Author: Mark

At the end of last year SPARK Media and Caxton commissioned international attention technology company Lumen to utilise its eye tracking software in qualitative research to measure attention on its local newspapers and lifestyle magazines. The results will be out in early March. It’s everything that was expected and so much more!

“Just because you can see something doesn’t mean that you will see it,” explains Mike Follett, Managing Director at Lumen. “Lumen’s eye tracking technology helps us understand what people look at.” The methodology also measures what is remembered or able to be recalled as the crucial metric. What you can’t remember you can’t act on.

“With attention at a premium in our multi-device dominated world, it’s more important than ever to understand the reality of visual attention on memory and the ability to recall messages,” says SPARK Media’s Marketing Services and Research Director, Debbie McIntyre.

“We know that we’ve created an efficient media shopping mall for consumers with all the relevant ads and inserts in our newspapers every week and we know they’re well read,” she says. “But our recent research findings from Lumen have also confirmed that times are incredibly tough for our readers and getting tougher so it’s crucial that we understand exactly where their attention is when it comes to our platforms.”

Eye tracking according to Lumen allows the company to ‘see exactly what people do, not what they say they’re going to do’. By measuring automatic responses and questioning respondents afterwards, Lumen can utilise this information to gain incredible consumer insights.

Results will be shared at industry presentations in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Interested parties are invited to email bs@sparkmedia.co.za for more information.

SPARK Media

Established in 2015, SPARK Media, a division of CTP Ltd, are experts in retail and location-based marketing solutions. The company owns and represents an arsenal of print products that deliver locally relevant, effective audiences for advertising clients. SPARK Media are Strategic Partners in Audience Research and Knowledge and offer ‘Insights that Ignite’.

Simba Hozo, Digital Specialist at Reprise Digital looks at the evolution of mobile in the consumer and branding space.

We all remember the first telephone we ever used, connecting with the person on the far end of that dialling tone. It was amazing to be able to connect like that no matter the time or distance (remember the girls hogging the phone for hours?). Years after this an even better bit of tech evolved. A telephone you could have on you all the time, one you could walk around with and connect to with more than just voice.
But did you know that hand held phones had been in the making since 1918, in trains and automobiles? This and many other lightbulb moments helped Motorola and its peers to introduce the world to the future telephone that would colloquially be known simply as ‘the mobile’.

It is argued that South Africa is the foremost mobile-first nation in Africa, maybe even the world, similar to America being the world’s foremost computer-first nation. These are probably two of the worlds’ grandest means of connecting businesses and consumers globally a.k.a the desktop and the mobile. According to ICASA (Independent Communications Authority of South Africa), South Africa’s smartphone penetration today stands at a whopping 84%, doubling in the past two years.

It is at moments like this I remember what one of my marketing mentors used to say: “fish where the fish are, and if you can’t find fish where the fish are, change your bait.” This was a simple analogy for the modern-day market place where quality leads have evolved from walk-ins to platforms.

Our world is a smartphone market place and it seems the only thing that matters these days is, ‘is it mobile ready?’ ICASA recorded smartphone subscriptions at 46.9 million as at 30 September 2018 and taking this in context of South Africa’s population, July 2018 Statistics South Africa reported the mid-year pollution to be 57.7million.

That is a staggering figure for any business wishing to connect with its consumers. Smartphone penetration has also seen a surge in application development, because what are people really doing on their smartphones apart from connecting and transacting? It goes without saying that it’s critical that brands are playing in the mobile space today more than ever. But, how are brands standing out? Who has mastered their ‘fishing’?

For a business to thrive, with more than just a shift in mind set, I believe the following three approaches are necessary.

– Look deeper and understand the type of audience you want to attract.
– Understand how your type of audience connects and converts as they sometimes don’t relate to the same thing.
– What device is your audience using to engage and at what time.

Mobile has in no way become the be-all and end-all of connecting with customers – that would be a dangerous assumption. There is however something to be said in constantly connecting with customers. Imagine serving a print ad, then serving the same ad via desktop or TV and then later re-serving it directly to the same customer’s mobile phone. Sounds a bit stalky and nonsensical doesn’t it? What if we could just re-purpose the same ad and serve it in three different appealing ways at three very convenient times, directly to that same customer? This is the impact smartphones and where the power of the technology lies.

The technology behind mobile phones means that businesses have the ability to study their customer’s engagement and lifestyle patterns. After all, mobile has propelled today’s fastest growing industrial stack – digital marketing, where the global online spend has grown 3% year on year since its inception.

Over the past three decades it remains, without a doubt in my mind that the biggest lesson for marketers throughout mobile’s incredible changes, is that the fundamentals have remained the same. It is still vital to reach the right customers, with the right message at the right time. Technology is accelerating at a tremendous pace and it pays to keep moving with the times. Mobile more than any other platform has become the world’s premier, and competitive, marketplace. So really, it’s always #MobileFirst

Reprise Digital SA DNA

Reprise is a digital-first agency, and everything we do is rooted in understanding how consumers interact across apps, sites, IOT-devices, bots, search engines, and social platforms. We uncover your audience based upon their digital fingerprints – and build a media approach to help transform your business digitally. Reprise has the ability to fuse smart digital approaches for our media agency partners in smart and sophisticated ways.

As part of the launch of Caxton’s exciting new locally produced video-on-demand platform, Hive Digital Media presented Spectrum to a few select agencies from November 2019 to January 2020.

As part of the initiative a lucky draw competition was run among the agencies, where two prizes were up for grabs, namely a free Spectrum pop-up channel and a 50% discount of a Spectrum channel, both valid for three months.

To date this roadshow has been a resounding success as agencies are eager to hear of the successful integration of Spectrum across 73 Caxton-owned local news websites. The agencies visited were: Mediacom, Mediaology, Dentus Aegis, Phd and Publicis Group.

Spectrum seeks to create a fair value ecosystem for local content producers. To this end the platform aims to provide relevant content to connected individuals, on a hyper local level; ensuring that South African advertising spend stays within our borders and funds locally produced programming and journalism.

Speaking to the value of local content Amber Valentine (Biddable Specialist, MediaCom) noted, “I would probably trust somebody more from a local blog just because they have similar experiences to me”

Spectrum’s stats already prove that the demand for local video is abundant. Between its launch in December 2018 and January 2020, the platform has seen over 9.7 million plays, almost 2.5 million unique browsers, and enjoys an outstanding average dwell time of 3 minutes and 48 seconds.

Another key differential noted by the agencies is that South African consumers can now discover local content in a brand safe, contextualised and non-intrusive video environment. Brand and data safety are central to clients concerns and all content on Spectrum has been curated, and advertisers have power over the context in which their communications will appear.

Emphasizing the importance of brand safety to his clients Bryce Betha (Digital Campaign Manager, Publicis Media) asserted that, “The most beneficial thing about the product is that the client will be able to tell what content is around the adverts.”

Designed and built by local tech company Tysflo (Spectrum’s software development partner) the data compression technology used by the platform ensures a maximum data consumption rate of 1.2mb/s, 40% less than competitors. This ensures that a diverse range of viewers can access its HD channels and video-on-demand content in an exceptionally data-friendly way.

Discussing the significance of Spectrum and the value of a channel affords clients Hive Digital’s CRO, Parmeshan Moodliar said, “Spectrum represents a defining moment in video-on-demand platforms. We want agencies to be part of Spectrum’s revolution and experience the value of the brand safety and the sustainable reach that the platform can offer.”

Hive Digital Media wanted agencies to experience the platform first-hand, which was their motivation for running the lucky draw competition among the agencies that they visited. Phd and Mediaology were the proud winners of the Spectrum channel prizes.

Moodliar enthused about working with the winners, “It is going to be mutually inspiring working with the winning agencies as we discover the potential of developing local content for a local market.”

To be part of the Spectrum video revolution which offers effective brand awareness, brand safety and ensures that South African media in all parts of the value chain benefit equally, contact Hive Digital Media’s Team on info@hivedigital.media/+27 10 492 8391.

For further insight visit our new website www.hivedigital.media.

Search Engines are finally putting the user first – enhancing zero click searches, local searches and understanding content better than ever before. This is according to Marcus Matsi, Head of SEO at Reprise Digital South Africa, an IPG Mediabrands company.

Search engines are getting better at understanding content that is crawled. This enhances the user experience by only serving content relevant to the query’s intent.

Take for example Google Featured Snippets (structured data), Google’s Local Packs, Knowledge Graphs, and so on, that result in more than half of all searches being ‘zero-click searches’. This means that the user’s query is answered on the search engine results itself, without the user having to click on any links.  Ahrefs research shows that if brands rank first in a search and has what is termed position zero (the featured snippet), they gain 31% more traffic compared to just having the first position without the featured snippet.

A second trend in terms of search engines is the proliferation of Local Search. We’re seeing more and more people wanting to find information that is geographically relevant to them. For instance, users want to find food delivery services in their neighbourhood. If a brand’s website isn’t optimised for the user to find that information, chances are high that they’ll move on to one that is.

According to Google’s Consumer Barometer, Local Search is a crucial component, with up to 78% of local-intent mobile searches resulting in an offline store visit within 24 hours.

Effective local search means having hyper local content, augmented for voice and mobile search – brands must always focus on the intent of the user. Does the person want to purely find information or do they want to make a transaction? Interestingly, searches including the words ‘near me’ increased by 590% during 2018 and 2019 searches.

Thirdly, Google is spending a lot more time understanding content. The search engine has released an algorithm update named BERT affecting complicated search queries that depend more on context.

Yes, content remains king but most search engines still don’t understand the content ‘in front of them’ so to speak. There are a lot of cultural nuances, and local pricing references that search engines need to learn by country, by region, by suburb. For instance, using the South Africanised word ‘couch’ instead of ‘sofa’ can go a long way in assisting search engines to learn about geographic-specific data.

Ultimately content needs to be relevant, fresh, trustworthy and authoritative. But hosting sites need to adhere to Google Best Practice and have a fast loading time. In fact, 53% of visitors will leave your site if content doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less. That’s why it’s so important to optimize websites and content for mobile conversions. Also, the better that brands write content and spell out as much detail as possible, the better search engines will learn and the better the overall user experience for the consumer will be and ultimately for brands too.

Reprise Digital SA DNA

Reprise is a digital-first agency, and everything we do is rooted in understanding how consumers interact across apps, sites, IOT-devices, bots, search engines, and social platforms. We uncover your audience based upon their digital fingerprints – and build a media approach to help transform your business digitally. Reprise has the ability to fuse smart digital approaches for our media agency partners in smart and sophisticated ways.

Good Things Guy has just been named the Best Blog in South Africa for the third year in a row and also came in tops as the Best Lifestyle Blog in the country for 2019.

Brent Lindeque, the founder of GoodThingsGuy, launched the blog almost five years ago to change the national conversation and give South Africans a balance to the news in South Africa.

The South African Blog Awards is the official showcase and recognition platform for the very best of South African blogs. They endeavour to bring South African bloggers to the forefront of people’s attention, both locally and internationally, increasing exposure for South Africa’s great bloggers around the globe.

“Through the recognition process of current South African Bloggers and the publicity created around the awards, blogs and bloggers, the platform looks to encourage people who are outside the realm of blogging to discover the fantastic world of blogging.”

The South African Blog Awards has evolved since its inception in 2010 through a process of public opinion, blogger opinion and social media expert’s opinion. Entries were open in 16 main categories, including Best Business Blog, Best Environmental Blog, Best Food and Wine Blog and Best Lifestyle Blog.

Lindeque maintains that all he wants to do is change the national conversation and give South Africans a balance to the news in our country.

A personal crusader on a mission to empower through the power of positive thinking, Brent has achieved global recognition for his forward-thinking approach and has inspired a nation. Recognised as one of the Mail and Guardian’s Top 200 Young South African’s as well as a Primedia LeadSA Hero, and one of the GQ Men of the year for 2019, South Africa’s Good Things Guy is just thankful for the continued support of the readers.

“I am so incredibly humbled and thankful for both the awards and to be named South Africa’s Blog of the Year again is just mind-blowing.

The platform has become one of the top good news sites in South Africa & has grown from a simple idea to share a few good stories on Facebook to a full team that bring good news to South Africans every day.

I have to give a massive shout-out to all our readers who regularly tune in and catch up with the good things. You make us what we are today, and this award is actually yours for all the support you give us.”

This is Good Things Guy’s 14th award since it was launched! The site was selected as one of the Top 25 African Blogs to follow, as well as one of the 100 most interesting websites in the world!

The platform is nearly five years old (it was launched on the 1st of August 2015) and is on a mission to change what the world pays attention to. The team behind Good Things Guy believe that there is good news all around us and over 1,5 million readers a month agree with them.

Good Things Guy also recently launched an app for both Apple and Google for readers to get the good news on the go, while their out-of-home offering has grown to over 150 screens around the country that show all the good news, all the time.

To see the full list of categories and winners here http://www.sablogawards.com/Home.aspx

At the end of last year, SPARK Media released its first media and advertising industry focused Get It magazine, modelled on the current popular localised national magazines.   

Containing profiles of successful captains of the industry, social pages, suggested reading material for progressive marketers, competitions and a round-up of SPARK Media news, the publication offers a fun and informal look into the people and events that drive our industry while still offering the reader valuable information.

“Our media focused launch issue has been shared among our media agency and client partners and we’re very encouraged with the feedback we’ve received so far,” says SPARK Media CEO Gill Randall. “Our next issue will be released mid-year with a third iteration being shared towards the end of the year.”

ROOTS research shows that consumers like the feel of their favourite magazine in their hands and the opportunity to put it down and reread at a later stage. There’s just something about that tactile experience. Readers really enjoy taking their time and lingering when reading print.

“As the local Get It magazines prove to be highly valued and respected publications that build a sense of community among local consumers, so too will our trade Get It, as it did in the past, foster this local media and advertising community of ours,” concludes Randall.

SPARK Media

Established in 2015, SPARK Media, a division of CTP Ltd, are experts in retail and location-based marketing solutions. The company owns and represents an arsenal of print products that deliver locally relevant, effective audiences for advertising clients. SPARK Media are Strategic Partners in Audience Research and Knowledge and offer ‘Insights that Ignite’.

Spectrum, Caxton’s exciting new locally produced video-on-demand platform, has been successfully launched across 73 Caxton-owned local news websites. Spectrum aims to provide relevant content to connected individuals, on a hyper local level; ensuring that South African advertising spend stays within our borders and funds locally produced programming and journalism.

Spectrum’s stats already prove that the demand for local video is abundant. Between its launch in December 2018 and January 2020, the platform has seen almost 9.2 million plays, over 2.5 million unique browsers, and enjoys an outstanding average dwell time of 3 minutes and 47 seconds.  Spectrum’s dwell time speaks to its value as an advertising platform, indeed according to thinkwithgoogle, 90 percent of people say they discover new brands or products on video platforms. And 2019 saw “Near Me” searches top trending search behaviour in South Africa. Now South African consumers can discover local content in a brand safe, contextualised and non-intrusive video environment.

In terms of Spectrum’s usages clients can:

• Reuse and amplify already existing content assets
• Drive brand awareness
• Sponsor branded content within a channel
• Sponsor a full channel
• Run pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ads
• Run in-stream ads
• Obtain in-depth and on-going reporting on campaign performance

Designed and built by local tech company Tysflo (Spectrum’s software development partner) the data compression technology used by the platform ensures a maximum data consumption rate of 1.2mb/s, 40% less than competitors. This ensures that a diverse range of viewers can access its HD channels and video-on-demand content in an exceptionally data-friendly way.

All content on Spectrum has been curated, and advertisers have power over the context in which their communications will appear.

Speaking to the importance of brand safety, Alan Shenton, COO of Tysflo, says: “Caxton enjoys high levels of trust owing to its accountability, and the trustworthiness of its sites grows confidence in clients’ brands. Essentially, the integrity of Caxton’s content lends credibility to clients’ products and services. This isn’t only brand safety; it’s leveraging a reputation built over many years.”

The many commercial opportunities afforded by Spectrum are overseen by a collaborative partnership between Caxton’s digital marketing wing, Hive Digital Media, and radio broadcasting media sales house, United Stations.

Regarding the commercial opportunities for Spectrum, Hive Digital’s CRO, Parmeshan Moodliar, notes: “The platform offers clients the opportunity to use professionally produced, relevant video content to create meaningful connections with Caxton’s large and varied audience – segmented at a hyperlocal level.

Being South Africa’s undisputed leader in community news, Caxton’s ability to target viewers at a finely grained geographical area is a key differentiator and a key value proposition.”

Be a part of the Spectrum video revolution that offers you effective brand awareness, brand safety and ensures that South African media in all parts of the value chain benefit equally. Contact Hive Digital Media’s Team on info@hivedigital.media/ +27 10 492 8391.  For further insight