By Alan Coleman on 10 Mar 2017
This month in 'Battle of the Internet Giants', Facebook's metric missteps have angered the world's largest advertisers.
Metric Missteps
Proctor & Gamble are the world's largest advertiser. Their head-honcho has come out swinging, stating digital marketing metrics stink. From 2017 P&G will be dictating their own analytics metrics to any media wishing to benefit from the brand's big bucks.
CMO Marc Pritchard’s ire was invoked by the “fraudulent” programmatic supply chain as well as Facebook’s multiple mistakes in overstating their stats while “marking their own homework”.
Some commentators are calling the talk “the most important speech in marketing" in 20 years.
Marc isn’t the only man in a twist over metrics at the minute.
Twitter Turns to Daily Active Users
Twitter is suggesting the metrics it led with at IPO are not actually the best measure of its performance. Rather than talking about MAU (monthly active users) in which growth is slowing, the niche social media network is now turning the conversation to DAU (daily active users), which grew healthily during the US election in Q4. Here in Dublin, Twitter is paying almost double the rent per sq foot compared to its neighbours (ourselves included), suggesting their commercial issues lie deeper than their marketing metrics.
Snapchat Learns From The Metric Missteps of Others
Snapchat IPO'd yesterday. Despite the fact that their losses dwarf their revenues, Wall Street went nuts for the augmented reality app. (It's not just digital marketers who lust after shiny new things). Its share price surged 44% from its initial offer price.
Snapchat, fair play to them, have learnt from the metric-related mistakes of others:
1/ They are focusing on Daily Active Users not Monthly Active Users, shifting the focus to engaged users.
2/ They are offering third party verified stats via Nielsen, meaning “teacher” is correcting their homework, unlike Google & Facebook who are now under increased pressure to follow suit. Facebook have demonstrated they have no issue following Snapchat's lead on creative formats, let's see if they ape verified performance metrics with such vigour.
3/ By using fluffy traditional metrics such as 'ad recall' and 'brand lift' Snapchat is positioning itself to compete with TV for budget rather than trying to beat Google & Facebook on cold-hard clicks and conversion, which would be a much tougher ask.
Scary Metric: Online ad spend in the US is actually in decline.
I sh!t you not.
If you remove Google and Facebook, the digital media duopoly who hoover up two-thirds of global online ad spend, the rest of the US market SHRANK by 3%.
Bitcoin Trading Higher Than Gold
One more number you need to know about. Bitcoin is now trading higher than Gold for the first time ever! Long time readers will remember my wife talked me out of putting our deposit for the house into Bitcoin 3 years ago.
Although it's an opportunity missed, I must admit I'm very happy not to have spent the last 3 years in our old, dark, rented basement flat.
Fair play Deborah.
If you are in E-Commerce, it's now time to consider your Bitcoin strategy.
