Match of the Day has been synonymous with English football for almost 50 years, but is under considerable risk of being shelved according to recent reports as the BBC looks set to pull the plug on it’s partner show The Football League Show . The BBC has also announced a cutback initiative as it strives to provide greater value – which as a national broadcaster in a recession will certainly be a challenge.

So, what exactly is wrong with Match of the Day?

Lazy Pundits.

There are a number of problems facing the show, much of which can be summed up that it is highlights programme wrapped up in an often tired tedious and annoying format. Football is presented in an apologetic manner, watered down with banal pundits who are too friendly with certain players and teams to say anything remotely interesting. There is very little insight or expertise on show and has long since moved from a must see with viewership on the wane. It’s also increasingly difficult to justify the amount paid to the presenters & pundits from licence fee payers. Alan Hansen is reported to earn around £1.4m a year, while Alan Shearer takes in around £500k. Ouch.

Younger generation demand a more informative programme.

While a more mature viewer may not be too put off with the all round lazy punditry that MotD provides, a younger generation – schooled in Championship Manager and easy access to a vast amount of information on stats, player information, tactics, video replays and football discussion. These viewers demand greater insight than the ‘say what you see’ style punditry

Highlights are available online, sooner.

While linear programming is not quite dead yet, the greater risk for sporting shows is that their audience can watch that goal/talking point/sending off online . There are a wide range of websites which offer short highlight packages for every game. Websites such as 101GreatGoals & FootyRoom are notable places to check first, even though the coverage probably won’t be in English – it doesn’t really matter if you’d prefer not having to endure Lineker & Co bore their way through over an hour of in-jokes and bad puns.

Full games are available online.

Thanks to the massive grey area of streaming live games from foreign countries, it is possible to access every live game online. Websites such as LiveOnlineFooty & FlashSportsStreams provide paid services which are on par with the best commercial providers at a snippet of the cost. There are also many free stream websites such as Sopcast that use peer-2-peer technology to provide watchable coverage.

The rise of ‘football stream’ searches

Is there any hope?

Quite simply, the BBC are the only broadcaster that are likely to want the programme. An ill conceived switch to ITV a number of years ago, where it moved to a prime time billing with much fanfare resulted in poor viewing numbers.

Shifting the time slot of the programme may be a good idea though, moving it to a more social friendly Sunday morning may suit a revamped MotD. Sky have a similar highlights programme Goals on Sunday which is much more relaxed and mixes football action with guests.

Viewers being able to access live games & highlights via the grey area of the internet can’t be avoided. Broadcasting packages are structured in suchso that Match of the Day would be unable to show highlights as quickly as those accessed online.

The one area where the BBC do succeed is their digital service which provides minute by minute coverage during live games and quality video content. As part of a recent review, CEO John Smith has outlined a number of strategic objectives which appear primarily concerned with their digital capabilities.

This could potentially open MotD to live interaction and a more engaging programme. It’s interesting to note the the MotD Facebook page has over 1.2m fans but post updates are twice a week at best. Contrast this to the TopGear or DoctorWho pages and it’s clear which works better. The fact that MotD has little overseas appeal compared to Top Gear & Doctor Who may have influenced this direction.

An obvious opportunity for MotD would be to get rid of the high paid pundits and invest more into the connection between social, broadcasting and website to build a richer experience for the viewer – similar to what The Guardian have done through podcasts, match analysis, quality journalism and integrating with Facebook.

Imagine the capability to interact with the content & discussion on MotD through social & digital channels. Engaging with fellow viewers, debating the finer points, offering your own analysis through apps and ultimate enjoying a greater experience than the current outdated method. Match of the Day may not be quite dead yet, but unless really needs to embrace the new age of broadcasting if it is to survive 2012.

Global Twitter Accounts

This is the one piece of information that Twitter have actually disclosed, with a company email at the turn of year mentioning there are “about 200 million accounts on Twitter now.” Although the coming back to Twitter theme of the email alludes to a lack of activity from those users.

Calculating Ireland

Google’s Ad Planner is the first port of call to view the trend of traffic activity, while the trend may not appear significant – a growth of daily visitors around 20% from Jan 2010 to Jan 2011 is certainly impressive and follows the surging trend of increased user activity.

This is a strong indication that Twitter has significantly grown since last year, another source of insight is Google Trends which uses the same data set as Ad Planner but allows comparison of other websites. In the case below, I’ve added LinkedIn.com to contrast the traffic growth of both.

It’s worth noting here that while Twitter.com has strong traffic numbers, it is a medium which doesn’t rely totally on access to their main website, although 78% of usage comes directly to Twitter.com. What is relevant here is the potential of duplicate users accessing the service from more than one medium. Unfortunately this is an issue for almost all website traffic analysis – where trends are evaluating based on unique visitors, i.e unique browsers. Nonetheless, seasoned web analysts will know that the importance is always on trend to determine improvements rather than hard numbers.

Ok, How Many?

I estimate 180,000, which is swaying closer to active or relatively active accounts. Here’s why –

• Trend increase from 20% from 2010
• Daily traffic profile of 60,000 daily visitors
• Comparison to LinkedIn traffic
• Country reach of 6.8% indicates 200,000 monthly visitors
• Comparison to IPSOS MRBI survey
• Discounting multiple session users & non account users

It’s also worth noting that Ad Planner indicates a reach of 6.8% of the total Irish web users (est: 2.9M), this is further backed up by a recent Ipsos mrbi poll of 1,000 Irish, indicated that 7% of the population have accounts, which estimates a total of about 245,000 accounts. While I don’t dispute this number, I would prefer to estimate closer to active users rather than overall accounts.

Users, Accounts, Traffic?

The figures above are based moreso on active traffic, i.e traffic that occurs during the recent 30 day window, this will obviously indicate a number closer to those that use Twitter more often. It is entirely possible that of the 200M Twitter global accounts, that Ireland may account for double my estimates to around 400,000. This is consistent with other Social Networks, where accounts are often created and then left idle. (Note the come back to Twitter theme in their recent newsletter)

If Twitter opens up paid advertising further this year, allowing advertisers to target their ads – don’t be surprised to see the number of ‘users’ approach 500,000 for Ireland.

Changing Media Lanscape

One of the key reasons why I estimate Twitter usage so high is that the media landscape of 2011 is very different to early 2010. Interaction between traditional media is no longer competing with online, but rather complimenting – evidenced by TV & Radio shows enaging with followers via social media, and this is where the micro-blogging format excels with the ability to create short snippets of information quickly and to engage directly with people within broadcast surroundings.

Not only are offline players embracing digital media more reddily, but those with online capabilities are integrating social media heavily into their plans. The recent general election saw websites such as TheJournal and RTE particularly impressive in their utilisation of Twitter.

This is also indicated with the growth in pageviews, rising from 15m to 21m over the course of 12 months, much of that helped by Google’s adaption of real-time search.

One of the key drivers for Twitters growth has been the usage of celebrity accounts, such as sporting & reality stars. In Ireland, we have seen an increase of homegrown celebrities take up tweeting.

Comparison to Facebook & LinkedIn

Fortunately stats for Facebook & LinkedIn are readily available, largely thanks to the monetisation of these networks, where advertising targeting allows segmenting based on location. Current figures as of March 7th 2011 are as follows:

• Facebook – 1,858,180
• LinkedIn – 424,926

It’s worth noting that LinkedIn has grown +20% since November 2010, which is amazing growth over a short period of time. Based on the traffic profile to LinkedIn.com this indicates a large number of dormant accounts, I’d estimate around 1/3 of those are active on a monthly basis. Meanwhile Facebook has also grown from 1.2M in Jan 2010 to over 1.8M in Mar 2011.

Future of Twitter in Ireland

I expect the growth of Twitter to continue this year as both offline & online media interact with their audience via Twitter, further cementing it’s place a mass communication channel. Ultimately, Twitter is a platform for communication and if there’s one thing Paddy likes, it’s talking.

You can find me @barryhand

DISCLAIMER
A few weeks after this post was published, I began working with a new social buying website called GrabOne. The following post was an attempt to crowd source a list of new websites which may not have been well known. I had created a series of posts on group/social in Ireland, but it’s unlikely these will be published now.

It seems like there are new group buying websites popping up every week. I’m compiling a list of all the websites and then will run analysis on the current market for them here in Ireland.

Group Buying Websites

1. http://www.citydeal.ie
2. http://www.livingsocial.com
3. http://www.pigsback.com/megadeals
4. http://dublin.ratemyarea.com
5. http://www.boardsdeals.ie
6. http://www.dealsoftheweek.ie
7. http://www.dealrush.ie
8. http://www.snapicity.com
9. http://www.dailydealsireland.com
10. http://www.promozebra.com
11. http://www.sinirgy.com
12. http://www.featured.ie
13. ttp://www.saveafewbob.ie
14. http://www.onoffer.ie
15. http://www.golfdealsdaily.ie
16. http://www.dubdealer.com
17. http://www.crazydeals.ie (Spotters Badge: letshost)
18. http://www.gruupy.com
19. http://www.todaysdeals.ie (Hat tip: Conor Normile)

If you have spotted others (and there are a few local specific ones), drop me a reply.

Introducing AdWords Remarketing

There is nothing new with the concept of remarketing, which is essentially allowing you a second chance with a potential customer who visited your website, the ability to do this quickly through AdWords makes it an extremely important tool for online businesses.

The premise of AdWords Remarketing involves the creation of different audiences or lists which are determined by setting a cookie with your website visitor at certain key points of your website. Typical audiences you would want to utilise are:

1. All Site Visitors (have visited any page on website)

This is the easiest and most obvious audience to create. Targeting all visitors to your website allows a quick method of communicating a message to those who have had enough interest to visit your website at least once.

2. High Interest Visitors (have visited sign up page/product page)

Visitors who have completed some action on your website, or have engaged at some level are obviously worth more than normal visitors. This is why targeting this audience allows for focused messaging. Great examples which have worked for me are Save offers (special discounts) and call to actions for completing an interaction (Hey, we saw you checked out our XYZ…)

3. Converted Customers (have purchased from you)

An important but sometimes forgotten segment. It is crucial to create this audience – if only to use it as a negative list to the above audiences. Knowing that someone is a customer allows you to use different messaging as well, such as up-selling or reminders.

The possibilties are endless depending on the type of business you have, you can even leverage your network of sites by creating an audience based on a visitors interaction with another website within your control. You can also create combinations of these lists in order to further target the message you want.

Click here to view the embedded video.

By segmenting these different audiences – you can further increase your relevancy and as a marketer, that’s an incredibly powerful ability to have. We invest heavily in demand generation to our websites and with remarketing we have the ability to get a second chance with those visitors and develop stronger relationships with both our visitors and customers.

With this level of control available if you are not already using Remarketing – you have got to ask yourself, Why not?

Interestingly, you can also opt out from Google Advertising, which I see as much more relevant to those who are concerned about the data which Google are storing about them.

The recent innovation of audience creation in AdWords allows advertisers to create even more relevant content due to the information which Google stores on peoples browsing habits. Good for advertisers but a worrying trend towards utilising browser behaviour to segment audiences.

Click here to view the embedded video.

IKEA have got it spot in on with the style, tone and theme of the ad perfectly fitting the target audience of twenty somethings with their never-ending love affair with the 80′s. The very market where the growing trend is shifting more to socialising at home.

It’s also no surprise that the song is actually a cover from the 80′s, with the #2 hit from Jona Lewie. The cover song was created especially for Ikea with the help of the Mother London ad agency.

Along with an announcement of cheaper delivery costs for Europe, Amazon have finally added a a barcode scanner to their iPhone app

The application still includes the ‘Remembers’ function which allows you to take a photo off something to search the Amazon store for, but adding a barcode scanning feature just made comparative shopping a whole lot easier.

Enter GruUpy, an Irish based deal-a-day website with a European wide reach from the guys behind RateMyArea, Jolt, Demonware among others.

The premise is simple: Gruupy.com sells one electronic item a day for as cheap as possible.

What’s interesting with GruUpy is that while offering low price tech products, they are also trying to resonate a little stronger with the customers than normal Group Buying websites – where the standard approach is a little cold in terms of messaging. An example of this can be found on their footer, How It Works & Terms pages where the tone is both light hearted and informative, a difficult balance but shows an attempt of trying to understand their market a little better (Male, Techy 24-40 year olds).

Selling electrical goods online is a very competitive space to operate in as the consumer can quickly and easily compare alternative souces. This will prove a very real challenge for GruUpy if their offering is not highly competitive on price. One strong plus point for them is offering free shipping to most countries, which for electronic goods – is an outstanding offer.

Best of luck to the guys at GruUpy, and I hope their service really grows – not just here in Ireland but further across Europe. They’re taking the right approach with strong Social Integration with Facebook & Twitter and are definitely one to watch.

As a marketing channel, the results can be massively important – driving both customer engagement and repeat revenue. One of the key steps to continual improvement in this space is increasing email click through rates, and in my experience the obvious element to first optimise is the subject line of the email.

As with any testing – the methodology behind it is simple; Test different subject lines, with the higher performing variant deemed the winner.

Makes sense, right? But where do you start with your subject line variations? Here is a handy way to do that using Google Wonder Wheel which visualises what keywords that people are searching for.

Let’s assume I’m a travel company which with an email going out to my family segment. Hitting up a normal Google search query, but selecting the Wonder Wheel in the view type.

What stands out here is that a destination is returned at this level – along with generic terms – family holidays scotland. This is something worth drilling down, both for subject line testing and for some market research.

From here, we can see two standout terms with adventure holidays scotland and luxury family holidays scotland. Next up would be to craft up some subject lines based on these two themes.

A: Adventure Holidays Scotland
A.1 Scotland: Adventure holidays for your family
A.2 Adventure holidays in Scotland: Bring the family
A.3 The latest family adventure holidays in Scotland

B: Luxury Family Holidays Scotland
B.1 Luxury for less: family holidays in Scotland
B.2 Luxury family holidays in Scotland
B.3 Scotland: Luxury holidays for your family

Once happy, testing can be through a tool or just keeping tabs with a manual method – taking around 5% per subject line (total: 30%) and whichever subject lines drives more clicks is determined as the winner, and then it’s a simple case of pushing that out to the remaining 70% of the list.

There are more in depth methods of doing this, combining Google’s Keyword Tool & Google Trends to help determine possible segments and to have a more confident view of what people are looking for but I’ve found Wonder Wheel a really simple and visual way of doing this – and it’s quick!

The idea behind group buying is simple. If enough people agree to buy something, everyone gets a discount. If the threshold number of buyers is not hit, the offer is void.

A simple idea, with a massive market – one that has certainly had investers taking interest. One of the market leaders Groupon valued at $1.2 billion, while LivingSocial recently raised $25 million and are due to enter the Irish market shortly. Promozebra have already been active in the Irish market since May.

Indeed it’s the Groupon backed CityDeal service which seems to have gained the most traction, but it’s worth noting that indegnius offerings from BoardsDeals.ie, Featured.ie & Sinirgy.com are also gaining popularity. Current deals like half price massages, discounted rounds of golf, and cheap restaurant deals are sure to strike an interest with consumers who are ever seeking more value for their money.

While the idea behind group buying is sound, the success is heavily reliant on having a large enough user base to purchase the offers. Here is where I think BoardsDeals could succeed due to the size of existing Boards.ie community. Pleasing the bargain savvy community will also be a considerable challenge but positively most recent deals have sold strongly despite not having the advertising clout that CityDeal do.

A lot has changed in a few short months, and it will be interesting to see how LivingSocial handle their launch as they have neither first mover advantage or a strong existing user base compared to their competitors. I spoke recently with someone on the inside, and have been really impressed with their strategy and general vibe from their communications across other markets.

While we might see even more copycat websites crop up in the next few months, undoubtedly we’ll see some fold due to the lack of user base, ineffectiveness of their deals and lack of marketing capability.