Last week on ViralBlog among others “40 Smart Uses Of Social Video Metrics”, “IKEA: The Facebook Fan Sleepover” and “Apple & Google Bid For UK Football TV Rights?”.

Stop Pushing Pop-up Ads In My Face!

Remember those annoying pop-up ads when you visit a website? Most websites got rid of them in the last decade. Well in China it’s still being used on a widespread scale. In China online marketing is still mostly pushing banners in people’s faces. It’s so annoying that sometimes users cannot even click it away.

40 Smart Uses Of Social Video Metrics

Brands can still buy media, but attention can only be earned. That’s why CMOs will massively embrace social videos and video metrics in 2012, says eMarketer. So see below video and our list: 40 smart uses of social video metrics…

Anarchy – A Social Game By Axe Is Coming

A graphic novel from AXE? Yes and no. Axe will provide the sketches and users take active part in the story. At least that’s the plan.

IKEA: The Facebook Fan Sleepover

After a few years of just focussing on gaining as many likes, friends and followers, brands slowly start to realize that real fan engagement is far more important than just showing a big number. IKEA is such a brand that goes beyond ‘the Facebook Like’.

Viral Friday: Golden Loves Guitar !!

A weekly viral video chart of ViralBlog, showing the 5 most popular viral videos, commercials, games or user-generated videos, carefully selected and ranked by popularity, viral impact & spread.

Apple & Google Bid For UK Football TV Rights?

Insiders say that Apple and Google are likely to enter the auction for the Premier League football TV rights in the UK. Both tech companies could easily afford the amount. What are the odds? And what could be the impact…

Can You Copy Rebecca Black?

Seeing that virality is such a sought after prize among marketers, is it worth marketing your brand in a way that gets you a lot of criticism but attention at the same time, much like Rebecca Black?

That’s why we wanted to share some examples, okay, well 40 examples, of actionable insights that CMOs could get from video tracking across the social web.

We are pretty sure this list will help CMOs to fuel their 2012 brand and business objectives…

The list with 40 smart uses of social video metrics, powerful videolytics and full social metrics:

1 Track your video views
2 Track your videos across 500+ video sharing portals
3 Measure your reach and engagement
4 Track Tweets of your video
5 Track Facebook shares of your video
6 Track comments of your video
7 Track ratings of your video
8 Learn about the creative power of your videos
9 Discover the long-tail effect of your videos
10 Discover your top viewing audiences by country
11 Measure the Costs Per View (CPV) of your videos
12 Measure your PR & Earned Media value
13 Discover what videos fly or die
14 Detect what videos your targets love and hate
15 Learn in what social hot spots your videos are embraced
16 Upload videos to multiple video sharing portals
17 Benchmark competitor videos against your own
18 Discover competitor video viewing peaks
19 Understand and measure competitor efforts
20 Discover social video shares of competitors
21 Enables you to track multiple videos for one campaign
22 Improve your creative power and future digital content strategies
23 Discover actionable insights and act upon them
24 Prove your natural seeding efforts with extreme low costs per contact
25 Measure free PR, Share of Voice (SoV) and earned media value
26 Save time with instant access to all external data
27 Manage information together in one (branded) dashboard
28 Measure videos at millions of blogs
29 Export video metrics data to Excel and PDF
30 Discover which video portals are important outside YouTube
31 Track videos of your brand ambassadors
32 Measure multiple campaigns at the same time
33 Review results from specific dates
34 Compare video results next to the overall campaign result
35 Discover when a video views start to drop
36 Learn about Strategic Social Seeding
37 Discover the power of the Owned – Earned- Paid value chain
38 Discover that content is king
39 Discover that distribution is queen
40 Discover why metrics is the emperor

We hope this list was useful to you. If so, please share this article with relevant peers.

And we would love to learn what other needs you have in the field of social video metrics. Please share them in the comments below.

Source: ViralTracker

This week I was amazed by below Nokia N9 video. Very cool, must go viral. But even our Viral Friday guys said: “Cool, but not a viral yet, it has only 35,000 views on YouTube.

Curious to learn more, I tapped into the dashboard of our sponsor ViralTracker and looked at the videolytics and social metrics around the Nokia N9 video.

And there it was: That same Nokia N9 video had over 1 Million views on its first day! Not on YouTube, but on Youku, one of China’s biggest video sharing sites…

If you are curious too, check the Nokia N9 video here on YouTube. Now check the same Nokia N9 (viral) video on Youku.

So a few learnings shared with all involved in marketing, media, pr and digital:

1. Think beyond YouTube insights. There are 500+ other video sharing portals to explore!
2. Use smart videolytics and social metrics technologies to get all insights.
3. Making the right decisions on content is about having the accurate data.
4. Content is King. Distrubution is Queen. Metrics is the Emperor.

So thank you, YouTube. For drawing big brands out of the box and onto the web. Your “insights” are fine, but other META insight companies should clearly take it from here.

To make the Nokia N9 example even more clear to CMOs and media agencies: Would you rather track 10% or 100% of your banner campaign? Or do you find being blindfolded 90% of the time more exciting?

It clearly shows how important powerful videolytics and full social metrics around your videos are. Across millions of blogs, social sites, YouTube but also 500+ other video sharing portals.

And yes we are aware this video is targeted at China, so Youku is fine. And not, we are not blaming YouTube.

Our message is: This is the era for non-linear marketers. Think way before you start: have I thought 360? Have I thought bottom-up? 365 Days?

Because if you don’t, you might easily miss-out on results and ROI. Like i.e missing out on 1 Million views at your next video campaign. Because you thought linear and YouTube only.

For example: How this would make you look, while your were reviewing the campaign review in the boardroom? So be clever.

And this is off course just one example on online video and distribution. Non-linear thinking offers many other benefits, in many other parts of marketing, media, broadcasting and publishing…

Why do we focus at China and video? Well, simply because a few remarkable things happened recently. Things that made us even more curious. Things that we had to dive into.

Stick around to get the insights…

Remarkable event #1, I need to explain to you.

6 Weeks ago we seeded some videos across the globe. China was one of the target markets. Based on the videolytics and social metrics ViralTracker showed us, we detected a large number of views at 5 Chinese video portals that allow UGC.

ViralTracker measures videos across millions of blogs, social sites, YouTube and over 500 other video sharing portals. So its dashboard provides much broader insights than i.e. YouTube analytics. Why? Well, simply because there is more to explore than YouTube, when it comes to online video.

We marked those 5 video portals red for you in below graph.

A deeper dive shows that China’s online video market is really maturing. The China online video market total reached 1.48 billion Yuan revenues in Q2 2011, which equals about $230 Million.

So it’s safe to assume that online video spend in 2011 in China will be somewhere around $900 Million to $ 1 Billion in 2011.

But how is this spend divided per industry? That data you can find in below graph: Top China Online Video Advertisers by Category in Q2 2011.

Global display and online video spend will be $200 Billion by 2020, Google’s Eric Schmidt recently stated. We will try to find out how much China’s display + video spend is in 2011, so you will be able to compare China to the rest of the world.

Remarkable event #2, will need some explanation as well.

In August 2011 Tudou, one of China’s leading video portals launched a new online video advertising format called AdSelector with VivaKi, the digital media operations of the worldwide Publicis Groupe.

For AdSelector, see the visual below.

AdSelector allows users to select their preferred video advertising before watching a program. Since including pre-roll, a small trailer of advertising, has become the standard and the most popular video ad format globally, Tudou has worked closely with VivaKi to enhance the experience and introduce this innovate format by giving users more choices.

The AdSelector format had been tested in the US market and is already applied by Hulu. As an expanding initiative, Publicis is introducing the new format and collaborating with top media partners in selected markets to test and collect more case studies.

Top tier brands such as GE, Lancôme, General Mills, Dettol and Veet joined the AdSelector roll-out on Tudou.com.

Warning, warning, warning:
I do applaud Tudou’s AdSelector. But to leading video portals like Tudou, YouTube and Hulu – and especially too many CMOs – I would like to state: please be extremely careful with serving too many intrusive pre-roll video commercials!! Why?

I know, TV advertising has poisoned us for over 60 years with it’s by nature interruptive, distracting, selfish and one-way mind-jacking. But the internet is not TV!

Just like social media and social networks demand a different approach and DNA from CMOs. In a social environment brands need to brag less about themselves. Maybe they should even think about digital branding in a whole different way than TV?!

Maybe, just maybe around the video is a great idea for branding too? It’s certainly less intrusive than pre-rolls only. And much more targeted due to the fact that the videos are shown based on a search query (tags / keywords) initiated by the consumer!

Think about that, same powerful video targeting and pull effect as Google Ad Words. Great for branding, or should I use a name you know from TV? Non spot or online video bill boarding? That might sound more familiar?

Yes I’m talking about: around the video (branded skins) every now and then. So YouTube, Hulu and Tudou, if you are reading this: there is more to explore than pre-rolls. Connect to us if you feel you should load balance the intrusiveness on your platforms. But only if you can think long term…

So to CMOs that are considering to buy Facebook likes, bribe bloggers or to launch another flight of intrusive pre-roll video commercials – think again! Is this your best possible way to build great brand experiences?!

Think about what is expected in online and social environments. Pls do that before you start firing away another flight. Try to think about the internet and the rules of engagement here.

Also try to keep your eyez on the prize: If your brand is your most valauble asset, could you think long term too? As CSO, I do believe that average people only talk about details and small things. Average people walk with their head down; they do not see the bigger picture.

I do believe that open minded and great people, tend to talk about great ideas. So I do expect great CMOs to walk with their head up, so they will keep seeing the bigger picture.

And that they will be able to look beyond “flights” and campaigns. CMOs need to see long term programs and strategic long term brand programming. And lately, I have been in to many narrow minded marketing and media meetings.

So my advice as CSO to leading CMOs would be: If you really like to build your brand into a love brand, remember this post, and this phrase: It takes an architect to vision and build cathedrals, everything else is just bricks in a wall…

Source: China Internet Watch and ViralTracker.

So play now, claim your eternal fame and post your Viral Quiz high score in the comments below. The winner of this viral video tournament will win a free 3 month license from our sponsor ViralTracker.

ViralTracker is the powerful videolytics and full social metrics company that tracks your viral and social videos across millions of blogs, social sites, YouTube and +500 other video sharing portals.

Yes you can also upload and distribute your videos with ViralTracker to 20 video sharing portals. Or track your social video ads at a low CPM.

Request the full fact sheet to discover all other benefits.

The Viral Quiz was developed with Netgamix – the collaborative network for trivia & online games.

Enjoy playing the Viral Quiz and meet the winners here in September.

To start off properly we briefly show what the Webby’s are and what we all can expect. As a CMO you might want to get a closer look on the nominees. It might inspire you!

What are the Webby’s?

For the few who are not familiar with the Webby’s, here’s a brief description. The Webby Awards are presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile. This year will be the 15^th edition. Nice thing about the Webby’s is that the results are completely generated by the public voters.

There are 25 categories to choose from within Online & Video. The complete horizon of the Webby Awards covers 132 categories. In this article we will focus on the nominees in the category Branded Entertainment.

In random order, these are the nominees:

• American Express
• Lego
•  Post-it
• Snoop Dogg vs. LL Cool J
• Halo Reach

It’s interesting that a videogame is nominated twice, which again means that videogaming has matured and is able to deliver high attractive content which appeals to a much larger group than ever.

ViralBlog’s sponsor ViralTracker draw some attention in their April’s Newsletter  to another interesting category, namely Virals.

According to your opinion, which one is the best? We want to know your thoughts!

I do know its pretty old wine in a new bottle. But I happen to know, that not all CMO’s know that satisfied and loyal clients do represent a tangible value to brands and business.

And since most consumers hate advertising anyway dear CMO, you can now focus on (social) CRM and gain as many Facebook Fans around your brand as you like.

In the era of media youcracy (I am the medium) consumer ratings, reviews and peer recommendations are first, advertising just second best. So if we agree from here, that advertising cannot buy you love nor loyalty, we can continue this journey.

What CRM managers already knew for decades, brand and marketing managers will have to embrace too: The future of marketing will be more and more about Customer Persona and CRM. Why?

Since in my opinion, the future of marketing will be mostly about:
1. How many customers do I have?
2. What’s the economical value of 1 relationship?
The back-up of my theory? Because the value of 1 relationship will create predictive companies, that can show their revenues and shareholder value based on the number of their relationships.

Here are some quotes from a very interesting study which I will refer to later on…

Brand marketers have been struggling to understand the impact of their Facebook marketing efforts contributing to their overall marketing success. Many of those marketers are attempting to establish the return through a campaign-based analysis, rather than bythe consideration of long-term business value.

Confusion in the industry is widespread and clear principles for Facebook measurement have not been commonly adopted. This has resulted in missed advantage across agencies and marketers, in fully realizing the potential benefits of Facebook marketing and fans.

Being an engagement strategist I need to explain brands, what the value is of having 10 million fans on Facebook. So I suggest you take a look at the digital strategy of Starbucks on Facebook first.

Understanding the long-term Facebook fan value is a complex undertaking with advanced calculations required across multiple variables. This understanding is rooted in the measureable differences
between users who have “fanned” a brand and those who have not.

The value is reflected not simply by the action of being a “fan” but rather by the value of the audience and the benefits “fanning” offers the brand. Below the visualization of the value of 1 Facebook Fan for a brand. Next I have summarized the 6 statements made in the study.

Statement 1 in the study:
A fan base is a self-segmented group of highly valuable customers.

Statement 2 in the study:
Facebook fans reported spending $71.84 more per year than non fans.

Statement 3 in the study:
Facebook fans are more loyal to the fanned brand than non-fans.

Statement 4 in the study:
68% of Facebook Fans indicate they are very likely to recommend a product.

Statement 5 in the study:
The Average Value of a Fan is $136.38.

Statement 6 in the study:
Monetary value of fans varies dramatically. Some are intensely active while others are totally inactive.

Well why did I show you these statements? Because this study from Syncapse in association with hotspex, just made my professional life much easier. So why don’t you let me show you the way?

The study proofs, what is old wine in new bottles for sure. But since not all in advertising are that ROI driven yet, the study offers proof that “tipping-pointers’ can use to: make it easier to predict and value the ROI of mechanisms, long term social marketing programs and engagement strategies on Facebook. So lets see if we can merge the world of brand and business objectives.

I assume that after reading the last paragraph, most old-skools creatives have already left our blog right now…

Anyway, suddenly a lot of marketers seem to understand the vision and mission of SocialMedia8. Yes you will probably not believe it, our VSPOT theory is finally being embraced. Okay: after 4 years. And by some. Honestly: by a few.

So I do hope you will take 15 minutes to read the full study. It will make your life much easier being a CMO – who has to answer all the questions about the ROI of his new investment – to his fellow board members.

And believe me or not, most CEO’s, CFO’s, CMO’s and COO’s are now having a new conversation on the golf course. They no longer brag about their great new and slick TV commercial. Today’s conversations on the fairway are about the number of Fans on Facebook.

Might it be, because Men have competition with peers in their DNA. They live by the “mine’s bigger than yours” principal at most male audiences. I doubt about the gay community, but lets give the guys a break for a while.

Back to the insight:
Most board members with an -O- in their short job title are Men. Most of those Men happen to play golf. And out of that group, a large percentage will brag a bit during their 18 hole tour. Brag about their new Facebook page. And next they will proudly drop their line: “I bet we do have more Facebook Fans, than you have”.

Last but not least: thank you for inspiring me again, Mister Michael Moon.

Hope you enjoyed the post. And that you’ll tell me how you see it…

Question could be: How can such a lousy video (slick, boring, poor casting, etc) earn so much attention? Well, that is what you could discover from being a data centric person that is using video tracking and insight tools…

Seeding the video to the influencers within the global gaming communities will create most of the earned eyeballs. And if you read all the comments underneath the video, you will soon learn that many gamers rate this technology (or product) as: “really want to have it”. About the video many they say: “it sucks, gayest ever seen”.

So what could be the key learnings here?
Even poor online video content can earn massive attention, when an amazing product or new technology is blended in.

Same goes for poor online videos that have one or two very hot or famous VIPS in it, sometimes these videos become weapons of mass affection, reaching and engaging your targets at very low costs per contact.

But, who on your agency roster masters natural seeding and earning global attention? Do you push the assignment towards your PR, Advertising, Digital, Social or Media agency? I do see presentations of them all, but most do not really understand their own slide about: Owned, Earned and Paid media.

Just ask your media agency why they start their slide with: Paid Media. And why not to start with i.e. Earned, Owned and next Paid media. Or ask your PR agency the exact same question about this slide…

My advice here: talk to your social marketing agency or if you have one, a very skilled digital marketing agency. Probably you will get very different explanations about Earned, Owned and Paid media. And if you do, please share the answers with me.

Extensive natural seeding can earn massive eyeballs at € 0,02 – € 0,04 per clip view while the same video clip in paid seeding would cost you around € 0,10 – € 0,20 (on average: price based on 20 large video portals around the globe).

Some guidelines and benchmarks for brand, pr, marketing and media managers: buying the same online attention with more intrusive video banners is around € 20- € 40 per 1000 views (online video CPM across the globe is around this amount).

Even more intrusive video advertising formats like pre, mid and post roll might cost you a lot more. If your targets are very happy with intrusive video ad formats, go out and ask them…

Do realize this, not very often well explained by PR and Media agencies: Video advertising campaigns (like video banners or pre-roll commercials) will stop the moment your budget box is empty. While paid embedded videos will enjoy more clip views, even when you our out of budget.

Embedded and paid seeded videos can organically grow online, even when you have no more budgets left. And most of your brands and products are here to stay for just another while, right? So use the long tail and break-down costs per contact in the long tail as well. Your reach might increase and your costs per contact will go down doing it this way.

Next, video tracking tools offer behavioral economists (brand marketers 2.0) the invaluable insights about the branding, reach and engagement power. And next about the creativity of your content and how your targets like your approach.

Maybe you should even use video tracking technologies to test your video content online. Once you have discovered which video is considered as most compelling and engaging by your targets, you take that spot and let your media agency push that in your next TV campaign.

Basic questions: Are you a brand marketer 2.0 (behavioral economist) and are you in control enough to let go first?

Now, along with the introduction of the iPhone 4 there is an entertaining video out there. Even though it does not have nearly as many views as Apple’s original one; we just couldn’t keep it from you:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video is uploaded under the name “Banned iPhone 4 Promo”, but is it really?

Well, the person pitching this to Steve Jobs would have quite some guts. The video is obviously a spoof and even though I have no idea who or what is behind this scoop, but -Apple fan as I may be- I find it hilarious. Definitely after seeing the original Apple video, which does have over 1,5 million views already.

As said, the spoof isn’t quite there yet: the counter is now on 23,000 views. The video was uploaded to YouTube nearly a week ago, but views seem to be rising rapidly. To see if it actually has viral potential, I have asked our friends at ViralTracker to track the video. In the meanwhile, let us know how you feel about the video!

This Heavyweight K1 World Title Fight starts around 22:00 hours CET at the Its Showtime event in the Amsterdam Arena for which 25,000 tickets were sold!

The fight will be live-streamed on internet and late at night on TV at SBS Broadcasting. Coming weeks, the fight will be on TV at Eurosport in 40 countries. And we expect to earn many more eyeballs in the long tail- on YouTube and many other video portals.

Why did we decide to sponsor K1 fighter Hesdy Fighterheart Gerges? Well there are a few reasons. When I met Hesdy, I asked him about his dreams and ambitions. Since I liked his spirit, we started training once or twice per week together at Chakuriki Amsterdam.

When I felt his true power- he knocked me down a few times- I offered him my help in finding sponsors and gave him some advice. Hesdy is 26, a great talent representing Egypt, with a very bright future ahead of him in the K1. However, all upcoming K1 fighters need some support every now and then.

Another reason is that Hesdy is being trained by the world famous sensei Thom Harinck. Thom is a champion maker who has trained i.e. Peter Aerts as well. Aerts has won the K1 Grand Prix in Japan 3 times!

Hesdy Fighterheart Gerges with sensei Thom Harinck

Another reason for our sponsorship? As challenger agencies, we have been underdogs for years. But we kept fighting to earn respect and success. So no wonder we like to support talented underdogs and passionate challengers.

Hesdy Gerges vs. Badr Hari in the Staredown at yesterday’s press conference

We wanted to tap into an international sponsorship in a ‘niche’ sport for a while. A niche sport that would be able to reach its tipping point within a few years. And K1 was already very popular in Asia, but it has been gaining millions of fans and thus eyeballs in Europe and the USA the last few years. So here was our opportunity…

In 2010 we will create Hesdy a website, a social presence, an iPhone App and more social interactions with fans. And off course a few international sponsorships, that we can activate content, functionalities and social marketing.

Hesdy has won the K1 Heavyweight fight against Balrak.

So, this Saturday we expect to see a great world title fight between challenger Hesdy Gerges and the reigning world champion Badr Hari. A fight that could last 3 rounds of 3 minutes, since it’s a world title fight.

See Hesdy in action, beating Ruslan Karaev.

Since Badr Hari was the finalist in 2008 and 2009 at the K1 Grand Prix in Yokohama Japan, most expect him to win. But I can assure you; I have put my money on Hesdy- and sincerely hope that he will win by knock-out in the second or third round.

Osu!