Today's Commexis Cast is all about experiential marketing; what works, doesn't work, how to measure ROI, and HBO and Bumble's interesting team-up. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/MbDFLr

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Sources:

Kerry Flynn: https://digiday.com/marketing/moviepass-falls-hbo-bumble-tap-giant-spoon-market-staying/

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On today's Commexis Cast we discuss Party City, and other big name retailers, choosing to sell their products on Amazon despite worries that Amazon could undersell them with a 3rd party alternative. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/Pgcj5b

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Sources:

Suman Bhattacharyya on Digiday: https://digiday.com/marketing/party-city-selling-products-amazon/

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It is Wednesday, which means it's time to talk about the purchase phase of the Buyer's Journey. Purchase is the third step, following consideration. During the purchase stage your user/client/customer has already become aware of your brand, and have done their due diligence to determine which businesses they may want to purchase from. Now, your user is looking at things such as: shipping cost, stock availability, estimated arrival time, estimated departure time, production time, etc. These will be the deciding factor for conversion.

As Suman Bhattacharyya points out in his piece on Digiday, the convenience, ease, and habit of purchasing on Amazon is likely the reason Party City has teamed with the e-commerce site. In addition, partnering with Amazon opens the doors to 2 Day free shipping for Amazon Prime members, as well as better reach to customers who wouldn't be able to reach a physical location.

However, this partnership isn't without its worries. As Phillip, Len, and I discussed in the past, Amazon isn't a stranger to requiring full inventories from certain brands lest the e-commerce site begin creating and selling versions of their own. To combat this, Bhattacharyya writes, "Party City designs and manufactures its own products, which it said differentiates itself from the range of offerings available in its category." He continued that Party City will only be releasing a portion of its product, and in particular the products that they exclusively manufacture, thereby controlling the ability for Amazon to create something similar.

Today's cast: Phillip Brooks (Commexis Lead Strategist) and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

On today's Commexis Cast we cap off the the final day of Influencer Marketing week with a reminder of just how vital influencers can be in the advocacy stage of the buyer's journey. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/CWeHYP

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Sources:

eMarketer: https://retail.emarketer.com/article/loss-of-consumer-trust-costly/5b60d04bebd40005bc4dc73d?ecid=NL1001

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Today's cast: Len Ward (Commexis CEO & Managing Partner), Phillip Brooks (Commexis Lead Strategist), and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

On today's Commexis Cast we kick off Influencer Marketing Week Day 4 with a look into brands using meme accounts in place of human influencer marketing tactics, and some are finding a better ROI than expected. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/Y37haj

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Sources:

Lucinda Southern on Digiday: https://digiday.com/uk/better-roi-influencers-meme-accounts-attract-growing-interest-instagram/

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Digiday's Lucinda Southern spoke to social media agency Cult LDN about campaigns their running for clients using meme accounts, in particular a campaign for streaming service Huya. Cult LDN is using meme accounts centered around "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" to push Huya's brand, labeling each meme with a Huya logo at the bottom and copy encouraging using the site.

Southern spoke to CEO of influencer platform Fanbytes, Tim Armoo, who said, “For 1 million followers, you could be paying $15,000 to a human influencer, and for 1 million followers on a meme account you’d be paying about $1,000."

Some of the benefits of using a meme account as opposed to a human influencer is the flexibility of messaging. After all, most influencers have a particular style or voice to their content, while meme accounts can be much more freeform. However, that also opens up potential brand safety issues. It's easier to tell what a particular influencer might do or talk about, but a meme account could share an unexpectedly controversial meme.

In addition, Rebekah, Josh, and I aren't 100% certain on how much better using a meme account is, particularly when building trust and authenticity with an audience. While the content meme pages post are often highly engaging and relatable, without an individual as the "face" of the account it becomes difficult for users to relate to.

Furthermore, the increased ROI isn't surprising. When a meme account only costs $1,000 for a million followers, the requirements for a return is much lower than when spending $15,000 for a human influencer. Like I wrote about on Tuesday, meme accounts could be helpful for small businesses in the same way micro-influencers are, but I wouldn't go all in just yet.

Ultimately, it's up to your marketing team to do the due diligence of ensuring a quality influencer, whether that be a human or a meme account.

Today's cast: Rebekah Milsted (Commexis Social Media Manager), Josh Lyons (Commexis Social Media Intern), and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

Today's Commexis Cast kicks off Influencer Marketing week! We discuss small businesses having great success with micro-influencers, and seeing increased ROI compared to influencers with increased followings. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/1h7AoJ

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Sources:

Dinah Wisenberg Brin: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dinahwisenberg/2018/07/31/small-businesses-find-micro-influencers-a-good-marketing-avenue/#53a228b36f9f

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Dinah Wisenberg Brin on Forbes spoke with the team behind Mason Jar Storage, creators of "Mom's Mason Jar Rack". The team tapped influencers in canning, home crafts, and cooking verticals and found great success by aiming for micro-influencers with small, engaged audiences than influencers with a higher audience number.

Alon Popilskis, the team member responsible for the marketing of the product, said, "We decided to work with micro-influencers as opposed to larger-scale influencers due to budget as well as due to the fact that micro-influencers, even though they have smaller audiences, have a more engaged and targeted following, leading to better use of money spend."

MediaHub found that influencers with 1,000 fans had an 85% higher engagement "lift" than those with 100,000 followers. Brin writes that, "New York Times-owned social media influencer marketing firm HelloSociety, meanwhile, found that accounts with 30,000 or fewer followers are better for marketers, according to Adweek. Micro-influencers, often considered to be trusted sources, generate a 60 percent higher engagement rate than a typical HelloSociety campaign and are 6.7 times more cost-effective than big-time influencers, according to the report."

In the podcast, Phillip and I discussed how micro-influencer is fantastic for small businesses because the increased engagement gained by having a smaller, niche audience. The cost compared to other influencers, for example, makes a ROI actually possible.

Today's cast: Phillip Brooks (Commexis Lead Strategist) and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

Today's Commexis Cast discusses Facebook newest ad type: playable ads! These ads can feature demos of mobile app games that allow users a taste of the full experience. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/2TMo8w

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Sources:

Ginny Marvin: https://marketingland.com/facebook-launches-playable-ads-tests-retention-optimization-for-app-advertising-245312

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Ginny Marvin on Marketing Land reports that new ad type was announced by Facebook last Friday at the ChinaJoy gaming convention, and has released globally.

Rick Kelley, VP of global gaming at Facebook, said in a statement, "With playable ads, advertisers can now give players a chance to experience a game in Feed before they install it, creating higher intent. And through two additions to our value suite, game developers can more efficiently reach their most valuable players — whether they’re optimizing for payers or for retention.”

So, what does this mean for marketers who aren't advertising gaming apps? In the podcast, Josh and I discussed how this is the first stepping stone for Facebook in creating new ad types for mobile app marketers. Marvin points out that Google is ahead of Facebook already. What I'm particularly interested in is the opportunity for the advancement of ad types into the realms of VR and AR. Previously on the podcast, Phillip and I discussed IKEA's Place app that allows for users to place furniture in their environment using AR technology to see if the color and style of the chair would be appropriate. I wonder if the same could be done in a more advanced ad type, offering a demo of a particular item without requiring the user to download a separate app.

Marvin also writes that a minimum return on ad spend (ROAS) feature will be launching the coming weeks, allowing advertisers to "be able to set a minimum spend to target users that the system determines are most likely to make in-app purchases." This isn't useful for gaming apps, but for other apps that require in-app purchases, as well.

Today's cast: Josh Lyons (Commexis Social Media Intern) and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

Twitter’s latest bot purge has dropped follower counts in the 6 digits for some, but marketers say they love that drop. On today’s Commexis Cast we explain why engagement is the number one metric for social media measurement, not follower count. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/i7DYAH

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Sources:

Kerry Flynn: https://digiday.com/marketing/twitters-bot-purge-welcomed-agency-execs/

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Kerry Flynn on Digiday spoke with many media execs who are happy to see Twitter making additional efforts to quell bot accounts on the platform. Twitter initially began looking into their bot problem following a New York Times investigation that found many celebrities and influencers on the platform paying to have bots follow, like, and retweet their accounts and posts. In addition, questions of Russian use of Twitter in an effort to influence the election, much like on Facebook and other platforms, began to surface.

So, Twitter began banning bots. The platform also made significant changes to their terms of service, disallowing bot use for mass liking, retweeting, and following.

In the newest wave of bot bannings, popular accounts lost hundreds of thousands of followers or more. Katy Perry lost about 2 million. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey proudly lost 200,000.

Many influencers and brands expressed frustration at the loss of followers, but Josh and I explain that follower count isn't the most important metric for social media. Certainly, having a big number looks great and can be a fantastic showing of growth overtime, but engagement it does not create. Not to mention, many marketers had to scrape away data in their reports to accommodate bot followers. Now? Not so much.

Flynn spoke to Darnell Brisco, vp of accounts in entertainment at Fullscreen, who said, “This is the outcome I was hoping for for a lot of reasons. Do people lose a large number of followings, a big flashy number? Sure. But it makes the job for us as marketers easier because we are already having such a tough time trying to clean that data.”

"Marketing should focus on real results," Bobby Palmieri, CEO of Lilo Social, told Flynn, "and this purge will help that. I think there’s a huge gap between perceived audience and true influence, and this purge is the first step in bridging that gap."

Ultimately, even if your follower number (or your "audience number") decreased during the purge, your engagement should stay the same. If you're not creating quality content for them to enjoy, share, and engage with then your follower number is nothing more than a vanity.

Today's cast: Josh Lyons (Commexis Social Media Intern) and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

Today's Commexis Cast discusses Google's announcement to show marketers more data in their Google Analytics and Google My Business profiles, including popular search keywords for businesses. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/n43BWX

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Sources:

Laurie Sullivan on Media Post: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/322170/google-starts-to-give-marketers-more-access-to-dat.html

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Laurie Sullivan reports on Media Post that the Search Analytics API in the search console will also allow users access to 25,000 rows of data per request, which is five times more than the previous 5,000 rows. Google has also released a guide on how to access this data, offering info on the default settings, searching by groups and by properties, and more.

Len and I also talked about Google’s history of keeping information close to the chest. There was a time prior to 2012-2013 where Google allowed users to look at every keyword their site could rank, but Google took that away in the place of pay-per-click. With the expanding markets of voice search and other forms of media, Google seems to be opening the gates a crack to allow some information to flow through.

Today's cast: Len Ward (Commexis CEO) and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

Today's Commexis Cast discusses Amazon's advertising working directly with some brands, leaving advertising agencies completely out of the picture. For more, visit our blog: https://goo.gl/wD5ggS

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Sources:

Shareen Pathak on Digiday: https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-advertising-working-directly-brands-now-cutting-ad-agencies/

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Shareen Pathak on Digiday has an excellent write-up of the various ways Amazon is working with brands, in particular eCommerce brands, without advertising agency help. Lego in particular has found success with a direct relationship working with Amazon, even having their own landing page. According to Pathak, competitors are not able to advertise there.

Pathak spoke with Eric Heller, founder of Wunderman Commerce consultancy Marketplace Ignition, who isn't particularly worried for advertising agencies. “I’m not sure that everything old isn’t new again." said Heller, "I don’t think after Google we started hearing later that companies were dropping agencies.”

Our Paid Placement Specialist Jim does point out, however, that this had been going on for a while now. Google does it, Facebook does it, even HubSpot does it. But Jim is not concerned. He argues that it never works for the platform because they are so highly focused they can't diversify the portfolio of advertising options and channels, so if someone does well they crush it, if they don't they fail. Also, Amazon's advertising expertise is very limited to only eCommerce, and anyone outside of eCommerce would be hard pressed to convince to go with an amazon ad rep over a comprehensive full service agency.

Today's cast: James Van Horn (Commexis Paid Placement Specialist) and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

Today's Commexis Cast discusses the growing popularity of eSports and the vast marketing potentials waiting to be seized. Visit our blog for more: https://goo.gl/vWyC2W

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Sources:

Mallory Locklear on Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/11/overwatch-league-air-abc-espn-disney-networks/

Sahil Patel on Digiday: https://digiday.com/media/turners-esports-league-aims-for-growth-with-new-games-advertisers/

Lucia Moses on Digiday: https://digiday.com/media/fortnite-themed-talk-show-coming-twitch/

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The Overwatch League (OWL) will begin having its games aired on the Disney, ESPN, and ABC family of networks. The partnership began at the onset of the OWL playoffs and is planned to continue in a multi-year deal that will broadcast future seasons of the league on ESPN, ESPN2, Disney XD, ABC, and streaming services. This isn't the first time esports will air on ESPN or Disney XD, but it is aimed to be quite lucrative. Blizzard Entertainment, owners of Overwatch, are already quite familiar with the esports world having created and fostered the Starcraft 2 esports

Community.

But what is so special about esports airing on television? After all, many millennials and the youngest of Gen Z (such as myself) don't even watch T.V.

Its the numbers. Turner Sports, owners of ELeague, have exceptional viewership numbers on TV. Sahil Patel on Digiday wrote, "On TV, ELeague averages 250,000 viewers per telecast. ELeague has also helped TBS draw new and younger viewers; to date, the league has brought in 10 million new viewers who had not spent any time with the network in the month prior to watching an ELeague broadcast. The median age for ELeague programming at 10 p.m. on Friday nights on TBS is four years younger than other network programming that airs on other nights at the same time."

ELeague's "Boston Major" tournament had a peak viewership of 1.1 million, Patel writes, which is inline with the viewership of the World Cup broadcasts on Fox Sports and Telemundo saw with peak concurrent live streams over the past month.

Finally, Inverse, the Amazon owned streaming company, is developing a talk show based around the hit gaming sensation Fortnite. Fortnite had a total of about 125 million players and generated $315 million in revenue in June, alone, and some top streamers of the game can amass 100,000+ consistent viewers per stream. During tournaments, top streamers such as Ninja can have 200,000 - 400,000 viewers at a time.

Today's cast: Phillip Brooks (Commexis Lead Strategist) and Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster).

Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.