Tag Archives: Social Analytics

Originally posted on MarketingProfs on 02.12.13 “The Social Media Winners of the 2013 Grammy Awards.”

Musicians and celebrities from all industries recently convened for the 2013 Grammys in Los Angeles, which crowned the top performers in the music industry. While those award winners were chosen by expert panelists, another group of winners was being crowned on social media.

Social media erupted during the Grammys telecast: More than 8 million conversations were occurring across social media—proving once again that live performances and celebrities are a winning combination. But how exactly, can we view the moments that resonated best with audiences from a marketing and viewer perspective?

An analysis of those conversations shows an overall positive trend in sentiment, with the number of conversations reaching their highest points around Rihanna’s solo performances, Jay-Z’s joke about The-Dream’s hat, and Justin Timberlake’s performance that turned the show’s visuals to black and white.

Below is a breakdown of Networked Insights’ data analysis and some of the celebrity highlights during the Grammy awards.

Other highlights…

Between the red carpet, multiple performances, and her appearance with Chris Brown, Rihanna was by far the largest draw during this year’s Grammys.
Frank Ocean’s conversation trended positively as many fans kept rooting for him with every award. However, many viewers were very unimpressed with Frank Ocean’s actual live performance later in the program.
Though Taylor Swift fans were excited to see her, viewers were less happy to see the frequency in which she appeared on camera during the audience shots, dancing, and singing along to performances.
Ed Sheeran was this year’s most snubbed nominee, as negative fan reactions peaked when he lost Song of the Year to Fun. Conversations also greatly picked up when Chris Brown refused to give a standing ovation to Frank Ocean when he won for Best Urban Contemporary Album.
Other notable celebrities that didn’t make the top 10 were Adele at #11, Miguel (#12), Kelly Clarkson (#13), Justin Timberlake (#14), Fun. (#15), and Jay-Z (#16).
While we do collect and analyze conversations from across the entire social web, the Grammys’ many Twitter activations to engage with viewers are also important to understand the impact live programming can have.

Mentions of @TheGrammys from 1/1/13 thru 2/10/13: 1,090 total / 27 daily average
Mentions of #GrammyLive from 1/1/13 thru 2/10/13: 146,690 total / 3,493 daily average
Mentions of #TheWorldisListening from 1/1/13 thru 2/10/13: 149,410 total / 3,557 daily average
Mentions of #GrammyGlam from 1/1/13 thru 2/10/13: 7,980 total / 190 daily average
Mentions of #Grammys from 1/1-2/10/13: 3,334,630/daily average 79,396

The USA Today Ad Meter is Meaningless

By Jason Kapler

February 7, 2013

Commentary, Marketing, Research, Trends & Insights

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Read this contributed article penned for my CEO on the iMedia Blog.

The live polling that USA Today performs annually with focus groups has proven itself meaningless. This year GoDaddy.com’s “Perfect Match” advertisement scored dead last on the newspaper’s Ad Meter meanwhile the company posted record sales for a Monday following a Super Bowl commercial. What is USA Today missing?

USA Today’s Ad Meter needs to be brought into the 21st century. Traditionally, they have focused on a small sample group of viewers to gauge ad performance. This year, in an attempt to update their analysis they opened up that sample group to viewers that registered on their online portal. It was likely an attempt to get a better read of consumer reactions, but with more than 8,000 participants, they still missed the mark.

The inherent flaw in their analysis—the same one they’ve had since the Ad Meter was first published in 1989—is in the way they measure advertisement success. Knowing whether a person “liked” or “disliked” an ad is no way to gauge if it got the job done for the advertiser. USA Today needs to go deeper to understand the winners and losers.

In Networked Insights’ analysis of the Super Bowl ads and celebrities, social data insights revealed a different viewpoint. GoDaddy.com was the #1 most discussed brand during Sunday’s big game. Despite a significant negative reaction from viewers, the data highlights a key to success when it comes to Super Bowl advertising, that controversy pays huge dividends.

It is time we move past antiquated means of collecting consumer information and start utilizing real-time data to uncover more reliable insights. Social data has characteristics that can no longer be ignored. Everyday this unbiased data source grows exponentially and the topics it covers are practically limitless.

Networked Insights is fortunate to work with innovative brands that want to use real-time consumer data from the social web to inform strategic marketing decisions. The reason is simple, traditional research can’t keep pace with the speed of today’s consumer. Progressive marketing professionals are looking for real-time trends and insights they can capitalize on. Perhaps most importantly, they’re looking for accurate information that is available when they need it – when it’s time to make a major decision.

Having the right information is critical to effective marketing. Taking your cues from USA Today’s Ad Meter is proving to be a risky proposition in the digital age. It’s time the unfiltered, boundless voice of the consumer – as expressed across the social web – rule the day. Marrying insights from social data with brand marketing intuition is a fierce combination that de-risks decisions and inspires more consumer-centric advertising.

Is Beyoncé Right for Your Brand?

By Jason Kapler

February 1, 2013

Marketing Thoughts, Sample work from Networked Insights

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Below is a blog post originally published at blog.networkedinsights.com, and on SocialMediaWeek.org, that I wrote along with the accompanying Super Bowl Marketing Guide that was developed with my colleagues at NI.

For elite brands, celebrity endorsement is a powerful marketing tool and there is no bigger stage to leverage celebrity partnerships than the Super Bowl. However, for a majority of brands, justifying the investment for a multi-million dollar brand ambassador has traditionally not been feasible. That’s beginning to change thanks to the equalizing effect of the social web.

Consumer insights from social media conversations are changing the way brands make marketing decisions. Progressive marketers are using robust analytics to measure consumer appeal of almost everything – celebrities, athletes, musicians, movies, TV shows, characters, and of course brands and products. For spokesperson and celebrity analysis, social media can take a lot of the guesswork out of the process and simplify how brands identify and evaluate celebrity partnerships.

Social Index of musicians for brand advocates of Mountain Dew as expressed across the social web.

The next wave of analytics platforms adds layers of relevancy previously unseen in traditional social media monitoring tools. This kind of analysis is more than the general popularity lists we see all over the internet celebrating the most liked brands, or most tweeted, or most followed, or most social. New social analytics technologies allow users to determine what’s meaningful in two key ways:

Segmenting social data into audiences.
Shifting from search to discovery focused technologies.

Brands are no longer limited to looking at social media as a single global data set. Instead, marketing professionals can create custom segments to analyze speciﬁc audiences and discover what’s important to them. The ability to create unique audiences allows marketing professionals to move from the most popular celebrities across the social web to the most popular celebrities with their audience. This kind of information can inform a multitude of content marketing decisions and can help brands ﬁnd value in the area of celebrity endorsement.

How would this work? Let me outline a few options:

Sample Audiences:

Established consumer segments
Brand or product advocates
Fans of my competitors
Mentions of product category
Mentions of anything – a hashtag, @username, “keyword”

SAMPLE QUERIES:

Most popular actors/actresses
Most popular athletes
Most popular musicians
Most popular TV shows
Most popular brands

Comparing the volume of conversations between the musician Skrillex versus the comedian Louis C.K. with the Networked Insights syndicated audience Tech Enthusiasts.

One of the keys to more effective celebrity partnerships is organic discovery. What’s the difference between search and discovery? Search technologies deliver the top posts in social data based on the terms or keywords you choose. Discovery organically clusters posts into themes identifying what you should be looking for without human bias. Rather than examining social data post by post, discovery presents the entire digital conversation landscape to reveal what is resonating with consumers making analysis easier.

To illustrate the power of discovery technologies we’ve taken a screenshot of Doppler™, one of the features in SocialSense by Networked Insights.

Social media has proved to be a revolutionary communications channel. Social analytics technologies are fueling the revolution by making marketing decisions easier. How? By letting real-time insights from your target consumer inform the decision making process. The example above focuses on celebrity endorsement, but the same techniques are applicable for decisions brands make at every stage of the marketing lifecycle – planning, activating, measuring, and optimizing.

Powered by social technologies, companies are connecting with consumers in new and exciting ways. The next generation technology platforms enable the development of consumer-centric strategies guided by real-time consumer data. With all these capabilities at your ﬁngertips all that’s left to ask is are you ready for business at the speed of your consumer? I say bring it on!

Want to learn more? Get your head in the game and download Networked Insights’ CMO Guide to Super Bowl Marketing and avoid making massive advertising fumbles.

Which musical artists do Super Bowl fans really want to see and hear at halftime?

By Jason Kapler

April 4, 2012

Sample work from Networked Insights

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Below is a blog post originally published at blog.networkedinsights.com that I wrote along with the accompanying guide with some help from my colleague Sean Reckwerdt.

Many people consider the National Football League’s choice of Madonna to headline the 2012 Super Bowl Halftime Show as, well, curious. It’s been more than 20 years since the artist released her landmark albums “Like A Virgin,” “True Blue” and “Like a Prayer.” Of course, a lot of music fans think artists from the 80s are timeless. Just the same, we thought we’d explore which acts sports fans talk about most in social media to see if there might have been a better fit.

Audience analysis is a key, unique aspect of Networked Insights social media analytics. In this case, we created an audience based on the people talking about the Super Bowl across all social channels. By analyzing their comments, we were able to uncover the musical acts they most discussed. We also looked at conversations around Madonna to see how well sports fans received the news of her appearance.

Using our proprietary real-time analytics and topic discovery engine, we learned that the most desired halftime acts are performers famous for rocking the stadium, especially bands with a front man. The Foo Fighters were the unanimous top choice, with Hank Williams Jr., Tom Petty and Peter Frampton also mentioned.

Super Bowl fans were less than kind toward the Material Girl, however. Many feel Madonna is past her prime, and showcasing her is a desperate attempt to appeal to an older female audience. Of the posts we uncovered, the measurable sentiment was 41 percent negative in nature, while only 3 percent positive.

To avoid such blowback, Networked Insights uses Content Sync to help networks, brands and agencies leverage real-time data to better understand their target audiences. Staying in sync with your audience allows you to uncover trends and insights that can improve marketing decisions. Content Sync helps eliminate guesswork or gut-based decisions on product placement and celebrity endorsement by allowing your audience to drive decision making.

Had the NFL tapped its audience for insight into who should perform at halftime, the result would have been a halftime show that increased social buzz and viewership – in other words, a can’t miss, must-watch Super Bowl experience aligned with the desires of its target audience.

How media buyers can reach NFL fans without a NFL media budget

By Jason Kapler

January 20, 2012

Sample work from Networked Insights

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Below is a blog post originally published at blog.networkedinsights.com that I wrote along with the accompanying guide with some help from my colleague Sean Reckwerdt.

Today’s fragmented media landscape means advertisers can no longer select the TV shows with the most reach and call it a day. Your target audience is now scattered across broadcast, cable and online media properties. And, it’s consuming digital content while viewing traditional programming. These trends are making the media buyer’s job exponentially harder.

National Football League broadcasts deliver a premium audience and provide an opportunity to reach many people at one time. But a downside for advertisers is the cost associated with adhering to mass-marketing techniques. As media has evolved, so too have the behaviors of the audience. How can brands and agencies keep up with target consumers who appear to have better technology than the marketers trying to connect with them?

TV analysts from Networked Insights examined shows that NFL fans discuss across the social web to identify more economical alternatives for reaching the big game’s audience. Shows like “Fringe,” “The Office,” “Community,” “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” were among the most mentioned. For brands and media buyers, this discovery supports more informed decision making. The result is a more efficient media plan that maximizes the effectiveness of your spend.

Staying in sync with the media choices of your target audience enables you to know with certainty that your message is being delivered. Networked Insights’ Media Sync enables networks, brands and agencies to leverage real-time data to uncover where their audience is consuming media. Pairing Media Sync with our Content Sync, which taps real-time data to better understand target audiences, eliminates much of the marketing guesswork, enabling you to deliver relevant content to target audiences where they’re consuming media.

As companies adapt to more agile marketing techniques, real-time consumer data will be the compass that guides decision making from launch into the “always-on” marketing world where more and more brands live. The ability to leverage social data to improve decisions across the enterprise will distinguish elite companies in the 21st century.

The richness of Twitter [Commentary]

By Jason Kapler

January 5, 2012

Commentary

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My response to Felix Salmon‘s Article The richness of Twitter on Reuters’ Blog.

Comment:

Felix, I agree with you that Twitter is a rich experience and better than any news outlet. The comparison that people make between news from Twitter and news delivered via other media is frankly unfair. It’s a false dilemma that maybe sounds great in a headline, but has no basis in the consumer experience. Ultimately the emergence of new communication technologies influences how information is delivered in complimentary ways.

However, I disagree that there is no value in analyzing social or Twitter data in aggregate. And your point of view is evidence that these technology platforms have an obligation to bring improved analytics to the masses so we can all better understand what people are saying about topics and not just the top mentioned topics.

What do I mean? I work at Networked Insights and we analyze social data for networks, brands and agencies. When we look at social data in aggregate by topic, let’s say NFL Football, you can begin to ask questions (queries) about that audience and find out what TV shows they’re talking about. Or you can look in aggregate at a product category to understand the brands people discuss and the way they experience those products. Lastly, we examine audiences and discover what’s trending, let’s say with moms, so companies can make more informed marketing decisions, for example what celebrity to place in an upcoming advertising campaign.

I share these examples of how social data can inform media buying, product development, and brand marketing to illustrate one of the benefits in aggregating and analyzing data – the discovery of insights. What’s fascinating is the real-time element. You can imagine how real-time insights will start to inform decision making. The information could be so valuable that it will affect decision cycles converting them from static moments of conclusions to ongoing, real-time calibration.

Clearly, this is an emerging technology capability where today only a limited group have purview into the possibilities. Networked Insights is working on bringing this capability to many organizations and we’d enjoy the opportunity to show you more someday. Maybe we’d be able to sway Michelle’s feelings too.

Beware of apparent popularity in social media, it could be masking the real story

By Jason Kapler

December 13, 2011

Sample work from Networked Insights

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Below is a blog post originally published at blog.networkedinsights.com that I contributed to along with my colleague Sean Reckwerdt.

The folks at Chrysler Group have high hopes for the Fiat 500, the throwback small car they’ve tossed into the cute competition against the Beetle, the Mini and the Smart. The fortunes of the 500 ride in part on the celebrity shoulders of singer Jennifer Lopez, who’s featured driving one in the TV campaign for the car.

The campaign has generated a healthy amount of social media attention, earning a top 10 spot in a recent ranking of 2011 viral ad campaigns. As it turns out, though, much of that buzz is probably not making the automaker happy. Networked Insights’s analysis of the social conversation bubbling around the campaign found that much of it has nothing to do with the car. Instead, online bombers have delighted in pointing out production goofs, such as a change in camera angles that puts the singer in a different pair of shoes. The revelation that a body double, not JLO, tooled the car through her Bronx ‘hood has challenged the pop star’s street cred. And, some ask, why were the ads in heavy rotation on college and pro football broadcasts, where the typical viewer might want more muscle than 74 horsepower (and not be much of a JLO fan)?

How can you avoid such mistakes? Don’t assume you’re meeting your marketing objectives because social impressions indicate you’re attracting an audience. Audience Sync is essential to knowing who your audience really is, what they care about, and what they’re discussing. And, Media Sync can provide the other piece of the puzzle – where your target audience is consuming content. These tools can help you design or refine your campaign to reach the audience you want with the right message, and prevent a fusillade of flamer potshots.

Interested in reading more about how to find the right celebrity for your brand? Click here to see more blog post on celebrity endorsement.

How important is real-time data? It’s all relative.

By Jason Kapler

December 6, 2011

Sample work from Networked Insights

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Below is a blog post originally published at blog.networkedinsights.com that I contributed to along with my colleague Brian Johnson.

The speed with which social media spreads ideas and information has led many marketers to place a premium on capturing data in real time. But should real-time data be such a priority?

Real time means different things to different people when the term is used as a proxy for recency. To an evolutionary biologist, real time could mean thousands of years of species development data. To a 911 dispatcher, real time is a few seconds worth of critical information from a telephone call.

What about marketing and advertising? This notion of “relative real time” extends there, too. To a marketing executive, real time may be data necessary to make annual, semi-annual and quarterly budget decisions. Real time to a media buyer may be several weeks of ratings data to understand what target consumers are viewing. To ad networks serving targeted banner ads to web visitors, real time is microseconds.

Ultimately, gathering the most data possible to inform a decision or solve a problem — in the window of time that best suits your need — is more important than having instantaneous data access. And to do that, you need to start with how you’re going to use the data. What do you want to accomplish? What business problem are you trying to solve?

While social data is exciting because it’s abundant and easily accessible, it’s still relatively new for corporations and how they’re integrating the voice of the consumer into business processes. Real-time social data is just another information source to be incorporated into your decision-making process, from problem definition, to research analysis and, ultimately, project execution. Data doesn’t need to come to you any faster than the time frame that process allows you to act on it.

At Networked Insights we help brands analyze social data for improved decision making — daily, weekly and monthly. While access to a rich data set sounds appealing, sometimes more is not better. Rather, understanding the behaviors of your target consumer is the quickest path to achieving marketing success.

Start by analyzing the decision cycles within your organization or department and how you want to engage data. The timeline of that process will determine what, relatively speaking, real time means to you.