The bulk of time Americans are spending on digital media … is now happening on mobile applications.
According to data released this past week by Internet and digital analytics firm comScore, the combined time that people expend using digital media breaks down as follows:
Mobile apps: ~52% of all time spent online
Mobile web surfing: ~8%
Desktop: ~40%
Apps are clearly in the driver’s seat – particularly in the mobile realm. In fact, comScore estimates that apps account for 7 out of every 8 minutes spent on mobile devices.
On smartphones, the app usage is ~88% of all time spent, whereas on tablets, it’s ~82%.
This doesn’t mean that app usage is spread evenly throughout the population of people who are online. Far from it. Only about one-third of people download one app per month or more. (The average smartphone user is downloading about three apps per month.)
The inevitable conclusion: App usage is highly concentrated among a subset of the population.
Indeed, the 7% most active smartphone owners account for almost half of all the download activity during any given month.
But even if most users aren’t downloading all that many apps … they are certainly engaged with the ones they do have on their devices: comScore reports that nearly 60% are using apps every day.
Here again, the data show that usage levels are much higher among smartphone users than they are with tablet users (where only about one quarter of the people use apps daily).
Where they’re spending their time is also interesting. Well over 40% of all app time spent on smartphones is with a user’s single most used app. (Facebook takes top honors — of course.)
And if you combine social networking, games and Internet radio, you’ve pretty much covered the waterfront when it comes to app usage.
When you think about it, none of this should come as much surprise. We’re a mobile society – hourly, daily, monthly and yearly. It only makes sense that most online time is going to be happening when people are away from their home or their desk, now that it’s so easy to be connected so easily from even the tiniest mobile devices.
And speaking of “easy” … is it really any wonder why people would flock to apps? It’s less hassle to open up an app for news or information rather than searching individual sites via mobile. People simply don’t have the patience for that anymore.
All the emphasis on having consumer-facing brands “surprise and delight” their customers isn’t what many people are looking for at all.
In the interactive age, what we hear often is that companies and brands need to go beyond simply offering a high-quality product.
Many companies and brands have the notion that they should strive to engender a kind of “personal” relationship with customers – so that consumers will develop the same kinds of feelings for brands as they have with their close friends.
How true is this?
One marketing company decided to find out. Toronto-based virtual agent technology firm IntelliResponse surveyed ~1,000 online consumers in the United States earlier this year.
When asked what sort of relationship they would prefer to have with the companies whose products and services they purchase, here’s how the percentages broke for these respondents:
Prefer a “friendship” where they get personalized service: ~24%
Prefer a “transactional” relationship where they receive efficient service and that’s all: ~59%
Prefer both equally: ~17%
Evidently, “boringly consistently good” beats “surprisingly delightful” far more often – assuming the company is minding its Ps and Qs when it comes to product quality.
Here’s what else consumers are seeking: They want to be able to get the same information and answers from a company’s desktop or mobile website … online portal … or social media sites as they do from speaking with company representatives over the phone.
The IntelliResponse survey found that two-thirds of the respondents will go to a company’s website first when seeking out information regarding a product or service – so the answers better be there or the brand risks consumer disappointment.
The takeaway is this: No matter how much breathless reporting there is about this “surprising” social media campaign or that “delightful” interactive contest … the majority of consumers continue to view companies and brands the way they have for 100 years: Companies are merely the vehicle by which they can acquire the goods they need.
Rather than spending undue energy trying to make the interactive world “fun” or “sticky” for customers, companies should focus on the basic work of delivering products, information and answers that are easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to act on.
And related to that — make sure support systems (and support people) are in place so that customers can get any problems or issues solved with a minimum of time or hassle.
Do those things well, and companies will naturally please the vast majority of their current and future customers.
The amount of translated content is also showing big-time growth.
According to an analysis by venture capitalist and Internet industry specialist Mary Meeker, in 2013 nine of the ten top global Internet properties were U.S.-based.
For the record, they were as follows (in order of ranking):
Google
Microsoft
Facebook
Yahoo
Wikipedia
Amazon
Ask
Glam Media
Apple
Only China-based Tencent cracked the Top Ten from outside the United States — and it just barely made it in as #10 in the rankings.
And yet … the same Top 10 Internet properties had nearly 80% of their users located outside America.
With such a disparity between broad-based Internet usage and concentrated Internet ownership, the picture was bound to change.
And boy, has it changed quickly: Barely a year later — as of March 2014 — the Top 10 listing now contains just six American-based companies.
Ask, Glam Media and Apple have all fallen off the list, replaced by three more China-based properties: Alibaba, Baidu and Sohu.
Paralleling this trend is another one: a sharp increase in the degree to which businesses are providing content in multiple languages.
For websites that offer some form of translated content, half of them are offering it in at least six languages. That’s double the number of languages that were being offered a year earlier.
And for a quarter of these firms, translated content is available in 15 or more languages.
What are the most popular languages besides English? Spanish, French, Italian and German are popular — not a great surprise there. But other languages that are becoming more prevalent include Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
In fact, the average volume of translated content has ballooned nearly 90% within just the past year.
The growing accuracy of computer-based translation modules — including surprisingly good performance in “idiomatic” language — is certainly helping the process along.
Moreover, when a major site like Facebook reports that its user base in France grew from 1.4 million to 2.4 million within just three months of offering its French-language site, it’s just more proof that the world may be getting smaller … but native language still remains a key to maximizing business success.
It’s one more reminder that for any company which hopes to compete in a transnational world, offering content in other languages isn’t just an option, but a necessity in order to build and maintain a strategic advantage.
I’ve blogged before about the fallout from the Edward Snowden affair and its effects on the U.S. cloud computing industry.
In fact, back in the summer of 2013 I read an interesting thought piece published by my brother, Nelson Nones, Chairman of Geoprise Technologies. His experiences as an IT specialist who has lived and worked outside the United States for two decades has made him particularly sensitive to what the international implications of the Snowden revelations may be.
In his 2013 analysis, he claimed that the NSA spying revelations would likely have serious consequences for the cloud computing industry. As he wrote at the time:
“… these threats will be perceived to be so serious that many businesses could decide to abandon the use of cloud computing services going forward — or refuse to consider cloud computing at all — because they bear full responsibility for compliance yet now realize that they have little or no ability to control the attendant non-compliance risks when utilizing major cloud services providers.
Out front: Geoprise Technologies’ Nelson Nones was among the first to warn about the negative consequences of NSA surveillance programs on the U.S. cloud computing industry.
In view of recent revelations, the tantalizing cost savings and efficiencies from cloud computing may be overwhelmed by the financial, business continuity and reputational risks.”
And his prediction as to what would likely happen as a result if these concerns played out in the market was even more chilling:
“Revenues and profits of U.S.-based service providers will suffer to the extent that businesses of every nationality abandon the public cloud computing services they are now using, or refuse to consider public cloud computing services offered by U.S.-based providers, in response to the heightened customer risks that have now been revealed.”
Shortly thereafter, I began to notice similar writings back here in the United States – in particular those by members of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a DC-based think tank focusing on technology policies. It projected that the U.S. cloud computing industry would forfeit somewhere between $22 billion and $35 billion in lost business as a result of the NSA-related revelations.
For anyone keeping score, that’s between 10% and 20% of the worldwide cloud computing market.
And now, one year later, the full scope of the impact is being realized. New America Foundation, a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization focusing on public policy issues, released a report this past week which outlines the impact of Snowden’s NSA revelations.
Here are just two examples of the findings it published:
Within days of the first NSA revelations, cloud computing services such as Dropbox and Amazon Web Services reported measurable sales declines.
Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco and others have reported sales declines in China – as much as a 10% drop in overall revenue.
Not only that, foreign governments are giving U.S. tech firms wide berth when it comes to contracting for a range of products and services that go well-beyond cloud computing.
Among the casualties: The German government ended its contract with Verizon as of June … while the Brazilian government selected Swedish-based Saab over Boeing in a contract to replace fighter jets.
In the current environment of security jitters, it’s much easier for foreign competitors to portray themselves as “NSA-proof” — and the “safer choice” for protecting sensitive information.
Hans-Peter Friedrich
And unambiguous comments like this one made by Germany’s Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich just add fuel to the fire:
“Whoever fears their communication is being monitored in any way should use services that don’t go through American servers.”
Even more ominous, a number of countries are debating – and indeed close to enacting – new legislation that would require companies doing business within their local to use local data centers.
Sure, some of the countries – Vietnam, Brunei, Greece – aren’t overly significant players in the grand scheme of things. But others certainly are; Brazil and India aren’t inconsequential markets by any measure.
In all, the New America Foundation report forecasts that the fallout from the NSA’s PRISM program will cost cloud-computing companies multiple billions in lost revenues – from $20 billion on the low end to nearly $200 billion on the high end.
This, plus the collateral damage of lost contracts involving ancillary and even unrelated tech services and manufactured products, may result in a contraction of the U.S. tech industry’s growth by as much as 4% — not to mention seriously undermining the United States’ credibility around the world.
Isn’t that just what America needs to have right now: international credibility problems not only in the political sphere, but also in the economic one.
Unfortunately, what I wrote in my blog post a year ago still stands true today: “OK, U.S. government and administration officials: Have fun unscrambling this egg!”
After years of fruitless attempts, it would seem so.
On July 15th, five senators introduced legislation on a bipartisan basis to make taxation of purchases made over the Internet a reality.
The legislation is called the Marketplace and Internet Tax Freedom Act, and it combines the efforts of two initiatives that had been separate before: The Marketplace Fairness Act and the Internet Tax Freedom Act.
On the one hand, the legislation would keep access to the Internet tax-free by limiting what state and local governments can do to impose Internet access fees – at least for the coming decade.
On the other hand, it gives states the unambiguous ability to enforce their sales tax laws on businesses selling to buyers located within their borders – including if those purchases are made online.
In other words, the 44 states that currently have sales tax laws on their books will be able to collect online sales taxes.
Not surprisingly, the National Retail Federation and other trade groups that represent brick-and-mortar retailing are lauding the actions of the five senators in introducing the legislation.
David French, the NRF’s senior vice president for government relations, noted that it’s high time “for Congress to eliminate the sales tax disparity, which disproportionally impacts community and independent retailers.”
Unlike in prior years when Senate and House lawmakers seemed incapable of coming together in support of sales tax legislation, this time appears different.
Why?
I think part of the reason is the sense that, at the end of the day, it just isn’t fair for offline retailers to shoulder the burden of collecting taxes – along with being at a competitive disadvantage – versus online retailers who benefit from being able to offer lower the same products at a lower overall cost, while also benefiting from lower overhead costs in most cases.
The fact that the current legislative bill is being introduced by senators from across the political spectrum as well as a diverse geography (the Northeast, South and Midwest) — tells me that the legislation will go through — and that the days of tax-free online shopping are numbered.
It will be interesting to see what the ramifications might be if and when the legislation passes. Will 24/7 armchair convenience trump the sudden 5%-7% higher cost to online consumers?
Those consumers can be notoriously price-sensitive … but they’re also creatures of habit and great lovers of convenience.
My prediction is that the new regulations will turn out to have little or no impact on the broader retail buying behaviors. If you concur — or if you have a different opinion — please share your thoughts with other readers here.
In recent years, there’s been more press than ever about “brand respect.” Building on this interest, brand strategy firm CoreBrand decided to use historical survey data to attempt to determine the sentiment behind the world’s best-known brands.
CoreBrand uses proprietary Corporate Branding Index data – 23 years’ worth – that it has been compiling through consumer surveys covering nearly 1,000 of most famous brands.
CoreBrand’s 2014 Brand Respect Study covers the 100 brands (limited to publicly traded companies) in the CBI that chart the highest levels of market familiarity among all of the brands tracked.
CoreBrand’s scoring mechanism is pretty straightforward: Brands with the highest familiarity and favorability are defined as “most respected,” while brands that have high familiarity but low favorability levels are the “least respected.”
For the record, here are the most respected brands as determined from the 2014 CoreBrand research:
#1: Coca-Cola – the most respected
#2: PepsiCo
#3: Hershey
#4: Bayer
#5: Johnson & Johnson
#6: Harley-Davidson
#7: IBM
#8: Apple
#9: Kellogg
#10: General Electric
In comparing 2014’s results to the previous year, Coke and Pepsi remain at the top of the heap – although they traded places from one year to the next. Moreover, both brands’ favorability scores declined slightly – perhaps due to the burgeoning “better for you” foods movement that seems to be souring some consumers on soft drinks and related beverages.
New on the “Top Ten” most-respected listing this year are IBM, Apple and GE.
At the other end of the scale, these ten brands came up as the ones that are the least respected – with Delta Airlines earning the Booby Prize as “the worst of the worst”:
#1: Delta Airlines – the least respected
#2: H&R Block
#3: Big Lots
#4: Denny’s
#5: Best Buy
#6: Rite Aid
#7: J.C. Penney
#8: Capital One Financial
#9: Family Dollar Stores
#10: Sprint Nextel
While it’s certainly no fun to be on the “least respected” list, two of the brands – Denny’s and Family Dollar — have actually seen their scores improve significantly this year compared to last. So at least they’re headed in the right direction.
Two other brands – Philip Morris and Foot Locker – have gone off the list. In the case of Foot Locker, it’s because its brand favorability ratings have improved significantly enough to lift them off the list.
For Philip Morris, the reason is far more mundane: it’s simply because its familiarity level has deteriorated so much, the brand no longer even qualifies to be part of the annual CoreBrand Brand Respect evaluation.
And finally … we come to Delta Airlines. It’s the air carrier everyone loves to hate — and it’s dead last in the brand respect rankings.
There’s some consolation for Delta, though: The only two other U.S.-based air carriers that qualify for inclusion in the study based on their familiarity levels (United and American) also score on the low end, although they (just) miss being on the “least respected list.”
Evidently, the airlines in general could benefit from earning more brand respect. Good luck with that.
As social media has crept more and more into the fabric of life for so many people, it’s only natural that social scientists and marketers are thinking about the wider implications.
One of these thinkers is someone whose viewpoints I respect a good deal. Social media and online/search über-strategist Gord Hotchkiss has come up with a way of looking at social media vehicles that he dubs the “Maturity Continuum.”
According to Hotchkiss, the Maturity Continuum is made up of four levels of increasing social media “stickiness” — meaning how relevant and important the social platforms are to people’s daily lives and routines.
Specifically, these four levels are:
The Fad Phase — This is when people start using a social media platform because it’s the bright shiny thing … and “everyone else” in their circle is doing so, too. This dynamic is commonly found among early adopters — you know, the folks who try out new things because … they’re new.
Gord Hotchkiss
Of course, early adopters don’t necessarily stick around. A new social platform has to have some sort of “there there” – to deliver some measure of functional benefit – or else it won’t keep fad users around for long.
Also important at this early stage is the aspect of uniqueness and novelty — which is always important among this group of people who tend to be higher on the ego and narcissism scale.
Making a Statement — If a social platform makes it through the pure novelty gauntlet, it continues to be used because it makes a statement about the user. In the case of social media, it’s often as much about the technology as it is the functionality.
Thinking about a platform like FourSquare, here you have social tool that’s probably at this level of maturity. With FourSquare, there may be a few utilitarian reasons for using it — getting vouchers or other “free stuff” from restaurants and bars — but it’s probably a lot more about “making that statement.”
A Useful Tool — At this point on the Maturity Continuum, here’s where a social platform breaks into a more practical realm. Going beyond the novelty and ego aspects, users find that the platform is a highly beneficial tool from a functionality standpoint — perhaps better than any other one out there for facilitating certain activities.
Thinking about a social platform like LinkedIn in this context, it’s easy to see how that particular one has done so well.
A Platform of Choice — This is the highest level of social media maturity, where users engage — and continue to engage — with a social platform because they have become so familiar with it.
At this level, it becomes quite a challenge to dislodge a social platform, even if “newer, better” choices come along. Once social habits have become established and a large critical mass of users is established, it can be very difficult to change the behavior.
Facebook is “Exhibit A” in this regard: Despite near-weekly reports of issues and controversies about the platform, people continue to hang in there with it.
Thinking about other social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, SnapChat and Pinterest, it’s interesting to speculate on where they currently fall on the “maturity meter.”
I’d venture to say that YouTube has made it to the highest level … SnapChat is still residing in the early “fad” stage … while Pinterest and Instagram are transitioning between “making a statement” and being “a useful tool.”
Where Twitter resides … is anyone’s guess. I for one am still wondering just how Twitter fits into the greater scheme of social — and how truly “consequential” it is in the fabric of most people’s social lives.
What are your perspectives on the Maturity Continuum in social media? If you have opinions one way or the other about the long-term staying power of certain platforms, please share them with other readers here.
It may be the year 2014, but many people continue to wander gracelessly through the gender minefield when it comes to the workplace.
We saw this in spades two weeks ago, when the Today Show’s Matt Lauer asked General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra how she successfully balanced her role as CEO of a large corporation with that of being a Mom.
Mr. Lauer was excoriated for asking the question, with criticism coming from all quarters (left and right). He was accused of sexist questioning. Several commentators pointed out that he had never asked such a question of the male top executives he had interviewed earlier at GM and Chrysler.
Still, the fact that a flurry of controversy was stirred up at all reminds us how emotionally charged questions about gender roles continue to be, several generations after the birth of the feminist movement.
In point of fact, gender roles have been evolving pretty rapidly in the past two or three decades. Sparked by economic and employment forces as well as changes in social norms, more men than ever are choosing to stay home with family, even as the participation of women in the workforce has reached all-time highs.
And field research conducted in May 2014 by consulting firm Insights in Marketing suggests that it’s men more than women who now feel that they’re facing struggles and stigmas associated with achieving a good work/family balance. To wit:
Among men surveyed who have children under the age of 18, ~35% report that they are “feeling more torn between work and family” … whereas with women with children under the age of 18, only ~26% report the same feelings.
Here’s another result from the same survey: By a 57% to 41% margin, men are more likely than women to agree with the following statement: “A man’s primary duty is to financially provide for his family.”
Those figures may not come as a surprise.
By contrast, nearly the same percentages of men (78%) and women (74%) disagree with the statement that “A woman’s primary duty is to be a full-time caretaker for her family.”
According to the research summary issued by Insights in Marketing, these findings suggest that certain gender stereotypes are no longer accurate: Society truly accepts (and even expects) women to be a part of the workforce, while expecting men to care only about their careers.
Instead, the survey reveals much more similarities than differences in how women and men see their family and work roles:
~81% of women surveyed feel that their first obligation is to their home and family … and ~75% of the men surveyed feel the same way.
~48% of men surveyed feel that their career gives their lives purpose … but ~40% of the women surveyed also reported the same feeling.
Even though real change is happening on the ground, it’ll probably take more time before we start seeing the change being reflected in popular culture — and so that Matt Lauer can ask a question without incurring the wrath of a thousand baying wolves.
Remember that, too, the next time you see a TV commercial for laundry detergent. You know — the one where Dad is some doofus who puts way too much soap in the washing machine and then can’t figure out when to add the fabric softener …
More findings from the Insights in Marketing report are available here.
When it comes to e-mail lead nurturing in the business world, it turns out there’s a whole lot of mediocrity — or worse — going on.
In discussions with my company’s clients, it seems that most of them are dissatisfied with what they consider, at best, only “middling” engagement levels that they’re achieving on their e-nurturing campaigns.
On top of that, many of them suspect that they’re underperforming their counterparts in the market.
I don’t think that’s the case. Since we work with a variety of clients and thus hear about the results from a group of firms, not just one or two, we can see that most everyone is in the same boat.
Even so, it’s anecdotal evidence rather than statistically quantifiable data.
But now we have the results from a new B-to-B survey conducted by Bizo and Oracle Eloqua … and what they’ve found is that many companies are struggling like most everyone else when it comes to developing comprehensive lead nurturing programs that perform well.
This survey of ~500 B-to-B marketing executives revealed that nearly 95% of all companies have some form of lead nurturing program in place. But having such a program in place doesn’t mean it’s all that effective.
How challenged are these marketers? Consider these key findings from the research:
Nearly 80% of respondents report that their e-mail open rates don’t exceed 20% on average.
~45% report that only 1% to 4% of known contacts develop into marketing-qualified leads.
Only ~5% of buyers on business websites are willing to provide detailed information on a “gated” contact offer form.
The implications of these findings are varied:
E-mail databases that are built from website visits tend to have significant omissions (and errors) regarding contact information.
Only a smallish fraction of e-mail subscribers are reading the e-mails they receive … and by definition, no anonymous prospects are, either.
Because e-mail marketing relies on having access to prospects’ e-mail addresses, the e-marketing approach provides no opportunity to engage with a potentially much larger audience of customers who may be in the market for a company’s products and services at any given point in time.
With so much useful information so available online, websites is where research can occur without have to deal with pesky sales personnel until “the time is right.”
It’s also why, despite the well-known negative aspects and limitations of web display advertising, nearly half of the respondents in the Bizo/Oracle Eloqua survey feel that online display advertising plays a role in attracting anonymous prospects and nurturing those leads through the sales funnel.
But marketers are also showing interest in multi-channel nurturing, and are receptive to adopting techniques that support the ability to nurture known and anonymous prospects without using e-mail. Those tactics will probably the next new wave in lead nurturing practices going forward … provided people know where they can access the tools to make it happen.
Most businesspeople recognize the value of planning and implementing long-term growth strategies.
So it may be a surprise to learn that only a minority of companies are actually doing anything extensive along those lines.
That’s what the results from a January 2014 survey of ~825 senior executives seem to be saying. The research was carried out by business strategy consulting firm Innosight, and included respondents active in 20 industry segments ranging from manufacturing and consumer goods to financial, healthcare and telecommunications firms.
There is near-unanimous agreement among the execs in the survey that their organizations need to be continually chang their core offerings, or their business models, in response to rapidly changing market dynamics.
As to whether those changes are actually happening — well, that’s another matter.
In fact, only ~42% of the respondents expressed confidence that their companies are setting the table for any sort of “transformation” at all within a 5- or 10-year horizon.
And here’s an interesting twist the research revealed. One would typically think that the smaller the company, the less confident those execs would be about sufficient planning for future growth.
But the Innosight survey found exactly the opposite finding. The confidence level is actually lower among those respondents who work at the largest companies in the research sample: Only about one-third of respondents with $1-billion revenue companies expressed confidence.
The problem is that many companies are changing at a slower pace than the markets in which they operate.
Or at least that’s the perception. About 40% of the survey respondents feel that their organizations are changing at a rate that’s slower than the market’s evolution. (It’s the case with roughly half of the large company respondents.)
Tied to this concern is another finding that the Innosight research uncovered: Only about one in ten of the respondents reported that their companies have formal growth strategies covering at least a 5-year horizon.
The rest have either no formal growth strategy at all, or one that’s extremely short-term and mainly tactical in character.
The reason for this lack of growth planning is the sense that markets are way too unpredictable in today’s business environment. Long-term strategizing in such an environment seems more like a theoretical exercise and less of a practical use of time to many of the execs in the survey.
On top of that, pressing issues that crop up on a daily basis are prone to suck most of the planning oxygen out of the room.
Scott D. Anthony
As part of its report, Innosight managing partner Scott D. Anthony pointed out that despite its shortcomings, transformational innovation has an important role to play, even though it takes time to pay off — sometimes as long as five or ten years.
“Companies that invest in planning methods that help align senior leaders on long-term growth strategies are probably at a real advantage to develop new business models and open new growth markets,” Anthony contends.
And this:
“If you have a long-term strategy, you don’t have many competitors — a good thing — because most companies want a return on investment within three years. In other words, a switch in timeline can e a real competitive advantage.”
By contrast, companies that are always working in the “here and now,” are usually facing multiple market players and a much more competitive environment.
It was bound to happen.
Nones Notes 