10 Must-See Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

Last week felt like a year in Internet time because there was so much happening online. It started with the Oscars and ended with escaped llamas and the dress. There were also touching "LLAP"—live long and prosper—tributes to Leonard Nimoy, who died. With so much happening online, what made an impact, if only for a moment? Here are the must-see digital stats from last week: The dress was the ultimate meme moment courtesy of a BuzzFeed article, courtesy of a Tumblr post, with an assist from the Twitterverse. The Internet had a meltdown because no one could agree what color the bodycon dress was, even though it was definitely black and blue. BuzzFeed drew a record number of simultaneous visitors to its site—670,000 people—most of them checking out the story. More than 10 million people read the site's first story within hours of its posting; 900,000 people took a poll on what color they saw; and 75 percent said it was white and gold. (The dress designer's catalogue revealed it to be black and blue.) Before the dress, there were the llamas, which escaped in a retirement community outside of Phoenix, Ariz. The Internet watched, captivated, as two llamas ran through the streets and were finally captured. There were 220,000 tweets related to the llamas, according to VentureBeat. Let's not forget the Oscars this week, because Sunday night started with Lego stealing the show despite being snubbed for best animated movie. The toy maker handed out Lego Oscars during a performance of Everything Is Awesome, the hit song from The Lego Movie. With 47,290 mentions, Lego was the top brand across social media during the Academy Awards. Facebook announced Tuesday that it hit 2 million advertisers. That's a jump from 1.5 million just six months ago. The social network made a "thank you" video featuring Mark Zuckerberg for small businesses around the world that market on Facebook. Creative digital agency 72andSunny let us in on its mobile campaign for Carl's Jr., which features a video ad starring Charlotte McKinney and big watermelons. The video inspired a 42 percent completion rate, almost double the normal rate most mobile videos achieve, the agency said, crediting its new partner in video production, Opera Mediaworks, with the assist. The one-second rule is stirring up debate. Last week, AdExchanger quoted Rachel Herskovitz, global media manager at American Express, criticizing digital ad viewability standards. She said it makes no sense to count any ad that only gets seen for 1 second, which is part of a Media Rating Council guideline. Poor YouTube. Google's video site is still not making money for the company despite $4 billion in revenue in 2014. According to a Wall Street Journal article, increased ad sales and 1 billion viewers did nothing for Google's bottom line. The Apple Watch has a new date with the public on March 9. Apple already is marketing the wearable wonder, most recently with a 12-page spread in Vogue that showed closeups of the stylish smartwatch. The smartphone market is utterly dominated by iPhones and Androids, but profits are all Apple's. The Cupertino, Calif., company accounted for 89 percent of all profits in the industry, with $18.8 billion in the fourth quarter ending in December. Android profits were spread across a number of manufacturers, but the largest was Samsung, which reached $2.4 billion. Blackberry and Microsoft? No profits. Pebble surpassed its earlier crowdfunding record on Kickstarter with its next-generation smartwatch. Pebble Time has raised $11.2 million after the original device raised $10.2 million in 2012, a record at the time. Bonus Stat: Ed Sheeran and Chegg, the digital education startup, hosted a social media contest for schools to win a visit from the singer. The campaign launched in January and generated 65 million social impressions.

Performance Marketing

10 Must-See Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

The Dress, llama drama and Oscars cause a social eruption

Garett Sloane

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Garett Sloane