92% of consumers say they trust earned media like personal recommendations above other forms of advertising

"Ninety-two percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising—an increase of 18 percent since 2007, according to a new study from Nielsen, a leading global provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy. Online consumer reviews are the second most trusted form of advertising with 70 percent of global consumers surveyed online indicating they trust this platform, an increase of 15 percent in four years.
Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising Survey of more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries shows that while nearly half (47%) of consumers around the world say they trust paid television, magazine and newspaper ads, confidence declined by 24 percent, 20 percent and 25 percent respectively since 2009. Still, the majority of advertising dollars are spent on traditional or paid media, such as television. In 2011, overall global ad spend saw a seven percent increase over 2010, according to Nielsen’s most recent Global AdView Pulse. This growth in spend was driven by a nearly 10 percent increase in television advertising, with countries, including the U.S. and China, attracting more advertising dollars versus the year prior."

Source:  Press release from Nielsen, 10th April 2012

Note - it's a pretty stunning figure - until you wonder who the 8% of people who trust TV & newspaper ads  above recommendations from friends...

Two thirds of cookies on sites are from third parties

"As UK companies scramble to comply with new laws requiring them to disclose and get permission for all the cookies they use, a new study has found that more than two thirds of all the bits of tracker code on websites are from third parties. Which means they are essentially for delivering targeted advertising or analysing behaviour across the website."

Source:  Data from Truste, reported by the Financial Times, 18th April 2012

Facebook advertising CPM costs rose by an estimated 40% in 12 months

"Thanks to the incredible popularity of the world's social network, soon-to-be-publicly-traded Facebook is top of mind for advertisers both large and small, many of which have been pouring more money into Facebook advertising campaigns.
But how are those Facebook ad campaigns treating advertisers?
According to ad agency TBG Digital, which looked at several hundred billion impressions across campaigns for more than 200 clients, the cost for a thousand impressions on Facebook has increased substantially (41%) in the past year, but over the past quarter, click-through rates have dropped by nearly double digits (8%). Ads sold on a CPC basis have also risen in price during the same period."

Source:  Econsultancy, 16th April 2012

31% of US online ad impressions aren't seen

"comScore, Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released full study results from its U.S.-based vCE Charter Study involving online advertising campaigns for 12 premium national advertisers. The study found that, in many cases, a large portion of ad impressions are not delivered according to plan, and that the quality of ad delivery can vary greatly based on a variety of factors, including site, placement, creative and targeting strategy. The study evaluated ad delivery based on a several key dimensions, including whether or not the ads were delivered in-view, to the right audience, in the right geography, in brand safe environments and absent of fraud. The complete results are included in a complimentary white paper, which can be downloaded at the following link: http://www.comscore.com/vce-charter-study
[...]
The vCE Charter Study includes a variety of detailed findings that shed light on the current state of online ad delivery and its implications for different participants in the online advertising market. Key findings include:
In-View Rates are Eye-Opening. The study showed that 31% of ads were not in-view, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen. There was also great variation across sites where the campaigns ran, with in-view rates ranging from 7% to 100% on a given site. This variance illustrates that even for major advertisers making premium buys there is a lot of room for improvement.
Targeting Audiences Beyond Demographics Can be Powerful. Generally, campaigns that had very basic demographic targeting objectives performed well with regard to hitting those targets. For example, those with an objective of reaching people in a particular broad age range did so with 70% of their impressions. Predictably, as additional demographic variables were added to the targeting criteria (e.g. income + gender), accuracy rates of the ad delivery declined. However, the results also showed that 37% of all impressions were delivered to audiences with behavioral profiles that were relevant to the brand (i.e. consumers with demonstrated interests in categories, such as food, auto or sports). One campaign had 67% of its impressions viewed by the target behavioral segment.
The Content in Which An Ad Runs Can Create Problems for Any Brand. Of the campaigns analyzed, 72% had at least some impressions that were delivered adjacent to objectionable content. While this did not translate to a large number of impressions on an absolute basis (141,000 impressions across 980 domains), it is important to note that 92,000 people were exposed to these impressions. This demonstrates that brand safety should be of concern to all advertisers.
Fraud is the Elephant in the Digital Room. Fraud is an undeniably large and growing problem in digital advertising. The results showed that an average of 0.16% of impressions across all campaigns was delivered to non-human agents from the IAB spiders & bots list. Although this percentage might appear negligible, there are two important considerations to keep in mind. Only the most basic forms of inappropriate delivery were addressed in this study. When additional, more sophisticated types of fraud are considered, the problem will only get larger. Like brand safety, fraud should be an important concern for all advertisers.
Digital Ad Economics: The Good Guys Aren't Necessarily Winning. The study showed that there was little to no correlation between CPM and value being delivered to the advertiser. For example, ad placements with strong in-view rates are not getting higher CPMs than placements with low in-view rates. Similarly, ads that are doing well at delivering to a primary demographic target are not receiving more value than those that are not. In other words, neither ad visibility nor the quality of the audience reached is currently reflected in the economics of digital advertising."
Source:  Press release from comScore, 26th March 2012
Note - comScore released similar research earlier in the year.  I'll repeat the note I made at the time:
While this research is valid, it's worth mentioning the different ad trading models.  Most ads are not bought on a 'cost per view' (CPM) model, but are bought on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA) basis.  This means that the advertisers for these campaigns don't pay for the ads until there is a click or a specified action - like a sale or a registration - so they are not being charge anything for ads that aren't seen. 
Part of the job of the agency is to ensure that the ads bought on a CPM basis appear in good positions - that is 'in view' making the site push the other ads down to the bottom of the page.  Similarly with ads appearing in unsafe content - part of the job of the agency is to make sure that this does not happen.

TV is the most effective medium for driving traffic to websites

"Television is still the most effective advertising channel in driving traffic to websites, according to a new survey by Deloitte.
The sixth annual ‘State of the Media Democracy’ report, based on responses from 2,276 UK consumers aged between 14 and 75 years old, found that 64% of respondents had visited a website after seeing an advert on TV.
61% said they visited a website after seeing a magazine ad, 59% said a newspaper ad drove them online, while only 12% of respondents said a mobile app advert had prompted them to visit a brand's site.
A further 62% of respondents said they paid more attention to newspaper adverts than their online equivalents.
Deloitte said that online display advertising had actually lost ground year-on-year, in 2010 only 49% of respondents said they paid more attention to print than online.
The power of TV advertising is to be expected, as the survey also found that 98% of people chose TV services as their favourite type of media."

Source:  Econsultancy, 19th March 2012

Mobile app Draw Something has been downloaded more than 20m times in 5 weeks

"Three weeks ago, we wrote about OMGPOP's mobile app, Draw Something. The ten-day-old social game had been downloaded more than 1.2 million times.
Now the company has shared even more staggering numbers with us.  In just five weeks, the pictionary-like game has been downloaded 20 million times.
That's more users than 3-year-old Foursquare has. That's almost as many users as 1.5-year-old Instagram.
Draw Something is one of the fastest growing mobile apps of all time.
CEO Dan Porter tells us the game is generating 6-figures per day. His company has generated more revenue from the game in five weeks than the entire company generated last year. He hasn't spent a dime on marketing since the app's first week."

Source:  Business Insider, 12th March 2012

Tablet ads have twice the engagement of mobile ads

"The latest research from mobile video ad network Rhythm NewMedia provides  further evidence that tablet ads are more inviting than those on mobile phones. In its fourth-quarter report, the company said full-page display ads on tablets had a 21% engagement rate compared to 9.4% for the same ad units on smartphones.
Almost a quarter (24%) of tablet owners and 11% of smartphone owners have clicked an ad they were viewing on their respective devices to learn more about a product or promotion, according to data released last week by Nielsen. Doubling the screen size may not always double the interaction rate, but it seems to help.
Among other findings, the Rhythm report showed that combining video with full-page ads increased engagement on mobile devices from 9.4% to 11.5%. When it comes to in-stream video ads, it also indicated that adding custom buttons for social networks like Facebook or Twitter or specific brands pushed up engagement rates from .97% to 1.21%
Fifteen-second ads continued to have better completion rates than 30-second ads, but only slightly -- 89.2% compared to 88.3%. The shorter format still accounts for the vast majority of video ads, although 30-second spots grew slightly in 2011 in connection with people increasingly watching full episodes on mobile devices."

Source:  MediaPost, 1st March 2012

There are 338m mobile internet users in China

"The follow are some of the numbers coming out of iResearch.  The Chinese mobile Internet market during 2011 reached 39.31 billion RMB.  This created a year to year growth rate of 97.5%.  This growth was supported mainly by the mobile value-added market and the rapidly growing mobile E-Commerce.  We expect mobile E-commerce to fully surpass mobile value-added sometime during 2012.  Mobile advertising, which saw a 101.7% growth in 2011 to 2.42 billion RMB, is another segment that will continue its track record during 2012 as adverstising on mobile is finally being wholeheartedly supported by advertisers..
With 338 million mobile Internet users in China during 2011, we should see the mobile Internet market continue its rocket ship climb this year as well – as long as Europe gets its act together.  If they don’t, we’ll still see very solid growth."

Source:  MobiSights, 7th February 2012

The over-supply of mobile ad inventory

"For publishers, the biggest challenge around monetizing mobile audiences is still the matter of inventory oversupply. The number of mobile apps and sites is growing rapidly, but advertiser investment continues to lag, meaning even networks are struggling to fill the majority of impressions they’re handed.
According to data from publisher-side ad management platform Smaato, that problem is only getting worse. During the third quarter of the year the firm said only 18 percent of impressions were filled by the top 20 U.S. mobile ad networks, representing a decline from the 19 percent of ad slots they filled between April and June."

Source:  DigiDay, 30th November 2012

Advertising accounts for less than 50% of the FT's revenues

"Two thousand of the FT’s new 2011 subs were corporate licenses. In the U.S., print circulation was overtaken by these digital subscribers for the first time.
[...]
Advertising is now the minority of FT revenue, with content sales 58 percent. And digital is now 47 percent of revenue."

Source:  Paid Content, 27th February 2012

41% of ad-related searches during the Super Bowl came from mobile devices

"Multi-tasking while watching TV isn't new, but nowadays smartphones and tablets are also becoming popular couch companions. Mobile devices have driven increases in total searches because of their always on, always-with-you nature. During the Super Bowl, 41% of Google searches in the US related to Super Bowl TV ads came from mobile devices. By looking at a selection of specific Super Bowl related queries both during the game and one week before, we found that the number of searches on these terms increased at a significant rate across all devices and was particularly high for mobile. Super Bowl ad related searches in the US rose 200% on desktop, 970% on tablets and a whopping 2700% on smartphones."

Source:  Google Mobile Ads Blog, 7th February 2012

Nike's TV & press advertising budgets in the US have fallen, while marketing spend has risen

"Just try to recall the last couple of Nike commercials you saw on television. Don't be surprised when you can't. Nike's spending on TV and print advertising in the U.S. has dropped by 40% in just three years, even as its total marketing budget has steadily climbed upward to hit a record $2.4 billion last year. "There's barely any media advertising these days for Nike," says Brian Collins, a brand consultant and longtime Madison Avenue creative executive."

Source:  Fortune, 13th February 2012

Unilever's digital campaigns yield 'over $3 in revenue for each $1 spent'

"Unilever Chief Financial Officer Jean-Marc Huet also mentioned his company's 15% increase in digital spending last year vs. a 2% increase overall in the context of spending efficiency in a Feb. 2 investor meeting. That follows a December investor presentation by Chief Marketing Officer Keith Weed in which he noted several digital programs that produced north of $3 in revenue for each dollar spent."

Source:  AdAge, 6th February 2012

David Beckham's H&M Super Bowl ad had 109,000 comments in social media within 45 minutes of airing

click to enlarge

Source:  Data from Bluefin, reported by AdAge, 6th February 2012
Note - The count is for comments made within 45 minutes of the ad airing

A digest of Super Bowl stats

"Super Bowl 46 is history now and here’s a roundup of all of the internet-related reports. Roughly 100 million watch the Super Bowl every year, making it one of the most viewed events in the world.
Twitter reported that there were an average of 10,000 tweets per second in the final three minutes of the game. That beats the Royal Wedding at 3,966 tweets per second and Osama Bin Laden’s death at 5,106 tweets per second.
Social TV startup Bluefin Labs said it saw 11.5 million comments during the game, up six fold over last year.
The official Super Bowl Twitter account has just 37,871 followers. Some 50 employees and volunteers manned the Super Bowl Command Center for social media.
The NFL has about 2.8 million Twitter followers and 4.5 million Facebook NFL page likes. Verizon added 400 additional 3G and LTE antennae for 3G and LTE service. AT&T added 200 new cell sites in Indianapolis.
InMobi reported that 40 percent of respondents to its survey said they used mobile devices in response to TV ads and 45 percent estimated they would spend 30 minutes or more on their mobile devices during the game. About 39 percent said they would use their mobile devices in response to TV commercials. About 27 percent said they downloaded a Super Bowl mobile app; and 30 percent said they used mobile devices most during commercials.
During the 630 pm EST to 8 pm EST time block, H&M’s Super Bowl commercial site was the fastest with a response time of 1.7 seconds to load the whole page, while Honda’s was the worst with 40 seconds required to load the full page, according to the SmartBear AlertSite."

Source:  VentureBeat, 6th February 2012

Nearly half of the advertisers in Super Bowl 2012 are using Shazam with their advertising

"Now the company says it’s working with nearly half the advertisers at the Super Bowl, and it’s revealing a few key ones: Viewers of the Toyota ad will be able to use Shazam to enter a contest to win two free Camrys. When viewers tag the Cars.com ad, Cars.com will donate $1.00 to one of seven charities. Pepsi’s ad will feature X-Factor winner Melanie Amaro, and using Shazam on the ad will unlock an extra video. Viewers who tag the Teleflora ad will receive a special offer. And not only is Best Buy using Shazam to offer a $50 gift card to customers who buy and activate a mobile phone in 2012 — it’s actually featuring two of Shazam’s founders in its commercial."

Source:  TechCrunch, 2nd February 2012

Facebook accounts for 28% of online ad impressions in the US

"Ahead of a rumoured IPO as early as tomorrow, Facebook’s position in the ad space has been boosted by comScore data that shows its share of US ad impressions grew to 27.9% in 2011.
This is up from 21% in 2010 and means Facebook has been ranked number one in comScore’s display ad impressions category for the past three years.
Despite its well-publicised woes Yahoo is second on the list with 11% of the market, while Microsoft, Google and AOL trail with less than 5% each.
Unlike the other companies on the list Facebook is almost totally reliant on banner ads to bring in revenue."

Source:  Data from comScore, reported by Econsultancy, 31st January 2012

Facebook's ad revenue increased by 69% in 2011

"In its filing, Facebook reported 2011 revenue of $3.71 billion, an 88% increase from the $1.97 billion total reported for 2010, though falling short of eMarketer's 2011 projection of $4.27 billion. The increase was mostly attributed to the 69% growth of advertising revenue, which was buoyed by a 42% increase in the number of ads delivered and an 18% increase in their average price.
While advertising made up $3.15 billion of Facebook's revenues last year, the company earned $557 million from Facebook Payments -- the virtual currency it began requiring game developers on the platform to use as of July 1 -- and other fees. Payments are making up an increasingly hefty chunk of Facebook's revenue, and in the fourth quarter of 2011, advertising constituted just 83% of revenues, down from 90% the previous year. Facebook takes a cut of all money exchanged through the use of "Payments," and in the case of virtual goods purchased on Zynga, that cut is up to 30%."

Source:  AdAge, 1st February 2012

An average TV viewer in the UK sees 47 ads a day

"Viewers in the UK are still exposed to a record number of TV ads, with figures from 2011 showing an increase on the previous year.
A survey conducted by Thinkbox using BARB data said that that the average Briton saw up to 47 ads a day, an increase of 2.6% on 2010.
The study also revealed that the average viewer watched up to 28 hours and 14 minutes a week last year. Of these hours 64% were spent watching commercial channels, with 72% of the viewers aged between 16 and 34."

Source:  UTalkMarketing, 24th January 2012

Over 30% of online ad impressions aren't seen

"To better understand the quality of ad delivery today, comScore conducted a U.S.-based vCE Charter Study, which involved 12 national brands, 3,000 placements, 381,000 site domains and 1.7 billion ad impressions. Select advertisers from the charter study include Allstate, Chrysler, Discover, E*TRADE Financial, Ford, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kimberly Clark, Kraft, and Sprint. All of the impressions analyzed in the study were delivered in iframes and none required publisher site pixels.
Topline study results are included below, and a full whitepaper with detailed insights and analysis will be published in March 2012.
Across all charter campaigns measured, 69 percent of the ad impressions were classified as being ‘in-view.’* The remaining 31 percent were delivered but never seen by a consumer, a likely result of a consumer scrolling past the ad before it loaded or a consumer never scrolling the ad into view. In-view percentages varied by site and ranged from 7 percent to 91 percent.
An average of 4 percent of ad impressions were delivered outside the desired geography, but individual campaigns ran as high as 15 percent. In many cases, ads were served in markets where the advertised product is not sold, meaning wasted ad spend and sub-optimal effectiveness results.
72 percent of Charter Study campaigns had at least some ads running next to content deemed “not brand safe” by the advertiser, meaning that the content is deemed objectionable by the brand. This type of unsafe delivery has the potential to damage the brand, creating a difficult situation for all members of the digital advertising ecosystem."

Source:  Press release from comScore, 18th January 2012

Note:  While this research is valid, it's worth mentioning the different ad trading models.  Most ads are not bought on a 'cost per view' (CPM) model, but are bought on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA) basis.  This means that the advertisers for these campaigns don't pay for the ads until there is a click or a specified action - like a sale or a registration - so they are not being charge anything for ads that aren't seen. 

Part of the job of the agency is to ensure that the ads bought on a CPM basis appear in good positions - that is 'in view' making the site push the other ads down to the bottom of the page.  Similarly with ads appearing in unsafe content - part of the job of the agency is to make sure that this does not happen.