Why Agencies Don’t Get StumbleUpon: Media Planning for a User Review Community
By Craig Hordlow, Chief Strategist
“When You’re Holding a Hammer, Everything is a Nail.”
I’ve had two meetings with StumbleUpon (SU) where they’ve described their challenges working with agencies.
SU is an anomaly as far as online advertising buys go because there are a number of questions, objectives, and creative approaches that online marketers are accustomed to using that are not effective for a successful SU campaign.
Yet agencies still try to apply the same media buying techniques to SU’s user review driven network. How many users are going to give a favorable review to an ad placement?
Let’s examine a few of the disconnects:
1. Marketing & Creative Mistake #1: Direct Response / Marketing Creative & Copy
SU’s user base does not use SU to discover forms or ads. They use it to discover content. Media planners who are not working with their clients or creative teams to produce valuable content are forcing the wrong content into the network. It is important to note that sites well received by the SU community will have a longer lifespan, like a successful viral or buzz piece.
2. Marketing Question: How Much Will It Cost?
Agency media planners are used to the usual acronyms: CPC, CPM, CPA, etc. But SU has an odd model: they charge you $.05 for every “push”. A push is, simplistically, a display everytime an SU user makes a request. I have had this explained to me several times by SU and I find it’s still confusing. Bottom line: there is no way to know how many impressions you will get, and predicting is difficult because a page that SU users don’t like will be suppressed, while a favorably reviewed page will be propagated.
3. Marketing Question: What Is the Opportunity Size?
Google can tell you the number of impressions a keyword got last month, or a publisher can tell you the number of impressions a buy is likely to give, and a lead generator can give you a range of leads they are likely to deliver, but SU has a difficult time defining opportunity size because of the effect the community has on the page you submit. If the people don’t like it, SU’s algorithm will dampen it.
4. Marketing Question: Do You Have Any Case Studies?
SU could not show me any case studies because, as I was told, the successful advertisers consider SU a “secret weapon”. Without a cost metric, opportunity size, or a case study, marketers are concerned and uncertain. Uncertainty in media planning can lead to a situation where a media planner leaves money on the table, or spends it too fast, resulting in a campaign that is not paced with the client’s campaign objectives.
Agencies & StumbleUpon: The Right Approach
Agencies should think of StumbleUpon as a mix of a media buy and a buzz campaign. Here is a checklist to help you properly leverage the SU network:
1. Study the category you will be targeting and generate a list of the attributes of the most favored sites. You will find traits like: “free tool”, “funny content”, “guide to”, “documentation for”, etc.
2. Write a creative brief that is mindful of the attributes you found in step 1.
3. Create content specifically for SU. Don’t recycle existing content, or worse yet, ad creative, unless the content has many of the attributes you identified in step 1.
4. Place a value on the number of users who use your tool or view your (branded) content. SU users are usually looking for stimulation or entertainment, so they are far less likely to “convert” than other segments. Recognize that and calibrate your campaign objectives accordingly.
Tags: media buying, Media Planning, stumbleupon, SU, User-Generated Content