GE Study Shows Shared Trumps Paid Content

For the longest time, it was assumed by marketers and social media gurus that shared content by friends and influencers carried more weight than self-serving paid ad placements  According to a study by GE, people exposed to content via sharing had a significantly higher positive attitudes towards the Brand the content was from.  There you go.  Social sharing trumps paid placement after all.

GE commissioned the digital agency, Vizu, to test a campaign last fall in which the marketer distributed “The GE Show” videos through Buzzfeed both in a paid display placement and through social sharing vehicles.  They then tested how attitudes changed among responses.

According to the study:

Overall, consumers saying they saw GE as “creative,” was 138% higher for consumers exposed to via sharing than those who didn’t see it at all. Specifically, 17% of people found GE creative after viewing the content via sharing vs. only 7% of people who made that connection without having seen the advertising at all.  Consumers exposed via sharing were also 83% more likely to rate GE “creative” than those exposed to the content via paid advertising on Buzzfeed.

The “brand lift,” which measured the extent to which consumers saw GE as “Creative” was calculated based on short online survey responses to the question: “What comes to mind when you think of General Electric (GE)?”

Overall, 42% of the responses about GE from people in the control group that didn’t see the content were positive, compared to 55% of responses from people exposed via paid advertising and 77% for those exposed via sharing.

Obviously, shared media has the advantage of being “free inventory,” said Paul Marcum, director of global digital marketing and programming at GE.  But he was also interested in knowing whether it actually has more impact on consumers than paid media.

“We all would intrinsically think that if you see something your friend has shared or a community you’re part of has shared, you’re more likely to value it differently” than paid placement, he said. “But no one we could find had actually tried to quantify the difference.”

So paid placement is worthless now?!

Although the study found that shared, or ‘earned’ media packs a greater punch, marketers shouldn’t abandon the paid ship yet.  It’s very hard to get one without the other.  Instead, we recommend marketers dial UP the paid and hope for the earned to go with it.

For GE, the study was a lesson on “the value of advocacy, and that will surely inform their future marketing decisions.