Do you speak social

1

March 2012

Do@you#speak social?!

How to build leadership for brands in a social world and measure it

DO@YOU#SPEAK SOCIAL?!

Ebuzzing Ltd | 5th Floor East - Portland House, 4 Great Portland Street, London - W1W9QJ | p. +44 207 467 8582

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2011 should definitely stay in digital history as the year when social media overcame portals as

the most engaging activity online and gained traction as an advertising vehicle.

26% of total time spent by Internet users in the top five European countries is on social

network or a blog platform.1This share is likely to increase with the rise of mobile social

networkers, up from 69% in comparison to last year.2

Obviously, Facebook maintains a strong lead across Europe, covering two thirds of the

Internet population, but it is challenged by some local networks and vertical networks,

registering skyrocketing growth.3

Six months after its launch, Google + is amassing close to an audience of 30 million

monthly unique users, but seems to be far less engaging than Facebook with only 2

minutes per visitor (compared to 6 hours and 47 minutes spent on Facebook). 3

Micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Tumblr, which experienced a 107 % growth compared

to April 2011, are stirring up the blog category.3

US properties are prevailing the top European ranking, followed by Russian properties,

Ebuzzing being the first European social media group.

Last year, social networking really gained traction as an advertising vehicle, with 41% increase

in ad revenues Worldwide according to emarketer, that forecasts a 48.5% growth in 2012.

The top 5 awarded creatives in 2011 were all powered by social media. To follow their path,

brands have to embrace the shifts and play with the seven golden rules in the social game.

1. Forget time schedule and get online, as the internet never sleeps

2. Work at the level of individuals rather than at site level

3. Unleash the power of social data

4. Place video at the heart of your advertising strategy

5. Think about value for the users rather than message

6. Don’t expect too much on planning but do on reporting

7. Track the social impact of your campaign centrally and globally

1 Source Comscore Media Metrix, September 2011

2 Source Comscore, Connected Europe, January 2012

3 Source Comscore : Media Metrix Europe, January 2012



From a media planning and reporting perspective, the social media revolution creates a

massive flow of new statistics and sources, and a call for analysis and decoding.

With the Ebuzzing Labs, we offer a set of tools that provides quantitative and qualitative

insights for our clients about their brands and competitors.

A blog planning tool, which relies on our exclusive database of 1.2 million blogs we

index and update on a daily basis across 5 European countries.

A monitoring tool that collects all the social data available on various platforms for

more than 2000 brands in Europe and aggregates it in one place.

A reporting tool that measures the performance of social campaigns in terms of

bought and earned media, tracks the comments, shares or other conversations taking

place in real time.

At Ebuzzing, we believe that social analytics will heavily influence digital but also

traditional planning decisions in the future.



TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

1. ESTABLISHING A NEW MEDIA ORDER 2

1.1. Social media, the new leading category 2

1.2. Meeting with the top social players in Europe 5

1.3. Social media gaining share in ad revenues 6

2. SHIFTING FROM DIGITAL TO SOCIAL ADVERTISING 9

2.1. From time schedule to the social pulse 9

2.2. From media planning to people planning 10

2.3. From audience data to social data 10

2.4. From ads to brand(ed) content 11

2.5. From opportunity to see to opportunity to share 12

2.6. From planning to reporting 13

2.7. From share of voice to share of choice 14

3. MAKING SOCIAL ANALYTICS EASY AND USEFUL 15

3.1 Exclusive blog planning 15

3.2 Smart monitoring tool 20

3.3 Advanced Reporting tool 23

CONCLUSION 26


Ebuzzing Ltd | 5th Floor East - Portland House, 4 Great Portland Street, London - W1W9QJ | p. +44 207 467 8582 1

INTRODUCTION

The social revolution is continually transforming the online experience by providing new ways to

connect people and creating opportunities to share information and publish content. This

prevailing trend is having a great impact on the media and advertising landscape, overthrowing the

established order.

2011 should definitely stay in marketing history as the year when social media overcame portals as

the most engaging online activity, and the first category in terms of share of impressions in Europe.

It also marked the year of great campaigns, with a social power engine, such as the Old Spice man

or Heineken’s Man of the World.

At Ebuzzing, we strongly believe that social media shouldn’t be considered as a site category or an

add-on to a campaign, but rather as a disrupting force and a key ingredient of the marketing mix.

If Facebook is the third country in the world… then social media is a new language that every

marketer should learn, embracing the changes to grow the leadership of brands.

Well, then …do you speak social? If not, you can always use our Ebuzzing Labs to interpret the

signals! Marketers will find a set of tools to understand what is going on, listen to what consumers

say, meet the influencers and track the impact of their advertising, all in one place.

Following this path, you will be able to unleash the real marketing power of social media, build the

leadership of your brand…and measure it!

Caroline Hugonenc

Head of Research and Planning



1. ESTABLISHING A NEW MEDIA ORDER

As a publisher, Ebuzzing is taking part in this evolution of the media landscape, offering users a

cutting edge platform to publish and distribute content amongst their network. From this

perspective, we have identified some crucial changes that set the scene for a new media order.

1.1. Social media, the new leading category

We are entering into a new era, in which portals are no longer the only sites that can deliver

reach.

IN EUROPE4

More than 92% of internet users visit social networking sites every month (compared with

93% of users visiting a search/navigation sites and 97% visiting portals).

76% of internet users visit a site within the community category, which is bigger than email

(69% of monthly reach).

The blog category is very close with 63% of monthly reach, ahead of the entertainment

category or TV category (respectively 51 and 49%).

Spain and UK users are the champions of social networking, with almost 100% reach!

Source: Comscore Media Metrix, September 2011

4 Source : Comscore MediaMetrix, September 2011

98%

98%

93%

90%

89%

87%

Spain

United Kingdom

Italy

France

Germany

Worldwide

Reach of social networking



The reach of the portals’ homepages is decreasing, which makes them less relevant than they

used to be for branding campaigns. In the meantime, Facebook has increased its daily reach,

ranked second, just after Google in France.

Reach of the Home Page and % Change (Dec 08- Dec11)

Source: Médiamétrie/ NielsenNetratings, France

Furthermore, the social media category has dethroned the portals as the first category in terms of

share of time spent. In December 2011, 26% of total time spent by Internet users in Europe was on

a social network or a blog platform.

Source: Comscore Media Metrix EU5, September 2011

19%

27%

36%

14%

22%

34%

Yahoo! Homepage (C)

MSN Homepage (C)

Orange Homepage (C)

Dec. 11

Dec. 08

-6,4%

-19.9%

-25,5%



The rise of smartphone and tablet adoption is likely to enhance the leading position of social

media in the online landscape. In the top 5 European countries, mobile penetration has

reached 42%, a 13% jump over the last year and social networking is a very popular activity

amongst smartphone users: 57.4 million smart phone users are reported to visit social

networking in October 2011, up from 69% compared to last year5.

Source: Comscore Mobile Lens EU 5 EU5, 3 month ending Sept 2010 vs. 3 month ending Sept2011

Social networking mobile usage seems to be very promising: in the UK, the mobile user spends on

average more time on Facebook and Twitter than the classic web user.6

5 Source: Comscore, Connected Europe, January 2012

6 Source: GSMA MMM and Comscore MediaMetrix UK



1.2. Meeting with the top social players in Europe

Obviously, Facebook maintains a strong lead across Europe, covering two thirds of the Internet

population, but it is challenged by some local networks in non-English speaking countries, like

VKontakte or Odnoklassniki in Russia, and also by vertical networks like Linkedin or Deviantart,

a social network devoted to artists.

Six months after its launch, Google + is amassing close to an audience of 30 million monthly

unique users, but seems to be far less engaging than Facebook with only 2 minutes per visitor

(compared with 6 hours and 47 minutes per Facebook users).

Micro blogging sites like Twitter or Tumblr, experienced a 107 % growth comparing to April

2011, stirring up the blog category.

US properties are prevailing the top European ranking, Ebuzzing being the first European social

media group.

Source Comscore, January 2012 Nationality CategoryTotal Unique

Visitors (000)

% change

vs april

2011

% Reach

Average

MInutes

per Visitor

Total Internet : Total Audience 383 720 5,0% 100,0 1 785,1

Social Media 370 512 5,7% 96,6 493,9

1 FACEBOOK.COM US Social Network 261 024 10,2% 68,0 409,0

2 Blogger US Blog platform 130 338 23,4% 34,0 8,6

3 Federated Media Publishing US Blog platform 87 242 NA 22,7 6,5

4 Vkontakte Russia Social Network 69 349 48,4% 18,1 462,3

5 Odnoklassniki Russia Social Network 52 312 59,6% 13,6 385,3

6 TWITTER.COM US Micro blogging 50 502 63,8% 13,2 17,6

7 Technorati Media US Social Media 40 928 8,4% 10,7 3,0

8 LINKEDIN.COM US Social Network 31 508 42,6% 8,2 16,5

9 Google Plus US Social Network 29 350 NA 7,6 2,3

10 Windows Live Profile US Social Network 27 806 -15,0% 7,2 4,1

11 Mail.Ru - My World Russia Social Network 26 648 29,1% 6,9 28,7

12 LIVEJOURNAL.COM* US Blog platform 22 222 14,5% 5,8 14,5

13 Ebuzzing Europe Social Media 20 605 5,0% 5,4 4,4

14 Myspace US Community site 20 457 -13,9% 5,3 5,2

15 gutefrage.net GmbH Germa,y Q&A site 18 660 38,3% 4,9 2,8

16 FOTOSTRANA.RU Russia Social Network 17 784 NA 4,6 9,7

17 DEVIANTART.COM US Social Network 16 974 40,1% 4,4 17,9

18 NK.PL Pologne Social Network 16 831 -1,3% 4,4 92,7

19 BADOO.COM US Dating 15 445 23,2% 4,0 85,8

20 TUMBLR.COM* US Micro blogging 14 956 107,5% 3,9 45,9



There are a number of newcomers in the social network or in the publishing platform

categories, that are registering skyrocketing growth, boosting the category and the online

media landscape overall.

Watch list of rising stars in E5

20 sites not yet in the top 20 with over 50% growth in the last 10 months

1.3. Social media gaining share in ad revenues

Social media has a great impact on all media players, but it is especially driving fundamental

changes in the advertising landscape.

Last year, social networking really gained traction as an advertising vehicle, with 41% increase in ad

revenues according to emarketer that forecasts a 48.5% growth in 2012.



Facebook is the biggest player in their category, capturing 68% of the revenues of social networking platforms in the US.

Even more significant, the world’s most popular social network is also the first publisher in terms of

ad impressions in the US, ahead of the portals, showing signs of decline.



"If Facebook can overthrow dictatorships, it certainly can mess with a media plan."

Tom Bedacarre, AKQA CEO7

As social media is getting more reach and attention from users, it draws investments from

advertisers, even if the share of spend is not yet in line with the share of time. But at Ebuzzing, we

believe social media is more than a category of sites; it is a disrupting force and a key ingredient of

the communication and marketing mix. The most admired advertisers and agencies, like Nike or

Heineken and Wieden & Kennedy, have already followed this path.

The Most Awarded Commercials in the World in 2011

1. Nike | Write the Future (Wieden+Kennedy, Amsterdam),

2. Heineken | The Entrance (Wieden+Kennedy, Amsterdam)

3. T-Mobile | Welcome Back (Saatchi & Saatchi, London)

4. Old Spice Body Wash | Questions / Boat (Wieden+Kennedy, Portland)

5. Google Chrome | Speed Tests (BBH/Google Creative Lab, New York)

6. Volkswagen Passat | The Force (Deutsch LA/Lowe & Partners, Los Angeles) Source: Gunner Report 2011

7http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-replaces-google-disruptor-online-

advertising/232987/?utm_source=mediaworks&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-replaces-google-disruptor-online-advertising/232987/?utm_source=mediaworks&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-replaces-google-disruptor-online-advertising/232987/?utm_source=mediaworks&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage



2. SHIFTING FROM DIGITAL TO SOCIAL ADVERTISING

With social media, brands are said to have lost power, as it now rests in the hands of consumers.

But we can also see this evolution as a great opportunity to enhance their leadership with

compelling advertising. Of course, this cannot be achieved without embracing the major shifts,

driven by social media.

2.1. From time schedule to the social pulse

It’s getting very hard for media companies to beat the social web, as anybody who is involved in an

event can break a scoop with a simple tweet. Moreover, brands are facing great pressure to

shorten their response rate or even to communicate in real time. Coca-Cola met the challenge

during the Super Bowl, broadcasting a video on Facebook during the game, featuring two bears

reacting to what was happening on the field. It was a real success for the brand, attracting more

than half a million users to the site. 8

8 http://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/coke-s-polar-bowl-draws-bigger-crowd-expected/232560/



2.2. From media planning to people planning

Social media is powered by people, taking part in the communication process, creating or

distributing messages mentioning the brand.

If people are the media, they have an audience and marketers should be able to quantify and

qualify it, using a new range of metrics like influence.

It also means scanning the web to identify top influencers among their fans and followers, and

consumers that are the most engaged with the brand. Some advertisers are already including them

in the communication process, on collaborative platforms like Eyeka or Tongal in the US.9

2.3. From audience data to social data

As we rely on the web for a wider range of activities and share more and more information with

our networks, marketers can mine the social data for insights and use a wider range of targeting

criteria.

For example, the new version of the Facebook’s “sponsored stories” ads allows targeting based on

their video-watching, song-listening and gaming habits.

The message can also be adapted in terms of format, time and place, making ads more relevant to

consumers.

“Aggregating, then mining buyer and audience data to allow personalized product development,

marketing and messaging is the key to unlocking adaptive marketing gold. That's going to be the

next space race for marketers and their agencies.”

Antony Young, CEO of Mindshare North America and Norm Johnston, co-global digital lead of Mindshare Worldwide.10

9 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/167348/lego-goes-social-for-hero-factory-idea.html

10 http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/adaptive-marketing-set-big-thing/232673/



2.4. From ads to brand(ed) content

Brands face a huge creative challenge in this user centric world, which is to produce ads worth

sharing, as Chris Anderson put it11. Tomorrow’s winners will not be the ones with the biggest

budget but the ones getting the most engagement from users. And this engagement comes in

exchange of the value of the content or experience they offer: it is a win-win advertising deal.

At the same time, the pace of social media and the intensity of sharing is shortening the lifetime

value of content: brands have a great opportunity to fuel users with their own content or sponsor

desired ones.

Accordingly, the view through and share through rate are the new standard metrics to measure the

performance of a campaign. To support this change of model, a new function has been created in

agencies; the EMD, or Earned Media Director, who makes sure that brand advertising resonates in

the social sphere.

"My job is not about crossing our fingers and hoping for free earned media. Our job, as a

department, and really collectively as an agency, is about strategically planning and executing

integrated brand content programs that seamlessly tie together shareable content, thoughtful

earned media and PR, and paid media that gets our content seen and socialized."12

Craig Batzofin, Earned Media Director and Executive Producer at agency Evolution Bureau

11

http://www.ted.com/initiatives/aws 12

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/159452/?print#ixzz1nJxqMmGN

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/159452/?print#ixzz1nJxqMmGN



2.5. From opportunity to see to opportunity to share

Marketers can buy Impressions and GRPs, but they can’t really buy likes and shares. So, what is the

best way to engage an audience? For most advertisers today, social video advertising, which is

defined as video content distributed in a social context, is at the heart of their strategy to generate

earned and owned media.

Even the luxury sector, which was previously very cautious towards online advertising, is massively

investing in this format, in which brands can express their creativity. Social video advertising is

becoming a must have, as much as a nice print ad in the September issue of a glossy magazine.

Social Video: Over 5.6 Billion Views in 2012

According to Visible Measures, over 5.6 billion views have been delivered in 2012, 4.1 billion of

them coming from paid media, and 1.5 billion driven directly by audiences. Over 980 million of

these views come from copies that audiences have reposted across the Web. Nearly 540 million

views are from new content created by audiences, including mixes, mashups, spoofs, parodies, and

more.



Source: Social Video, Visible Measures

There are five main reasons why social video advertising is exploding:

1. It can be retrieved any time, even after the campaign is over.

2. It can be seen on every device: phone, tablet, or connected TV.

3. It can be sequenced and is not limited in time and space.

4. It is a very engaging format, generating comments, shares, likes, and therefore

additional visibility for the brand.

5. It increases branding metrics and drives visits to the brand website.

2.6. From planning to reporting

In the age of trading desks with software allowing users to buy online ads in real time on a very

specific target, and self-serving auction based ad platform like Google or Facebook, the traditional

media planning tools estimating reach on sites based on panel audience data from last month

seems to be less and less relevant to predict the performance of a campaign. On the other side,

auditing is gaining ground on the market. Today, Ebuzzing guarantees the delivery of campaigns by

working with an ad verification tool, and is dedicated to make social media accountable.



2.7. From share of voice to share of choice

Today, the position of a brand in the social media environment cannot be assessed using

traditional ad tracking tools. The overall conversation and mentions about a brand and the impact

of its communication should be monitored and benchmarked against its competitors.

“Here we are in the digital age and what we don’t know seems to outweigh what we do

know...The rapid development of new platforms and devices, has pretty much obliterated what

was once an orderly process with defined metrics. The industry needs a “uniform process,” and

one that is built to digital-age specifications and not reliant on traditional mass media exposure

metrics.” Bob Barocci, ARF president

Moreover, advertising in a social world means potentially talking to a worldwide audience, which

can be a great opportunity for marketers to see their ad travelling. It means that reporting has to

be done across borders.

To benefit from this major shift and master the social game, brands have to follow seven golden

rules.

SEVEN GOLDEN RULES TO MASTER THE SOCIAL GAME

1. Forget time schedules and get online, as the internet never sleeps.

2. Work at the level of the individual rather than at a site level.

3. Unleash the power of social data.

4. Place video at the heart of your advertising strategy.

5. Think value for users rather than message.

6. Don’t expect too much on planning but do on reporting.

7. Track the social impact of your campaign centrally and globally.



3. MAKING SOCIAL ANALYTICS EASY AND USEFUL

From a media planning and reporting perspective, the social media revolution creates new needs

that are not fully covered yet. Here is a list of questions that you may have had and not found a

proper answer to:

What is the most interesting influencer in a given community?

What are my competitors doing in social media?

What are people and media saying about my ad?

How do I measure the performance of a campaign in terms of bought, but also earned

and owned media?

With the Ebuzzing Labs, we are providing a set of tools that will answer these critical questions in

one place, and make social analytics easy.

3.1 Exclusive blog planning

Audience measurement based on panel data will never be able to produce figures at a blog level.

However, marketers are expecting ways to evaluate scientifically the audience and influence of a

site/blog in order to select partners for PR events or distribute their video content.

With the Ebuzzing Labs, we offer a blog planning tool, which allows you to evaluate blogs using

quantitative but also qualitative criteria. It relies on our exclusive database of more than 1.2 million

blogs we index and update on a daily basis across 5 European countries. Our proprietary algorithm

produces this blog ranking for 30 categories, taking into account publication activity, backlinks and

social interactions via Facebook and Twitter.



If you are looking for insights on the top influencers for a category like beauty, you will be able to:

1. Have a comprehensive view of the most influential bloggers

You will find a ranking of the blogs, with a quick description of their content and trends.



2. At a second level, you are able to dig into the database and get some more information

for a selected blog.

ID of the blog

Analysing the evolution of the ranking



Analysing the publication activity

Checking the affinity with your product or thematic

The topic cloud gives a good picture of what the main themes of the blog are, thanks to the

semantic analysis of the posts published.



Evaluating the editorial value through articles and videos published



3.2 Smart monitoring tool

Social media is a fast moving area, which can be quite difficult to monitor for marketers. As a

matter of fact, each new platform generates a number of tools measuring different kinds of

statistics: for YouTube, the number of views; for Facebook, the number of fans and the

engagement rate; for Twitter the number of followers; for Google +, the number of circles, and so

on …

They end up facing an incredible number of tools and metrics from players that are not always

reliable and transparent. Moreover, they have a fragmented view of their position in social media.

At Ebuzzing, we collect all social data available on more than 2000 brands in Europe and aggregate

it in one place. We also process a social ranking of brands based on social listening analysis.

Evolution of the number of fans for Apple

You also have access to a detailed report based on what blogs and the media published about the

brand.



Publications mentioning the brand



On a daily basis we retrieve all the videos displayed in an article or a blog mentioning a brand.

We also retrieve all the videos published by a brand on its official channels across platforms.

Video published by the brand

Using our social video and social brand monitoring, we can have a very good picture of the overall trends, and benchmark your brand against its competitors.



3.3 Advanced Reporting tool

The media owned, bought and earned is a powerful model used by agencies to sell their plan to

marketers, but most of the time, only the bought media is tracked. When earned media is

measured, reporting often consists of a list of raw numbers, which are not put into perspective.

At Ebuzzing, we measure the performance of social campaigns in terms of bought and earned

media, and track the comments, shares or other conversation taking place in real time on social

channels (Twitter, forums and blogs) and on traditional media sites.

Publications mentioning the campaign by channel

This will allow you to follow the virality of a social video campaign and identify what are the key

drivers and influencers in the distribution process.



Identifying the influencers

Monitoring the share of voice

We also track the comments on creative for social video campaigns and provide conversation

sentiment analysis on them.

Finally, we are able to assess the value of the media earned during the campaign.



Valuing the media earned

We consider our Ebuzzing Labs a major achievement, as we are able to provide quantitative and

qualitative insights to our clients about their brands and competitors.

But we also see it as a work in progress as we are always updating it in a consistent way to

integrate platforms or metrics that make sense on a brand’s perspective.



CONCLUSION

At Ebuzzing we believe that the social revolution is going to have a greater impact on the

advertising industry than the search revolution, which happened ten years ago, because search is a

part of digital, when social is a part of media.

This gives a really good reason for advertisers and agencies to embrace the new advertising model

and create a standard of measurement and planning, based on social data and engagement

metrics.

With Shiv Singh, Head of Digital for Pepsi Co Beverages, we take the bet that social analytics will

heavily influence digital but also traditional planning decision in the future.

“With technologies from companies like Blue Fin and Networked Insights, I now know which TV

shows (and which Pepsi ads) triggered the most social engagement online. I also know which TV

shows were most engaging for Pepsi consumers specifically. You can bet that information will

heavily influence planning decisions in the future. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that in the future

the metric GRP (which stands for Gross Rating Points and which accounts for reach and

frequency) will look something like a "GRPE" with the "E" meaning "engagement." capturing

how social a particular TV show is. As advertisers, we will place a premium on shows that have a

high "E" component.” Shiv Singh, Global Head of Digital for PepsiCo Beverages

13

13

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/the_new_role_of_television_adv.html

Do you speak social

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