IDEASMARKIT (Where Marketing Meets Technology)

Digital agency Sapient Interactive has released the findings of a survey, titled Digital Marketing: The CMO perspective. The survey figures out the views of chief marketing officers (CMOs) or marketing heads of 52 organisations represented by sectors such as automobile, airlines, telecom and FMCG on various aspects of digital marketing and commerce. The findings are based on interviews conducted among respondents

• 17 % of the overall advertising spend goes to digital media, while 24.7 % and 19.4 % of the total advertising amount is allocated to print and TV respectively. Outdoor gets 10 %, while 4.5 % ad spend is allotted to radio.
• 33 % of the CMOs feel that they are over-spending on print advertising while 22 % on television.
• 59 % of the respondents would like to invest more in digital advertising.
• Maximum number of CMOs rated website advertising or product based microsites as most effective. Viral campaigns are regarded as the least effective way of digital advertising. Website advertising and viral campaigns get an average weighted score of 100 and 30.7 respectively.
• Search marketing campaigns (score of 94) and e-mail marketing (score of 90) are considered as the 2^nd and 3^rd most effective ways of digital advertising respectively. Banner ads received a score of 78.
• Almost 100 % of the respondents agreed that the main constraint in adoption of the digital medium for advertisement is the lack of understanding of metrics used to measure the effectiveness of digital advertisement. Another difficulty mentioned by CMOs in adoption of digital media is the inability to adapt traditional media practices to new media.
• 75 % felt that in the current economic climate, digital channels would take on a greater focus in their overall marketing strategy.
• Sectors most at ease with adapting to digital media include- Travel, Insurance, Airline/ hospitality, financial services and IT.

Edelman in collaboration with Brandtology, which provides business and brand online intelligence services have unveiled a Digital Brand Index for India. This was built by analyzing conversations in Indian social media sites. However I must warn you that these results should be taken with a pinch of salt since the largest channel which they mention for social media is twitter which has only 1.4 million users in India. The key findings of the index are

Nielsen has just declared results of its Upper Middle and Rich (UMAR) survey. The survey covered more than 18,250 individuals across 35 Indian metros. The survey has identified three segments of affluence from lifestyle and consumer durables mapping and estimates that there are 2.5 million population belonging to urban rich segments in India.

1. 2.2 million belong to the Upper Middle segment (owning a car and a computer)
2. 0.2 million households belong to the Upper-Upper Middle segment (owners of a car, computer and LCD television).
3. The Rich segment (owners of a car, computer and LCD television, and have holidayed abroad) consists of about 0.1 million households.

1. Half of the targeted consumers are schooled in English
2. English is the preferred language for newspapers however the television programmes watched are more in regional languages.
3. Nine in ten affluent individuals own a house; three-quarters have a fully automated washing machine; and nearly two in five affluent individuals have a home theatre and modular kitchen.

There is a large amount of user research which goes into building a quality website and this keeps throwing up some interesting user insights. Youtube has been sharing it for a while and in the past month has revealed two very interesting research on usability and user behavior.

1. First is this graph which shows the number of videos that receive specific star ratings amazingly there are some 1-stars and a huge amount of 5-stars, and then basically no 2, 3, or 4 stars. The chart above doesn't means that 5 star rating systems are bad it only means that the rating system is really dependent on the how engaging is the content being consumed an also the use of the rating in relation to the user.For a youtube which have a shorter more hit or miss kind of content rating doesn't gives the user something while on sites like IMDB, netflix, Amazon and others which have long form more engaging content the star system puts more weight on the person rating it ( since they would not like to get crappy recommendations themselves ) rather than the person who posted it making it more responsible.
   
2. The second insight is shown in the image below which highlights the difference between the kinds of users youtube has

According to youtube:

One of the most important findings has to do with the difference between the large group of users who are on YouTube simply to watch videos and a smaller, but very important, group of more engaged users -- often uploaders. The latter group will, unsurprisingly, care about details like how to make communication with their audience easier and more effective, how to grow their audience, and even how to make money on YouTube. The former, on the other hand, want as simple of an interface as possible: "Just let me watch the video, please!" -- note how differently each kind of user arranged features on the page and the sheer number of elements in the scenario on the right:

This however doesn't mean that youtube can adopt either of two interfaces as a standard since everyone cannot fit nicely into one of the two aforementioned categories -- for instance, there are users who like to watch videos, but they might also occasionally comment or favorite. Their ideal experience likely looks like something in-between the two examples pictured above.

Google commissioned mediascreen to do research on a lot of topics and their docs were revealed by Techcrunch but the key research was on why people use search engines, in this case with regards to people who browse the Web in search for health-related information. The results are shown below speed and ease of use tops but surprising trust is not high as factor.