Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report Supports Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing got a boost from Mary Meeker’s voluminous Internet Trends Report last week. Buried among the thousands of details about how we use the Internet was a clear message that advertising needs to evolve in order to be successful in a mobile-first, video, image and voice-driven future.

Meeker succinctly notes that online video advertising can be effective and notes that Google generated 75 billion in revenue in 2015 alone (and grew 18 percent that year). Her research says video and mobile advertising will continue to grow even as smartphone and Internet use taper off. Meeker also notes that there is a lot of opportunity for the advertising dollars from other media to make their way into digital video because it works and you can effectively track the success of your efforts.

The big problem is that video ads are terrible. They show up on mobile devices unformatted for the space. You cannot skip them. They are simply not relevant for the viewer. The list is long and users are aware of how bad it has gotten. The users are reacting in numbers that should be a wakeup call for those with obtrusive ad-units:

* 62 percent are annoyed by brands that push a pre-roll ad to them before viewing the content
* 81 percent mute video ads
* 93 percent of users consider using ad-blocking software

All is not lost, as the same source suggests the way for ads to succeed is for them to engage viewers effectively through strategies that line up perfectly with influencer marketing.

Influencer Marketing To The Rescue

Meeker’s list of the right way to create video ads sounds familiar to those who engage in influencer marketing. She notes that ads should be:

• Authentic
• Entertaining
• Evoke Emotion
• Personal/Relatable

These attributes are easy to include in your brand messages when it is created by or in collaboration with social media creators who have a relationship with their audience and who value authenticity highly. This is an ideal way to create high-quality, engaging content geared specifically for the audience you seek. Influencers, particularly those with mid-sized audiences that are programmatically matched with your brand, know the people who follow them. They know how to create content that can stir their emotions and feel personal because they are already doing this regularly. In addition, the content they create is delivered on a channel the audience chose to include in their social feeds. Influencer marketing removes many of the barriers that inspire a viewer’s desire to block ads and avoid receiving brand messages.

Want more from Meeker’s detailed report but don’t want to page through over 200 slides? You can watch her brief take on it from Recode’s YouTube channel and read up more about how to personalize content per her findings on alistdaily.com.