Indian Social Media Trends in 2012
Indian social media grew by leaps and bounds in 2011. Indians witnessed the true power of social over the course of the year – whether it was bolstering the IAC movement in India or MTV India being awarded the best social media TV program by Mashable. It has been a year of amazing social media campaigns but also a year of great fiascos. I feel social media momentum will only grow more in a country where 70 percent of the population accesses the Internet through mobile. There will be even bigger success stories in 2012, but what will they be? I have listed some trends that I believe will shape the social media business in India over the next 12 months.
Mobile goes social: It is a known fact that most Indians browse the Internet via mobile, and 2012 will see even more fondness to pocket devices. A large percentage of Indians are spending time on social networks using their mobiles, with the biggest chunk comes from non-metros. Expect mobile to add some extra zing to the Indian social media market in 2012. $100 mobiles powered with Android have already made it possible for Indians to browse the Internet quite cheaply. Are we going to witness brands now focusing more on mobile apps rather than web apps? This was a thought also expressed by Preetham Venkky in a recent chat.
B2B and corporate gear up: The B2B arena will gear up, and we will see not only professional networks opening up but also see large enterprises will walk the extra mile to embrace Enterprise 2.0. I have always felt that LinkedIn has been inside a shell, as its more of a corporate network. But this year, I think it will be more social and allow its API to be used by more developers. This would be great news for the Indian market considering how many people use Linkedin here. We are already seeing companies such as Standard Chartered opting for Enterprise 2.0 with the help of Kreeo. I think in 2012, we will see more companies being social, dropping their logos, and providing a platform for employees, stakeholders, and customers to engage.
Social commerce: New e-commerce sites are popping up all over the place in India, and they’re being funded pretty quickly too. Some pundits assert that it is a bubble but for the time being, there is money in that bubble. We have also seen the growing fondness towards Facebook, so a gradual evolution of e-commerce to social commerce seems like a logical next step. We have already seen lot of e-commerce brands such as Fashion and You, Flipkart, Fetise, and MyGrahak, doing an amazing job on social media. However brands will also have to understand that social commerce means far more than creating a Facebook fan page. They will have to provide fans with a positive experience, keeping the social aspect in focus, evolving from just liking and commenting on products.
Blogs and brands: Brands have kept their distance from blogs in the past, but 2011 saw some brands testing the waters more. Red Bull started a blogger hunt contest for F1, and we also saw the Snexy.in campaign that used blogs very effectively. IndiBlogger, India’s biggest blog network, made sure that it kept running contests all year round. Brands such as Tata, Dove, KFC, Samsung, and HP also tried creating a relationship with bloggers via contests. I have always believed that bloggers can be your best brand evangelists. Blogging is far from dead, and it will evolve further in 2012.
Forums will be back: I think social media is cluttered right now, and the content overload often detracts from the experience. Could it be that 2012 will see a resurgence of forums. We recently saw Pluggd.in launching its forum for the startup and entrepreneur community. I have engaged a couple of times and found some very interesting discussions. Forums have like-minded people and are moderated; they have more focused discussions and less spam. I hope PO is planning one too!
Video consumption increases: In 2011 we saw the launch of both BoxOffice and then Movieplex, from Internet giant’s Google and Yahoo respectively. After the Kolaveri di [2] snowball I am sure every artist and Bollywood personality would want to make his or her video viral. India is a market that is not going to be behind in 2012 even though we have infrastructure problems in the country, so expect video to be the next big thing.
The idiot box goes social: Television channels connecting to fans via social media is a common trend, but 2011 saw television serials being telecasted on social media. In December, we saw the rebirth of the movie review show Chicks on Flicks, aired on Facebook. Sony PIX had stopped airing it on TV, and from now on it will show movie reviews on the day of the release. I believe this will be followed by others in 2012.
Social media outsourcing: Last time when I spoke to Adhvith Dhuddu, he predicted that 2012 would see lot of social media outsourcing work coming to India. I think many bigger brands will opt for social media outsourcing as this will also allow them to scale. But how exactly can social media work be outsourced? Certainly there is some risk in some areas, but at the same time there are many mundane tasks that can be outsourced.
ORM becomes important: With more and more brands opting for social, brands will need to be more careful about their online reputation. 2011 saw Vodafone Dhaval Valia fail in this area. Having witnessed such catastrophes, other companies will be trying to avoid these kinds of mistakes in 2012.
SMEs become more social: I have always believed that social media can be a game changer for SMEs. In 2011 we saw some amazing social media work from Faasos, Shopo and more which may become case studies for their competitors. SME’s will be more open and innovative on social media over the coming year.
Source: www.penn-olson.com
2012 Trends: Video Leads Online Ad Growth
US online video ad spending to grow 43.1% in 2012
Whether they think of it as magnetic content or advertising, marketers are increasingly focused on creating video assets. This type of media reproduces the richness consumers associate with TV, often at a lower cost. And if online venues tend to fall short of TV when it comes to reach, they make up the difference by engaging viewers in an active, lean-forward mode.
The virtuous circle of content and technology adoption that consumers are experiencing is also fueling this trend. eMarketer estimates that US online video ad spending will grow by a compound annual rate of 38% in a five-year span ending in 2015, making this by far the fastest-rising category of online spending.
By 2015, video ad spending will reach $7.11 billion, up from $2.16 billion in 2011. In the past year alone, growth was 52.1%.
Similarly, in the UK video advertising will lead the pack, growing by a compound annual rate of 65% over five years. By 2015, UK video online ad spending will reach $850 million, compared with $150 million in 2011. As a percentage of total online advertising, video will grow to 8.2% in 2015 from 2.1% in 2011.
Still, challenges remain, including the high price of online video adsand the need for better reach and measurement. Several factors will mitigate these problems, making the upward course for video ad spending strong in 2012 and beyond. These factors include better filtering technologies for user-generated content, so publishers can better monetize it with ads; the emergence of cost per view and cost per engagement pricing structures; the increased use of interactive ad units and magnetic content; and personalization and targeting of video ads.
Source: www.emarketer.com
50% Of eCommerce Site Visitors Are Logged In To Facebook
eCommerce sites should consider how they can personalize their sites using Facebook data, as a new study shows 50% of visitors to ecommerce sites are currently logged in to Facebook. Using Facebook social plugins and Connect integrations, sites can leverage Facebook data to show visitors what friends bought or shared, what products relate to their Likes, and which friends they might want to invite. The study was conducted by Sociable Labs, which helps websites implement social functionality, and looked at 456 million visits to over a dozen ecommerce sites catering to different demographics.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that ecommerce sites are increasingly adding social features. She shared with us a new statistic: 88% of Internet Retailer Top 200 retail sites are integrated with Facebook.
Sociable Labs’ founder and CEO Nisan Gabbay explained that the target age market for an ecommerce site has surprisingly little influence on the percentage of visitors that were logged in to Facebook. Those aimed at college students were closer to 60%, but even those with middle aged saw at least 40% of visitors logged in.
The data was collected using the FB.getLoginStatus() API call from sites of Sociable Labs’ analytics and eCommerce integration customers. Gabbay tells me that while some of the studied sites attract early adopters, he has discussed the data with Facebook and the company validated it. Also, despite the fact that his company could benefit from more sites adopting social, the sample size is large enough to decrease the likelihood of bias.
“People look at Facebook’s active user count but don’t quite get how pervasive the service is in people’s lives. It’s there all the time in any activity they do online”, Gabbay says. The stats indicate that there may be less risk of sites offending non-Facebook users by adding social functionality than one might expect, because there just aren’t that many hold-outs any more. There’s also technical ways to detect if a user is logged in, and hide those big blue social plugins if they’re not.
As we enter the holiday season, there will be a critical mass of shoppers taking actions on ecommerce sites. Those willing to develop or license Facebook integrations can use social data to point visitors to the products most relevant to them. This can produce a lot more sales than leaving visitors them to browse aimlessly.
Source: Techgig
Google AdWords Bid To Call: Cost-Per-Phone (CPP)
Google has announced a new option to bid differently for phone calls versus clicks to your web site with Bid To Call charged on a cost-per-phone call (CPP) basis.
So if you are willing to pay $5 for a phone call but only $1 for a click to your web site, you can now specify so.
The ad position for these are are based on the quality score and CPP price. The algorithm is Ad rank = (max CPC bid x click quality score) + (max CPP x phone call quality score).
How do you set this up?
You need to select the option to use a Google forwarding number when you set up Call Extensions. Then you must enter a Max CPP bid in order to activate bid-per-call.
Then when someone sees your ad and calls you, Google will charge you the CPP price:
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