People Powered Stories - Moving Beyond the ‘Like’ with Social Advertising

Today at Social Media Week in New York I introduced a new social advertising solution I am pretty excited about. We’re calling it People Powered Stories (PPS) ™. With it, advertisers can incorporate real peoples’ ratings and reviews about their products within a rich brand ad. The solution will be available next month and we believe it will give marketers the ability to create ads that tell powerful stories and create brand relevancy beyond just a “Like” by adding the authenticity and believability of real people’s real stories.

To bring PPS to life, we’ve partnered with Bazaarvoice, (a company that has powered more than 290 billion customer conversations for brands across the globe) to integrate consumer ratings and reviews into the rich PPS ad format. Advertisers will be able to tap into Microsoft’s highly social and engaged audiences across multiple screens and deliver relevant ads in a way that is targeted and more measurable than is available for social advertising on the web today. PPS is the first in a suite of social ad solutions that we will create in the coming months.

The People Powered Stories offering integrates customer ratings seamlessly into a rich ad format.

And expands to give consumers a deep dive on the reviews of the product / service submitted by real people.

As an industry, we intuitively know the power of social and the potential it holds for advertisers to engage with consumers. We also know that people want to hear what others have to say about various products and services. Despite the brand dollars that are flowing toward social media, advertisers have told me they continue to be frustrated at how difficult it is to measure ROI and confirm whether they are successfully engaging their target audiences.

We recently commissioned a study of 713 social media marketers around the world to solicit their opinions on social advertising.* Here’s what we found:

· The top two reasons advertisers invest in social media is to drive word of mouth and brand awareness (27% and 26% respectively).

· 72% of advertisers said measuring ROI on social media campaigns is too difficult.

· Advertisers believe 65% of word of mouth misses the intended audience.

· 73% of those advertisers surveyed said they want to make sure the ratings and reviews they curate online reach their target audience (which is more than ‘Likes’, ‘Tweets’ and any other source we asked about).

Windows 7 ‘Back to School’ Campaign

We’ve already seen the power of the ratings and reviews within PPS in action. As a part of a pilot, Microsoft integrated the PPS ad format into a Windows 7 “back to school” advertising campaign, targeting college students in the market for a new computer. The campaign ran across Microsoft properties that offered audience targeting capabilities to assure college students would see the Windows 7 reviews at sites they visited frequently online. The campaign delivered. With the authentic voice of the students included in the advertising, other college students found the Windows 7 ad units “believable” and “relevant.” The campaign drove great improvement across many marketing metrics, including:

· Ad believability increased 20 points above the market norms for technology ads

· 6.3% lift in purchase intent

· 13.5% lift in unaided brand awareness 

After the campaign I spoke with Brenda Bown, Director of Windows Consumer Digital Marketing, and she had this to say about what PPS delivered for the Windows 7 brand: “Being able to harness the power of ratings and reviews from Bazaarvoice and incorporate it into our online marketing efforts strengthened our value proposition and established credibility by putting forth students’ voices to impact other students just like them.” 

Not only is it important to be able to reach and measure the effectiveness of social ads, it’s important that the industry re-examine how we think about social. Instead of focusing just on having a Facebook page or a Twitter handle, advertisers need to focus on consumers and what they need.

Why do we believe PPS will be successful?

· We know that consumers who are looking to make large purchases rarely turn to their social network first; rather, they turn to online reviews. This is one of the main reasons we’ve integrated ratings and reviews into our first social format.

· As we saw with our Windows pilot, the ads lifted brand favorability, purchase intent and brand awareness.

While we are still in the early stages of unlocking the potential of social advertising, I am confident that we are moving into a world where the impact of social advertising will move beyond a ‘Like’ to a world where you can create and measure the value of social ads. We believe that the People Powered Stories ad format is critical to continuing this movement and helping brands gain credibility and relevance with their target consumers.

We’re excited to share more momentum from our People Powered Stories solution and other social ad formats in the coming months, but in the meantime, if you have questions or feedback, please feel free to post in the comments section at the bottom of this blog post. We’re always listening.

Jennifer Creegan interviewed by Mel Carson on People Powered Stories

Thanks for reading and do check out the post from Bazaarvoice on today's announcement too!

Jennifer Creegan - General Manager for Display Advertising Experiences at Microsoft Advertising

* Microsoft Advertising People Powered Stories Case Study – September 2011