marketing agency
March 9, 2016
KIT AND ACE TRIES FACEBOOK CANVAS ADS ON FOR SIZE
Kit and Ace has made it clear its clothes are not for yoga, but they may be perfect for an impromptu sidewalk-painting session, based on the company’s early experiment with Facebook’s Canvas ad creation tool.
Launched less than two weeks ago, Facebook Canvas has been described as an advertising version of the company’s Instant Articles – a tool for creating immersive, rich media ads that will appear natively and play automatically in a Facebook user’s News Feed. Canvas doesn’t require coding and offers a drag-and-drop interface to add videos, product catalogues, carousels and other elements.
Kit and Ace’s first ad using Facebook Canvas evokes the act of painting with black and white-clad characters making sweeping motions as a can of milky white paint is poured onto a black surface, eventually creating a sort of crosswalk.
“It allowed us to tell our story in a different way,” JJ Wilson, head of brand at Kit and Ace, told Marketing. “One of the technical benefits and functionality of our proprietary fabric is that it helps people move. Leveraging video allowed us to show that.”
So far, Facebook users have spent an average of 36 seconds watching the Kit and Ace Canvas ad, which has led to more than 500 offline sales conversions. According to early reports, there have been even bigger results for those who have invested early. Wendy’s, for example, has reported an average of 65 seconds spent on its Facebook Canvas ads, with 3% of viewers clicking through to find the nearest location.
During the public launch of Facebook Canvas, which was live streamed, product manager Zach Hendlin said the company will be trying to make the economics of using the product as simple as creating an ad in it.
“We won’t charge by the number of things you put in a Canvas ad,” he said. “You build it like any other post and it’s ranked as everything else is. To an advertiser, you pay nothing beyond what you would for an ad on Facebook.” That said, Facebook should be able to provide insights on how long people are spending on an ad in order to help improve ad creative over time.
Wilson said the simplicity of Canvas is helpful because it allows Kit and Ace to easily test what using video will look like and to ensure it’s on brand.
“I’d measure it in two ways: analytical things like clicks and overall brand value, or building brand equity,” he said, adding that a big plus to using Facebook is its ability to target locally. “We’re looking to push stories and localize certain aspects of what our brand does — how you’re moving from a subway and commuting up the stairs and getting into your office. For us, it’s really about movement through your whole day.”
SHANE SCHICK- Marketing Mag
February 25, 2016
Three dark social channels with a billion active users & how to use them
While marketers are justifiably attracted to the Facebooks and Twitters of the world, stats from Radium One show that nearly 70% of global sharing activity takes place in dark social channels.
These are channels in which sharing activity takes place out of public view.
But just because dark social channels are harder to work and track doesn't mean that marketers should ignore them.
In fact, there are now a number of dark social channels that are just as big – and even bigger – than Facebook.
Here's a run-down of these channels and how marketers can use them.
Email
Email is the most prominent dark social channel, and arguably the most powerful.
Although marketers in some industries, such as ecommerce, already rely heavily on email and appreciate how it can be used as a social channel, many others underestimate it altogether.
That's a mistake because although it's not the only game in town, email is still one of the most common ways individuals communicate digitally.
Gmail alone recently surpassed 1bn monthly active users.
How to Use It
Knowing that emails are frequently shared, marketers can, where appropriate, include calls to action that encourage sharing.
For example, some retailers incentivize subscribers to share with friends to receive discounts.
On the analytics side, with properly tagged email links and a proper analytics program, it's possible to get a general sense of email sharing activity.
And there are even email analytics services that can track specific activity, such as forwards.
To learn more about this channel, check out our range of Email Marketing Training Courses.
SMS
SMS might be the most underrated and overlooked dark social channel.
How underrated? Consider this: late last year, BuzzFeed revealed that SMS often generates the greatest percentage of shares in the company's iOS and Android News apps.
While more sophisticated messaging apps have surged in popularity in recent years, billions of people around the world on mobile devices and platforms of all kinds have access to SMS.
Therefore it's not surprising that other publishers that have encouraged SMS sharing, such as Gannett, have also seen this dark social channel outperforming popular platforms like Twitter.
Coupled with the fact that SMS messages are opened more often than emails, and quickly, SMS is a channel marketers are wise not to ignore.
How to Use It
SMS is one of the easiest dark social channels to take advantage of. All that's required to add SMS sharing is a link with the sms scheme.
On devices with an SMS client, links with the sms scheme function similarly to links that use the mail scheme.
WhatsApp
In 2014, Facebook acquired cross-platform instant messaging service WhatsApp for more than $19bn and less than two years later, WhatsApp has joined the billion active user club.
Much like SMS, some publishers have found that WhatsApp is a very productive social channel and, in some cases, it can even be more productive than popular channels like Facebook and Twitter.
How to Use It
It's possible to create custom WhatsApp share buttons, and there is open source code to help with this.
Popular third-party sharing services like AddThis also offer the ability to include WhatsApp share buttons.
Future billion user club members
For most marketers, email, SMS and WhatsApp are the dark social channels most worthy of investigation and investment.
But marketers, particularly those active in Asia, should keep an eye on Tencent QQ and WeChat. These popular messaging programs are on their way to the billion active user mark.
And because they incorporate innovative features not yet seen or popular in the West, marketers able to capitalize on their growth may find that they have access to unique opportunities they don't yet have in other dark social channels.
Published 18 February, 2016 by Patricio Robles
Patricio Robles is a tech reporter at Econsultancy.
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