Last week saw the annual Future of Digital Marketing conference in London, presented by Econsultancy. For me, a long day’s exposure to many stimulating speakers boiled down to a multifaceted take on the concept of value. How can marketing deliver value for advertisers in 2010? What value (and values) do consumers look for when they consider the options presented to them? What new behaviors made possible by digital media are attaining value? Below are a few points raised or prompted by the occasion.

Value comes in many forms these days.

At the most basic level, there is value in technology itself, including Internet access and mobile devices. These things make it easy to get information, find products and services, save time and save money. A milestone in this appreciation of technology as value, as keynote speaker Gerd Leonhard reminded us, is that from July 2010, access to broadband will be a legal right in Finland.

While some things are gaining value, others are losing it. A corollary of recent technological development, Leonhard observed, is that the intrinsic value of copies (such as songs, video and written content) has declined, turning many old business models on their heads. Now it is often the context of information or creativity that makes it valuable, and those who can create a compelling context will attract audiences.

One of the greatest sources of contextual value is online community. Facebook is the headline example—demonstrating that not only the site itself but advertisers who use it well can reap big rewards. But there are countless examples of smaller communities creating value through shared interests.

One speaker, Rowan Gormley of Naked Wines, has built his business on a blindingly simple win-win premise: Wine lovers get together to support independent winemakers with a proven pedigree, and commit to buying specific wines before they are made. Because the winemakers effectively pre-sell those wines, they don’t need to market them, and many upfront costs are also met. For their part, buyers save an average 33%—often more—on the wines themselves. The earlier they commit to buy, the lower the price.

Of the 80,000 members of Naked Wines, 20,000 also spend £20 per month to support winemakers who need modest investment to launch a new wine or begin a new project—perhaps buying an additional parcel of land to cultivate. In 2009, Gormley noted, Naked Wines was the largest single investor in new wine ventures in the world. Beyond this, the company works to harness the full value of users’ comments and to provide good customer service.

It’s not difficult to see the concrete value in Gormley’s business: for winemakers, for wine drinkers, and for Gormley himself, who clearly loves his job. Tom Savigar of the Future Lab discussed value in a broader sense. Savigar aimed to look “beyond retail” in his keynote speech, and ask questions that are fundamental in the multichannel age: “Why do I go to a store? Why do I go to a Website?” What are the differences, and how are these categories blurring as we all learn to shop in different ways?  More importantly, how are retailers recognizing the value they provide, and using that knowledge to rethink their businesses?

Angela Maurer, senior marketing manager at Tesco.com, lifted the lid on the grocery giant’s API strategy to reveal another win-win situation. First, Tesco managers spent some hours together brainstorming ideas for online and mobile applications, and drew up a list of priorities in various areas. These were written on Post-It notes and stuck to the walls of their very large meeting room. That same evening, the firm threw open the doors to interested programmers recruited online.

Browsing among the posted ideas, programmers could choose the projects they wanted to tackle. Tesco managed the assignment process, and gave programmers all the information they needed about the store’s API and related infrastructure. Result: Tesco is taking advantage of some of the best brains in the field, programmers get payment and credit, and the customer gets better service. Moreover, said Ms. Maurer, the entire process of brainstorming, commissioning and delivery took a tiny fraction of the months that older processes would have required.

Marks & Spencer is also squeezing extra value from existing assets—in this case, its branded video content—according to Chris Gorell Barnes. Barnes is CEO of Adjust Your Set, which helped the retailer launch M&STV. The site is now populated with more than 1,000 pieces of intelligent content, and has generated over 4 million minutes of views.

Much of the content is also syndicated for broadcast on video sharing sites, social networks and other content and media portals. Crucially, these videos incorporate a click-to-buy facility, taking viewers straight to M&S for purchase. So far, data shows customers who viewed M&STV spending 23% more. And, said Gorell Barnes, video delivers value in other ways. His firm has seen e-mail response rates rise by up to 300% when outgoing messages contain video elements.

Inevitably, Facebook plays a growing role in any assessment of value on the Web. Beyond its importance to users and product advertisers, however, is its growing value as a broadcaster. As Gerd Leonhard noted, even content from major media owners is increasingly seen within this social environment, as a currency shared between friends or given new meanings by Facebook groups. Content owners are just beginning to think about how this may raise or lower the value of what they produce, and how their business models need to alter in response.

The emerging mobile arena was another key topic of the day. Douglas Orr of price comparison engine Sccope discussed the rapidly growing market for mobile commerce. His firm is the global m-commerce partner for BlackBerry, which aims to launch mobile buying facilities from this August. Orr and other speakers on mobile were joined on a panel by Jo Vertigan, Head of Digital at England 2018 (promoting England’s bid to host the FIFA World Cup eight years from now) and Patrick Mork, CMO of GetJar, a site offering “appsolutely everything” in the way of applications for mobile handsets.

M-commerce promises greater convenience for buyers and a new revenue stream for sellers. But what other values attach to mobile? Are apps better value for advertisers and consumers than mobile Websites? Advertisers often opt for a site strategy, which removes the need to cater for different handsets. But will the mobile Web win out in the long run?  

Mork, not surprisingly, favored apps over sites. Apps offered deeper brand engagement, he said; users experienced no network delays, and payment was (at the moment) easier and more secure from within an app. But he acknowledged that advertisers interested in reach probably find better value in building mobile sites.

A final insight agreed by all the FODM speakers: The pace of change in the industry, though frightening, is also inherently valuable, keeping marketers on their toes and sparking innovation.

Speaker: Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer Senior Analyst (see below for more info on Jeffrey)
What: Advantages of Multichannel Marketing
When: Thursday, May 20, 2010, 1 PM ET

To watch playback of the Webinar, click here. You can view the PowerPoint deck below.

In this session, you’ll find out:

Cross-channel shoppers are bigger spenders and more profitable than single-channel shoppers. They effortlessly do product research online via their PC or mobile phone before making an in-store purchase. They browse catalogs to find interesting products but then visit the retailer’s Website to consummate their purchase.

Smart multichannel retailers understand that by leveraging the strengths of their stores, Website, catalog and mobile offering they create a customer experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.

In this stimulating and informative Webinar, eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau will discuss how savvy marketers coordinate their messaging, promotions and merchandising across channels to better compete and to accommodate the preferences of shoppers. Multichannel marketing insights will be gleaned from a wealth of market research data and interviews with retailers and industry experts.

About Jeffrey Grau

Jeffrey Grau covers retail e-commerce in North America. Besides building e-commerce forecasting models for these markets, he writes on special topics such as multichannel retailing, online holiday shopping, social commerce and the online shopping experience.

Previously, Jeffrey was a competitive analyst for Lucent Technologies. He also held research and information roles at Bell Laboratories, AT&T and ABC News. Jeffrey has been a guest on TV programs including “Morning Call” (CNBC) and NBC’s New York morning news. He has been quoted in CNNMoney, Inc. magazine, Investor’s Business Daily and Advertising Age. He has appeared as a speaker at conferences sponsored by EyeforTravel and the Special Libraries Association.

Jeffrey has an MBA with honors from Fordham University and a master’s degree in library service from Columbia University. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Grand Valley State College.

Sponsored by Akamai.

The UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) published its first detailed figures on UK Internet users’ online behavior on May 19, 2010. The data relates to usage in April.

UKOM, launched earlier this year, was set up to deliver a common currency of information about Internet audiences in the UK, comparable to offline metrics such as the TV audience figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB). This will enable marketers and media planners to assess more clearly the targeted reach and frequency achieved by digital ads, and should help preserve the positive momentum of online ad spending in the UK—up 5.7% in 2009, according to the Advertising Association and the World Advertising Research Center.

The scheme has had overwhelming buy-in from agencies, publishers and other industry firms, according to UKOM, although its software product and user interface will not be finalized until the second half of this year.

The first raft of UKOM results indicated that UK Web users spent 884 million hours online in April 2010—65% more than in April 2007. Almost 23% of that time was apparently spent on social networks and blogs, with the number of hours rising from 40 million to 176 million in three years.

The next most popular categories after social networks and blogs were personal e-mail (56 million hours in April 2010) and online games (53 million hours).

Portals, often thought to be in permanent decline, put in a surprisingly good showing; UKOM found that UK Web users spent 31 million hours on sites such as Yahoo! and MSN in April 2010.

How successful can a B2B business be using social media? Fairly successful, at least in the case of IBM. We recently chatted with Ed Linde II, whose team is responsible for building Web assets to support the IBM.com sales channel and organic Web visitors, about IBM’s social media efforts and successes. He spoke about their Listening for Leads program, which he says has “uncovered millions of dollars worth of sales leads” so far, and is expected grow even more. Here’s a clip from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access. (Read more…)

In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and the days following it, the ads that appeared in the game got plenty of online buzz, especially if they had social media tie-ins. But what about Pepsi, which decided to opt out of the game? Will it get better ROI from the Pepsi Refresh Project that than it would have from being on the Super Bowl telecast?

A few results are starting to come in. Clickz tallied up the number of Facebook fans that Super Bowl advertisers had before and after the game. Pepsi’s rival, Coke, which had several spots during the game, added nearly 390,000 fans to its page. Pepsi added about 300,000 fans, but it still trails Coke in total fans. Coke now has nearly 5 million, while Pepsi has around 515,000.

True, fan count isn’t a very good measure of ROI. But with all the money Pepsi reportedly is devoting to digital marketing for the Refresh Project, it had an opportunity to pull closer to Coke in the social-media wars. At least by this measure, Coke still won.

And while Pepsi has gotten plenty of PR in the marketing community for its decision to skip the Super Bowl, Coke’s in-game ads generated awareness among consumers—the people who actually buy its products.

Some think Pepsi made a mistake by not tying the Refresh Project in with a Super Bowl ad. Jeremiah Owyang, a partner in the Altimeter Group, wrote this week in Forbes: “By not having any in-game discussion on the advertisements, [Pepsi] was unable to use the Super Bowl or its advertisements as a catapult to launch the campaign into the social sphere. In fact, after the game, overall mentions of Pepsi and the Pepsi Refresh campaign remained relatively on the same trajectory as before.”

The Refresh Project is expected to last a year, so the good news is that Pepsi has plenty of time beyond the near-term buzz of the Super Bowl to generate ROI. But it will only be successful if it has clear objectives and ties its social media efforts in with its bottom-line results.

As Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer’s CEO, writes in the new Insight Brief “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media,” “It is impossible for marketers to measure success if they do not know what their objectives are before they start a social media marketing initiative.” To succeed, Geoff asserts, marketers must establish clear marketing goals, organize their measurements into a logical framework and take a long-term approach.

PepsiCo’s Frank Cooper told SmartBrief on Social Media that he’s looking at three key measurements: relationships with consumers, social media activity and sales lift.

“First and foremost we’re focused on relationships. We are building more relationships and we have more points of contact with our consumers. That’s a positive thing. We can measure that. We know how many more people  that we’re contacting. We can also measure the activity within the social-media space. We already see today what’s happening on Twitter. We see what’s happening on Facebook — and the response has been tremendous. And then third, I think ultimately, this whole idea of allowing people to do good through our platform, we believe will actually serve us at the shelf. I believe we will see a sales lift coming from this.”

Whether Pepsi’s Refresh Project is successful or not depends on its ability to follow through and not only measure those things but also apply them to its entire marketing plan.

“Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media” is part of a series of eMarketer Insight Briefs focused on social media marketing. Available exclusively to Total Access subscribers, the seven briefs, along with a PowerPoint slideshow, answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.