Category: Country Focus

Most UK consumers are finding mobile ads on their smartphones, tablets and other devices to be much more informative and helpful now than a year ago.

This is according to new report from the 2nd Annual UK Mobile Path-to-Purchase Study released today by xAd, the global location marketplace, and Telmetrics, a major call measurement technology provider.

Results of the 2014 study were compiled by Nielsen from an online survey of 2,000 UK smartphone and tablet users focused on the Retail, Insurance and Telecom categories.

View the xAd/Telmetrics 2014 UK Mobile Path-to-Purchase Ad Receptiveness infographic here. 

Randomised mobile ads featuring irrelevant messaging are becoming a thing of the past, as brands are analysing factors such as consumer shopping behaviour patterns and real-time location to serve ads that are more personal, relevant and timely.

As a result, consumers are clicking on ads more frequently and finding them more helpful as a key tool on their path to purchase. In fact, a third of respondents who noticed mobile ads reported clicking on at least one of them in the past 30 days.

As mobile ads continue to improve, brands will continue to see an increase in ad engagement, ultimately resulting in greater influence over their target audiences and a positive impact on their bottom lines.

Relevance is the most significant driver of clicks and engagement
The advertised product must be something the consumer is interested in, the study finds. In fact, one in three respondents reported that they clicked on an ad because it was something they were interested in or looking for. The importance of geographic relevance, or how close a consumer is to a store where they can buy the product, is also significant. Its significance in determining whether or not a consumer will engage with an ad has grown 40 per cent since 2013. Readily available and easy-to-find business contact information was also important. A quarter of survey respondents specified that they prefer ads with phone numbers.

Monica Ho, SVP of marketing at xAd, said: “Through analysing historical and real-time data, brands are now able to serve ads that are much more relevant to consumers.

“Accurate location data in particular has enabled brands to serve ads that are of interest to consumers when they’re close to a store or retail location. As we’ve seen, most customers engaging with ads are looking to make immediate purchases, so this can drive significant in-store traffic and sales for brands.”

Consumers are becoming more comfortable with the free content ‘trade off’
As the mobile advertising industry matures, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that the revenue generated by ads enables their favourite sites and apps to continue producing free content. They’re also becoming more educated on location awareness and the fact that it increases relevance within mobile apps and ads. The vast majority of survey respondents said that they prefer a free website with ads over paying for an ad-free subscription, a sentiment that has increased 41 per cent since 2013.

Secondary actions are the strongest indicators of purchase intent
Secondary actions after viewing an ad, such as visiting a website or store location or calling the business, are the best indicators of purchase intent. Consumers who further engage with mobile ads post-click, have a higher purchase urgency, expectation of proximity and likelihood to convert. The frequency of these post-click activities is therefore a great measure of campaign success. 77 per cent of users who took action post-click purchased or plan to do so in the near future and 63 per cent were looking to do so within the hour. Not surprisingly, 40 per cent of respondents who took secondary actions expected the business advertised to be within 8km of their current location, once again underscoring the importance of accurate location data in mobile advertising.

Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics, said: “Post-click mobile shoppers are 2x more likely to be looking for a specific location or contact information so advertisers that include this information can help drive more purchase activity.

“Overall, the jump in mobile ad engagement among consumers is a good sign for advertisers who can now benchmark their mobile ad performance against relevancy, timeliness and geographical trends to ensure they are maximising the mobile opportunity.”

A fifth of UK-based businesses regard catalogues as out-dated, despite a third of those using them crediting 40% of their overall sales as a direct result of them.

According to a new report, recently released by a direct marketing specialist, one in five businesses believe catalogues to be out-dated, despite those that used catalogues seeing two-fifths of their sales driven via the channel.

The report, put together by direct marketing, design and print specialists Catalogues 4 Business (C4B), questioned more than 300 UK organisations as part of research into corporate marketing strategies. Respondents to the study were drawn from a diverse mix of businesses, both B2B and B2C, which spanned multiple industry sectors.

According to the results of the study, only 5% of businesses plan to implement a catalogue within their marketing strategy over the next 12 months, despite the apparent success of incorporating catalogues as part of the marketing mix. Of the companies polled, 49% believed that they didn’t need a catalogue, despite a fifth (20%) saying that they used a website with e-commerce.

Ian Simpson, managing director of C4B, said: “It’s quite baffling that businesses don’t recognise the benefits that having a catalogue can bring. If you sell products via your website, a catalogue is an excellent additional method to market your product and your brand.”

He continued: “They’re also great tools for networking. Previous analysis of our study revealed networking to be the main driver of sales for 24% of businesses, making it the number one deliverer overall. Combining networking with a catalogue gives you that extra edge and allows you to leave something tangible with a potential client.”

The findings also revealed that a quarter of businesses (24%) believed that the biggest barrier to sales and marketing success was the fact that ‘people were so bombarded with emails that something in the post provided more impact’.

Simpson said: “Everyone is familiar with receiving junk emails, the majority of which end up in a SPAM folder, and even those that don’t often get deleted without being read. The prevalence of direct email marketing means that it’s easy for your message to get lost in the flood. However paper-based marketing provides that physical element, which is harder to ignore. And when it comes to paper-based marketing, catalogues have the highest opening and highest retention rate of any form.”

Simpson concluded: “While businesses might believe that printed marketing material is dead, that’s far from the case. With digital marketing becoming more and more predominant, paper-based marketing offers something different. Not everyone likes trawling through page after page on the Internet. Catalogues have a physical presence and can communicate by the way they feel, smell and unfold in your hands, something that an online equivalent simply doesn’t provide. They also have huge ‘pass through’ potential and a catalogue is often read by several people, with a similar demographic. Catalogue marketing has never gone away and, if anything, its influence is increasing.”

Craft brewery says redefining Britain’s most popular beer style can end binge drink culture for good.

Scotland’s largest independent brewery, BrewDog, has set its sights on obliterating the ‘insidious culture around lager drinking’ cultivated by decades of mass marketing – by launching a beer that takes the lager style back to its roots.

Launching yesterday, This. Is. Lager. is a 4.7% ABV pilsner designed to offer lager drinkers a craft beer alternative to the mass-produced lagers that still dominate the UK market.

This. Is. Lager. is brewed with 100% malt and ten times the hops of most industrial lagers. To demonstrate the difference to those still unfamiliar or resistant to the craft beer revolution, BrewDog offered free 1/3 pint tasters of This. Is. Lager. at all of its UK bars yesterday.

James Watt, cofounder at BrewDog, said: “This. Is. Lager. redefines a beer style that has for so long been defined by shallow, listless beers undeserving of the name.”

“For years, global breweries have spent millions convincing the British public that lager is a beer style best served as fizzy, tasteless liquid cardboard propped up by snappy straplines, glamorous advertising or counterfeit stories of foreign provenance. We hope to perpetuate a movement of craft breweries blazing a new trail for lager, proving it’s a misunderstood, neglected beer style.”

Craft beer is the star ascendant in the drinks market, with BrewDog named the fastest growing drinks brand in the UK within a context of declining beer sales for mainstream, mass-production breweries.  The artisan brewer is immediately making This. Is. Lager. part of its headliners range to ‘convert’ those still unfamiliar with craft beer as it plots destroying the binge drink culture that has long overshadowed the industry.

“Lager is often demonised or derided as the choice drink of chavs and louts, which is the result of laddish marketing that diverts attention away from taste and enjoyment and undermines the potential of lager as a creative and artisanal beer style,” he added.

The death of binge-drinking

“If we can redefine lager in the UK, we will redefine our relationship with alcohol. We can actually start to reverse binge-drinking trends currently being tackled by toothless and misguided legislative proposals unlikely to ever see the light of day anyway. With the volume-driven industry leaders trying to pull the wool over drinkers’ eyes and the government trying to legislate their way out of a media-disaster cul-de-sac, it’s time we treated drinkers like adults and gave them an alternative to stack ‘em high sell ‘em cheap beers with no soul or taste.

“Gone are the days of lager being synonymous with extra-cold taps, lads on tour, fake Aussie accents, Burberry baseball caps and pot bellies. That is not lager. This. Is. Lager.” he added.

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Connections don’t equate to brand engagement.

More than half of Britain’s adult population engaged in social media do little to increase brand interest and create positive associations with brands online, finds Kantar Media in a new social media segmentation from its TGI Clickstream study of online consumer behaviour.

Richard Keogh, head of Kantar Media TGI UK, said: “This new segmentation provides crucial insights into the level of engagement and influence that social media users have online. The different segments show that clicks and connections alone will not reveal consumers’ actual engagement levels.”

Based on an analysis of the social media connections and engagement of more than 50 million adults (aged 15+), TGI’s segmentation uncovered six groups of social media users:
1. Social Spectators – a disengaged group with a respectable number of connections, but the least likely of all social media users to buy goods online, or to read or update their social media accounts. Neither do they post product reviews or follow brands online. They tend to be older and, because they don’t carry high economic or cultural capital, are unlikely to have much clout or spending power for brands.
2. Online Experimenters – are potentially very valuable for brands to target given their crucial combination of purchase power and online engagement.  Accounting for just 10% of the adult social media-using population, this group are more likely to be older and particularly likely to engage with brands and to buy products online.
3 Connected Engagers – have the highest level of connections and influence. They account for just 3% of all social media users, but, because they lack economic and cultural clout, may not be the big spenders. They are, however, most likely to spread the corporate word online.
4. Connected Dabblers – this group represents 10% of the social media-using population and has a high level of connections. They follow brands on social media but are less likely to post reviews about products/brands. They are engaged but less influential than Connected Engagers.
5. Passive Socialites – have a high level of connections but don’t follow brands or post reviews. This means they have a low level of influence. They account for 4% of the population.
6. Credible Contributors – account for 22% of the population. This group has an average level of connections and engagement, being highly likely to follow brands and post reviews online. They are active and engaged with medium amounts of influence.

Keogh added: “Marketers should review who they are targeting online to ensure they are directing their social media activities (and marketing budget) at the most appropriate audience.

“For instance, Social Spectators display very little online engagement in spite of having a moderate number of connections. Connected Engagers however, who are most active online have minimal economic or cultural clout. Comparatively, our Online Experimenters, who have relatively few connections online, could prove particularly influential in driving sales and growth for brands. What they lack in connections they make up for in the way they embrace social media and online purchasing.

“Marketers need to look beyond widely accepted metrics to specific evidence of engaged online activity to determine how valuable consumers are. Now is a good time for brands to review who they’re really speaking to online.”

Retailers drive 33 per cent increase.

The number of coupons redeemed in the UK has reached 365 million redemptions in the first half of 2014, according to Valassis.

Findings released by the UK’s coupon experts show that the number of coupons redeemed from January to June this year is 33 per cent higher than the same period last year, and 11 per cent higher than the second half of 2013. The first half of 2013 saw 275 million coupons redeemed and 328 million redeemed in the second half of the year.

The rise in coupon redemption is driven predominantly by retailers, with 43 per cent more retailer-issued coupon redemptions in the first half of this year than in the same period in 2013. This contrasts with manufacturer-issued coupons which, despite a sharp growth over the past 18 months, were flat in the first half of 2014.

Overall, the number of coupons redeemed by UK consumers has more than trebled since 2006, from 109 million in the first half of 2006 to 365 million just eight years later.

Charles D’Oyly, managing director of Valassis, said: “Many supermarket shopping trips are now driven by savings behaviour, and coupons form a key part of this with consumers searching for the best discounts before they set foot in store. This often means that supermarket choice is determined by the most attractive and relevant offers.

“Retailers are acutely aware of this, with coupons playing a key role in their promotional strategy in a bid to attract shoppers to their stores and give them the competitive advantage.”