Change is sweeping the marketing industry; all digital media is becoming conversational in nature, which means existing media buying and selling strategies need to be modified and new ones need to be built.
We’ve got some changes happening here at BuzzLogic too. The rise of conversational media has enabled a new kind of engagement opportunity for brands – one that centers around cultivating relationships with content providers and offering them something of value for their audiences. Essentially, we’re starting to see the traditional PR role converging with a traditional advertiser role. Where things will get really exciting is how exactly these two points will intersect – and how advertisers will start launching integrated programs (combining both paid media and “earned media,” or WOM) to maximize awareness.
At BuzzLogic, we find this intersection is particularly fascinating. We’ve spent the last two years building out a media offering that allows advertisers to target campaigns around conversations publishers have with each other on specific topics. Now, as advertisers are getting closer to fully understanding how to tap the Web as a branding vehicle, our focus is about helping those brands better understand the audiences conversational media attracts – and how to leverage conversational content to fuel a brand’s marketing strategy.
Given the market opportunity and how our business has grown within the advertising community, we have decided to no longer offer our subscription monitoring software as a stand-alone product. No, our social analysis IP is not going away; instead, our technology advancements will focus on “Insights” as a means for new, data-driven advertiser planning, targeting, reporting and measurement tools, the first of which, our Conversational Ad Dashboard, we recently launched last month.
The future of online advertising remains a bright one; despite a tough economy, there is still huge opportunity:
1) The online display ad market is still forecast for growth $7.8B in 2009, $8.3B in 2010 (Forrester 7/09 advertising forecast).
2) Despite the worst economic recession in 70 years, spending on WOM spending word-of-mouth marketing rose 14.2% to $1.54 billion in 2008 (PQ Media).
3) Recent figures from Pubmatic indicate that ad prices are on the rise as more networks incorporate new targeting technology and premium content – two elements that have been baked into BuzzLogic’s advertiser value proposition from the start.
Our ability to surface and organize online conversations, and guide ad placements across them, has helped advertisers reach their audiences in ever more meaningful ways. The recent launch of our Conversational Ad Dashboard helps power this by offering advertisers visibility into the conversations happening on the sites they buy media on, as well as presenting new conversational metrics for success.
Over the course of the last year, we’ve spent a lot of time with the folks at the IAB helping to define new Social Media Metrics for conversational media. Things like Conversation Size – the number of sites referencing a topic – or Conversation Density – the amount of content within sites focused on certain topics – represent new ways for advertisers to better understand the conversational landscape, and better direct their selection of media partners.
We’re excited about the direction conversational media is headed and the role our technology can play in helping brands capitalize on it. Stay tuned for more changes to come, as BuzzLogic unveils a new Web site in the coming weeks to more strongly reinforce our company’s direction.