Spanish ban on advertising on public TV (10/08/2009)
WFA research shows insight into global audience measurement (31/07/2009)
Contagious: "The rise of own brands" (31/07/2009)
Bing to power Yahoo! as part of global search deal (31/07/2009)
BRICs well-placed for economic recovery (28/07/2009)
Marketers "slow to embrace social networks", but positive towards other social media
Date: 28/11/2008
Despite the cultural phenomenon that Facebook and MySpace have become in the past few years, 55% of CMOs said they're not too interested (22%), or not interested at all (33%), in incorporating these and similar social-networking sites into their marketing strategies, according to a survey by Epsilon.
Overall, strategic use of social-networking platforms also remains low, even among those who say they have interest in them. Only 10% percent of CMO survey respondents said they already are using these social sites in their marketing plans, the survey found.
"These sites narrowly appeal to college and high school students, providing a challenge as far as measuring results and yielding a limited amount of actionable data," said Steve Cone, CMO of Epsilon.
Marketing executives are much more interested in other elements of the social-media mix, such as internet forums (52%), webcasts and podcasts (47%), email (47%), blogs (37%) and webinars (52%). All of these approaches outscored Facebook and MySpace (35%), in terms of being social media elements that marketing executives said they are very interested or somewhat interested in using.
Other key survey results:
- CMOs bracing for budget reductions identified email as the channel they are least likely to cut back vs. any other tool in the traditional or digital marketing mix.
- While more than half of the companies already use consumer data mining, 23% more said that they plan to utilize the technology in the next 12 months.
- 55% of those not already employing web analytics plan to do so in the next 12 months.
- Customer loyalty and rewards programs remain polarizing, with 33% of companies already using them and 17% planning to use them in the next year, but 50% not using or planning to use.
Spending Down for 2009
The CMO survey results also indicate the economic crisis will diminish marketing spending in 2009. Some 93% of marketing executives said the current state of the economy will have a moderate or significant impact on their marketing efforts in the next few months. Regarding advertising expenditures, 70% said they'll decrease spending.
Source: MarketingCharts.com
WFA Comment: Use of social networking featured as an agenda topic at a recent Digital Network meeting. WFA members can request a copy of the meeting take-outs from Robert Dreblow: [email protected]
