Weekend Reading, 10/24/14

October 24, 2014

NRF-Halloween-Spending-Forecast-Oct2014Halloween spending is expected to rebound from a drop last year and total $7.4 billion, according to the NRF, which finds that the average person will spend $77.52 this Halloween. Roughly two-thirds of as two-thirds of adults will celebrate, and two-thirds of those celebrants say they’ll buy Halloween costumes. AdGooroo breaks down the list of top costumes by paid search spend here.

Meanwhile, here are some other pieces of research data to get you through the weekend:

  • The government confirms what everyone already knows: more people are using mobile devices for internet-connected activities! Find the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) report here.
  • Sticking with mobile, Chadwick Martin Bailey reports via a survey of 2,000 recent tablet purchasers [download page] that few tablets were bought using a mobile devices, and that mobile applications and social media aren’t used much during the purchase journey.
  • Mobile might be gaining ground, but business execs are keeping it traditional for the time being. An Economist Group and Peppercomm study finds that 78% of global business execs would prefer to consume business-related content on desktops, laptop PCs and Macs than on smartphones (7%) or tablets (15%). For the record, they’ll take that content in text (86%) form rather than video (12%) or audio (2%), thank you very much. Are B2B execs old school? Find out here.
  • Keeping with the B2B audience, a Spiceworks study [download page] reminds that IT buyers are humans and that they should therefore be treated like people (not leads), which is basically the impetus behind the MarketingCharts study (yes, another plug) that looks at B2B buyers as, well, people. Some of the Spiceworks study highlights include the finding that about three-quarters IT buyers consult social networks at all during their purchase journey, and that marketers should focus more on IT forums and free product trials, which are important to IT buyers.
  • Shifting gears, the Pew Research Center has an intriguing study on the difference in media habits between liberals and conservatives – and it seems to be quite a gulf.
  • US politics do get about the right amount of coverage in US news media, consumers responding to a Harris Interactive survey believe, but the news media generally overdoes it on celebrity gossip/scandals, general entertainment news and sports. Topics not getting enough attention, per respondents, include humanitarian issues in the US, education, science and government corruption. But… ratings!
  • Sports may get too much attention in the news, but consumers sure are spending more time in sports apps. In fact, Flurry says that time spent in sports apps has grown by 210% year-over-year, compared to a 65% growth for apps overall. After the recent big news in the TV industry, Flurry theorizes that this could be “Strike Three” for cable. But, really, sports apps won’t be replacing live sports on TV until they’re actually showing live sports, not just scores and highlights.
  • On the video front, content creators are moving away from the old paradigm of publishing videos to YouTube and then sharing them to Facebook, instead now uploading them directly to Facebook. This, per Socialbakers, with more data here.
  • Finally, Leapfrog Marketing Institute’s survey of 91 CMOs in the US gives another indication that ROI is kind of a big deal these days. Separately, while CMOs see websites, data/analytics and mobile as being most important in achieving their marketing objectives, those latter two are among the least developed in their organizations. (To be fair, they’re also newer.)

Have a good weekend!

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