Audio Delivers Big Results For Both Consumers and Advertisers

Audio in its many platforms has become a beguiling alternative for both consumers and advertisers compared to television and social media.

For consumers, the idea of “radio” has taken on new meaning. It is no longer an analogue, old timey sound box. Now it offers a range of new platforms that provide a myriad of fascinating content from transportive AM/FM to self-select and recommendation engine content, to podcasts to audio books to information provided by smart speakers.

For marketers, the cost of television advertising defies gravity with increasing prices for inventory despite a shrinking and fragmented audience. CPMs for social media have also risen with diminishing results. In a marketplace riven with rising costs and diminishing returns, advertisers are finding that audio delivers the consumers they want in an immersive environment with cost effective options. Notably, these consumers are much younger than television whose average age is 57 years compared to 49 for radio.

A recent study by iHeart revealed that consumers currently spend about a third (31%) of their media time with audio. But, despite the fact that ad-supported radio drives scale, advertising dollars have yet to match this amount of usage. With radio, the ability to add incremental reach with lower cost should be extremely appealing.

With more data available through various and new platforms as well as the increasing use of machine learning to normalize and structure the data, audio offers a heightened ability to target cross-platform. Audio creative has also taken giant leaps in quality, efficiency and prove-ability compared to video. Currently, audio is as measureable as digital and TV and offers measurement solutions for every KPI and channel. Further, being able to target while knowing that consumer privacy is maintained (unlike in social media) offers an additional comfort level for marketers.

Talent plays a big role in the trust and influence of audio ads. Seventy-seven percent of listeners trust the information they receive from radio personalities which makes radio two times as trusted as social media. When it comes to overall impact, radio proves to be the most influential at the point of purchase compared to other media, with AM/FM radio accounting for 49% of visits to stores within a half hour of exposure to messaging. The second highest media was Live TV at 26% and, interestingly, outdoor ranked 5^th at 13%. Overall, 75% of measured consumers indicate that radio is the last media contact they have before shopping.

When it comes to iHeart specifically, their ability to reach a mass market audience age 6+ compared to television and social media is unsurpassed, according to Nielsen and Comscore. And, in a special Tik Tok case study using radio to drive new audience growth, iHeart, specifically, out-performs other audio companies in attracting adults 18+. Overall the company reaches 90% of Americans with both national and local presence. Its strength is proving successful among marketers with increasing spend topping $4 billion, dwarfing other audio options.

So in a media world of increasing content and platform choice, technological advancements, a call for privacy that still offers the ability to target effectively, there is no better choice than audio for both consumers and marketers. Radio delivers on all levels.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

Researching Authenticity. An Interview with Professor Watson and Danielle Wiley

What is authenticity? Dr. Jared Watson, an assistant professor of marketing at NYU Stern and Danielle Wiley, Founder & CEO,  SWAY GROUP, partnered on a study to find out exactly that. The study was launched pre-pandemic and offers insights into what we can expect going forward..

“Authenticity has been super important to us from day one,” Wiley explained, “We always had a gut feeling that our push for authentic content was a major driver of the high engagement rates on our campaigns. When we realized that Jared and his colleagues had the capability to actually MEASURE this for us, we couldn't resist.”

The study helped to reveal, how authenticity is actually manifested within a piece of content. “Certain words, use of emojis, type of photos - it's been just so interesting to get all of this juicy data and we can't wait to translate those learnings into improved post instructions for the creators in our network,” she added.

Charlene Weisler: Is this the first time it was done? If yes, are there plans for a follow-up? If not, what are the trends?

Dr. Jared Watson: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time sentiment analysis has been used to explore the effectiveness of influencers. There has been other research that concludes that authenticity helps influencers, but this work is based on subjective evaluations of authenticity whereas we are using a methodology that tries to objectively quantify authenticity. We certainly plan to further our investigation beyond authenticity to explore related themes (e.g., negative and positive emotion) to understand the contexts by which it is better to express things like vulnerability or excitement. Beyond this, we also plan to explore when other signals (like credibility/expertise) may be more beneficial than authenticity and whether these effects are unique to individual influencers or if these effects hold when brands use similar language.

Weisler: What was the methodology?

Watson: Sway Group provided us with data from 20+ campaigns that include captions of the social media posts along with various engagement metrics like likes/comments/shares/etc. We then used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software program to convert the text of the captions to quantitative scores for a variety of categories. Because our focus is currently on authenticity, we then used simple linear regressions to understand the impact of the authenticity scores (as quantified by LIWC) on the engagement metrics (as provided by Sway Group)

Weisler: What is the definition of influencer? of authenticity?

Danielle Wiley: These days, an influencer can be anyone, from a fellow mom at the playground to a celebrity that you follow on Instagram. That said, for the purposes of what we do at Sway Group, influencers are anyone with at least 1,000 followers on any social platform, usually Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch or blogs. We define authenticity as content that is relevant and meaningful to the influencer. Are they writing about a product or service that they actually use and are excited about? Are they using their own words and unique voice? Will the content feel real and relevant to the influencer's followers?

Weisler: What were the big takeaways?

Watson: I think there were two big takeaways. Authenticity is an industry buzzword and something influencers strive for, and the data suggests that their intuition is valid: posts that are deemed as authentic receive more engagement than those that do not (in this data, posts that receive a 50 or greater LIWC engagement score receive over 3x more engagement on average than those that score under 50). The second is that while we often think of authenticity as a subjective evaluation of the influencer, LIWC's classification seems to capture authenticity quite well, suggesting it can be easily measured and tracked.

Weisler: Were there any surprises?

Watson: I think the biggest surprise for us was how few posts scored high on authenticity. From a pure mean split perspective, less than 10% of posts in this dataset (and less than 5% in another dataset) recorded authenticity scores greater than 50 (out of 100). So while the industry continues to buzz about authenticity, sometimes the pursuit of it actually might lower perceptions of authenticity.

Weisler: Are there any differences in gender, age and region of the country?

Watson: The dataset provided was spread out throughout the country, and consisted mostly of millennial mothers. In some of our experimental work, we find that the effectiveness of influencers is highly predicated on gender (women are more influenced than men) and age (younger vs. older people accept influencers more easily). I'd also add that while we don't see much variance across the various campaigns in our dataset, most of these campaigns were affect-laden things that really impact people's feelings. In another dataset, we have more technology-focused products and we find that authenticity plays a much weaker role (probably because people are more concerned about quantifiable attributes like battery size, screen size, etc.)

Weisler: How can we best use these results?

Watson: These results suggest that there are some guidelines by which we can help influencers more authentically communicate their message. For example, use I-first language rather than you-first. That is, the influencer can speak about how a product has impacted their own life vs. telling their audience how the product might impact their lives. Similarly, there are benefits to speaking about feeling-states (e.g., this product makes me happy) vs. just product attributes (e.g., this product has a 12x zoom). Naturally, these guidelines may vary for individual products, but we can better provide advice for the influencer community on how to communicate their message more authentically.

This article first appeared on www.Mediapost.com

 

 

 

Harnessing Communities of Influencers. An Interview with Perlu’s Andres Echenique

Gathering the internet into communities has been happening for years. The wisdom of the crowd has been proven valuable for marketers who are interested in understanding their brand positions within the greater ecosystem. But Perlu is taking crowd gathering in a more focused direction by harnessing influencers into hyper-niche groups of experts. 

Owned by parent company Terrakeet, Perlu has been around for almost four years and has constructed influencer groups across a wide range of products and services in addition to being a networking opportunity for these opinion leaders. CEO Andres Echenique, explained, “We have two missions: first, providing tools, resources, and a community to help influencers work together to establish and develop their careers as influencers. Second, we provide brands with tools, services and proprietary data to quickly and easily engage this community for research, planning, content production, and campaigns.” 

Charlene Weisler: How do you define influencers?

Andres Echenique: For some, influencers can be anyone with a social account, relevant content and a following. But in our experience, the best candidates are trusted partners who add value beyond just an audience. These influencers are known and respected by other influencers, as well as their audiences, and have a track record of collaboration with both influencers and brands.

Weisler: How are you best able to monitor and consolidate influencer groups and what are some examples of the groups?

Echenique: The community organizes itself into groups: influencers will form groups of other influencers they collaborate with, share content with or simply respect on the basis of shared interests and content quality. There are thousands of these influencer micro-communities on Perlu (called “Packs”) collaborate with each other to help grow their audiences, share and source content and work together on various projects for mutual benefit. Examples of packs include “Black Solo Female Travel”, “Vegan Desserts”, “Keto Moms”, “Skin Care Addicts”, “Multiple Sclerosis Warriors.” Pack creators manage their packs, curating membership to suit their needs for partnerships and professional networking. As the Pack owners curate their Packs, inactive and low-quality influencers are left out -- thus, keeping them out of the mainstream of discovery and collaboration with both other influencers and brands.

Weisler: How do you bring in brands?

Echenique: Through agency partners, professional connections and advertising.  Brands can join Perlu for free and have community facing profiles on Perlu just like influencers do. 

Weisler: What is the promise of matching and collaborating?

 Echenique: Brands partner with influencers for a number of outcomes: gaining insight, producing content, driving sales, creating awareness, growing audiences, building a reputation, etc. The challenge is finding and engaging exactly the right influencer partners for these outcomes quickly, reliably and at scale. “Right” varies dramatically depending on the desired outcome, not the least of which is the influencer’s interest in partnering with the brand. Many brands assume every qualified influencer is ready and willing to partner with them but the reality is that influencers are selective in who they partner with, further complicating the brands’ searches for influencer partners.

When brands have needs for projects for influencers, they advertise their needs to Packs they choose, and members of Packs will raise their hands to let brands know they’re willing to work together. This approach eliminates the process of searching for influencers, replacing it with screening qualified applicants. Questions to tens or even hundreds of influencers can be fielded in a few clicks, with nearly immediate responses. 

Weisler: What are the challenges that you’re facing?

Echenique: The COVID-19 pandemic, the uncertain political outlook, and the unrest associated with social inequalities have disrupted the marketing landscape significantly. Marketers are unsure about operating in this new reality and are trying hard to avoid mistakes that either worsen their market shares or, worse, offend customers. This puts extra emphasis on making good decisions about influencer partners, getting input and feedback on campaigns before launch and operating with agility to find competitive advantages quickly. 

Weisler: Have you made any changes to the business because of the pandemic? 

Echenique: We see COVID-19 driving a huge shift over the coming year. As store closures and consumers’ fears drive purchases online, authenticity issues in product ratings on e-commerce sites become a huge risk for many brands.  As brands are forced to compete in an even more crowded online space (and can rely less on retail sales), influencers represent a huge opportunity for brands to counterbalance and augment questionable e-commerce ratings with influencer-driven authentic reporting on experiences and recommendations for brands and products.

Weisler: What data do you collect? And do you break up influencer by demographic categories such as age and gender?

Echenique: When influencers join Perlu, they can authorize us to access their social accounts giving us access to a range of information about them: follower counts, engagement rates and other key audience metrics. Influencer members can also connect their blogs and we analyze the content of their pages to automatically assign subject and category tags to their content. They can also supplement their Perlu profiles with audience demographics for their audiences as well as their own geographic details. We also build proprietary activity profiles that serve to further classify and validate our members. 

Weisler: Where do you see your company two years from now?

Echenique: Our mission is to become the de facto professional network for influencers - a place where influencers can congregate and collaborate to develop their personal brands and their audiences, and learn how to grow and develop their influence and expertise. Our professional community attracts brands in every category eager to partner with advocates for their products and services for a wide range of business purposes. As our community and proprietary data set grows, we will continue developing innovative tools not only for brands to gain and work with influencer partners but also to help influencers develop and enhance their careers.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

The Fraud of Fake Influencer Marketing

Fraud remains one of the top concerns for marketers and digital companies. A new study by cybersecurity company CHEQ found that 15% of all influencer ad dollars are spent on fake followers costing brand advertisers a projected $1.3B globally in 2019.

A study titled The Economic Cost of Bad Actors on the Internet; Fake Influencer Marketing in 2019 by Professor Roberto Cavazos, Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore, reports that the total cost of fraud and the resulting loss of trust, “extends beyond the affected business. Entire sectors and economies are adversely impacted.” Influencer marketing spend is big and growing; Mediakix reports that 2019 influencer marketing spend is $8.5 billion globally and is expected to reach up to $10 Billion in 2020, up twentyfold since 2015 when spend on social influencers globally was $500 million. 

When it comes to Fake Followers, there are four main ways to game the system:

Automation can be used to build followers to appear as if they are among the top influencers. Nik Speller, head of campaigns at influencer marketing agency Influencer says: ‘‘They use  automated services, to act on your behalf to follow people, unfollow them again, like content, comment on content, just to do all that underlying stuff that an account has to do sometimes to grow and do it in a  turbo-charged way. In this way all of a sudden you follow 500 people, 200 follow you back, you unfollow them, you’ve got 200 followers and it looks like you are important because your follower number is bigger than the number of people you follow.’’ Speller believes this practice is fraudulent and against social media network’s terms of service as it consists of spamming. 

Use of “Pods” which allow influencers to trade engagement back and forth on each other’s posts, as part of a community. This involves one influencer commenting on or liking a certain number of posts, and is reimbursed in kind with comments on their own activity and posts. Cavazos noted that, “This is clearly not what brands have in mind when creating and paying for campaigns.” 

Sponsored posts. Some bad players publish what is purported to be sponsored posts on behalf of brands they are not actually working with. “In some cases, they engage in this dubious behavior with fake sponsored posts to dupe brands into believing they have a proven track record – and in order to get hired for a future engagement,” according to Cavazos’ study. 

Goosing Inactivity. Even real followers can be problematic when audience inactivity on many networks is considered. In a situation where 30% of some social media accounts have been claimed to be inactive, digital analyst Brian Solis says, ‘‘Many influencers have no access to 90% of their audience simply because it no longer uses the social network where they were followed. This doesn’t stop them from touting millions of followers, who will, of course, never see your content.’’ 

Complexity is a well-known cause of fraud in many domains. Cavazos explains that, “Ad fraud losses to the economy are expected to be more than 20-times the costs of Influencer marketing losses in 2019. However, the growing popularity of influencer marketing brings with it greater opportunities for fraud as the number of players increase and more players are involved around this economy across an expected 4.4 million influencer promoted posts in 2019. The opportunities for accountability and monitoring diminish as the sector increases. In addition, the industry is moving towards greater depth and complexity through other means, with so-called micro influencers and nano-influencers joining the payroll of brands.”

While there are efforts to combat fake influencer fraud, marketers should be aware that we are not there yet.

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.