Digital news this week has been corking – nothing massive, but all very interesting and plenty that has flown under the radar.
Updates come from Google, Uber, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Alibaba and Tencent.
Here’s what you missed…
We’ve got some cracking stats for you this week, including news about Amazon’s marketing budget, Olympic advertising, AI funding and so much more.
For further insight, download the Internet Statistics Compendium.
No brand social media team will be able to avoid the Olympics over the coming weeks.
But if you’re in a last-minute panic, some tips I learned at the coalface in 2012 might be of help.
Ahead of the opening ceremony this Friday, Olympic excitement is building.
So, how are the biggest ads faring online?
The Olympic Games and million-dollar marketing campaigns go hand in hand.
Official sponsors like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s pay mega bucks for the privilege of plastering their logos all over athletes and official Olympics merchandise.
Cadbury UK certainly made a splash when it showed up as one of the early adopters of Google Plus.
Despite its near immediate success on the platform (the brand gained 1.2m followers in a matter of months) many others have been slow to get on board with the not-so-new social network.
I wanted to share with you how Cadbury has used the platform to take its content marketing strategy to the next level.
Now that the Paralympics has finished, let’s take a moment to reflect on the digital legacy left by London 2012, which has delivered the first truly digital Olympic and Paralympic experience.
The summer of sport saw ambitious projects from two of the main broadcasters, BBC and C4, and the rather more controversial, official London 2012 site.
And, for pretty much the first time, a range of mobile and tablet apps to support our desire to keep up to date on the move.
No-one can fail to have been inspired by the 2012 Olympics we have just witnessed. Sports men and women competing at the top of their game to win the highest prize possible in sport.
They invest years preparing for the moment they go for gold. It is humbling and also motivating to witness that determination to be the best.
While reflecting on the efforts of the Olympic athletes, I believe there are some parallels with brands. Here are three of them…
Nike managed to outperform official Olympic sponsor Adidas on social media during the Games, generating more tweets and pulling in more new Facebook fans.
However Adidas had the last laugh, as it achieved a much bigger spike in traffic during the two weeks.
Non-sponsor Nike was particularly visible around London during the Olympics with a campaign that celebrated everyday athletes. It bought up hundreds of billboards around the city and on the tube featuring the hashtag ‘#findgreatness’.
Adidas, which spent tens of millions of pounds to be an official sponsor, ran a campaign featuring Team GB athletes and the hashtag ‘#takethestage’.
If you’re an avid user of popular social media sites, there’s a decent chance you’ve been exposed to the significant criticism that’s been leveled at NBC over its tape-delayed coverage of the Olympics.
While the media giant is live streaming events online, NBC’s rationale for airing the biggest events on a broadcast tape delay is simple: it can earn far more advertising dollars by capturing prime time eyeballs. That’s important given that NBC isn’t guaranteed to make a profit from the Olympics given the costs associated with airing them.
I read a great piece by Nick Donelly on the Usability Hell website, showing the sheer UX nightmare that is the London 2012 ticket website.
I also heard on Five Live yesterday that, though more tickets are being released to fill in the empty spaces seen at venues, people can’t just turn up on the day, they need to book online.
This means they have to face one of the worst ticketing websites ever…
If you have searched for information around the Olympics online then it’s likely you will have come across Google’s new interface that contains a huge amount of information about the Games.
It is essentially a giant Olympics website containing thousands of pages that are integrated into the SERPs.
As highlighted by marketing consultant Dan Barker in his blog post, Google delivers so much information that it removes much of the reason for searchers to visit the official London 2012 site and broadcaster sites.