... convenient, efficacious or suifficiently high-quality to command a premium price.  

Opines Maureen Morrison, writing in today's Advertising Age: "Brands can no longer bide their time, fending off store's own-brand options while waiting and hoping for consumers' wallets to fatten.

"About 40% of the US population is still downtrodden, concerned or otherwise worried about their financial futures, according to IRI [Information Resources Inc] research.

"In addition to convincing consumers, brands may need to perform an even tougher trick: redefining their own definition of value to one that's additive.

"When not reduced to the question of price, value speaks directly to what benefits a product or service adds to a customer's life. Some smart brands get this and are using packaging, design, sourcing strategies and technologies to entice consumers to get them to open their wallet a bit more, even in these tough times."

Conversely, however, the classic example of a recessionary innovation that gets consumers to pay more, not less, is P&G's Tide Pods.

The repackaging of its detergent into one-pack-per-load pellets is a clear boon to the consumer because it eliminates messy measuring.

Research consducted by IRI concluded that P&G's Tide Pods been a breakout hit that rocketed to $500m in stateside sales in about one year.

Better yet, from P&G's viewpoint, the bundle of individual laundry detergent packages comes at a significant premium to liquid Tide - $18.99 for a 66-load container of Pods on Walgreens.com.

Read the original unabridged AdAge article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... although the report relates solely to the USA, the halcyon days of near-exponential growth for social media elsewhere in the western world are trending sharply downward.

The Experian data indicates that, proportionate to other online activities, the time US consumers spend on social media sites is actually in decline.

However the report qualifies that apparent decline: "Blindly chasing fans or followers has rightly lost credence as brands realise that social sharing and referring has the biggest impact. As a result, simpler and more effective tools to measure social sharing will allow brands to refocus on creating meaningful social media campaigns."

By contrast, time spent shopping online grew year-on-year. In fact, US consumers spent 9% of their web time shopping in 2012. After analyzing US browsing data for mobile devices, email accounted for the largest time spent on average.

Overall, email made up 23% of time spent on mobile devices during the first quarter of the year, while social networking accounted for 15% of consumers’ mobile time.

Consumption of news content also increased among US consumers who devoted 4% of their online time to news.

Although the data refers solely to the US market - the western world's largest - the report's implications are equally valid within the UK and European Union.

All pales into relative insignificance, however, alongside the Chinese  social media market vis a recent report from Forbes.com.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... foreign direct investment.

This is forecast to reach record levels in the period through to 2015, the Bank predicts, reaching US$54bn (£35.3bn) annually by 2015.

The report said strong economic growth in Africa had significantly reduced the extent of poverty in the sub-continent over the past decade.

The Bank's provisional figures show that the proportion of Africans living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 58% to 48.5% between 1996 and 2010

World Bank economist, Punam Chuhan-Pole comments: "If properly harnessed to unleash their full potential, these trends hold the promise of more growth, much less poverty, and accelerating shared prosperity for African countries in the foreseeable future." 

However, resource-rich countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Gabon were singled out as making less progress in combating poverty than other African countries with fewer natural resources.

Read the original unabridged BBC article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the purchase or rental of video or audio content from an internet provider, such as cable television, video on demand or an IPTV video service like AT&T U-Verse.

OTTC specifically refers to content that arrives from a third party, for example Netflix, Hulu or MyTV, and is delivered to an end user device, leaving the internet service provider responsible solely for transporting IP packets.

Worldwide OTTC video revenue continues its sharp growth - with Netflix, Hulu, Apple, and Amazon driving the business.

According to ABI Research, the OTTC market - valued at $8 billion in 2012 - grew at a near 60% increase over the previous year. Continued rapid growth will push the market past $20 billion by 2015.

Much of this will occur as traditional entertainment content providers become more comfortable with new media distributors/platforms.

Comments ABI senior analyst Michael Inouye: “The shift to digital and OTT distribution is accelerating, particularly as content providers increasingly warm up to these channels.

ABI notes that the three biggest markets - North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific - enjoyed year-on-year growth in excess of 50% in 2012.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... the health of the global economy, particularly in relation to the Eurozone debt crisis.

Despite which WARC expects global advertising spend (based on twelve major markets) to increase by +3.0% at current prices in 2013 and by +5.4% in 2014, according to its latest International Ad Forecast.

With the exceptions of Brazil and Japan, all featured markets have seen downgrades to their forecasts for 2013 compared with WARC's November 2012  report.

The Eurozone countries will all see flat or negative growth in advertising spemajor political or sportind for 2013.

Comments WARC's Data and Journals Director Suzy Young: "With few major political or sporting events this year, global advertising spend growth was always expected to be slower than in 2012. The Eurozone debt crisis also continues to depress growth both among member countries and abroad. To offset this, global adspend will be reliant on a solid performance from the US and strong growth from emerging markets."

Read the original unabridged WARC article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... viewed in context with people's economic status. 

The Great British Class Survey posits that defining (and understanding) classes as "amounts of different types of 'capitals'" help us to view class across a number of dimensions.

The French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu first developed this approach in 1984, suggesting there are different types of capitals which give people an advantage in life.

Economic, cultural and social capitals may overlap but they are different. Using this approach, the survey distinguishes between people with different amounts of each of the foregoing three capitals.

It's been difficult to test this approach in Britain because comprehensive questions on cultural and social capital are rarely asked in national surveys. Sociologists need large amounts of data to unravel the complicated way the different capitals interact with each other, in many different people.

Mike Savage from the London School of Economics and Fiona Devine from the University of Manchester say they were "excited to test this approach for the first time" by designing a survey with BBC Lab UK.

The survey's results identify a new model of class with seven classes ranging from the 'Elite' at the top to a 'Precariat' at the bottom.

Read the original unabridged BBC article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... $75 billion, an increase of 14% over five years.

At the current rate, it will be some time before digital ad spending surpasses TV in the USA, though it's expected to grow at a much faster rate (18%) over the next five years.

Advertisers spent an estimated $37.3 billion on digital advertising this year, and are expected to invest $60.4 billion in 2017. (Ad revenues from digital outpaced TV ad revenues in the UK in 2009.) 

Of course, broadcast and cable networks, many of which have built out digital extensions of their own, will partake of some of that increase.

Spending on digital video ads is expected to reach $4.14 billion this year, more than double the amount invested in 2011.

Read the original unabridged Mashable.com article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... challenges brands to grow earnings through improved marketing effectiveness and increased spending efficiencies to cut costs.”

Continued Mr Liodice: “Companies expect technology, expanding media platforms and better decision making to better enable marketers to pursue earnings growth objectives.” 

The survey found that marketers are continuing to challenge their agencies to lower costs. However, only 15% plan to cut agency compensation - a significant decrease from 2009 when 56% of marketers squeezed their agencies in this way.

Perhaps more significantly, the research also reveals that from 2013 onward marketers will focus on other means to lower costs and expenditures, including reductions on:

• Travel (58%)
   
• Internal agency expenses (55%)
   
• Advertising campaign media budgets (46%)
   
• New projects (44%)

The survey marks the seventh occasion on which the ANA has polled its members on the marketing industry's post-recession fiscal focus. The study was executed online in January 2013. Respondents included 120 client-side marketers.

Read the original unabridged ANA article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... Russia's online advertising spend will this year grow from 19% of total national adspend to 22%, while spending on print media will decline from 13.9% to 12.6%. 

Conversely, TV ad revenues in 2013 will account for 46.4%, down on 48% in 2012. 

According to Vedomosti, publishing houses in Russia received between 2% and 25% percent of their revenues from internet advertising.

Mikhail Voshchinsky, managing director of Aegis Media, said that spending on online marketing was growing because new technologies such as real-time bidding had made online ads more transparent and straightforward to advertisers.

Read the original unabridged Vedomosti article.

*Vedomosti is co-owned by the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... who recalled seeing the last ad remember seeing it online.

The survey conducted in December 2012 analyzes responses from US-domiciled consumers of all genders, ages, income and education levels. The study's key findings indicate that:

• Relevance remains a key challenge, and 36.5% of respondents who remembered the last ad they viewed did not remember the context.
   
• About 80% felt the last ad they saw was not relevant to them.
   
• Only 2.8% of respondents said they thought the ads they saw met their needs, either to answer a question or provide more information.
   
• The findings also reveal that only half of users ever click on online ads, while 35% click on less than five ads per month.
   
• Among online ad viewers, 75% saw the ad on their computer, while the remainder viewed the ad on their phone or tablet.

The study notes:"There are similarities between the way the US Transportation Security Administration's airport security screeners glaze over liquid-filled bottles in carry-on luggage and the banner ads that consumers searching for information never see.

Infolinks ceo Dave Zinman believes improving the 0.1% click-through rates on banner ads requires choosing nontraditional and memorable ad locations to increase the recall by consumers typically bombarded with messages.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.