go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

Leaving other media out of the equation for the moment, research shows that TV ad spending continues to rise even as audience size remains flat or declining, speaking to the value advertisers continue to place on TV commercials. (A separate MarketingCharts analysis suggests that advertisers are spending roughly $225 per year on each TV viewer, versus $144 to reach each online user.) Indeed, comparing the figures provided by Kantar Media with Nielsen audience estimates reveals that TV ad spending growth continues to be relatively solid amidst an apparent saturation in audience size. The size of the TV-viewing population (Americans aged 2 years and older) has dipped on a year-over-year basis for 8 consecutive quarters – even as TV ad spending growth rates were positive during each of those quarters.

Some of that may be due to TV consumption rates remaining intact. Overall, traditional TV viewing time is inching up, though there are stark demographic differences at play: older segments continue to increase their viewing time, while younger segments are slowly turnin! g away from traditional TV and upping their consumption of online video. (See here for an in-depth look at TV consumption rates for youth, and here for a comparison of TV and online video consumption.)

In its compilation of study results into benchmarks for brand advertisers, comScore indicates that it has observed statistically significant lifts for test groups (versus control groups) in:

• Aided awareness (20%);
• Favorability (4%);
• Likelihood to recommend (22%); and
• Purchase intent (28%).

Product-related content is currently seen as the most critical, rated extremely important or important by 77% of respondents. Best practices and thought leadership are next (each at 71%), followed by industry (57%) and corporate (56%) news. Audience lifestyle falls further down the list, cited by 46% of respondents. While that may have something to do with the nature of the respondents’ businesses, it’s an interesting result nonetheless, as the rankings suggest that brands are lending much more weight to content that discusses their products rather than that which may engage their audiences. That’s particularly notable given separate findings from the study that the primary objective of content marketing programs is to engage customers and prospects (68%) rather than to increase brand awareness (44%) or provide thought leadership (23%).

Also interesting: when it comes to the social media platforms with the highest levels of engagement, Facebook (55%) rules the roost, ahead of Twitter (45%), LinkedIn (39%) and branded blogs (31%). But despite those high marks for enga! gement, F! acebook is perceived as the 4th most valuable social media initiative (58% rating it extremely valuable or valuable), behind branded blogs (64%), LinkedIn (60%) and Twitter (59%).

Other Findings:

• Articles (82%) are the most commonly shared content on social pages, followed by video (60%), photos (54%) and press releases (54%).
• About half of respondents are creating original content for social media channels, with an additional 30% planning to or under development.
• A slight majority are posting 1-10 content marketing assets per month across social media channels and a plurality 46% are posting fresh, original content on a weekly basis.
• The most oft-cited challenge to improving branded content marketing is producing targeted, relevant content to engage audiences (66%), followed by producing enough content (53%).
• Marketers are most commonly gaining insight for targeted content marketing through surveys (50%), website/audience analytics (50%) and search analytics/keyword research (46%).

Overall, ad campaigns geared towards the standard TV demo (18-49) were successful in reaching that audience – which accounts for about half of the digital population – 76% of the time. That indicates that, generally speaking, online campaigns are reaching their intended broad audiences.

Narrower groups, somewhat intuitively, are more difficult to reach, though. For example, narrowing the age range from 18-49 to 18-34 results in the on-target percentage falling to 60%, which itself was one of the best results among the various narrower age breaks. Intended audiences aged 35-54, by contrast, were reached successfully only 41% of the time. That means that advertisers are missing sizable segments of the population: their highest success levels came for a group representing 22% of the online population (the 21-34 group); while their lowest on-target percentage came for a group representing 34% of the online population (the 35-54 demo).

Successfully reaching specific genders proves even more difficult. While campaigns focused on reaching online consumers aged 18-34 were successful 60% of the time, that figure dropped to 46% when targeting a specific gender within that age group. Similarly, when focusing on 18-49-year-olds, the on-target percentage dropped from 76% to 56% when focusing on a gender.

According to the study – which also found a lack of confidence among respondents in key marketing areas – 8 in 10 marketers feel that it will be much (29%) or somewhat (50%) more important for their marketing function to prove business impact and/or ROI in the next 12 months. This view appears to be commonly held across marketing staff (82%) and decision-makers (76%), as well as by digital marketers (75%) and marketing generalists (80%).

Proof of ROI isn’t growing from a position of unimportance, either. Currently, 83% of marketers indicate that it is extremely (39%) or somewhat (44%) important for their team to prove business impact and/or ROI, with those figures also relatively constant across the various segments.

Nevertheless, marketers don’t believe the focus on ROI is going to dissipate anytime soon, and as a result mark this among their top challenges. Asked how concerned they are about a range of marketing issues, 77% respondents t! hat they ! are extremely or very concerned about proving campaign effectiveness, and 75% concurred with respect to demonstrating marketing return on investment. Those were the top responses behind reaching customers (82%) and understanding whether campaigns are working (79%).

The next biggest gaps (42% points) were for “creativity and innovation in marketing programs” and “customer response management.” The study found 75% of the 1,017 US marketers rating each area as important, with only 33% rating their company as proficient at them. Other significant gaps between importance and proficiency emerged for content management (40% points), personalization and targeting (40% points) and cross-channel marketing (38% points). The smallest gap, of 19% points, was for events, with 58% rating them important for their company and 39% feeling their company performs well at them.

The survey finds a particular lack of confidence in digital marketing abilities, with only 48% of digital marketers (marketers with a primarily digital focus) feeling highly proficient in digital marketing. (Only 37% of marketing generalists concurred.) Indeed, 54% of respondents overall agreed that their company’s digital marketing approach is in a constant cycle of trial and error.