Evian’s Viral Roller Babies Jump from YouTube to TV

The lovable Evian Roller Babies, which broke the world record for the most viewed online advertisement in history last year, have made the leap from YouTube to your television.

Evian’s wildly successful viral campaign has surpassed 100 million views across all of its many versions. It was one of the first YouTube-exclusive campaigns by a major brand: there were no TV commercials for the viral videos.

Now according to Social Times, the campaign has already made its debut on Los Angeles TV stations, and will run in New York sometime this summer. They are also airing in other countries, including France and the UK.

The Evian Roller Babies showed advertisers that viral videos have tremendous reach. Hopefully we’ll see more advertisers take their ads to the YouTube masses first before pushing them out on the far more expensive TV airwaves.

Bigger Business Blogs Better Lead Bringers

Business blogs begin generating significantly more leads when they have a median of 24 or more articles posted, according to research by internet marketing firm Hubspot.

Businesses with blog article numbers above this critical threshold are likely to have enough content to make a significant impact on search engines through additional indexed pages and new keywords with which to associate. In addition, other sites are more likely to link to a blog that offers a steady stream of content. Businesses with blogs of 24-plus articles are more likely to be committed to updating their blog frequently and, thus, are likely to generate more traffic from referring sites.

 

Business blogs that have 0-11 articles posted will generate a median of three leads. Once blogs reach the 12-23 posted article threshold, this median dramatically rises to 10. However, blogs with 24-51 posted articles generate a median of 13 leads, and will generate a median of 23 leads when the posted article threshold reaches 52. This represents 77% lead growth, more than twice the 30% lead growth that occurs when the number of posted blog articles reaches 24.

Businesses with Blogs Generate 67% More Online Leads
Businesses with blogs generate 67% more online leads than businesses without blogs. A business with a blog will generate a median of 15 online leads, compared to a median of nine online leads for a business without a blog. Blog size does matter to a degree, as businesses with a median of 10 blog entries or less report similar online generation numbers to businesses without blogs.

Advice for Bloggers
Based on its research, Hubspot offers the following advice to business bloggers:

• Increase the number of keywords marketers rank for in Google. Through blogs, marketers have the opportunity to create unique content that can be different from their web site content. They have the potential to significantly increase the number of keywords they rank highly for in Google.
• Generate inbound links. These are a central factor in Google’s organic search ranking algorithm. Other related sites are likely to link to a blog that provides interesting and fresh content.
• Increase repeat visitors.

  Blogs give visitors a reason to come back and interact with sites.

Google Page Indexing Creates Leads
In addition to blogging to generate online leads, the more pages a company has indexed by Google, the more leads it will generate, according to related research by Hubspot. There is a strong positive correlation between the number of Google indexed pages and median leads. An incremental increase of 50-100 pages indexed by Google can cause lead growth in double-digit percentages. For example, going from 60-120 indexed pages to 121-175 indexed pages can increase a company’s median leads from seven to 12, creating 58.3% growth.

The most significant improvement in median lead growth comes when a company increases its indexed pages from the 176-310 range to the 311-plus range. Median leads skyrocket from 22 to 74, representing triple-digit 236% growth. After exceeding the 311 indexed pages mark, median lead growth subsides.

Google Page Indexing Creates Leads

Getting your site ranked highly on search engines is one of the fundamentals of SEO, just how you go about that is a topic which creates a lot of discussion, which method works best, and is off page optimisation more effective than on page optimisation, and how valuable are links or votes that are directed to your site from other web sites on the net.

I’ve always worked on the premise that I get as many of these factors working for me when optimising a site and a very effective tool to get high rankings is relevancy to the subject you’re trying to rank for. Getting as many of your URL’s or pages indexed by the search engines can lead to an increase in both traffic and conversions. So I thought this research from HubSpot would be of interest to you.

The more pages a company has indexed by Google, the more leads it will generate, according to research by internet marketing firm Hubspot.

Incremental Indexed Pages Can Cause Double-digit Lead Growth
There is a strong positive correlation between the number of Google indexed pages and median leads. An incremental increase of 50-100 pages indexed by Google can cause lead growth in double-digit percentages. For example, going from 60-120 indexed pages to 121-175 indexed pages can increase a company’s median leads from seven to 12, creating 58.3% growth.

 

The most significant improvement in median lead growth comes when a company increases its indexed pages from the 176-310 range to the 311-plus range. Median leads skyrocket from 22 to 74, representing triple-digit 236% growth. After exceeding the 311 indexed pages mark, median lead growth subsides.

Size Not Critical Factor
Overall, Hubspot research indicates that size is not a critical factor for achieving significant volumes of Google indexed pages. Size and number of pages are mildly positively correlated, mostly in the extreme categories of indexed pages.

 

While HubSpot’s large customers formed the biggest group with 311 or more indexed pages in Google, small and medium-sized customers together outnumbered large ones in this category, 57% - 43%. In addition, small customers formed the largest group with 176 to 310 Google indexed pages (39%).

As might be expected, small customers do form the largest group within the less than 60 (53%) and 61-120 (54%) indexed pages categories.

Marketing Takeaways
Hubspot advises marketers considering a Google page indexing program to use the following techniques:

• Build page volume: Consider starting a blog to quickly increase the number of indexed pages.
• Improve each page’s optimization as per Google’s methodology to maximize chances of having all corporate web pages included in the index.
• On-page search engine optimization: Place keywords in the right places on web pages such that Google and other search engines know what each page of a company’s web site is about, and what keywords to rank it for.
• Off-page search engine optimization: Build inbound links from reputable sites, thus demonstrating a company’s popularity to search engines.
• Inbound links do not generate more leads, but do generate more unique visitors.

Google Dominates Core Search
Google Sites clearly dominate US internet users’ core search activities, according to comScore. In March 2010, Google Sites led the core search market with 65.1% market share and 10.05 billion core searches, up 6% from February 2010. Both of these statistics represent the continuation of long-term core search trends.

Consumers Follow Social Brand Referrals

Not only are social fans more likely to buy and recommend brands, but their friends are also listening.

More than two-thirds of US Facebook users said a Facebook friend referral would increase their chances of purchasing a product or visiting a retailer, according to research and consulting firm Morpace.

 

Fan pages, used by 41% of respondents to show their friends what products they support, are one way to spur such positive referrals. In line with other researchers, Morpace found that coupons and discounts were also key reasons to join a fan page, cited by 37% of Facebook users. On average, users were fans of nine pages.

The racial and ethnic background of users influenced their fan page activity. White Facebook users were generally least likely to become a fan of brands and retailers.

Hispanics in the US had the greatest propensity to become fans in all the categories studied by Morpace. One-half of Hispanic respondents said Facebook was a good tool for researching new products, compared with 46% of Asians, 44% of African-Americans and only 31% of whites.

Twitter opens its doors to advertisers

Social networking site Twitter is allowing adverts in its content for the first time.

Companies can now purchase 'Promoted Tweets' that will show in Twitter Search results.

It gives advertisers the opportunity to insert themselves into a stream.

Twitter has pledged the ads must be Tweets that 'reasonate with users' and only one Tweet will show on each search results page.

Initial customers of the platform include Starbucks, Sony Pictures and US retailer Best Buy.

Twitter is yet to make a profit and this is the first part of a new advertising initiative to rectify that.

The plan is to roll 'Promoted Tweets' out further with them appearing in users' stream of posts.

But the decision to allow adverts has upset some Twitter users.

'I would pay a flat yearly subscription NOT to have adverts on,' commented user mommadona.

While creospace said: 'This isn't good. Twitter announces adverts as its revenue stream.'

Story from Telstra.com

Top 10 Viral Videos – March 2010

Continuing a trend established in January and February 2010, the videos selected by video-content distributor goviral for March 2010 were universally light in tone.

For the first time this year, goviral did not select any public service announcement videos. Four of the 10 videos selected for March centered on some form of athletic performance or achievement. These include the number one video, which demonstrates a possibly staged trick performed on a BMW motorcycle, as well as a Pepsi video featuring famous soccer players, a Nike ad highlighting the connection between athletes (both famous and unknown), and an Adidas ad with numerous athletic and non-athletic celebrities.

Two videos featured humor mocking other brands. Sony Playstation directly ridicules the controllers used by rival Microsoft’s Xbox gaming system, and SpecSavers directly parodies the sexist ads from men’s body spray Axe that suggest men who use Axe will have beautiful women in bikinis purse them.

In a return to a trend seen in January 2010, most of last month’s videos were global in theme and featured little or no language. Globally famous celebrities and/or simple yet powerful imagery made these videos easily consumed by viewers anywhere in the world. Most of February 2010’s videos required knowledge of the English language and US or UK popular culture and humor to fully appreciate, which partially reflects the inclusion of several commercials aired during the February 2010 Super Bowl telecast.

The top 10 picks for February, with links to view on YouTube:

1. BMW S1000RR – Dinner Table, agency: n/a
2. Pedigree – Dogs, agency: TBWA
3. Pepsi Max – ‘Oh Africa,’ agency: n/a
4. Nike – The Human Chain, agency: Wieden & Kennedy
5. Adidas Originals – Street Corner, agency: Sid Lee
6. Tropicana – Arctic Sun, agency: BBDO
7. Sprite – Spark, agency: Bartle Bogle Hegarty
8. Sony Playstation – Move, agency: Deutsch
9. Specsavers – ‘The Specs Effect,’ agency: Specsavers Creative
10. Natural Gas Belgium – Soft Heat, agency: TBWA

About the Rankings: goviral issues a monthly top-10 list of viral video rankings on its site, including additional commentary about the videos, their approaches and why the firm thinks they are viral or likely to become viral in the future.

Businesses Split on Paying for Twitter

The powers that be at Twitter have been vague about how they plan to monetize the service. As marketers have flocked to the microblogging site, Twitter has considered charging for business functionality as one possibility.

According to a survey commissioned by Internet marketing solutions company WebBizIdeas.com, a plurality of business users of Twitter are unsure whether they would pay to use extra business features on the site. About one-quarter said they would.

 

Defining what those extra features might be as well as how much they would cost could push less decisive business users into one camp or another. Among respondents who said they would pay, most were willing to spend less than $50 per month.

In addition, 8% of all respondents said they would pay for analytics alone, if Twitter offered that service.

Advertising, another possibility for Twitter monetization, may have more appeal. Businesses were largely uninterested in advertising tactics that would increase their follower count, but nearly seven in 10 respondents said pay-for-performance ads would bring the greatest value for them.

Defining what those extra features might be as well as how much they would cost could push less decisive business users into one camp or another. Among respondents who said they would pay, most were willing to spend less than $50 per month.

In addition, 8% of all respondents said they would pay for analytics alone, if Twitter offered that service.

Advertising, another possibility for Twitter monetization, may have more appeal. Businesses were largely uninterested in advertising tactics that would increase their follower count, but nearly seven in 10 respondents said pay-for-performance ads would bring the greatest value for them.