Recently the IAB, in conjunction with Trendstream and Lightspeed research, presented the findings of the Global Web Index research at the Future Web event held in London.
On the night three speakers presented the key findings they had found after diving into the data. First up was Tom Smith, who previously had been heavily involved with the excellent Universal McCann Wave reports. Tom outlined the reasoning behind the research and presented the most important findings. Particularly interesting were the usage stats of various online tools and the granular data on country level. For example, nearly 60% of the respondents had visited a forum in the last month yet less than 10% had been on Twitter.
The research indicated that adoption was driven by three key factors: Culture, Generation and Gender. Some other intriguing stats showed us that people would consider phoning up 9% of their Facebook contacts to go for a beer, whilst this was only 3% and 0.3% for LinkedIn and Twitter respectively.
One of the most important pieces of advice came from the data at country level – it is clear that each country had its own level of adoption, as well as driving factors behind usage of online tools. For example, people in the UK are far more likely to use an auction site then web browsers from Brazil and people in South Korea are more likely to search the internet to stay up to date with the latest news, whilst Canadians are more likely to do research or try and find products. As such it is important to tailor your campaigns based on the traits of the local population.
I’ve embedded Tom’s presentation below
Next up was Julian Smith, Group Director Analytics and Insight at Mediaedge:cia, who explored the Active Participants data in more detail. He segmented the data by focusing on the research participants who showed high levels of online engagement through writing blogs, managing a website, posting on Twitter and uploading a video. He called this group the committed contributors.
Thirty five percent of the participants found themselves in this committed contributors group. As indicated in the previous presentation, generation is a good indicator of the level of activity with 16-24 year olds being the most active and activity decreasing with each passing generation.
It may come as no surprise that the more active people were more often asked for recommendations on issues such as films, music and mobile phones. They are also more likely to share their opinion on these issues in an online environment.
The most important finding is that these people are also more open to advertising and branded messages. Not only that, they are also more likely to actively look for information on branded websites, company profiles on Facebook and other official company outlets online.
See his full presentation below
Last up was Anita Caras, head of research at Microsoft Advertising. Key elements of her presentation focused around how brands can be relevant in the new media landscape. Her recommendations: entertain them, hook them up with like minded people and improve their knowledge.
If I was to distil all the information from the night and the research discussed it all comes down to a few very important recommendations:
1) Understand your markets. Usage and adoptions is different for each country, so your campaign needs to be tailored to these regional differences.
2) Be aware of generational differences – younger people tend to be more active than older folks. Keep this in mind when drafting an online strategy – know where and how your target audience communicates.
3) Find the Active Participants – these people are both more likely to share and regarded as trustworthy sources of information
4) People don’t dislike advertising by definition – it’s just up to you to be relevant and add value to the exchange. People are willing to trust your brand, so don’t abuse that trust.
5) Be relevant. This follows up on the previous point, there is a place for brands online, but only if they are willing to play by the rules of the community.
