Eyetrack reVeals search is gOing sOcial, sO what?

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Do people actually look at ads on social media sites? Marketers face the constant challenge of keeping up with and understanding consumer search behavior. Social networking sites offer opportunities to develop a relationship between brands and consumers, display ads and search. But a lot of confusion over the effectiveness of advertising on social networking sites still exists. An eye tracking study conducted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by a digital marketing company reveals trends about the way people interact with paid ads in social media sites. The study hopes to alleviate some of the mystery.

Oneupweb found that not only do people spend time viewing paid ads on social networks, but they often looked at the ads more quickly once they landed on the search results page. For example, 65% of participants engage with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search. Often times, the path eyes scan the page often does not follow the order of the search results. Contrary to expected behavior, sponsored ads were looked at before the 3rd or 4th result. The Oneupweb study indicates similar behavior was observed throughout the YouTube search. The participants engaged with the sponsored ads in the process of completing the search task. Twitter does not support sponsored ads but the study still observed users’ search habits on Twitter as it has become an essential social marketing channel. About half of survey participants revealed they were satisfied with their brand search on Twitter. Many liked that they could find the most current opinions about a product. If you would like a PDF copy of the study results, access it here!

Okay, we’ve established that there’s not blindness toward ads in social networks, people still look at the ads. But do they click on them? Unlike searching on Google, the interaction with content in social media sites is very different. Many marketers including myself believe that opt-in advertising works best, while behavior-based campaigns and randomly generated ads are far less successful. In my opinion, this notion still holds true although the end users are becoming more acceptable of sponsored ads on social sites. Niche targeting and relevancy are the two areas advertisers need to focus on more when they try to apply their brand campaigns to those new environments. Will targeting based on niche, geographic location, interest, lifestyle & social graph be the future of advertising? Certainly! Will “engagement ads” change the game of online advertising after Google’s creation of “contextual ads” (judge the quality yourself)? Sooner or later. As of now, there is still a lot left to be desired!

KudOs tO HSBC – PersOnalized in-flight mags

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HSBC mag
Started in December 08, global banking giant HSBC started offering passengers at Heathrow’s Terminal 1 a chance to select magazine articles on topics they’re interested in and have them bound into a hardback form they can take on their flight, according to Springwise.  The concept was pretty simple: as travelers enter the enclosure, they are handed a hardback magazine cover. They can then pick and choose from a large selection of loose-leaf articles arranged on the kiosk’s shelves. When they’re done, a staff member at the ‘binding bar’ neatly binds them into the cover to create a personal magazine.

Although this pilot marketing campaign was HSBC trying to promote its Premier banking package, it was definitely a laudable initiative heading in the right direction. As the world becoming more personalized – companies realize they would have to provide customized experience one way or the other. They might not be in charge of the content production, but there is an increasing demand in customization and curation that’s waiting to be fulfilled.

I sincerely hope such perks will roll out to other places around the world in the near future.

Website: www.hsbc.com
Contact: www.hsbc.com/1/2/contact-us