January News Round Up

Social media eclipsing Direct Mail

The annual budget survey from Alterian, surveying more than 1,000 marketers around the world, has claimed that marketers are diverting their budgets from direct marketing activity into social media. The research found that 66% of respondents plan to invest in social media activity in 2010. Furthermore, 40% said this investment would come from a cut in their DM budgets. This is a big step for digital marketing as well as social media as an individual discipline. It’s showing that companies are recognising the importance and value of online campaigns in engaging with customers, as well as maintaining the benefits of DM, still enabling data collection and results measurement.

Twitter trialling new ad model

Twitters chief operating officer, Dick Costolo, has said the company is ready to begin testing a new advertising platform shortly. The micro blogging service has been focusing on building revenue and living up to its $1 billion valuation. Twitters money making plans include paid-for commercial accounts. These would offer corporate customers access to a variety of analytics tools, aiding in the extraction of more data and value from their activity on the site.

YouTube to stream live sports

The big story over the past couple of weeks has been YouTubes newly signed contract with cricket’s Indian Premier League (IPL), to stream 60 of their matches live on the internet channel. In a bid to improve their ad model and reduce the estimated $470m they lost in 2009. Google, who bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65bn, will hope this venture can attract big advertisers to the channel. Although sports coverage is a far cry from YouTubes better known offerings, such as keyboard cat, evolution of dance and a multitude of other home videos that get passed around the web on a daily basis, Google have been spurred on by the popularity of the live stream from U2’s October 2009 concert, which attracted 10m viewers. With mass media becoming less ‘mass’ and certain markets becoming harder to reach there is a strong case for advertisers looking to reach the new generation of digital content junkies.