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To help marketers, agencies and publishers understand how social media is influencing consumer brand perception and purchasing decisions, Knowledge Networks has teamed with MediaPost Communications Inc., the publisher of Marketing Daily and the parent of the Center for Media Research, to launch the "Faces of Social Media," a new, long-term tracking study providing a consumer-centric view of social media's effect on 30 key product categories.

The new syndicated report will track the marketing impact of social media in the general population and on users in five explicit social media segments ranging from "Evangelists" to "Passive Users." Parallels will be drawn from category-specific comparisons with non-users of social media to address the true incremental effect of social media.

"We are helping CMOs and brand managers decide to what degree they should play in social media and how best to target specific audiences," says Simon Kooyman, CEO of Knowledge Networks. "We are painting a more sophisticated picture of social media's influence, showing where and how category consideration and [social media] level of influence intersect."

"While there is a sea of data about social media, little of it speaks to the needs of marketers, who are trying to make specific plans for their categories and brands," adds Chuck Martin, director of MediaPost's Center for Media Research.

The report, which will publish biannual trends, will begin with a report benchmarking what proportion of product category consumers are the highest-potential targets across each of the social media user clusters, how their use of social media is impacting brand perceptions and decisions, how it relates to demographic composition, which social media platforms dominate, and how specific social media features influence the process, how use of social media impacts use of other media, perceived trust of social media information about specific product categories, the influence of "friends" versus "non-friends" on the attitudes of social media users, etc.

To ground the social media/category comparisons, the companies said overall media consumption for each social media segment will accompany the data, as well as a "Social Media Influence Score."

Knowledge Networks is one of the top 15 survey-based consumer research companies in the U.S., and is highly regarded for the quality of its research methods and the representation of its consumer panels.

For more information visit www.mediapost.com

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Those who follow hockey know the deadline for NHL teams to trade players came and went Wednesday. Typically, the day drives the most traffic and unique visitors to the NHL site. But this year, a real-time Twitter feed on the NHL's site produced the most impressive interaction with fans to date.

Michael DiLorenzo, the NHL's director of social media marketing and strategy, calls the number of people -- 1,500 -- who visited the Twitter channel Wednesday on the NHL site "small potatoes," but "significant." Each person on average viewed 8 pages and spent 25 minutes on the site. "That's the type of engagement you get on Facebook," he says.

TweetMixx Channel creates a distribution method for tweets. In December, the NHL became the first in a handful of companies to launch a white-label platform from Mixx that aggregates tweets from Twitter on Web sites and blogs.

While three Twitter feeds provide information, the one with the greatest influence comes from the Insiders' Tab, where tweets stream from influential North American hockey writers. In Canada and the United States, the NHL-related stream on Twitter appeared in the top 10 trending topics. Those tweets feed through the TweetMixx Channel and onto the league's site.

TweetMixx is not the only tool that provides additional content to publishers. AdGent 007 also integrates into Web sites, relying on an API widget that allows brands to integrate online advertising with real-time tweets and Twitter feeds.

Similar to TweetMixx, publishers can use tweetedia to control, manage and filter Twitter streams on sites. The free AdGent tool offers management of featured Twittter feeds. Publishers can use the free tool to support traditional banner advertisements with or without sponsorship. As an ad network, publishers can upload a widget on blogs and other sites.

AdGent 007 splits the revenue with participating bloggers, although the percentage is being worked out. The ads appear in a 300 x 350 dpi box at the bottom of the unit, but hosts don't have a say in the ads that appear in the box. The ads and social media aim to drive the traffic.

The NHL's social media strategy has attracted more hockey fans to the site. When Casie needed quick access via iPhone while at a baby shower to track the U.S. and Canadian game last Sunday, she relied on the NHL Web site for up-to-the-minute reports and scores.

The NHL hopes that kind of loyalty rings through to advertisers. The league hopes to support their TweetMixx Web page with sponsors looking to skin the page. DiLorenzo knew that social media continues to drive traffic to the NHL Web site, but now he has the numbers to back up the claim. "Our playoffs are coming up and we'll see something similar," he says. "Every night you have a couple of mashup games, but they are highly scrutinized and broken down by fans, similar to NFL games."

Statistics published by Facebook on the Gold Medal Hockey game on Sunday reflected the energy and excitement. The U.S. scored in the last 20 seconds after losing 2 to 1. That tie sent the game to overtime, where Canada scored to win.

The Facebook published data points to member status updates that align peaks in the game to reflect that winning point from Canada. Between 2:29 and 2:54 p.m. Pacific time, more than 3.5 million status updates were posted, which is twice the pace of the rest of the day. "When it comes to following NHL players and teams, our fans use social media as a second screen for sharing and amplifying what's happening on the ice," DiLorenzo says.

For more information visit www.mediapost.com

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Gaming companies could be wasting their time (and a lot of money) pouring their efforts into the wrong channels. A study released Tuesday indicates that the core gaming audience has a limited tolerance for messages directly from the publishers of games. In fact, the audience is even suspicious of "expert" reviews (such as those on IGN.com and Gamespot), which they perceive as biased because they are highly commercialized and subsidized by advertising from the publisher.

"The heavy gamer really disregarded the majority of publisher advertising and marketing; their preference was to go to the purest sources they could find," says Ivan Todorov, CEO of Blitz. "One thing that kept coming up in both the study and in the focus group was that they preferred to go to YouTube to watch game-play footage over the marketing or the destination Web sites, or even the content on Gamespot or IGN."

YouTube was an unmediated source, where other gamers had posted game play, that respondents trusted. "They tend to think that publisher content has been touched up, or sweetened up, in post-production to make the graphics look better," says Todorov. "They really prefer peer content." Another outlet that gamers went to for information was Wikipedia -- even before they went to the publisher site -- or sometimes, elsewhere after, avoiding the publisher site.

The top three sources cited as "one of the most important factors" in determining gaming purchases were talking to friends, having friends who played the games, and online peer reviews, with people citing friends as being twice as influential on their decision as expert reviewers. Surprisingly, only a small percentage said social networks were one of the most important factors.

This leads Todorov to conclude that social networks like Facebook are severely under-utilized. "Which really presents a good opportunity for game marketers to really enable those tools and platforms that allow gamers to become influencers," he says. On of the key way of doing this would be incorporating social platforms into game play, such as challenging friends to be high scores, etc.

The study also found that television was one of the biggest drivers of interest in games, but was most effective when featuring actual video of the game, something that Blitz found was often overlooked. Another obvious mistake that gaming marketers make, according to the report, is neglecting to clearly state what is new in a sequel, which can be a key buying-decision-making differential.

In an effort to better understand what types of marketing and what channels influence avid gamers Blitz, a marketing agency that has working with top video game publishers, commissioned Mintel to conduct a study of 1,000 gamers between the ages of 13 and 35 (with a 60/40 split between male and female respondents), supplemented with additional focus groups and research. For the purposes of the study, an avid gamer was one who played a minimum of 7 hours a week on either consoles or portable game devices, and buy at least 9 titles a year. The white paper that resulted, "Pulling the Trigger to Purchase," can be downloaded here.

"While this study focused strictly on the techniques used to market video games, targeting the 'avid gamer' is similar to targeting other key audiences that can act as influencers for brands. These groups help carry the banner for a brand, in a way that can often be perceived as more genuine than the brand pushing the message by itself," says Todorov.

Blitz is an integrated marketing agency that has worked with many video game publishers, including Activision/Blizzard, Atari, Bioware, Eidos, Electronic Arts, Lucas Arts, Midway, Nintendo and Vivendi Games.

For more information visit www.mediapost.com