MarketingSherpa just put out an insightful article about some big industry shifts in marketing spend in response to the economic downturn.

Some of the survey findings are no surprise. One example — facing a tough consumer climate, more businesses are partially or all together dropping print and television ads from their quarterly campaigns.

One flip-side stat, however, really is a fresh finding. And we think it deserves emphasis since it validates all of those brands and agencies who strive to be in the internet vanguard because they know that, more often than not, being in the vanguard just makes bottom-line sense.

From a September 2008 representative sample of 382 marketing professionals, MarketingSherpa discovered that 48% of those surveyed are planning on increasing their social network marketing spend during this recessionary period. Compare that to static banner ads, where 43% are planning on reducing their spend. See the chart below.

Social networks have come a long way. It seems like every other day the top tech bloggers publish new commentary or announcements on Facebook, MySpace, and other like companies. No doubt such buzz has motivated big brands and other organizations to look towards social networks for viable marketing solutions. But the thing to keep in mind is that this growing interest and commitment are actually backed and driven by solid results: these campaigns on social networks (including video campaigns on social networks) have generated and are generating increased ROI for all kinds of companies.

Success metrics in video marketing have to do in large part with measuring the spread and demographic targeting of your content. These metrics are supposed to answer some obvious but essential questions: Did you deliver your message to enough video viewers, and did you really engage them? And just as important, were you able to reach the most relevant audiences possible?

Whether it’s Puma identifying 5,000 new influencers through Facebook, or Kiva harnessing the Involver platform to win $300,000 in new funding, we’re happy that we’ve had a number of opportunities to help top-shelf brands achieve widespread and enthusiastic buy-in from their video viewers. The ability to micro-target by age, gender, location, and content preference; the ability to guarantee up to 1 million video views; and the ability to identify and communicate with one’s top influencers on social networks like Facebook — we know that these are the features and guarantees that our clients care about. Confronted with a bad economy and lackluster results from traditional banner and print ads, digital marketers are turning to video campaigns not because they’re glitzy, but rather because they’re a proven and high-impact tool.

We’re happy to announce that Puma’s “chasingBOLT” campaign has won an Award of Excellence from the Society for New Community Research (SNCR). The campaign covered sprinter Usain Bolt’s three world record-breaking performances at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The awards ceremony was held last week at the 3rd Annual SNCR Research Symposium and Gala in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Other marquee winners included Dell, SAP, and Salesforce.com.

chasingBOLT was recognized in the “Media Creation - Corporate” category. The award citation mentioned the three primary goals that Puma sought to achieve through its video campaign on Facebook:

“[The]…program had to 1) create great web PR for Usain Bolt and his PUMA sponsorship, generating an increased level of online chatter about PUMA, 2) drive traffic to specific flash-based PUMA Running properties, and 3) lay the groundwork for future social media outreach by identifying PUMA Running fans and loyalists.”

By all accounts, Puma’s Involver-powered video campaign was a considerable success, generating over 1.25 video views — that’s over a million brand exposures — as well as attracting over 5,000 enthusiastic influencers who shared videos, uploaded photos and submitted messages of support on Facebook.

Congrats to Puma! We’re grateful to have worked closely with this great and forward-thinking brand!

Earlier today the popular Facebook blog AllFacebook.com published a guest article by Tyler Willis, our Director of Marketing. The piece focuses on the power of using Facebook — and the applications built on top of the Facebook platform — as an effective video marketing channel.

We’ve reposted the AllFacebook article below. We hope you enjoy it! Also, don’t miss the great responses to the article: Tyler’s points generated a lot of thoughtful commentary on the current state and ideal future of video campaigns on social networks.

—
“The Social Graph’s Effect on Video Marketing”
AllFacebook.com - November 4, 2008

When looking for the best way to make videos go viral, too many marketers just upload their videos to YouTube and cross their fingers, hoping viewers like the content enough to forward it on to their friends. Some try “guerrilla” tactics by repurposing social tools like Digg or Stumbleupon, marshalling a small army of friends and co-workers to drive up traffic, and hoping the effort makes a big enough splash to build momentum for their “video campaign.” Unfortunately these rudimentary practices are outdated and far from effective, so their video campaign is much more likely to flounder along with everyone else’s unwatched videos.

Rather than forcing social behavior into a publishing platform and putting all their eggs in the YouTube basket, forward-thinking marketers are weaving video into truly social platforms like Facebook because they can take immediate advantage of existing behaviors and tools that are built into these networks. For example, Facebook users are already accustomed to sharing links with their friends: they comment, send invites, post items to public places and talk about what they see -– it’s a much more engaging experience for the audience than watching a video on YouTube. This behavior has a monumental impact on video campaigns, and from my experience, savvy marketers are excited about the early results they’re seeing.

Beyond traffic and word-of-mouth perks, using Facebook has other benefits for running a successful video campaign. It lets you better control, target and measure your campaign with an incredible level of detail, and has the openness as a platform to build custom functionality that cannot be built into a YouTube campaign. Things like custom players can have interactive options, deeper analytics or data collection features, and rich immersive user experiences. With the Facebook news feed, you also gain visibility and exposure to the entire network when users interact with your content. It’s also easier: you only have to learn one system, instead of learning how to stitch together multiple solutions to fit your needs.

No matter how you slice it, the experience on Facebook is inherently more social purely because of the users’ intentions when they are there, and that’s why savvy marketers are migrating their campaigns to these sites. If you have wondered how to improve your campaigns and generate virality for an engaged, participative, and targeted audience, it might be time to think about using social networks.