ads already in the hopper. Even when controlling for exposure, we see that repurposed TV spots resonate quite well in the streaming full-episode environment,” said Kaplan.
Is it not obvious to brand advertisers that redistribution of high quality television advertising online and the effects of congruent messaging across all channels compounds overall message effectiveness?
I guess not.
From Advertising Age via Jeff Bornhoff @ Forrester Research:
Everyone knows people make impressions on each other — it’s called word of mouth. The question marketers always asked us was: just how many impressions? And who is responsible for the mass of those impressions?
Now we know. People make over 500 billion impressions on each other about products and services every year. And a small group of mass influencers are responsible for 80% of those impressions. This is the beginning of what we call Peer Influence Analysis.Here’s how it works. Start by counting every instance in which a person influences another person online about a product or service. (We model this from Forrester’s 10,000 person survey, which asks how frequently they post, in what places, how many followers they have, and what products and services they post about.)
This influence comes in two types.
First, there is influence from people posting within social networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on. We call these instances influence impressions. Based on our surveys, we estimate people in the U.S. create 256 billion influence impression on each other in social networks every year. (Has anyone ever measured this number before?) Of these influence impressions, 62% come from Facebook.
Second, there is influence created by posts: blog posts, blog comments, discussion forum posts, and ratings and reviews. We call these influence posts. We estimate that people in the U.S. create 1.64 billion influence posts every year. If around 150 people view each of these posts (a conservative estimate, based on our research), that’s another 250 billion-plus impressions. Blog posts and blog comments account for about 40% of these posts.
Add the impressions from both social networks and posts together and you get the 500 billion impressions.
Mass Influence
Once you start analyzing this huge pool of influence, you can draw some very interesting conclusions. Here are a few.
People’s influence on each other rivals online advertising. For comparison, for a 12-month period ending September 30 last year, Nielsen Online estimates advertisers created 1.974 trillion online advertising impressions, compared to the 500 billion impressions people make on each other about products and services. So people’s online impressions on each other about products and services are about one-fourth of the online advertising impression. And peer impressions are more credible than advertising, since they come from friends. Take those numbers into your next budget meeting!
A minority of people generate 80% of the impressions. Take a look at the graphic. About 6.2% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence impressions. Around 13.8% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence posts. We call these two groups Mass Connectors and Mass Mavens (if you’ve read “The Tipping Point” you know where we got the names.). If you’re a marketer, you probably want to know who these people are (demographics, where they share, that kind of thing) — once we’ve identified them, we can find that all out through the survey.
You can do peer influencer analysis for any type of product or service. For example, mass influencers in consumer electronics are far more concentrated, somewhat more affluent and quite a bit more male than the general mass influencers. If you want to build a word-of-mouth strategy, you have to start with the information on mass influencers in your market.
It’s time to start analyzing peer influence with the same discipline we apply to media. And it’s time word-of-mouth got a budget that reflects the amount of influence people have, and who has it.
On the surface its sounds reasonable to conclude “peer impressions are more credible than advertising, since they come from friends.”
However, I’m not convinced.
If peer impressions were more credible than advertising – why then can’t all company’s switch to an Amwayesque multi-level marketing sales organization model to promote and sell their products?
Because not all peer impressions are created equally.
From comScore:
Automaker discounts and incentives compelled millions of Americans to visit auto manufacturer sites to seek information and investigate possible purchases. Political news and information sites also saw sizeable gains in traffic as Americans tuned into the debate over passage of the congressional healthcare bill.
“Auto manufacturers relied on incentives and promotions to boost sales before the end of the quarter, sending more Americans to research their purchases online prior to buying,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “As automakers compete in this challenging market, it is ever more important for consumers to research all of their options online before making these important purchase decisions. Americans also looked to stay abreast of the monumental healthcare bill negotiations in March by closely following political news and information online.”
Automakers Drive the Deals Home
Auto Manufacturers ranked as the top-gaining site category in March, growing 23 percent to more than 30 million visitors, as potential buyers researched vehicle options online. General Motors led the category with 7.6 million visitors, up 32 percent during the month. Hyundai Motors, Inc. grabbed the #2 position with 5.4 million visitors, representing a 222-percent surge since February. Toyota attracted 5.1 million visitors, followed closely by Ford Motor Company with 5.0 million (up 3 percent). Chevrolet.com grew 71 percent to 4.4 million visitors, while Honda attracted 3.6 million visitors.
Americans Debate Healthcare Reform Online
Political sites grew 18 percent in March to 20.5 million visitors as Americans sought the latest news and analysis on the political landscape, including the hotly debated healthcare reform bill. PoliticsDaily.com attracted 5.3 million unique visitors, while The Economist Group grew 35 percent to 2.7 million visitors and Politico.com grew 10 percent to 1.8 million visitors. The number of visitors to BarackObama.com more than doubled during the month, growing 133 percent to 1.5 million visitors.
Online Trading Sites Flourish as Stock Market Recovers
As the stock market continued to rebound in March so did traffic to Online Trading sites, which grew 13 percent to 11.5 million unique visitors. Fidelity Investments ranked as the #1 investment site, rising 10 percent to 3.5 million visitors. Scottrade Sites ranked second with 1.6 million visitors (up 7 percent), followed by ShareBuilder.com with 1.5 million visitors (up 20 percent), and ETrade Financial Network with 1.3 million visitors (up 25 percent).
Top Gaining Site Categories
If double digit gains in visits to industry sector websites are an indicator of future economic activity, it looks like the American consumer is once again showing signs of life.
Google Analytics Experts Avinash Kaushik & Nick Mihailovski answer questions about Analytics and other Google tools.
Topics covered in this video include macro vs. micro conversions, using analytics on affiliate sites, tracking different domains, and more.
Don’t think so?
If you have a pulse and you live in the U.S. – you are a media company.
How?
Because by definition your life’s peaks and troughs are now digitally captured and recorded.
Everything that is digitized ultimately finds its way to the cloud and then the web in some shape or form.
This digital signature on the web is your media company’s footprint.
As with every prior computing life cycle, there are the pioneers, early adopters, the middle majority and laggards.
Where are you personally in the life cycle of every U.S. citizen becoming a media company?
The following is a Nielsen Research infographic for how to conduct a social listening campaign.
A Listening Formula
By focusing on themes, audience and situational context marketers can glean actionable new insights about products from vast amounts of consumers’ conversation data.
Whether this insight can be readily converted into innovative and successful new products or not remains to be seen.
According to Avinash Kaushik, one of the Internet’s greatest gifts is to be proven wrong fast.
Unlike in any other measurable setting, the internet’s ability to prove something wrong quickly conversely can also accelerate one’s success.
“The way to succeed is to double your error rate.” Thomas J. Watson
Indeed, being proven wrong fast can help almost any business out distance and exhaust failures at the rate and costs (near zero) necessary for experiencing and otherwise sustaining success.
The following video is a “fireside chat” with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
I noticed the following Twitter audience survey today while logged into Twitter on the web.
Twitter Audience Survey
Clicking on the link takes Twitter users to the following seven questions:
1. On a scale of zero to ten, how likely is it that you would recommend Twitter to a friend or coworker?
2. Which of these Twitter apps have you used?
3. Which of these Twitter apps would you recommend to a friend or coworker?
4. Who do you follow?
5. Who would you like to find more of?
6. What is your primary motivation for using Twitter?
7. What is your secondary motivation for using Twitter?
The Twitter survey then asks several “optional” questions:
a. Twitter user name
b. Gender
c. Age
d. In which of these Twitter apps did you see the link to this survey?
e. Profession
f. Education
g. Country
h. Postal Code
i. Interested in helping us test new features? If so, what’s your email address? (We won’t share your email address with anyone.)
Based on the tone of their questions, would be Twitter users may not be the only ones who aren’t yet sure what Twitter’s value proposition is.
Search Marketing Communications 
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