Your Digital Intelligence Report

Digital Intelligence Report

April 2019 Bonus Issue

Holistic, coordinated executions are the ones that are remembered. Burger King retweeting 10-year-old Twitter posts and then allowing the confused social sphere light up is one example. Pilsner is doing the same thing by highlighting negative comments about its offerings … and the social world awaits as the other shoe gets ready to drop.

These executions stand out because they took time and thought. Not to mention, they took strong internal leaders to get the teams to buy in. We are in a fast-paced, busy business. But we applaud those who break from that norm and go beyond in thought and creativity.

Harvard neuroscientist researchers last week showed that prolonged thought/meditation for ~27 minutes each day can result in younger and faster frontal cortexes (where decision-making and access memory flourish).

So, giving your next marketing project some deeper thought isn’t just good for the product or brand, but you, as well.

INNOVATION: If you didn’t just get off of a call with a potential new vendor, hopefully your key digital partner/employee did. Always be innovating to stay on the forefront of digital transformation (see chart below for more encouragement)… So many have spent so much time getting their hands around the data, they are ill-prepared to do anything notable with it. Consider merging the data-infused future with a design-based approach. Extract data for the good of the audience, products and processes. MORE … Scott Brinker's map of marketing and technology innovation has been updated to include more than 7,000 brands. His graphic over the years has been in half of all digital presentations. MORE ... By the way, if you are looking for a key digital partner, look to Rooster. We have your back.

SOCIAL: In an effort to protect from platform manipulation, Twitter is deleting millions of accounts per week. MORE … Pinterest is what we think it is – overwhelmingly female. It could be as high as 70 percent female by the end of the year. MORE … SnapChat is still reeling from a poor redesign and is expected to decrease in users for the first time. Meanwhile, Snap’s lead competitor Instagram remains hot and growing. MORE … Facebook will likely earn 85% of all social ad dollars in 2019. No one likes a monopoly, though, so alternatives that work are worth seeking … A report from Blue Fountain Media had a nifty tidbit that 65 percent of social-media-targeted consumers are looking for items they wouldn’t likely see elsewhere, and that consumers are actually receptive to social advertising. MORE … Social engagement is morphing from the old text and image format to a more heavily graphical approach. Hence why stories are becoming more popular, along with story-like apps What’s App, SnapChat, etc. If you haven’t already, be experimenting with stories. Only 9 percent of brands have tested it out on Facebook, so you aren’t behind. MORE … For those who like the soap opera that is Facebook, Wired gives you a fresh and not so friendly take on their recent history. MORE

SEARCH: You can probably type 40 words per minute. But you probably speak 150 words per minute. That’s one key reason voice search matters. MORE … Visual search has finally become sophisticated enough to earn scale of usage. It might even be a marketing consideration today and absolutely must be in the near future. MORE ... According to a Wordstream webcast yesterday, Google Ads ctr benchmarks increased significantly year over year (5.06% ctrs and $2.41 cpcs, $56.11 cpas on search). Bigger ads and better targeting were credited. The more human industries earned the highest click-through rates. By the way, a quality score of 10 on your ad will cut your cpc in half. MORE

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: AI is coming but examples of its use will help everyone get to a place where AI becomes tangible and deliverable quickly. For example, the Drum used AI to have a deceased tech celebrity sign 1,000 issues of its magazine. MORE ... Travel, retail and media have some of the early adoption that makes the most sense. MORE

MOBILE: It’s a haphazard, clunky and Thunderdome-level competitive industry, but mobile innovation and adoption has brought us to 2019, the year when mobile-based “unicorns” grow up and take a full leadership position in digital transformation. MORE ... Mobile is always on. Even when the television or streaming service is rolling, mobile is in play. MORE

PROGRAMMATIC: Google’s move to first-price auction by the end of 2019 has some on the sell side nervous. There is a high likelihood that auction bids will increase in the short-term as the bidders reshuffle. Publishers, meanwhile, will have to evolve tools like header bidding to keep it relevant and revenue stabilized. Don’t act too fast though because other companies will be innovating in this space throughout 2019 to gain an advantage … The IAB Tech Lab is suggesting a couple of ads.txt-like approaches to help buyers swim to legit sellers quicker and easier. MORE

CHATBOTS: Consumers love them when they save them time, hate them when they aren't nimble or informative. But, 72 percent find chatbots generally helpful. MORE

VIDEO: Not everyone can play in the long-form space, but some brands are engaging with Amazon Prime Video to distribute their videos. With enough viewership, the brand could start actually making money on it. MORE … Salesforce research postulates that display ad spending’s steady decline is offset by an equal uptick on video (specifically YouTube). MORE

REGULATION: The Publicis Groupe purchase of Epsilon was about owning data in a regulated era. More like it will follow, but a few of the other major players say that the data on the market isn’t unique enough to matter. MORE … Industry groups are joining together to help form federal laws for privacy in an attempt to fend off state action. MORE … GDPR is in the process of getting updated to close some important loopholes. None are business friendly. MORE

THE BEST FROM THE DIGITAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT:

For more details on any of the topics covered here, contact Rooster’s Chief Digital Officer James Arnold:

Office: (913) 489-8470

Cell: (913) 291-6996

[email protected]

The goal of the Rooster Strategic Solutions Digital Intelligence Report is to provide intelligence around the digital product landscape. What is coming next. How to use what you already have. Who might be doing it right.