Day: October 12, 2013

Facebook has been leveraging its large user base and data bank for companies’ advertisements since a long time ago, and so has Twitter. Pinterest has recently announced that it will roll out “promoted pin” to further monetize their service. A few months after Pinterest’s announcement, Instagram made a decision to introduce ads into the feeds, and promised “to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands.” This new feature will first be introduced to the U.S. users. The company believes that the transition will be smooth because many brands are regular participants on the network already. Moreover, they will focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community.

The company has not revealed the details of such plan. However, I will be interested in knowing if it will make any plan to control the quantity of ads appearing in a set amount of time. If yes, then how they are going to coordinate with the advertisers regarding the media timeline. I would expect Instagram to be able to provide useful data to help advertisers dig out which communities within Instagram are more actively engage in the topics that relate to the businesses. Only then will Instagram provide value to businesses by matching ads to users’ preferences and tastes.

Source: http://o.canada.com/technology/instagram-to-start-showing-ads-but-not-in-canada-yet/

Although the ready-to-eat breakfast U.S. market as a whole has $10 billion in annual sales, of which General Mills has a 40% share, boxed cereals have seen flat sales and declining volumes over the past decade, according to a recent report by Rabobank on U.S. cereal trends. The main cause of this trend is that consumers have a lot more choices in breakfast nowadays. To improve sales and volumes of boxed cereals, General Mills has launched the “Hello, Cereal Lovers” campaign which promotes rival brands along with General Mills brands.

“We’re very open to sharing and curating news and discussions regardless of the brand, because what’s important is what cereal fans themselves want to talk about, the hot topics,” director of communications for the Hello, Cereal Lovers initiative says. This integrated campaign focuses on driving engagement and interaction with consumers through sharing of cereal-based recipes, ideas, news  and crafts activities sharing on its dedicated Web site and Facebook (see below), Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr presences.

During the National Cereal Lovers Week (which is part of the campaign, Oct. 14-20), Justin Warner who is a winning contestant on Food Network’s “Food Network Star” program and chef/co-owner of Brooklyn’s Do or Dine restaurant, will be creating cereal-inspired dishes and hosting Google Hangout session.

The idea behind this “brand-agnostic” campaign reminds me of the discussion we had in class regarding how companies try to engage in online conversations without direct marketing. General Mills are interested in refreshing the idea that cereals is a traditional breakfast, so they want to know what consumers are passionate about cereals. Even though the campaign benefits the whole cereal market, I think General Mills is still the biggest winner because it currently has the biggest share in the cereal market and it presents itself as the initiator of this campaign.

Source: http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2013/07/24/General-Mills-Cereal-Lovers-072413.aspx

The tech giant Google has recently come up with a new solution to help businesses amplify the power of social media influencers. After the policy takes place on Nov 11, the profiles, pictures and recommendations of ordinary people on products, services, and brands will show up in the company’s ads as endorsements. For instance, if I review video on Youtube, my name, photo and comment will show up in ads on any of the 2 million Web sites that are part of the company’s display advertising network. Google said its new advertising policy would apply only to the 390 million people who have signed up for Google Plus, the company’s social network. Companies and marketers welcome this new practice because they believe that customers value word-of -month endorsements on products and services from their friends and family members. However, there is, of course, a lot of concerns on privacy although users have an opt-out option, and an option to limit the reach of their advertising endorsements.

On the consumers’ perspective, Google said that the launch of “shared endorsements” will help them make better choices as they will be able to see the comments and opinions made by their friends and family members. Also, I think there are some people who are active on social media and enjoy seeing their own opinions become more influential.  It is also interesting to note that users under 18 are excluded from this feature. This term is required for legality purposes. However, knowing that social influences from peers are particularly valued among teenagers, this term is indeed limiting the power of social advertising.

Source: http://cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2013/10/11/google_to_put_user_p.frame.html