With giants like Amazon and Google stretching their tentacles and taking over whole city blocks in Manhattan, Queens, and Austin, TX, it would be hard to call 2018 the year of the underdog. Once upon a time, the Internet was supposed to be a great leveler. On social media, a new generation of rising personalities and entrepreneurs became legitimate brands in their own right. But what happens when big brands crack the social media code and beat the underdogs at their own game?
To figure out who’s really winning requires a broad inspection of all platforms. AI-powered platform Socialbakers has one of the largest social media datasets in the industry, marking out $3 billion in social ad spend and 10 billion pieces of content overall. In their new Trends Report, which includes insights from the health and beauty category, Socialbakers anoints Instagram the queen of social media. Pitting personalities against big brands, it looks like an old standby like Johnson’s Baby has the advantage against an upstart like Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics. Johnson’s dwarfs Kylie on Facebook, with 23.1 million likes versus 3.3 million. But sluggish brands should take note that the youngest of the Kardashians is taking the party with her to Instagram, where 303 million likes and comments have lifted her cosmetics line to number one on that platform.
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As social media influence continues to expand, a 2019 trends report by uberflip reminds the B2B community not to assume that business decisionmakers are above such powers. The report states that 48 percent of B2C marketers have ongoing influencer campaigns, while in the B2B space, these programs are only being executed in 11 percent of cases.
Either way, per uberflip, author Jay Baer reminds brands that word-of-mouth is more than just name-dropping. “The key to spreading your story with influencers isn’t the influencers, it’s the story. Before embarking on an influencer marketing program, every company (and especially B2B brands) needs to determine what makes them worthy of conversation. Every business must commit to doing something different that compels conversation.”
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For the global perspective, Criteo drew on surveys from 901 marketers in nine different countries to compile their “State of Ad Tech 2019” report, just out today. Key findings in the study include:
- The Top 10 Channels for Marketers: We asked not only which channels marketers used to reach their customers, but how much of their budget they dedicated to each one
- Conversion Metrics are Different Across Different Companies: Marketers have a lot of different ways of defining what makes effective conversion
- Data Availability and Quality Represent Key Challenges in the Conversion Phase: Nearly half (40 percent) of marketers struggle to find data on the online/offline shopper connection
- Different Campaigns Help Aid Repeat Purchases, App Reengagement and App Reactivation: Reengagement is a critical part of the consumer purchase journey, particularly as the impact of brand loyalty increases.
