THE STATE OF MARKETING AUGUST 2013

CONTENTS• SECTION 1: The Social Networks

• SECTION 2: The State of SEO

• SECTION 3: The State of Mobile

• SECTION 4: Marketing Industry Developments

• SECTION 5: The State of South African Marketing

• SECTION 6: AVATAR News

• SOURCES

• CONTACT

To learn more and continuously grow, we surveyed the marketing industry worldwide, and found that...

SECTION 1: THE SOCIAL NETWORKSSocial Media Images Form a New Language Online•Instagram said that people shared 45 million photos a day on the site, and 16 billion in total since it began less than three years ago. On Facebook, people share 300 million images each day, or 100 billion photos a year.

•Vine, Twitter’s six-second video-sharing app, has signed up more than 13 million people since it began in January. Vine sharing on Twitter has continued to drop over the last few weeks since Instagram video rolled out.

Instagram introduces web embeds•An easy way to add Instagram photos and videos to the stories you want to tell. Now you’ll see a new share button on the right side of a photo (just under the comments button) and the embed code. Embed code is only available to those whose photos and videos are public.

Facebook’s Q2 Earnings show mobile growth•A 51% increase in monthly active mobile users to 819 million monthly users.•1.15 billion monthly users as of June 30.•A 61% increase in advertising revenue – 41% of which was from mobile advertising.•100 million monthly users for the Facebook standard cell phone app (non-smartphone).

Facebook's Zuckerberg aims to get world online•Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has enlisted Samsung Electronics, Qualcomm Inc and other technology companies to help him in a project aimed at making Internet access affordable for the 5 billion people around the world who are not online.

•The group, called internet.org, is the latest effort by an Internet company to seek to expand Web access to emerging economies. It follows a similar thrust by Facebook rival Google Inc, which uses everything from balloons to fibre connections to expand connectivity

Facebook unveils business-friendly promotions•Facebook has updated its Page Terms guidelines regarding business-friendly promotions.

•Promotions can now be administrated and created on the brand’s Page timeline and in apps, rather than solely via app.

•Businesses can also collect entries by having users message or post its brand's Page or comment or like a post. Brands can also utilise likes as a voting mechanism. However, businesses still cannot administer promotions on personal Timelines.

•In addition, accurate tagging is required for all promotions. Facebook says this is in order to maintain accuracy of the Page content. This means brands cannot encourage users to tag themselves in content in order to win a prize.

Twitter revamps conversations•Twitter has updated conversations in order to make it easier for users to track interactions and keep up to date with discussions.

•The social network's desktop website and mobile app will now show conversations in chronological order with Tweets from the conversation connected via a vertical line.

•Up to three tweets from a conversation will now be shown on the homepage timeline. Plus, users can tap on a tweet to see all of the replies.

•Meanwhile, users can share whole conversations via email from the desktop site, or as individual tweets from the Twitter iPhone or Android app.

LinkedIn to launch for students 13+•Professional networking site, LinkedIn, has announced it will be dropping its minimum age for membership from 18 to 13 from 12 September.

•LinkedIn has said these new ‘student' profiles will include default settings making less of the user's personal information publicly visible, with more prominent safety information.

•This news comes 24 hours after the social network launched University Pages, which allows higher education institutions to set up profiles on the site.

Social Signals Again Seen Highest Correlating Factors With Google Rankings

• Among 44 ranking factors examined, social signals account for 7 of the 8 most highly correlated with Google search results, according to a new study from Searchmetrics.

• Google +1s (0.4) have easily the highest correlation, followed by number of backlinks, Facebook shares, and Facebook total (summary of shares, likes and comments), each at 0.34.

• Other social signals correlating with Google rankings included Facebook comments (0.33), Facebook likes (0.31), Pinterest pins (0.29) and Tweets (0.28). (Google +1s and Pinterest pins were new to the study this year.)

SECTION 2: THE STATE OF SEO

Google Keyword Tool Has Officially Been Replaced By Keyword Planner•The Google Keyword Tool, used by SEO professionals the world over, has officially been retired. While the sentiments regarding this change have been mixed, there are positive and negative aspects to being forced to use the Keyword Planner instead of the Keyword Tool.

Matt Cutts Says Google +1′s Have No Direct Impact On Search Rankings•Matt Cutts, Google's Head of Search spam, refuted the latest Moz study that claimed to show a correlation between Google +1s and high search engine rankings. According to Cutts, correlation does not equal causation. •Cutts says high quality content naturally generates a lot of likes, shares, and +1′s.

Google Will Start Giving Quick Answers To Questions In Search Results•Google is going to start providing a range of personalized "quick answers" in search results by bringing more of the capabilities of Google Now to all platforms. According to Google's announcement, these new search capabilities will focus on providing answers to questions related to travel and logistics, such as: hotel and restaurant reservations and flight times.

Google’s Main Objective Is To Make It Easy To Retrieve Your Personal Information Quickly•Google wants to save you the hassle of having to sift through e-mail or browsing through a multitude of other Google apps.

•Google Now has been doing this on mobile for some time now, but what differentiates these new search capabilities from Google Now is the ability to find information on demand. Not to mention it will be available to desktop users as well as mobile users.

Google Analytics Launches Real Time API In Beta•This means you can now make queries about your real-time data and use that information in whatever way you please.

•One of the immediate use cases is to manage the content on your webpage. For example, you can query the API for the top visited URLs to construct a top trending content widget with the number of active readers.

SECTION 3: THE STATE OF MOBILE17.4% of Global Web Traffic Comes Through Mobile•People around the globe are accessing the web via their smartphones more often than ever. So far in 2013, 17.4% of web traffic has come through mobile, representing more than a 6% increase since 2012 when 11.1% of traffic came from mobile.

•Asia and Africa lead the planet as the two continents with the most-mobile web users, with 26.6% and 23.7%, respectively, of web traffic coming from mobile devices.

BBM reportedly coming to Android and iOS at the end of next month•BlackBerry announced their messaging service, BBM, would be coming to Android and iOS in the winter. This came as BlackBerry started to think about other options, including the possible sale of the company and assets.

•Since the announcement, there has been no release date from BlackBerry and it has got to the point developers are adding fake apps to keep the bubbling community excited. BBM may be ancient in some eyes, but to others it is still the superior messaging service.

Google, Microsoft take on iPhone 5•Google has introduced new smartphones that will be challenging the Apple iPhone5. Microsoft and Nokia also joined in with Google to build this software that will make Apple seem very weak.

•Microsoft and Nokia joined to boost their smartphone arsenal with two new Lumia handsets powered by Windows 8 software.

MTN announces App of the Year winners•The winners of the MTN Business App of the Year Awards were announced at an event at Melrose Arch.

•Here are the main winners of the MTN Business App of the Year Awards– Best IOS Consumer - DStv– Best IOS Enterprise - .comm Telco Data Visualizer– Best Blackberry app - PriceCheck Mobile– Best Android app Enterprise - MarkitShare– Best Android app Consumer - Nedbank App Suite– Best HTML 5 app - SnapScan– Best Windows app - Kids Aid– Most innovative app - bookly– Best independent (garage) developer - Gautrain Buddy

Poorly optimised mobile sites drive 46% of customers to competitors•Tablets are now the fastest growing technology in history, with the market growing 65 per cent year-on-year. However, a bad tablet website experience will drive 46 per cent of users to competitive websites, according to a new Netbiscuits People's Web Report.

•Today 93 per cent of people use their tablets to search, 83 per cent to social network and 78 per cent to shop.

SECTION 4: INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS

Oxford Dictionary Adds ‘Badassery’, ‘Selfie’ and ‘Twerk’•Oxford Dictionaries Online announced the latest batch of words that are being invited off the street and into their database. The 65 terms and definitions added to their reference this quarter cover everything from resurgent ’80s fashion to gadgets to questionable dance moves.

•In line with other updates in recent years, many of the new entries have evolved from our technology-obsessed lives, like click and collect, digital detox, emoji, supercut and phablet. Others are condensed forms of words and phrases, like srsly, as well as apols, BYOD, FOMO, grats and vom.

Survey Sampling International ran a study and found that average time spent per week on email, text and social reached 23 hours.

•Email and Facebook each saw 87% of respondents logging in weekly to communicate with others.

•Just more than three out of 10 logged on to Twitter and YouTube once a week to connect.

•Even niche social networks like Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest saw more than one in 10 respondents log in to each platform at least once a week.

Articles with images get 94% more views than those without•Online articles with images receive 94 per cent more views than those without.

•Plus, using videos on landing pages can increase conversations by 86 per cent as videos receive 267 per cent more links than normal posts. However, 58 per cent of your audience will stop watching the video within the first 90 seconds.

•Meanwhile, email opens on smartphones and tablets have increased by 80 per cent over the last six months. Personalised emails improve click-through-rates by 14 per cent and conversation rates by 10 per cent.

•Blogs are 63 per cent more likely to influence purchase decisions than print magazine advertising.

The State of Video in 2013

•The infographic about the state of video marketing and its use within social media channels provides facts and figures about the growth of video, its consumption on mobile devices, and what the numbers mean for marketers.

South Africa’s internet population jumps•Research conducted by the Digital Media and Marketing Association (DMMA) and Echo Consultancy estimates the total internet population in South Africa in 2013 to be almost 14 million users. This represents 39% of the adult population.

•The results indicate that the South African internet audience grew by two million in the last 12 months.

•South Africa’s online market is enjoying a growth spurt thanks to healthy competition in the broadband sector and the wide scale deployment of 3G mobile data services that now rival available ADSL offerings in terms of both speed and price.

SECTION 5: SA INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS

South Africa’s internet population jumps•According to Effective Measure’s digital market data for the month of June, South Africa’s digital community is largely using ADSL for its connection (48.73%) followed by mobile connectivity (36%).

•The leading digital tribes are located in Gauteng province, which has the highest traffic flow (+46%) spurred by Johannesburg and Pretoria populations followed by the Western Cape (21.97%).

•The classic profile of the South African digerati is aged over 40 (56%), university educated (72%) with kids (64%).

SECTION 6: AVATAR NEWS• AVATAR has welcomed a new family member, Jae Brits, who is taking on

the role of Creative Director.

• Read AVATAR CEO, Zibusiso Mkhwanazi’s latest article: The digital marketing agency is dead, long live the digital marketing agency.

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