NZ's Digital Universe

Roy Morgan held an event in Auckland last week to go through the findings of their latest research. It painted  a picture of New Zealand that is increasingly going digital, with nothing short of a revolution well under way.

Here are the top findings from the report:

1) Smartphone penetration and mobile internet is growing rapidly. 

Today, 68 percent of Smartphone owners use their mobile phone to access the internet and internet access via mobile phone has increased by 99 percent in the past 12 months.

2) Social media is used by the majority of New Zealanders

Over half (56 percent) of New Zealanders use Facebook in an average four week period. This equates to approximately two million New Zealanders aged 14+. Even more people use social media, if you include other growing platforms such as Google+ (up by 20 percent in the past six months), LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Twitter (which allows anyone to be a publisher and build an audience) is still an early adopter phenomenon. Only six percent of New Zealanders visit Twitter in an average four week period, but its growth continues and has in fact increased by 31 percent in the past 12 months. 

3) 27 percent of smartphone owners use their mobile for social networking

Given the growing prominence of smartphones, it is not surprising that social media use on mobile phones is growing so fast. 11 percent of smartphone owners in New Zealand visit Twitter in an average four week period. 

4) Digital media is quickly growing 

There are so many ways people can now access and read the news – via the printed edition, PCs, Tablets and Smartphones. Digital newspaper consumption, which has increased 112 percent in the past five years, is driving the total masthead readership of newspapers. 

Computer tablets like the iPad, which are now accessible to over half a million (570,000) New Zealanders 14+, allow readers to view a digital version of the newspaper in high resolution. 

5) Like print, television has new competitive threats (and opportunities)

YouTube is now used by 39 percent of New Zealanders 14+.

Of interest, the group most likely to stream video content is men aged 18-24 years, with seven percent of these young men never watching commercial television. This clearly demonstrates that some consumers cannot be reached with video content in traditional mediums but are embracing new forms of video or visual entertainment.

6) TV broadcasters have been quick to reach and embrace new digital platforms

Traditional television networks, however, have been quick to react and embrace new digital platforms. We are seeing them create social TV experiments and deliver greater audience engagement by linking TV programmes with the power of the smartphone and social media. 

7) Online shopping is now mainstream. 

Most of us are surprised to learn that Trademe is now one of New Zealand’s largest shopping outlets. Roy Morgan data shows that two million New Zealanders 14+ visit Trademe in an average four week period. Comparatively, 1.95 million New Zealanders shop (buy something) at the Warehouse in the same timeframe. 

With $5.6 billion spent in online shopping by New Zealanders in the last year, it’s clear that the internet, and the increased prevalence of smartphones and tablets, is impacting the way we shop and therefore the very fabric of retailing in New Zealand. 

8) Online payment systems, like PayPal, are increasingly being used by New Zealanders when they shop online

Almost one in five (19 percent) New Zealanders are using fast-growing online payment systems like PayPal while 30 percent are using credit cards online. This also means that banks and credit card companies are facing new competitive forces that didn’t exist a few years ago. 

9) The digital universe is not just impacting the way we shop, but also the way we pay our bills. 

36 percent of New Zealanders 14+ have gone online to pay household bills in the last 12 months, while only 10 percent pay with cash and 17 percent with a cheque. 

With the advent of the digital wallet – e.g. Google Wallet and the new iPhone iOS6 operating system – consumers will become more reliant on internet payment mechanisms and less reliant on traditional modes of payment such as cash and cheques. 

If you want to read the whole report, you can do so here

New ASA guidelines for social media use

New Zealand advertisers have averted the need for regulation of commercial messages on Facebook and Twitter.

The Advertising Standards Authority has issued guidelines short of a formal code for social media.

The move aims to make advertisers aware of potential issues regarding social media and head off complaints like those decisions against social media advertisers for VB Australia and Nike in the UK.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents online advertisers, contributed to the new guidelines effective from January 1 which will cover Facebook, Twitter and all social media.

But the clearest change of rules will be for Twitter users and advice that people who are paid to tweet should declare their affiliation.

The guidelines say that from January 1 they will have to add the hashtag #ad - making it clear the tweets are advertisements and subject to the ASA jurisdiction.

ASA chief executive Hilary Souter said everybody who received money from advertisers was not obliged to include the hashtag #ad.

"It's not black and white," she said.

There had been no complaints about undeclared advertising on social media in this country.

IAB general manager Alisa Higgins and leading social media consultant Michael Carney said they could not estimate the amount paid for tweeting but that it was widespread in New Zealand.

The chief executive of the Association of New Zealand advertisers, Lindsay Mouat, said the guidelines made it clearer for advertisers paying someone to endorse brands. "That is something that has tripped up some advertisers internationally."

Facebook charges $7 for personal promoted posts - what do you think?

Facebook announced on Wednesday U.S. users will now be able to promote their personal posts to friends for a fee, but the news is being met with mixed reactions.

Although testing first started in New Zealand in May and has since rolled out to more than 20 countries, those in the U.S. can now pay to make sure your network never misses a big update in your life, from a baby announcement to an event you’re organizing. But each promoted post will cost you $7.

Take part in the poll below to tell me what you think of it...

Mercedes lets #YouDrive

Social innovation is at an all time high and campaigns integrated with social media are the latest incarnation exemplified by the new Mercedes-Benz #YOUDRIVE Twitter campaign, which will let fans help shape the ending. Ever the innovator on digital, Mercedes-Benz is up 10 percent in Interbrand's just-announced 2012 Best Global Brands report.

TV viewers in the UK will ‘drive the action’ of a three-part story about the new Mercedes-Benz A-Class to be shown this weekend during commercial breaks in "The X Factor." A cat and mouse caper features a young music star (played by Top Boy actor Kane Robinson) aided by a female accomplice attempting to secure a secret gig that authorities are keen to close down.

Different scenarios give viewers the chance to ‘steer the action’ real-time in scenes shot on the streets of Portugal by Anthony Dod Mantle, whose movie credits include D.P. on Slumdog Millionaire.

“Our strategy is led by the way consumers now interact with advertising,” stated David George, Marketing Director, Mercedes-Benz UK. “People no longer want just to listen to brands, they want to interact with them, that’s critical.”

Twitter data showing the percentage of viewers who voted for each outcome will be integrated into the final ad and viewers will be directed to a custom YouTube channel, to view the ads and create their own. The campaign runs through December 2, and includes cinema, press and outdoor, and a promoted Twitter campaign next weekend to promote the activity.

Why it works...

One of the key drivers for social media is the human desire to play god. We all like to exert control over our world and to feel like we are able to influence outcomes and other people. That's why this sort of campaign is such an alluring proposition. Mercedes aren't just asking people what they think of their brand, they're actively allowing them to create that brand's image. But cleverly, they're not really having to give up much control to do it.

I think we'll see more and more of these types of campaigns over the coming year as brands work out how best to use the power of social media to empower their brand ambassadors.

Facebook not clicking for marketers

With Facebook's stock down over 40% since their May IPO, they have embarked on an aggressive campaign with the aim of persuading the market that their revenue streams are viable. There has been much debate recently as to the efficacy of Facebook advertising, something that Facebook's execs are keen to defend.

In order to prop up their stock valuation Facebook have been forced to be more overt about their advertising placements. It's clear that more of the platform is for sale now than has ever been and regular Facebook users will have noticed the increased presence of sponsored posts in their newsfeeds, both on desktop and mobile. But the fact of that matter is that people don't click on them as much as they do on traditional digital adverts.

The most recent figures I've seen have the average click-through-rate for an ad on the internet at around 0.1%. Facebook currently delivers a CTR of half of this at 0.051%. Google's ad network on the other hand delivers four times the average click through with 0.4%, making Google's advertising a huge eight times as effective as that of Facebook.

It's pretty hard for Facebook to argue with these numbers, so instead they've tried to move the goalposts. After arguing for years that their platform is about engagement, influence and conversation, they now want to move away from using clicks as a metric and instead concentrate on the efficacy of Facebook as a reach and awareness platform.

This seems somewhat disingenuous to me. I heard Paul Adams, Facebook's own Global Head of Brand and Design and one of the leading thinkers on the emerging social web, talk specifically about how platforms like Facebook will mark the end of distraction mass advertising as we have traditionally known it. He talked about the billboard as an example of a dying advertising format as it was designed purely to distract people from doing the thing they should be concentrating on doing. He talked about the TVC as an example of marketing arrogance, putting up a barrier in front of what the consumer really wanted to get at. And most of all, he talked about engagement being the real king.

Where have these mantras disappeared to? Concentrating on Facebook's potential as a reach and awareness platform by placing adverts in the centre of people's newsfeeds is doing exactly what a billboard does. It is putting a barrier between the consumer and what they want to be doing. And it's not engagement.

I'm sure there are some good reasons why Facebook advertising doesn't get the same click-throughs as Googles. Firstly, on Facebook a user is looking to socialise. They're not shopping or searching for products or services in the way they might be when exposed to a Google ad. But changing the numbers to suit the story can't be the right strategy for correcting this. If Facebook want to make their advertising more attractive, they need to make platform changes that allow those ads to appear in greater context. Perhaps putting such weight on the advertising being in social context simply doesn't work.

I talked some time back about Facebook being on the brink of plucking defeat from the jaws of victory. That prediction may have been somewhat facetious, but one thing's for sure, their future is looking less certain than it was a few years back.

The changing face of news

Andy Carvin: "I get uncomfortable when people refer my twitter feed as a newswire. It’s not a newswire. It’s a newsroom. It’s where I’m trying to separate fact from fiction, interacting with people. That’s a newsroom."

Flickr photo of Tunisian protests by marcovdz

July 6th 2005 - I found myself stuck beneath the armpits of revelling Londoners as thousands celebrated the announcement that London was to host the 2012 Olympic Games. It was one of the great moments for my home city and one I'll never forget. Sadly, the following day was to prove even more memorable as four coordinated bomb attacks brought London to a standstill.

At that time I was working for GMTV as an interactive producer. I took a camera down to Trafalgar Square on the day we won the Olympic bid and we ran a picture gallery on the GMTV website, alongside an appeal for viewer photos from Trafalgar Square and their messages of congratulations. We also had a poll asking whether Brits were happy that London won the bid - believe it or not, it was not universally supported.

The following morning I was in the GMTV gallery when news of a problem on the underground hit the wires. At first it was being reported as a probable electrical fault. Within minutes we had a line to the Met Police and Transport For London as news of a second Circle Line problem and another on the Picadilly Line filtered through. Scrambling to get reporters in place and phonos with spokespeople, we broke the news to the nation that London had become a target for a series of co-ordinated attacks.

Just seven years ago, as two of the biggest stories in London's recent history broke in the space of two days, the public relied entirely on news publishers to get their information. Could you imagine if those two stories broke in London now? How would you learn about it first?

It's more than possible that the answer to this is through social media. At 1.30pm on July 6th, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr and more would have been full of pictures of Brits draped around the Union Jack, videos of M People blasting out "Search for the Hero", messages to friends and family declaring "I was there", jokes, pithy commentary, informed opinion and celebrity endorsements. The nation would find out about the story simply by virtue of the fact that their ears were open. It would be difficult to avoid the conversation.

On July 7th, this would have been even more pronounced. The Twittersphere would have been full of chatter the minute the first explosion was heard (though unlike South Korea, there is no internet access on London's Tube). People would have been jumping on Facebook to let their friends know that they were okay - I had to call all my family members individually - and to share pictures and videos taken on their smartphones.

So does this mean that the importance of traditional media is dwindling? Simply put, no. While traditional news organisations are to an extent losing control over the message, they are more important than ever. 

The problem with social media (and the citizen journalism output that goes hand in hand with it) is that it is entirely unregulated. The job of a journalist is to report verified facts. So the job of contemporary news telling, at least in part, is to become a social curator. While a news publisher may no longer be the first voice in the news conversation, they need to be the first trusted voice. It's a semantic difference, but one that could spell success or defeat for news organisations.

News should no longer be thought of as a product. It is now an always-on and collaborative process. News publishers need to listen as much as they speak. And then they need to filter the pertinent from the noise. They should enable the news consumer to find what's important to them quickly, easily and always accurately.

Reddit's coverage of the Toronto shooting a month ago makes for interesting reading and a possible glimpse of the news output of the future.What is unique about Reddit's style of storytelling versus traditional journalism it that it is an uneditorialised aggregation of updates available from those involved in the incident.

Fact checking is available to the reader right from consumption, thanks to the inclusion of links to the sources themselves. And while it may be somewhat difficult to read at first glance, it actually includes context that no other news publisher had when it was published. It included hard-hitting tweets from people attending the party about the potential for violence before the shooting even occurs. It also used messages posted by those involved to talk about the shooting being part of a possible gang war, including links to individual tweets from people threatening more violence. There were tweets and YouTube videos posted by members of a gang that one of the victims was apparently associated with.

Thanks to the curation of updates from those intimately involved in the story, there is more depth and context to this narrative than any other mainstream new publisher was able to produce. Ultimately, that makes for a more human story and that's extremely powerful.

Journalists need to stop seeing themselves as gatekeepers of information and start to look at journalism as a collaborative effort involving all kinds of different sources. Those who learn how to make use of all these tools will end up producing better journalism. They'll end up producing stories with greater depth and context. They'll end up telling stories that resonate more deeply with their readers on a base human level. And news publishers who have these journalists on board, will end up winning in the war of the changing worlds.

Aussie Court Rules that Facebook is Advertising

But are you really?

The world of social media is an ever evolving one and as brands work out how to best use new technologies to create word of mouth around their products, the goal posts are endlessly being moved. Never more so than in Australia, where this week a landmark court case has made companies sit up and take notice of what is being said on their Facebook pages in ways that they never have before.

The Australian Advertising Standards Board this week ruled that Facebook is an advertising medium, and as such, that company pages must comply with pertinent codes and laws. So far so good. However, one ramification of this ruling is that a company would not only be responsible for their own page posts, but also for any public posts that appear within their page environment. What this means is that any consumer posting sexist, racist or factually inaccurate information on branded Facebook pages are no longer a nuisance, they are a legal risk.

Brands have long argued that Facebook isn't an advertising medium, but rather a networking tool that facilitates interaction between the customer (or consumer) and the brand. However, the Australian Courts disagree and so now brands will have to ensure that the only content that appears on their page is content that they would be happy to distribute on other advertising platforms. A quick look through much of the user generated commentary on branded pages and it will become clear how far this is from the current position.

So what will this mean for brands? Well, brands will have to resource their pages accordingly to ensure that every incoming piece of user information that makes it onto the page is read and verified for legal compliance. They will have to react quickly to anything that is inaccurate or that falls foul of advertising standards. Whether this means deleting or simply putting the record straight is yet to be seen. And how quickly the law will expect this retraction to occur is up for debate.

The question is whether or not brands will bother to do this. I think there's general acceptance that using social media to produce positive digital word of mouth is beneficial to a brand. However, if this positive word of mouth now has the potential to put the brand at risk of legal issues, some may consider it too risky or high maintenance and revert to more traditional media through which to generate social buzz. Alternatively, we may simply see a move to restrict the consumer voice through these social channels, which would negate the whole concept of social marketing.

What is for sure is that brands can no longer afford to take a hands-off approach to what consumers are saying on their pages. If you build it, they will talk. And not listening to that talk is no longer an option.

It's important to note that this ruling has been made in Australia and does not apply to New Zealand... yet.