February 9th, 2010 Posted by: Sam Granleese Comments (0)
Google appears to have, intentionally or not, started its own meme (as if the ‘Googling’ generized synonym for search wasn’t enough).
In December Google USA soft-launched a series of 30-60 second videos on their youtube.com/searchstories channel – where a series of internet searches a woven together to create a short story. A couple are clever, some plain odd.
Yesterday the most popular of seven Google created clips – Parisian Love – aired during the Superbowl. This itself was a clever tactic for choosing the most likely TVC to air, as of the seven Google created videos Parisian Love was by far and away the most popular (about 20 times more popular than the next, prior to the national Superbowl spot).
Reference Videos:
From the views on Parisian Love so far the views have doubled in the last 24 hours since the Superbowl. Interestingly, Mashable reported also reported yesterday that 12% of Superbowl viewers use the web during the game. 
So far the majority of responses are probably not what Google had in mind (Tiger Woods, Emos/Suicide, Underwear Bomber), but there is a good chance after the Superbowl exposure, and talk online about the ads, that there will be more and more. All it needs is one quite funny and popular clip (like the Tiger Woods one below being passed around on Twitter this morning) to become the ‘Downfall‘ (Hitler) meme of 2010.
Notable user generated examples so far:
* Is Tiger Woods feeling lucky? (>50,000 views)
* 77777 (via the prodigious CollegeHumor)
* Emo Search Stories (<1000 views)
* Flight 253 (Underwear Bomber) Search Story (<1000 views).
It is a brave brand manager who puts the control of a brand in the hands of a small % of its audience. However, it is also a sign of confidence in your product, service and customer loyalty.
I have discussed previously to people inside the agency, in creating ideas aimed at Gen Y, the validity of campaigns creating numerous pieces of content, connected by a single idea, with the view to firstly share to an audience who will then likely remix and re-distribute to their peers. Most of these in the past have been user-initiated. If a big brand can pull this off, without it backfiring, it will be something to behold.
It is possible. Remember the success of BlendTec Will It Blend?
Please share your thoughts, or links below. Thanks.
February 2nd, 2010 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (0)
Who does not love at least a little gaming these days? It’s experiencing the largest growth in the entertainment category and the titles and technologies seem leap future bound every few months. With that in mind here are the latest stats on Australian gamers.
PDF here
*Thanks to Priscilla for pulling this together
January 28th, 2010 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (0)
From an advertising point of view it has always surprised me how relatively long (it is only 3 years since YouTube launched in Australia) for the YT ad product to evolve. Of course this evolution is very much in keeping with the Google philosophy of user experience first; ads, monetisation and revenue second.
So, it was great to see yesterday a raft of new ad positions; many of which are engaging prominent homepage placements and video overlays (which are served only over professional content) and which were all clearly developed with a users experience in mind. In addition there are a load of new and quite sexy channel features now available for advertisers including video carousel galleries, video walls and for the adventurous an ability to create custom gadgets.
YouTube’s audience is also estimated at 5.3M users or 40% of Australian video views, and ~50% are logged in meaning we have a sense of their demographics and locations – Wrap all that up and you find you have a pretty compelling media proposition.
Some other interesting stats I noted down:
- It is estimated that +90% of the video content on YT is user created, although with revenue sharing partnerships there is more and more professional content coming online all the time. The IPL will be streamed live this year – in a first for YT globally
- In Australia there are 5 Billion streams accessed each month – and 1 Billion a day globally
The other interesting thing discovered yesterday was the Test Tube section of the site – which is essentially the Google labs of YouTube – in here you will find all manner of features that are in beta. One test that caught my eye in particular and one I can see being very useful if you are looking to gather verbatims and sentiment for a topic or theme is the comment search tool which allows you to search YouTube for comments based on a key word. Here is a query for Avatar Movie
So, YouTube is more than just videos of Goats Yelling like a man On a good day it reaches an audience large enough to rival leading Australian portal homepages, and you also get the benefit of analytics that tells you who watched liked and commented on your content – who else can claim that?
A special thanks to Aleetza Wood of YouTube for an excellent refresher session on YT ad products yesterday.
Happy Tubing
January 5th, 2010 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (1)
Wow, awesome, spectacular…. a few words that have been used to describe the movie of the moment – Avatar. I’ve seen it, you’ve probably seen it, and well yeah IMHO it’s deserved of its accolades. But that’s not the point of this post.
Moreover 20thCentury FOX are a client and as such we have been keenly following the way WoM and buzz for this film has grown from the release of the first snippets and teasers through its release date and now well into its cinematic release and arguably history making run at highest grossing film of all time.
Following are some charts and observations taken from our Sentiment Measurement Tool. (Note: for commercial reasons charts are small files and all scales have been removed)
Buzz Volume and Sentiment
-Avatar launched officially in Australia on December 17th
-Positive buzz for the film began back in October (trailer release, teaser screenings and pre-sales) but the conversations only began to achieve significant volumes about a week out from the 17th
-WoM peaked on the 22nd December (a Tuesday and the first week of holidays for many)
-With the exception of Christmas conversations have continued at a steady and significant pace since then.
-Sentiment is overwhelmingly positive with less than 4% being attributed negative (most of this relates to queues or technical issues in cinemas)
So, what is selling this movie?
- Simple. James Cameron (orange bar) is the key selling proposition and has been the predominant topic discussed in relation to this picture.
What about those adjectives?
- That’s right terms like; ‘good, great, awesome, fantastic, wow, enjoyed’ feature in about 25% of all conversations tracked since December 1st
Finally, where is all this chatter occurring?
-The above charts present two different views of the same data. The sources by authority show that film sites like IMDB and in fact facebook are the most influential channels in terms of their collective reach and popularity.
-On the other hand we have twitter (the long tail of chit chat) which is by far and away the most prodigious channel in terms of how often the term Avatar appears – indicating people shared their experiences of the film with peers more here than anywhere else (expect around the dinner table, bar, or BBQ perhaps)
So, the net is literally abuzz with Avatar and is no doubt playing its part in driving box office. We look forward to seeing for how long and to what extent over the coming weeks.
December 8th, 2009 Posted by: phil Comments (0)
Google’s version of real-time search was unveiled today, where ‘live’ search results are displayed via AJAX on the search results page.
At first glance, it’s a pretty nice execution, blending real-time with relevance, rather than just real-time, which is the focus of all new social/real-time search engines.
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December 8th, 2009 Posted by: Andrew Reeves Comments (3)
We recently passed the hat around the media team at ZEDO to see what people thought would be the hot topics for digital in the upcoming year 2010.
Whilst there are some old favourites in the mix, mobile and personalisation, the scope of these rather broadly talked about themes is now beginning to take on a more defined shape and it’s a little easier perhaps to now identify where this growth will actually come from.
Our list for trends to watch goes something like this:
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