Research out by Pew shows that when it comes to the major US hard news story of 2012, the Presidential election, voters prefer tried and tested news sources.

Only one in twenty (6%) Americans hears about the campaign from Facebook, and while 20% get election news from online news apps or websites, 36% get it from cable TV.Similarly, 41% of Twitter users ‘regularly’ or ‘sometimes’ get election news on Twitter, compared to 40% who never do.

Two observations about this study:

Pew headlines it by saying “Twitter, Facebook play very modest roles.”

I would add the words “so far.”   Pew’s research also shows that younger age groups who are most likely to get news from social media, have so far been turned off by the campaign

Secondly, we’ve yet to have the set piece events of the election, the live Presidential debates.   The recent US Superbowl showed how social media and live TV now goes hand in hand with 10,000 tweets a second being sent in the closing minutes.

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Over 90% of branded communities feature a funnel of ‘new’ content – i.e. almost every brand has some kind of system in place to get material out to the community, while 80% deploy media rich content.

However, less than half of brands surveyed now have a community manager to look after those communities, with the % dropping from 51% to 48% over the past year.    One would have to wonder why – whether its a sign of budget cuts or a community job being subsumed into a wider marketing function.

Not only that, ComBlu points out that the use of advocates (normally marshaled via a company super fan programme) in online branded communities is very low – at 20%.    ComBlu points out that this is a huge missed opportunity for brands as advocates who will fight a brand’s corner out of their own good will are

• 70% more likely to be seen as a reliable source of information (they don’t directly work for you per se)

• Increase conversions by 166% through content amplification and referrals

• Reduce the cost of overall product support by 60% – they effectively do a lot of it for you

• Are 50% more likely to create content that influences a purchase

• Are 83% more likely to share information

ComBlu says super-fans are “the core of engagement and help bring others into the brand fold” – wise words.

Over eight in ten branded communities have integration with other social media assets, it’s surprising that 20% don’t.

However, ComBlu points out that in many cases this is nothing more than streaming Twitter feeds and Facebook posts onto community sites – but few bothering with other feeds such as YouTube, Foursquare, LinkedIn or Slideshare.

In contrast to a one size fits all approach, research by Edgerank shows that certainly when it comes to Facebook, smaller, niche communities show much higher engagement levels

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The other week I talked about Nielsen figures showing that in the US at least, the older you are the more TV you watch.   However, that doesn’t mean that the television is being abandoned completely.

A study from Frank Magid Associates shows that only 1% of digital TV subscribers in the US have cancelled their subscriptions because they get everything that they want online (via MediaPost). In fact, only 2.5% of US media consumers use the Internet exclusively for video content.

Indeed, people who watch video via the Web seem to be entertainment junkies who indulge through a variety of different platforms.  Frank Magid associates says that “consumers using the greatest number of alternative platforms also tend to spend the most money on traditional subscription services.”

As a result, online video consumers are not so-called cord cutters.   Instead they see the Web as one element of their overall TV experience.

Earlier this year the UK regulatory authority Ofcom found that the most popular YouTube channels were variations of mainstream media properties.   And then there is the much talked about return of appointment or social TV where laptops or iPhones are used side by side with the television set to share the experience with a wider online audience of friends.

Image – From dhammza

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Does watching online content make you less likely to watch ordinary TV?   Not at all, says metrics group Nielsen (via Hollywood Reporter) and the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), which say that Web TV viewers are if anything “cord keepers” rather than cutters.

Nielsen surveyed a group of Americans that watch at least some TV or movies via the Internet on their TV sets.    The research showed that 84% were watching as much, if not more, scheduled TV.   And discovering a programme on the Web can then often result in you watching it via the normal means on scheduled TV – this was the case for 53% of respondents.

CTAM says that these results show how the Internet is often used to enhance someone’s enjoyment of a particular show, and not replace it with something else.   It also links into stats that show that the most popular YouTube channels are more often than not variations of what you will see on TV anyway.   According to Ofcom, in the UK that includes BBC Worldwide, X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – all mainstream broadcast properties.

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Not only that but the % of active “creators” in the US, EU and Australia have gone down at the same time as overall (and so passive) social media numbers have gone up.

Ben’s conclusion is as follows:

“The implication is that as social media goes mainstream (Facebook is now the No. 3 website among U.S. adults age 45-54), more users are spending more time watching and less submitting.

“This may be good news for advertisers who seek to use social channels as a push medium for their message, and not-so-good news for those who believe everyone wants to actively engage in a two-way conversation with their brand.”

It also highlights the need to have a system in place to identify those creators and conversationalists, who everyone else is watching (and is influenced by).

The rise and rise of the mommy blogger

A lot of those participants and conversationalists are in fact mothers.   On The Wall Blog Gordon MacMillan has a piece out about the ‘rise and rise of the mommy blogger.’

In particular, Gordon makes the point that ‘mommy bloggers’ are sometimes just mothers that blog, it’s not the case that they will always blog about parenting matters.

According to this chart from emarketer, one in eight (12.1%) US mothers on the Internet will be blogging this year.   Similarly, a study from TNS at the end of 2008 found that UK mothers spend 47% of their free time online.

It’s worth re-emphasising exactly why mothers are so active on social media and this ties into a conversation I had the other day – how can you find the time to blog?

The flippant answer – don’t have a social life (I was talking to two 20 somethings who do).  The more serious answer – online social tools are actually pretty well suited for parents.

It works well if you have bursts of free time in 30 min segments here and there (like new mothers).    It also works for people who are sometimes awake at odd hours (again parents), and finally as a way of keeping in touch with an extended social circle when circumstances (so small children) might not allow you to.

The above post is one of the items on this week’s Rabbit Feed.  Every week at Rabbit we put together a weekly online digest, you can sign up to receive by email.

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As the graph above shows, 20% of viewers have found something better to do online after the 1st ten seconds, by the 30 second spot a third are gone, and by 60 seconds 44% have left (so slightly better than TubeMogul’s earlier research but still significant).

Visible Measures took this “controversial” Bud Light video ad as a case-study to look into the phenomenon of what they are calling viewer abandonment.   The drop off rate was higher than normal in the 1st ten seconds – I guess because it starts slowly with a guy buying some beer.   But once the punchline (i.e the point where he asks for porn) hits, more viewers than average were engaged.

Wonder if the lesson here is lose any hint of being subtle and hit them right between the eyes from the start…or alternatively obviously get it talked about so that people know what they are going to be seeing when they arrive.

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The survey was taken among Brightcove customers, with a focus on media companies, and key stats include:

1 – Viewers watched 11.8 percent more videos per month in Q2 than last quarter.

2 – In Q2, across media verticals, the average viewing time per video stream was 2:00 minutes.   Note media verticals, not run of the mill YouTube vids, where the evidence is still that most people switch off after a minute.  Also worth noting – videos on broadcast websites are watched the longest.  Which comes back to the point of the delivery mechanism being less important than the content for consumers.

3 – “The online video content of media companies has an average completion rate  of 38 percent per video view.”   In other words, 2/3 of videos on media websites are not watched to the end.

4 – By the end of the year, Facebook will be only second to Google in driving video traffic.   Right now, 64  percent  of referrals still come  from Google, followed by Yahoo (11.9 percent) with Facebook on 4.3%.   So Brightcove and TubeMogul seem to be saying that by late 2010, Facebook’s share will be 10%+

5 – Finally, showing that referrals from social networks (ie via online friends) are ultimately of a better quality than from search, Facebook and Twitter users on average hang around watching online videos the longest.  For brand videos, Facebook viewers stuck around for 1.25 minutes, compared to a measly 52 seconds for Yahoo

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1 – Live, scheduled TV carries a low attention threshold. Compared to other forms of media, consumers are least likely to give live TV and radio their undivided attention.     Social media and print have medium attention scores, while games and downloaded video content rank best when it comes to consumer focus (hence the wisdom of spending money on in-game promotions).

2 – We’re now more likely to ‘media stack.’ 20% of media time is now simultaneous – very often involving TV + the Internet and mobile phones.  Among the under 25s that proportion rises to 29%.  16-24 year olds managed to fit just over nine and a half hours’ worth of media into a little  over six and a half hours of actual time.

3 – The most popular YouTube channels are variations of mainstream media properties. It’s a myth that we want to spend our time on YouTube watching home made ‘world’s funniest animal’ type videos.   Instead, much as we do on TV, we want to see content with high production values, involving recognisable names.

Where’s the proof that TV + online work in tandem works?  Here are three random examples:

1 – PHD and Medialets developed a True Blood iPhone ad to support the last series.   Though we can question whether HBO’s 38% increase in viewers was down to the mobile campaign, the best click-through rate of 8.73% that the campaign achieved was way beyond the usual display ad rate of 0.02%.

2 – Speaking of click-throughs, Coke achieved one of 6%, when it ran a Promoted Tweets / Twitter World Cup campaign.   Running a World Cup promo while people were tweeting about matches made sense – Twitter saw a clear spike in activity, including a record for the number of tweets per second during the recent tournament.

3 – One of my favourite examples is this one:  US broadcaster Oxygen piloted a “real time viewing party” called Oxygen Live around one of its hit shows – Bad Girls Club.   This pulled in comments and conversations from several networks such as Twitter into an online hub while the show was airing.

Oxygen Live kicked off 30 mins before each show started, meaning that it was trending on Twitter 5 mins before each episode and there was a consistent increase in viewers over the hour.   In fact in the US West Coast when they *didn’t* run Oxygen Live, ratings were up 9% among women aged 18-49.   Once Oxygen Live launched that ratings then saw a much bigger increase, up to 57%.

And as far as a successful example of integrating TV advertising and an online campaign goes….Old Spice anyone?

As a final point, it’s worth noting that two of the new social networks that have created a buzz over the past few weeks, Miso and Glue, have a model that’s directly related to people checking into entertainment events and TV programmes, as opposed to locations.

We’ve got a more detailed summary of the Ofcom report in the latest (agency) Rabbit feed, the html version is here.

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Robin makes his observation by pointing out that Facebook’s UK growth rate is starting to slow.   Just like in the US, where last month, Facebook user rates among 18-44 year olds dropped (but grew among over 45s), Facebook saw a slight dip in its UK page view share last month, which could of course be seasonal due to colleges and Universities breaking up for the year.

Facebook does of course have 500 million worldwide users, hence the question of whether it can realistically grow much more.   And of course, it raises the other question of whether it will really ever be replaced (the same question constantly asked of Google in search)?

An interesting piece over on Flowtown says no, giving various reasons from the fact that a lot of people genuinely use it to manage their online lives, the applications market, and the fact that brands and businesses gravitate to it now almost as a default.

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You know the received wisdom that you need time to make your YouTube videos a success, with people slowly discovering it and passing it on?  More often than not its wrong – according to TubeMogul (via Thought Gadgets) half the audience for the average online video will have come and gone within the first six days.

According to Business Insider our online attention spans are definitely getting shorter:

” In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.”

In other words, the shelf life of the average video has now halved.  Some other stats that build on this one:

If supported by social media recommendations, people will be more engaged with your video.  Another TubeMogul and Brightcove survey found that music videos recommended on Twitter are watched on average for a minute longer.

In terms of the chances of your video becoming a huge hit with 1 million+ views, you are 6x more likely to get hit by a bus anyway

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