▶ Yesterday’s winning brand could be today’s losing brand: Facebook is the top global brand for the third consecutive quarter, generating $730M of Impact Media Value, according to General Sentiment’s Q1 2013 Global Brands report.
“Our Global Brands report looked very different a year ago,” said Pete Moran, CEO of General Sentiment, in a statement. “Then, Apple was the top brand, and technology companies comprised the first nine slots. Last year, Facebook wasn’t even on the list. Today, Apple is at fifth, and automotive brands Volkswagen and Honda have entered the top ten.”
The report measures the purchase equivalent value of a brand’s exposure as determined by the sentiment, frequency and exposure of news mentions and social dialogue. Google ($545M) claimed second place, and Amazon.com ($519M) placed third while Apple ($350M), which was lord of the manor last year, fell to fifth place this year.
Here are some of the details from the study:
- The automotive industry gained the most traction this quarter, led by Volkswagen climbing 17 rungs and Honda’s ($178M) ascent from eleventh to ninth.
- Technology brands continued to dominate the list; Microsoft, Adobe and Intel claimed the sixth, seventh and eighth spots, respectively.
- In 2012 Apple was the top brand, and technology companies comprised the first nine slots. Last year, Facebook wasn’t even on the list.
Source: General Sentiment
▶ Online Radio Reaches 86 Million Listeners Weekly: Radio isn’t dead, thanks in large part to smartphone growth and the ability of consumers to listen to tunes on their hand-held devices. Indeed, one in three Americans aged 12 and older now listen to all forms of online radio on a weekly basis, according to a national survey of 2,021 Americans, per Arbitron and Edison Research.
Some of the other nuggets from the survey:
- Fifth-three percent of all Americans aged 12 and over (an estimated 139 million people) own a smartphone; three-quarters of those aged 18-to-34 own such devices.
- Weekly online radio listeners listened for an average of 11 hours 56 minutes, per week, up by more than two hours over last year’s listening levels, and nearly double that reported in 2008.
- AM/FM radio is an “almost all of the time” or “most of the time” the in-car choice for 58% of adults aged 18 and over; dashboard AM/FM radio far outpaces frequent in-car use of CD players at 15%, portable digital audio/MP3 players (11%) and satellite radio (10%).
- AM/FM Radio delivers far more consumers (49%) than other media during the half hour before they arrive to shop, more than twice the number reached by the next closest medium (billboards, at 21%). PRN
Sources: Arbitron, Edison Research
Oh, what a tangled web of decision. If they could have only one of their currently owned devices, a majority of high-income consumers chose their smartphone, according to Shullman Research Center’s “Survey of the Affluent.” Only tablets and video game systems were chosen by a smaller percentage of elite consumers.