The digital ad spend for 2019 is estimated at a staggering 300 billion EUR. That is roughly half of all the ad spend in the World combined.

Google is the largest ad seller in the World, accounting for 93 billion EUR, close to one-third of the entire digital ad spend. Facebook is second, with almost 61 billion EUR. Which means these two internet juggernauts account for almost half of the money spent on online advertising, during 2019.

Google Ads (previously Google Adwords) and Facebook ads are the platforms behind these money-printing businesses.

Google Ads

Launched in October of 2000, it is the quintessential online advertising platform. Its success is entrenched in its premisse: the moment people are searching for something is the perfect timing to show them such products.

Nowadays, thousands of agencies and independent professionals implement Google Ads campaigns. There are tons of tutorials, online courses and other learning materials that help digital marketing practitioners learn and improve. Google did a tremendous grass-roots work developing materials and evangelising companies and decision-makers to the importance and benefits of such campaigns.

Facebook Ads

This highly successful digital advertising platform takes a completely different approach from its counterpart. Ingrained in a plethora of social knowledge of its users, Facebook developed an exceptionally effective algorithm to profile its users. This, in turn, allows Facebook to serve remarkably well targeted ads. 

Facebook mimicked Google’s strategy and developed extensive content to help spread knowledge and train a generation of skilled advertisers into their platform.

Influencer Marketing

The digital revolution that ignited with the internet and with smartphones shifted eyeballs away from traditional media, like print, cinema, radio and tv, towards new media, like the web and social networks. Hence the rise of the two behemoths aforementioned. 

During that process, another social phenomena started to rise. Content creators, also known as influencers, started to build up large audiences. People interested in their content regularly came back to their channels to see what the influencers were saying. These followers avidly devoured the content, whether video, image or text. 

And where eyeballs and attention are, brands soon join. And thus influencers started to collab with brands as channels to disseminate their messages. 

The Influencer Marketing (IM) industry is still in its infancy. Although the numbers are already impressive, industry reports foresee explosive growth ahead. 

Global spending on influencer marketing has skyrocketed in recent years, rising from an estimated $2 billion in 2017 to about $8 billion in 2019. One forecast shows that spending is expected to jump to $15 billion by 2022.

Harvard Business School

The magnitude of brands adding IM to their marketing mix is impressive. Many brands are becoming influencer-centric, some even go as far as becoming Influencer Marketing exclusive. And not just small or boutique brands. Estée Lauder is currently allocating 75% of its marketing budget to influencers.

How to implement digital campaigns?

Implementing ad campaigns in Google and Facebook is quite simple. Both companies created workflows that start with a seminal task: defining the campaign goal. 

Examples of goals are interaction, or conversion.

Each advertising platform uses its own terminology, adapted to the social network itself. You can consult Facebook and Google‘s detailed explanation.

Using goals gives the advantage of focusing the brand on the most important thing, whatever that may be. As opposed to a mindset of “everything is important, let’s create a campaign to generate awareness, consideration and increase sales”. 

Defining the goal also helps the platform to guide you through the campaign creation process, by showing the options available for that specific goal and making educated suggestions.

Google Ads: available campaign types and goals

Facebook Ads: available campaign types and goals

Influencer marketing goals and campaign types

Here is Primetag’s approach to campaign goals on its platform of Influencer Marketing:

Whether you are using Google, Facebook or Primetag, the first step is always to define the campaign goal. Now that we have established that, we should move on to the next step: choosing the right goal for your campaigns.

Influencer Marketing Strategy: Choose the Right Goal for Your Campaigns

The post Implementing Digital Marketing Campaigns: an Introduction to Campaign Goals appeared first on Primetag Blog.

We’ve all read it somewhere. Instagram is hiding likes count on posts. Now what? What will happen to influencers? How is this going to impact the Influence Marketing industry? How will brands select influencers? How will influencers be noted? 

I work for Primetag, a SAAS company that develops tools to transform influencer marketing. It is a collaborative platform designed for influencers, agencies and brands to work together in a scalable, simple and data-driven way. We are in a unique position to observe and to speak about these changes Instagram is operating.
Pedro Fernandes, Chief Marketing Officer at Primetag

First of all, what’s really going on?

Instagram first announced this decision in their annual developer conference, in April 2019. The rationale was reducing pressure and helping users focus on the quality of their contents, not on its performance. Removing the likes count removes the burden on the performance, according to their thesis. 

Instagram started testing this in Canada and by mid July they extended the trial to Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Italy and Japan. Which makes it seem more like a roll out than an extended test, but let’s put a pin on that for now.

It’s important to notice that while the number of likes is not public, the posting user still has access to that information. So the likes are not gone. The public just doesn’t see them.

How will this change impact the behaviour of the user? 

Instagram was built based on the “like” behaviour. Simply put, you browse your feed and when you see something you enjoy, you double-tap to “like” it. Which begs the question: if the number of likes stops being visible, will users keep liking posts? Where’s the incentive for doing so? 

For instance, video posts on Instagram have typically a smaller number of likes than image posts because the default behaviour is watching it. If you like the video, you watch, that’s how you exteriorize that likability. You are less prone to add a like to that video because you already watched it. So we actually can identify a user behaviour where adding or not a like to the content is not so relevant.

So, yes, we may be seeing a fundamental change in the way people interact in Instagram. 

Think about Instagram stories, which are nowadays a big part of the content being published in this social network. There are no likes for stories. The default behaviour is watching the stories and swipe up when you want to see more, eventually go to the purchasing page. And we all know that Instagram is working on building an ecommerce experience around the app. So maybe removing the likes may just be an intermediate step towards a more shoppable experience.

All things considered, it seems to me that removing the number of likes from posts is not that radical. If you think about, it’s actually quite in line with the overall app experience and evolution.

Will this harm influencers?

Influencers have large audiences. And social networks want those audiences because they earn money showing ads. The more people, more ads. The more ads, more money. So it’s hard for me to believe that Instagram would harm influencers, at least intentionally. 

Seems like Instagram stepping away from vanity metrics, and forcing brands to step up their game.

At Primetag we develop software that lets brands and influencers (or media and talent agencies on their behalf) collaborate in a professional and sophisticated fashion.

Brands with little or no experience in influence marketing resort to likes and comments to evaluate the success of their campaigns. Experienced brands and brand managers know that the metrics and KPIs to monitor vary according to the campaign goals. Without likes and engagement rates, inexperienced brands will need to dig deeper and find better ways to evaluate their campaigns. They’ll be forced to evolve, to increase their expertise.  

There are digital providers that estimate influencers insights and put this information out there. This lack of transparency affects every player within the influence marketing sector. Brands are making decisions based on estimated data, not real facts, and influencers are being evaluated based on information that is not correct. 

With this move, Instagram is making life much harder for digital providers that estimate insights. Which, in reality, is a good thing for influencers. Primetag’s platform allows influencers to share their real insights with brands in a safe and controlled way. Favoring platforms that work with real data is Instagram’s way of promoting this industry and protecting its most valuable asset, the influencers in their social network.

So, Instagram is removing likes. Don’t panic!

The post Instagram is Hiding Likes. Don’t Panic! appeared first on Primetag Blog.

Influencer audience insights is critical information to plan successful campaigns. Are you sure you’re using real data?

Understanding influencers’ data

Each influencer has access to the analytic information of their social networks, whether we’re talking about a blog, Instagram account or a Youtube channel. That is commonly called “private data”. As opposed to other public metrics, such as number of followers, likes, and comments.

That private data includes information regarding the location of an influencer’s audience, such as the city and country, its gender, and age range. The reach of each specific post. And many other metrics, depending on the social network

Reach is how many people actually saw a specific content. Not all followers will be shown the post. And sometimes non-followers see the post.

That is why public data is information nice-to-have, but private data is a must-have. Because it gives you an insight into an influencer’s audience. Hence the name, audience insights

When do brands need access to influencer audience insights?

There are two critical moments when brands and agencies need to access the real data from influencers’ analytics.

The first moment is during the campaign planning stage.

A brand (or an agency working on its behalf) has goals to achieve in any advertising campaign, and with influencer marketing it’s no different. The brand has a target audience to reach, with specific characteristics, grouped into segments.

Let’s imagine you are a brand and you want to impact 500.000 people in your country. With public data, you will have to look at the number of followers and interactions of an influencer and try to guess how many people will actually see that post. Which, let’s face it, is not the most rigorous approach (hint: it’s ).

With access to audience insights, you get to know the average reach and impressions of that influencer. And you can, with a high degree of confidence, forecast the number of posts required to reach the 500.000 people you are targeting.

The second moment is evaluating the campaign results, in the report stage.

Brands need to evaluate the performance of the campaign, to know whether it reached its goals. To do so, they need access to audience analytics of all the influencers in the campaign. Only then can the brand assess the campaign’s performance. Again, without access to authentic data, you will not be able to correctly assess the campaign’s performance.

What is happening in the market?

Well, it turns out that asking each influencer for their audience insights is a time-demanding task.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could go to a website and have all the private data of all the influencers available? It would! And, in fact, it just so happens that such websites do exist! But…

The problem with this third-party companies that sell audience insights is that their data is not correct! That is, the numbers they provide in exchange for money are fabricated. They do not have access to the real audience insight information. So they estimate data and charge for it.

Think about it. This information is constantly evolving. They would need to be in contact with the influencers, constantly requesting their insights to update their database. And there are multiple providers like this. So all of them would be constantly contacting influencers and requesting their private data. It’s absurd.

Let’s look at an example! Here we have a printscreen of the audience insights from an Instagram account with +8M followers.

And here is a third-party supplier data for that same account:

According to the third party supplier, 29% of their followers are from Spain. So, 29% of 8M followers would be 2,320M persons. However, from the private data in his account, we can see that this account only has 5% of his audience in Spain. 8194006 x 5% equals 409700 persons. There’s a staggering difference between the real data of 410k and the fabricated data of 2,3M!

So, where are they getting their data from?

There are a lot of third party providers, and each one has their own specific way of producing data. But at the end of the day, they are mostly a “guesstrapolating” from public metrics (hint: they are ). The data usually ranges from unacceptable to simply atrocious.

What are the consequences of these bad practices?

Brands and media agencies that are using this data to plan their campaigns suffer a direct impact from these misleading third party companies.

As they are using estimated data to plan their campaigns, the immediate consequence is the impact on the campaign’s performance. If you are making decisions based on wrong information, don’t expect a brilliant outcome.

Influencers and social networks selection, the number of posts, all of these will be decided based on fake data. And, obviously, as these third party companies omit the fact that their data is not legit, brands keep using that data, completely unaware of the disastrous consequences.

In short, brands and media agencies are burning money.

And that’s not all. Influencers are suffering from this plague too. Most of the time without even realising it!

Influencers are being disregarded for campaigns simply because they are being evaluated based on estimated data. And worst of all, they are not even aware of that. As brands (think they) don’t need to contact them to have their audience insights, influencers are oblivious to the whole situation.

What’s the professional approach?

We believe that data authenticity is mandatory to work in a professional manner, as this is the only sustainable way for this industry to grow.

Influencers are the owners of their audience insights!

They are the ones who should be in control of who has access to that information. What influencers need is a safe way to easily manage who has access to their audience insights. A tool to enable brands to obtain that information, and the ability to revoke access to it once it is no longer necessary.

Brands that work with an influencer must have access to the audience insights. It is in both parties best interest. Brands that are evaluating working with an influencer must have access as well, in order to accurately assess the fit between the influencer and the campaign goals.

We developed our platform with this concept in mind: influencers have full control of their data. They decide which brands can see their audience insights. They decide which agent can work on their behalf.

Why is Primetag’s data real?

Primetag was approved by the most relevant social networks to access their APIs for the audience insights level.

This guarantees that data influencers and brands see in the Primetag platform is real. Because it displays the information that comes directly from the social network. With our platform the influencer is empowered in the decision of sharing his private information and the brand has access to data certified by the social networks.

If you work in the influencer marketing industry and agree that real data is mandatory to work in a professional manner, drop us a line. We can explain a bit more about our tool and how you can use it to implement successful campaigns.

#RealFollowers event in Barcelona: influence marketing leaders join Primetag in Spain

The post The Deception in Influencer Audience Insights: Why Estimated Data puts Brands and Influencers in jeopardy appeared first on Primetag Blog.

I had just entered my teen years when the Use Your Illusion albums were released. I grew up reading everything I could find about Guns N’ Roses, acquiring every bootleg album I could get my hands on and essentially listening over and over to their tunes, much like every other kid my age. You can say that, in a way, we were all followers of Axl, even though the concept of social media was still years away.

Pedro Fernandes, Chief Marketing Officer at Primetag

Theodore Andreadis is a talented american musician of Greek ascent. Throughout his career he worked with a stellar list of artists, such as Alice Cooper, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Roger Daltrey, to name just a few. His musical talent alongside his instrument versatility garnered him the respect and recognition of his peers.

However, and despite being acknowledged by the very best in the industry, Theodore wasn’t a mainstream media celebrity. He played with the best, hang out with the best and, in fact, he was one of the best. But he just wasn’t recognized by the audiences as being a rock n’ roll star. It all changed one night.

Teddy goes to The Jungle

Let’s go back a little bit. In 91, Theodore Andreadis was given a ticket to enter the jungle and paradise city, all in one. Our hero was invited to join Guns n’ Roses on the “Use your Illusion” tour, playing keys, harmonica and helping with background vocals. That meant sharing stage with the most charismatic, incendiary, magnetic, hellraiser and sought-after rock n’ roll stars of the late eighties and early nineties. Namely, Duff McKagan, Slash and Axl Rose. 

(…) and the band’s slightest misstep becomes controversy and turns established magazines and newspapers into veritable Guns n’ Roses fanzines. No wonder they take themselves so seriously.

“Use Your Illusion II” review, Rolling Stone magazine, October 17 1991

And so, Teddy Andreadis started playing before fifty, sixty and seventy thousand people, day in and day out, taking part in what became the longest tour in rock n’ roll history. 

Axl Rose, the legendary frontman, had the habit of, every night, introducing all the musicians on stage. However, the addition of Teddy Andreadis to the band brought in a little problem. Apparently, the name Andreadis was a bit too complicated to pronounce, so Axl would quite often mispronounce it (or either flat out make something up, like “Teddy angry anus”). Until, that is, the day when Axl is walking backstage and overhears a crew member talking with Teddy, calling him Teddy “Zig Zag”. 

That night was the night that forever changed Teddy Andreadis life. Axl went on stage and, for the first time ever, he introduced to the World the guy that was playing harmonica as being “Mr. Teddy Zig Zag”. Remember this was the early nineties. No social media. No internet. No youtube to amplify what had happened that night. Just a musical performance for around sixty thousand people and the media, that would write about the show in the next day newspaper or in next week’s magazine. However, Axl Rose’s influence power was such that, from that night on, Theodore Andreadis became Teddy Zig Zag. Forever! From that day on,  everybody started addressing him as Teddy Zig Zag. 

Even today, in a World with so many social media celebrities, with thousands and even millions of followers, that kind of influence is absolutely uncanny. The magnetism, the charisma, the power of influence of Axl Rose was so colossal that in one night, in one second, he threw Teddy into mainstream celebrity. And that, kids, is how you influence people. 

The World has changed

In the past we had a handful of people that were known on a global scale. Today, the number of people recognized globally has increased by an order of magnitude. I grew up with only two TV channels. So, give or take, we were all subject to the same media content. And that, in a way, favoured the appearance of Axl Rose type of phenomena: the combination of highly charismatic and magnetic personalities with the concentration of existing the media. Today there is so much dilution of content, so many channels and communication platforms available that I don’t think we’ll ever be able to witness such phenomena.

The post Influencing before Social Media: the Power of Axl Rose appeared first on Primetag Blog.