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Via WARC NEW YORK: A majority of US brand owners are interested in exploring innovative technologies and services to enhance their television advertising, a study has found.

The Association of National Advertisers, the trade body, and Forrester Research, the insights group, surveyed 124 advertisers in 16 major industries in the US.
Overall, television should take 47% of media expenditure this year, a figure which had grown by six percentage points compared with similar analysis published in 2010.

Some 76% of respondents reported that media budgets will be “stable” in 2011. Another 62% thought their media agency was well-equipped to help them exploit the changing viewing trends and possibilities which are currently observable.

Among the shifts set to reshape the TV market this year is the rising uptake of alternative measurement methodologies, to be coupled with existing data from Nielsen, which remains the most trusted source.

For 72% of interviewees, the quality and accuracy of information provided by set-top boxes, for example those offered by TiVo or Apple, is likely to improve in the next few years.

An additional 47% stated that unique visitor or viewer numbers would eventually become the industry standard for measuring audience figures across different channels. Advertisers expressed rising confidence in set-top box technologies capable of targeting ads at specific customer segments. Nearly three-quarters of marketers had a “strong interest” in this area.

Elsewhere, almost half of participants are testing or plan to utilise “advanced” television advertising, such as by including interactive features in spots on video-on-demand platforms or cable stations, in the coming 12 months.

A further 18% of the panel had already leveraged “synchronised” ads on at least two screens – say, PC and television – while 31% expected to deploy this kind of model in 2012.

In all, digital is still the top priority for advertisers, 70% of which will spend more on web ads in 2012. Social media and mobile came next in this list.

Indeed, ads on the latter channel were the main video alternative to linear 30-second spots when contributors considered areas where they were likely to boost expenditure in 2012, the study said.

Data sourced from Forrester; additional content by Warc staff, 20 February 2012

via Warc.com NEW YORK: Companies making the most effective use of digital media typically adopt a distinct set of strategies in areas like mobile, social networking and data analytics, a study has argued.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the advisory group, polled 489 US firms with annual sales of over $500m, and identified a selection of “top performers” boasting the strongest revenues, growth, margins and innovation credentials.

It revealed that 50% of these leading players planned to spend a minimum of $1m on building mobile tools for their customers to use in 2012. The same was true of just 29% of other enterprises.

Moreover, 66% of the premier digital businesses described their interaction with consumers on mobile devices as “quite or very significant”, measured against 45% of all the corporations assessed

A 30% share of “top performers” deployed social networks to reach shoppers, versus 37% of firms not attaining such a status. But while 41% of the former group yielded “significant benefits” from this tactic, a smaller 24% of “the rest” said the same.

“Interestingly, though, there seems to be little connection between use of social media for external communications and actual commercial success,” PwC study stated.

“We have found that the organisations that achieve solid results from their social media efforts are those that use it not only as an outreach platform but “also as a method to listen and engage.”

By contrast, the companies enjoying the most impressive returns are making greater usage of social media internally, and 36% should spend at least $1m on this channel in 2012, standing at 22% for “the rest”.

Similarly, although 56% of the entire panel intend to collect more consumer data in the next year, this rises to 66% for “top performers”. Exactly 50% of the best organisations will exploit such insights for R&D, falling to 28% elsewhere.

Some 89% of top performers also agreed their company had a strategy in place that was likely to succeed, and 86% said their CEO actively championed new technology to achieve success. This beat average scores of 68% and 60% in turn.

More specifically, 63% of the highest-ranking operators believed that their chief information officer and chief marketing officer had a “strong” or “very strong” relationship, a total that fell to 42% of all featured corporations.

“Leading firms … understand that being behind the curve on the strategic use of technology not only puts their firms at a competitive disadvantage, but weakens their ability to interact and strengthen relationships with customers,” PwC said.

Data sourced from PricewaterhouseCoopers; additional content by Warc staff, 3 February 2012