I built a part-time online business for 10 years before I chose to retire from my healthcare career, years ahead of schedule. In this post, I want to provide you with some of my insights and wisdom as to how you can leverage your business to do the same (or leave your job). You can […]
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Should marketers be investing in top-of-funnel campaigns or performance advertising right now? That question is being hotly debated in a lot of places, including major earnings reports where performance seems to be winning. (We’ll be debating top vs. bottom of the funnel marketing on tomorrow’s Live with Search Engine Land.) Making the case for brand. New consumer data from Survata makes a strong case for brand marketing and argues that trusted brands are winning during the pandemic. The survey also contains interesting findings about messaging and what consumers want to hear from brands right now. Survata polled 1,016 U.S. adults on shopping behavior and brand expectations. The company found a strong preference for established brands over private labels or generics in a number of product categories. This seems at least partly at odds with another of the survey’s findings: almost two-thirds (64%) of consumers are cutting back on spending in a significant way. Brand preference despite spending reductions. According to Survata, “In previous periods of economic uncertainty, generic products have performed better compared to their brand-name counterparts because consumers aren’t willing to pay a premium.” That doesn’t seem to be as true in this unprecedented instance, despite consumer-spending cutbacks. In numerous product categories (cleaning products, frozen food, coffee, soda and packaged foods) consumers indicated they were much more likely to choose familiar brands. In non-prescription medication and personal care products, however, the audience was more evenly divided with a somewhat higher percentage choosing generics or store brands, presumably to save money. Consumers becoming more cautious, selective. Multiple recent surveys indicate that consumers are cancelling or delaying purchases in the current economic climate. This is not unexpected but still very worrisome because consumer spending drives 70% of U.S. GDP and is therefore critical to any recovery. Survata found one quarter of respondents intended to cut spending by 30% – 40%, and one in five said they will reduce their budgets by 50% or more. In contrast to consumer spending cutbacks, major tech company earnings and IAB survey data reflect that advertiser spending recovered a bit in April causing investors to celebrate. However budgets are still short of plan and far from pre-pandemic levels. Brand messages consumers want to hear. The Survata research also explored consumer expectations of brands and what messages they wanted to hear. There are some surprises here too:
Beyond messaging, other buying considerations included price (for a substantial minority), regional product source (is it from a virus-impacted area?) and brand trust. Trust was the most significant factor influencing purchase decisions for 40% of respondents. In addition, consumers are now 3x more likely to research products before buying than prior to the outbreak, according to the survey. Survata CEO Chris Kelly commented to us in email, “Consumers are clearly very cognizant of a brand’s message right now. While we know consumers expect a brand to be responsive to the current times, it was surprising that so many consumers felt that the most important thing brands should communicate to them was a commitment to their employees. There might be a sense of American ‘in-this-together-ism’ when you unpack that, but it’ll be important for brands to measure the tricky balance of putting out the right messages.” Restaurants, vacations and shopping. Asked where they’re looking forward to spending money when the lockdowns end, survey respondents indicated they were most interested in going out to eat, followed by vacation and shopping (in stores):
Why we care. Consumer behavior is shifting and must less predictable right now. We’ve moved in about six weeks from a position of near full employment to roughly 20% unemployment with more to come. That kind of economic whiplash is totally unprecedented. While marketers should ideally address the full funnel, most no longer have the budget. Accordingly, they’re emphasizing performance campaigns because those are easier to track. Any spending that can’t be justified in terms of clear ROI is being cut in many places. But the Survata data and other evidence indicate that brand visibility may be more important than ever — during the crisis and, especially, when it’s finally over. To hear more of this discussion and how to measure brand campaigns don’t miss tomorrow’s episode of Live with Search Engine Land. The post People choosing trusted brands but marketers pulling brand campaigns appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2YnwtWS Have we hit bottom yet? What new earnings reports say about COVIDs impact on digital advertising4/30/2020 “We experienced a significant reduction in the demand for advertising, as well as a related decline in the pricing of our ads, over the last three weeks of the first quarter of 2020.” — Facebook (Advertising revenues increased by 17% year-over-year to $17.4 billion.) “. . . but then in March we experienced a significant slowdown in ad revenues” — Google/Alphabet (Advertising revenues increased by 10% year-over-year to $33.8 billion for the quarter.) “. . . a strong start to the quarter that was impacted by widespread economic disruption related to COVID-19 in March.” — Twitter (Ad revenue was flat year-over-year at $682 million.) “While many advertising budgets declined due to COVID-19, we experienced high revenue growth rates in the first two months of the quarter which offset our lower growth in March.” — Snap (Revenue increased by 44% year-over-year to $462 million.) “. . . a significant reduction in advertising spend, which impacted our Search and LinkedIn businesses.” — Microsoft (Search ad revenue grew by 1% and LinkedIn revenues increased by 21%.) The statements above come from each company’s formal quarterly press releases or earnings calls for the period ending March 31, 2020. They reflect the sudden impact of COVID-19 on their ad businesses in the final weeks of the quarter, dulling what had been a strong start to the year. Direct response was a bufferWith the feast or famine nature of this crisis, many companies saw demand skyrocket and those that continued to see ROI from their performance campaigns held the course or increased ad spend on certain channels. Facebook, Google and Snapchat mentioned the positive impact on direct response revenue at the end of the quarter. Facebook CFO David Wehner said performance advertisers that “get those results that they’re looking for” kept spending, while those “looking for offline or more top of funnel brand, there we’ve seen more pullback in spend.” YouTube has been making in-roads in direct response, but it has long been courting brand advertisers and their TV budgets. Last quarter, it was performance campaigns that held strong while companies pulled back on their branding campaigns. “Direct response continued to have substantial year-on-year growth throughout the entire quarter,” Ruth Porat, Google and Alphabet CFO said about YouTube. “Brand advertising growth accelerated in the first two months of the quarter, but began to experience a headwind in mid-March.” That caused YouTube’s year-on-year ad revenue growth to slow to “high single digits.” CEO Sundar Pichai called out app installs and gaming as areas where YouTube has gained traction in direct response. Snap, which reported strong quarterly revenue growth at 44% year-over-year, said its direct response revenue has doubled as a share of the company’s total ad revenue in the past two years. “Consequently, this strategy has put us in strong position for this immediate crisis as well as continue to take share of the digital ad market on the road to recovery,” said Snap’s Chief Business Officer Jeremi Gorman said on the earnings call. A sense of what’s to comeDue to the volatility of the situation, many companies declined to provide financial guidance for the second quarter of 2020. However, based on several statements, April appears to be shaping up to be, well, like March — meaning things may not be improving much but that we may have hit bottom. Google’s Ruth Porat said in the first few weeks of April that Search had not seen further percentage declines in year-over-year revenue from the end of March and that YouTube’s direct response ad revenue remained strong. But she noted that “we have seen continued decline in Brand advertising.” Likewise, Facebook said it has seen “signs of stability” in the first three weeks of April. The company said ad revenue has been roughly flat compared to the same period a year ago and down from the 17% year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2020. “The April trends reflect weakness across all of our user geographies as most of our major countries have had some sort of shelter-in-place guidelines in effect,” the company said. Microsoft said that it expects the significantly lower ad spend levels seen in March will continue in this quarter, “which will impact Search and LinkedIn.” Media buyer sentiment, creative plansIn its most recent survey of media buyers, released Thursday, the IAB asked about advertising spending plans for March through June. There was a bit of improvement in digital spend expectations compared to the last survey in March, but they remain below plan. In the IAB’s March survey, buyers said they expected digital ad budgets to be cut by 33% on average in the second quarter, whereas the April survey showed slight bump to an average cut of 29%. In contrast, traditional media spend projections for the second quarter fell from expected cuts of 39% on average in March to 44% in April. Search and social appear best positioned for a rebound. These budgets are still below plan, but the planned cuts for the quarter have shrunk considerably in the period between the two surveys, as shown in the chart below. Looking at targeting and buying tactics, the IAB found an increased interest in national and local geotargeting as well as in direct buys with premium publishers. The interest in geo-targeting makes sense as the impact of the virus and shelter in place policies vary. In contrast, there was a decline in interest for demographic and audience targeting buys between March and April. This may be a reflection of the dramatic shifts in consumer behavior have rendered existing audiences less effective. Regardless of spending changes, 73% of advertisers said they are modifying or developing new creative assets. Of those who are updating creative, 58% said they plan to mention coronavirus, COVID-19 or in someway reflect the crisis in their ads. Certainly advertisers don’t want to be tone-deaf, but it begs the question of whether consumers will become corona-weary or even corona-blind to an inundation of ads talking about “these uncertain times.” The post Have we hit bottom yet? What new earnings reports say about COVID’s impact on digital advertising appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3d3FkRD Why businesses that prioritized martech data and organization are faring better during COVID [Video]4/30/2020 “One thing I can say is a true trend when we look across clients who are doing really well versus [those that are] struggling right now, is how well organized they were beforehand,” said Brad Geddes, co-founder of AdAlysis, during our PPC for B2B session of Live with Search Engine Land, adding, “Companies who had good CRM systems that talked to their stuff [and] their data flowed well, are managing this much better than people who are cobbling together systems with everyone now distributed.” The opposite is also true for businesses that have worse data governance, Geddes told Search Engine Land: those companies may have witnessed changes to their bottom lines or the number of lead forms being submitted, but are struggling to determine what they need to change to turn those figures around because they lack insight into customer behavior. Additionally, businesses with poor data management and organizational practices often focus on more basic metrics, so when conversion rates decline, they’re more likely to reduce or halt marketing spend than companies with better insights, Geddes said. “The biggest difference is those that had great data could easily see the trends in how users were buying, changing shopping (or lead) habits, changes to the products being sold, and so forth,” he said, explaining that businesses that had this information readily available were able to dig into the trends and could make more efficient strategic decisions. “Those with good insights were more likely to change their marketing messages, cut brand spend, increase spend in other areas, and looked at it more as a marketing challenge that needed to be solved than something to run away from and just stop spending,” he added, caveating that there are exceptions, such as businesses in highly impacted sectors like travel and leisure. Why we care. “As an overall trend, we noticed that people who had focused on great data, which means systems integration, and often well-defined processes, have navigated these strange times much better than those who weren’t data, system, and process-focused companies,” said Geddes. Prioritizing organization, data and processes can provide organizations with the information they need to interpret unexpected shifts in customer behavior, which will help them identify new opportunities and allocate their resources more efficiently. Want more Live with Search Engine Land? Get it here:
More about marketing in the time of the coronavirusThe post Why businesses that prioritized martech, data and organization are faring better during COVID [Video] appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Wcffcm While Microsoft said the coronavirus pandemic had minimal net impact on total net revenue in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020, its ad businesses saw significant declines. Overall, Microsoft reported a 15% increase in revenues year-over-year to $35 billion Wednesday. Search advertising hit. Microsoft’s Search advertising revenues (ex-TAC or traffic acquisition costs) grew by just 1% year-over-year for the quarter, well below company expectations due to “significantly reduced advertising spend” in March amid the coronavirus outbreak. Microsoft also noted that “the effects of COVID-19 may not be fully reflected in the financial results until future periods. Looking to the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the company expects Search ad revenues “to decline in the mid 20% range, similar to March.” LinkedIn sessions up, revenue down. LinkedIn, too, experienced “COVID-related reduction in advertising spend” last quarter, despite continued record levels of engagement — a theme expressed in both Google and Facebook’s earnings statements. Overall LinkedIn revenue grew by 21% year-over-year for the quarter while sessions rose by 26%. Why we care. Advertising is a small fraction of Microsoft’s business, which is buoyed, in particular, by its cloud business. The sharp decline in Search advertising, however, may indicate that Microsoft Advertising campaigns were among the first place advertisers most impacted by COVID-19 looked to cut or pull back on. Given the company’s projection that it expects to see continued declines in the mid 20% range in this current quarter, it appears Microsoft campaigns may also be among the last to recover. Earlier this week, Facebook reported it had already seen stabilization in ad spend in April — to flat revenue growth year-over-year. However, for some advertisers, the continued slow demand on Microsoft could yield good opportunities to reach audiences at lower prices with less competition. The post Microsoft: Search, LinkedIn ad revenue took a big hit due to COVID-19 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2SmfTTj The post SEL 20200430 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2KKKEgF Last year, Google says it took down 2.7 billion so-called bad ads for violating the company’s ad policies, according to its annual report released Thursday. That’s up from the 2.3 billion bad ads Google reported taking down in 2018. The number of ad accounts Google terminated remained relatively flat from the previous year at nearly one million. Publisher network. Google also noted that it terminated the accounts of more than 1.2 million publishers and removed ads from over 21 million web pages across its publisher network for policy violations. Targeted areas. Google typically highlights areas of particular focus in its annual bad ads reports. In 2019, the company says it saw an increase in phishing attempts targeting people looking to renew their passports. “These ads mimicked real ads for renewal sites but their actual intent was to get users to provide sensitive information such as their social security or credit card number.” It also cracked down on the kinds of “trick-to-click” ads that are designed to look like computer or phone system warnings as well as an increase in the number of personal loan ads with misleading information on lending terms. Google updated its ad policy to require loan-related advertisers to state all fees, risks and benefits on their website or app. Coronavirus impact. To address an increase in malicious activity by bad actors during the COVID-19 pandemic, a dedicated team has developed new detection technology and beefed up existing enforcement systems. Google banned ads for face masks globally in March due to a flood of misleading ads. “We’ve blocked and removed tens of millions of coronavirus-related ads over the past few months, for policy violations including price-gouging, capitalizing on global medical supply shortages, making misleading claims about cures and promoting illegitimate unemployment benefits,” wrote Scott Spencer, Google vice president of ads privacy and safety. At the same time, Google says it is working to allow advertisers to share relevant information about COVID-19. It has enabled PSAs from health organizations, governments and NGOs about relief funds and resources for small businesses, for example. Why we care. These reports are always a sobering reminder of the scale of effort required to try to keep bad actors out of Google’s (or any) ad system. Google has thousands of people working on ecosystem safety, and yet you’ve likely seen and/or reported bad ads yourself over the past year. The coronavirus crisis is yet another example of how quickly opportunists can move in and the challenges involved in adapting existing or creating new systems to stop them. Last week, Google announced it will be phasing in its advertiser verification program beyond political advertisers. Advertisers will be required to submit business incorporation documents and other identifying information in order to be verified. Users will be able to check the business name and country in a disclosure on verified advertisers’ ads. The post Google removed 2.7 billion bad ads, nearly 1 million ad accounts in 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3d1y6xo
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via ShoeMoney https://ift.tt/2KHL8UT Just like Google’s earnings yesterday, Facebook reported a pretty decent quarter marred by “a steep decrease in advertising revenue in March.” However April has reportedly brought nascent “signs of stability,” which is enough to drive the company’s stock up 10% in after-hours trading. Beating diminished expectations. To say that Wall Street expectations have been lowered by the economic fallout from the pandemic might be the understatement of the quarter. Any positive news now is being greeted with enthusiasm by the market in the hope that the recovery will come quickly after the lockdowns end, although there’s considerable debate among economists about how long it will take to recover. Facebook reported $17.7 billion in revenue, which was up approximately 17% from a year ago. Analysts had expected $17.4 billion in topline revenue for Q1. However earnings-per-share fell somewhat short of expectations, as with Google’s results yesterday. Facebook Q1 2020 revenue Other key Facebook stats reported today:
April revenues flat. Facebook stated in its earnings release that it saw a sharp reduction in demand for advertising and a related decline in ad prices, which has been confirmed by third party data. In terms of ad-revenue stabilization, Facebook said, “After the initial steep decrease in advertising revenue in March, we have seen signs of stability reflected in the first three weeks of April, where advertising revenue has been approximately flat compared to the same period a year ago, down from the 17% year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2020.” Given the volatility in the advertising market Facebook said it would not provide revenue guidance for the duration of the year. Why we care. One can be wary of these results or celebrate them as a win for Facebook and the digital ad market as a whole, given the current uncertainty and negative indicators. Just like the other, major tech companies, Facebook has seen user growth and improved engagement — people at home all day are (re)turning to social media to stay connected — but those metrics have not translated into ad revenue growth. However, “stability” in this market is the new growth. There have been multiple anecdotal reports that, given the lower CPMs/CPCs and diminished competition, this is a great time to advertise on Facebook and Instagram. I’ve also heard that from some B2B marketers recently, including that some B2B campaigns are outperforming LinkedIn. The post Facebook Q1 earnings: Investors excited about ‘signs of stability’ in ad revenues appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Yg9Nry |
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