Business Issues Blog

Pepsi will reportedly be skipping its annual Super Bowl commercials, and will instead invest the money it would generally spend on those, in social media marketing. This would make the first time in 23 years that Pepsi will not have Super Bowl ads. Larry D. Woodard, President and CEO of Manhattan ad agency Vigilante writes in an ABC News piece: Pepsi represents one of the stalwarts, not just of the Super Bowl advertiser lineup, but of broadcast TV in general. In 2006, spending on brand, Pepsi was at about $150 million. Although brand spending has been decreasing in recent years, Pepsi has continued to spend tens of millions on TV. And the Super Bowl annually has the largest audience of any TV show. As television viewership has gone down, Internet usage, particularly social media interaction, has increased. The 2009 Super Bowl attracted an impressive 95.4 million viewers (approximately 42.1 percent of U.S. TV homes) and many of those watch the commercials as attentively as the football game. By contrast, in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company. This holiday season, Toys “R” Us developed a Facebook page that grew at the astounding rate of between 40,000 and 95,000 fans per day after its late November launch. As the numbers Woodard mentions would indicate, the Super Bowl is always an advertiser’s dream. It costs big bucks, but there are so many eyeballs on those ads, and some people even watch the event just to see the commercials. Pepsi’s move really says something about how far social media has come in the advertising world in such a short time. The fact that the company is breaking such a long-standing tradition in favor of it says a lot. Of course social media will play its role in the further viewing of the Super Bowl ads themselves. They will no doubt appear on various video sites, and will be shared by countless people on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

According to Opera, Facebook is the most popular site on the mobile web in Africa. In addition, a report from the company shows a 5% jump in global mobile Internet users. Opera Mini has garnered more than 41.7 million users worldwide showing a 5.3 percent jump compared to the previous month, according to the report. The number of page views in November went up 9.5% and data consumption increased 8.3% compared to October. In Africa, Facebook has taken a strong lead and ranks as the most popular site in six out of the top 10 countries, Opera says. The company highlights the following global trends: – In November 2009, more than 41.7 million people used Opera Mini, a 5.3% increase from October 2009 and more than 154% compared to November 2008. – Those 41.7 million people viewed more than 18.8 billion pages in November 2009. Since October, page-views have gone up 9.5%. Since November 2008, page-views have increased 231%. – Opera Mini users generated over 285 million megabytes of data for operators worldwide in November 2009. Since October, the data consumed went up by 8.3%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 2.6 petabytes of data in November. Since November 2008, data traffic is up 213%. – The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Vietnam and Poland. Opera also highlights the following trends for Africa: – The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are (in order): South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Tanzania and Namibia. – Some numbers regarding Africa: From November 2008 to November 2009, page-views in the top 10 countries increased by 374%, unique users increased by 177%, and data transferred increased by 183%. – Since our last spotlight on Africa, Kenya jumped from #4 to #3, Ghana jumped from #11 to #5 and Ivory Coast jumped from #8 to #7. – Growth rates in Africa: Ghana and Kenya lead the top 10 African countries in terms of page-view growth. Ghana and Ivory Coast lead the top 10 African countries in growth of unique users. Kenya leads the top 10 African countries in page-views, with each user browsing 525 pages on average each month. – Facebook has taken the lead in Africa; it is the most popular site visited by Opera Mini users in six out of 10 countries and the #2 site in the three countries where it isn’t #1. Google is also very popular, and is ahead of Facebook in a few of the top 10 African countries. Yahoo and Wikipedia are also ubiquitous in the top 10 lists of the various African countries. – Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets are extremely popular in Africa, but Samsung is a significant exception, boasting the most popular phone used by Opera Mini users in South Africa, Zambia and Namibia. “It is heartening to know that Opera Mini continues to grow consistently in all regions and categories — specially in continents like Africa where mobile phones are more likely the only way for people to access the Web,” said Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. “At Opera, we are striving to bring the most innovative and affordable way for people to access the mobile Web and expect 2010 will prove just as successful for us as the case has been in previous years.” Have You Read This? > Opera Turbo Sees 60% User Growth in One Month > 40 Million Reasons You Need a Mobile Web Presence > Opera Releases Latest Version of Popular Mobile Browser

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Opera: Facebook Most Popular Mobile Site in Africa

You may recall that a lot of entities -including Google, Yahoo, and Bing – released some top/best of/worst of 2009 lists back in late November and early December, seemingly forgetting about the last one-twelfth of the year.

Facebook users are a pretty important group of people; after all, in recent months, it’s been established that there are more of them than there are individuals in the United States.

Update 4 :

As you read this, the inboxes of 14 Facebook developers may be reaching the breaking point.

Earlier, we looked at Twitter’s top trending topics of 2009 . They broke it down into several top ten lists based on various categories. Yfrog , a site that hosts images and videos for people to share on Twitter, has shared its top ten image searches for 2009. In other words, this is a reflection of what people are looking for images of on Twitter. Granted, Yfrog is not the only service that people use to share pictures on Twitter. TwitPic is an obvious one. Still, Yfrog is a reasonably popular one, and it would be hard to believe if TwitPic’s list was too different. Here’s Yfrog’s Top 10 of 2009 1. New Moon / Twilight 2. Jonas Brothers 3. Tiger Woods 4. Michael Jackson 5. Halloween / costume 6. iPhone 7. Adam Lambert 8. Kanye West / RIP Kanye West 9. Iran election 10. Miley Cyrus “In 2009 posting pictures and videos to sites like Facebook and Twitter became standard practice for the tech savvy,” a YFrog representative tells WebProNews. “Instant media sharing defined not only a new form of citizen journalism, but revolutionized how pop culture, politics and current events are captured and shared globally.” This is only one of the many top ten of 2009 lists we have covered, and don’t be surprised if there are more. Check out some of the other 2009 lists in the related articles and get ready for a new year. Related Articles: > What the Most People Watched on YouTube in 2009 > The Most Searched For Terms of 2009 > Death, Disease, Money, and Twitter on Bing > The Definitions That People Didn’t Know in 2009 > What People Talked About on Twitter Most in 2009

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The Things People Looked for Pictures of on Twitter in 2009