[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]The share of Americans who use social media as their primary source of political news and information is rising fast but remains relatively small[/inlinetweet]. Only 14 percent of American adults reported that social media was their most important source of news for the 2016 election. On the other hand, 57 percent of American adults said that TV (cable, network or local) was their most important source. And yet when it comes to branding reserach companies like Kantar Millward Brown insist that brands need to use social media as a marketing channel.
Category Archive: Bad Research
Once again the media is spewing its bullshit. By turning events into “crises” the media draws attention to itself, and earns a nice little profit from the increased viewership/listenership/readership.
When it comes to internet headlines we’re easily impressed, mislead, and bullied by sneaky or irrelevant data, meaningless charts, fast talking metrics monkeys, and cement-head marketing mavens who know even less than we do. The bottom line is that online commerce constitutes just 6% of retail activity and good old brick and mortar retail activity constitutes 94% yet writers love to try and make headlines about the rise of ecommerce.
In the hard sciences, research is reasonably reliable because it measures things. In the soft (social) sciences, research is often not about measuring things, but about asking questions. In other words, rather than watching to see if you’re cheating on your wife, they ask you if you are. Then they treat your answer as a fact rather than just the bullshit it is.
Men are more responsive to online ads than women, according to an eye-tracking study by picture provider Shutterstock. Men looked at the ads for 0.4 seconds longer than females (0.9 seconds vs 0.5 seconds) while noticing a third of the ads in the study, compared to a quarter for women. This is an example of useless research and is a clear indication that some research companies don’t have any common sense.
A study, done by Mr. Grayson and Mathew Isaac, a professor at Seattle University, and published in April in the Journal of Consumer Research, surveyed 400 participants regarding 20 common tactics used in television and digital ads. Thirteen of the tactics elicited favorable responses, which surprised even marketers. When you reside in academia instead of the real world you live with blinders on.
Ad blockers are appearing everywhere and are now available for desktop as well as mobile browsers. The IAB recently conducted research and according to their report consumers would be willing to delete ad blockers if advertisers could “assure users of site safety: Provide guarantees that site and ads are secure, malware and virus-free, and won’t slow down browsing”. Uh, No.
You have to be careful when downloading white papers from the Internet as most are disguised to try and sell you on a new service. The latest is a report from Simply Measured on the State of Social Marketing. While the online marketers are trying to cut through online ad fraud, BOTS, and the decline of social media they actually suggest “social media is a growing focus for marketing teams: The percentage of social media teams that live within the marketing organization has grown from 49% in 2015 to 63.2% in 2016”. I work for/with a lot of consumer marketers and I can safely say that almost all of them are cutting social media marketing budgets and people.