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  • Facebook Working To Monetize The “Like” Button

    With Facebook’s stock price making a slow recovery following the spectacular disaster that was the social network’s IPO, the company is reportedly looking to beef up its revenue. Facebook is reportedly in talks with TV executives on monetizing Facebook’s “Like” button for videos.

    The details of the plan are a little unclear, but according to the New York Post, Facebook wants to partner with network and cable TV to host videos – whether entire episodes or clips isn’t clear. Facebook would provide the companies with valuable information about the popularity of their content – via the Like button – while the companies would increase the exposure of Facebook’s video hosting.

    While Facebook does currently host trailers and other videos, they’re reportedly making very little money from it. This plan would allow Facebook to increase the ad revenues generated by its video. According to the Post, the plan has gotten mixed reactions from the execs, who are concerned about limiting their own financial exposure. Nevertheless, it seems that Facebook has already gotten a deal in place with TBS. Though the terms of the deal are unclear, it seems that Facebook will promote some of TBS’s content, while in turn netting a share of the revenues from advertising associated with the content.

    The deal with TBS notwithstanding, this plan appears to still be in fairly early stages. With their stock price still well below the IPO price and revenues down since last quarter, Facebook certainly needs all the help it can get.

  • Google Display Network Gets New Targeting Option

    Google announced today that it’s rolling out a new targeting option for Google Display Network advertisers. The new option, for Flexible Reach, will appear in Networks and Devices in the Settings tab in AdWords.

    “Flexible reach enables you to fine-tune where your ads show by choosing your settings at the ad group level instead of the campaign level,” explains product manager Subha Subramanian. “This will give you more control over where your ads appear and who sees them.”

    “Flexible reach allows you to select any combination of multiple targeting selections at the ad group level, plus the control to combine different methods for targeting and bidding at the ad group level,” says Subramanian. “It also provides transparency into how your targeting selections are affecting the reach and impression volume of your campaigns.”

    Flexible Reach

    The new targeting option will roll out in the next couple of weeks. It will replace the Broad and Specific reach options later in the year.

    It’s worth noting that once you select Flexible Reach for a campaign, there’s no going back to Broad or Specific reach.

  • The Trials & Tribulations of J.C. Penney’s ‘Fair and Square’ Strategy

    When the country and, really, the world is descending into an economic sinkhole, you have to play your hand carefully when it comes to how you try to gin up some business and stay afloat. Typically, you’ll see companies shake things up by trying some novel approaches of commerce like revamping the brand’s logo or changing up the company’s promotional plans.

    J.C. Penney took a stab at this approach earlier this year under the leadership of new CEO Ron Johnson, who had formerly been Apple’s head of retail. If anybody knows about minting a brand and successfully promoting it to ridiculous levels of popularity, it’s Apple. On the surface, you’d expect that J.C. Penney would be headed to the promised land of retail. Until it didn’t.

    The retail chain actually began to tank, prompting market analysts to start brushing up a rough draft for J.C. Penney’s obituary.

    With everything looking like J.C. Penney was on the verge of imploding, how did it all go so wrong? Martha Guidry, the principal at The Rite Concept, said she doesn’t blame the retailer for trying to implement bad ideas, but rather for implementing ideas badly.

    “I don’t think the strategy was bad,” Guidry said, “It’s been the execution of that strategy that has really gone afoul for them.” She goes on to absolve Johnson of any blame, as well, saying that the marketing ideas that J.C. Penney had tried to enact were actually great ideas but the company didn’t successfully communicate its new pricing strategy to customers.

    Guidry said that J.C. Penney’s attempt to get rid of coupons and sales was a savvy idea but that they failed to make it relevant to the consumer. Citing the company’s “Fair and Square” approach that aimed to offer a sales price everyday, J.C. Penney failed to make the concept relevant to shoppers. “If would have been really easy for them to have said, ‘Fair and Square pricing is a sale price everyday,’ and I think people would’ve gotten it but they didn’t communicate it that way,” she said.

    That seems like an amateur mistake on the company’s behalf because you’d have to make a pretty horrible fumble if you fail to make customers understand that you’re giving them stuff for cheaper prices. That should be like shooting fish in a barrel, really. Guidry said that J.C. Penney should have spent more time testing this idea with consumers and that the company should have spent more time testing out the strategy. “A test market with 100 stores would have allowed them to fine-tune the language and get it right before they launched it for the full chain.”

    Although the retailer was attempting to trek off the well-worn path of its traditional marketing strategy, the plan wasn’t inherently doomed. J.C. Penney just didn’t spend enough time developing any actual language that would normal people would understand. “J.C. Penney probably a leap of faith or maybe a leap-frog step,” Guidry opined. “They went from having this idea to jumping into this advertising language that really didn’t resonate, so I think they skipped a step and it’s done them a huge disservice.”

    In light of the advertising backfire, though, J.C. Penney plans to adjust its marketing message but will keep with the current strategy for now. Guidry thinks that’s a step in the right direction. “Their fundamental idea of ‘Fair and Square’ pricing is a great idea, but I don’t think it makes sense to the average American consumer.” Guidry concluded, “If they can find language that is more meaningful to the consumer, it’ll help a lot.”

    J.C. Penney has one more quarter of the 2012 fiscal year to work out the kinks of its ‘Fair and Square’ promotion and try to turn things around before the retailer, like the rest of the commerce world, barrels into the holiday shopping season at the end of the year.

  • Google Lets Users Click An X To Stop Seeing Ads From Specific Campaigns

    Google is launching a new [x] button on some of its display ads over the next several weeks. Much like display ads on Facebook, the user will stop seeing ads from that campaign, once the [x] is clicked.

    It’s unclear on what all ads the feature will be included, but Google says it is starting on those that are based on remarketing and interest categories.

    When the user clicks the [x], they’ll be presented with a confirmation page, which explains that the ad has been muted, and provides a link to Google’s Ad Preferences Manager.

    Google Ad muting

    Google does note that clicking the [x] isn’t a 100% guarantee users won’t see the ad again. Ads might appear again if shown by a different ad company or if a marketer runs a separate campaign targeting specific content.

    This isn’t the first way Google has tried to give users more control over ads.

    “We’re investing in many ways to give users control over the ads they see,” says product manager Michael Aiello. “On YouTube, our TrueView ad products enables users to skip video ads. On Google search, you can click ‘Why this Ad?’ and stop sites you’re not interested in from showing you ads. Our Ads Preferences Manager, available with one click on the AdChoices icon on ads on the Google Display Network, enables you to edit your interest categories, or opt out of all interest based ads including remarketing ads on our Display Network.”

    Advertisers who get the [x] clicked a lot might experience further ramifications, as Google says it will use the feedback it collects from users to “improve” its ads over time.

  • Google Adds A New Kind Of Referrer For Ad Clicks

    Google announced today that it’s making a change to how some clicks coming from Google appear in traffic logs and web analytics software, though Google Analytics itself will not be affected by the change.

    There are now three possible referrers.

    Referrers for clicks on ads for a term like “shoes,” have, until now, looked like either:

    http://www.google.com/search?…&q=shoes&…

    or

    http://www.google.com/aclk?…&q=shoes&…

    Now, they may also look like:

    http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?…&q=shoes&…&ohost=www.google.com&…

    The new referrer is on a different domain, and has a new path.

    “We’re making this change because we’re trying to improve the experience of clicking on an ad for our users,” says Ali Mohammad with Google’s Ads Latency Team. “For historical reasons, Google currently uses two redirects on two different domains for many of the ads on our site. We are streamlining our infrastructure to remove one of these redirects, which brings users to ad landing pages faster, leading to a better user experience for our users and a better return on ad clicks for our advertisers.”

    “The new referrer format ensures that advertisers will still get the relevant bits of information about a search that drove traffic to their site, but without the extra redirect,” Mohammad adds.

    Google says it will keep the number of affected searches low throughout the next month, but will move to all queries in August.

  • How Much Is That Hotlink in the Tablet Edition of Family Circle Worth? Possibly $1,500 to $5,000

    How Much Is That Hotlink in the Tablet Edition of Family Circle Worth? Possibly $1,500 to $5,000

    Most of us probably don’t pay too much attention to the hotlinks that accompany several digital ads we see in tablet editions of the magazines we read, but for all that we ignore them advertisers are being charged a pretty penny just to ensure that the link is active should we actually notice the ads.

    According to Ad Age, Meredith Corporation, which publishes several homemaker-centric titles like Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and EveryDay with Rachael Ray, has decided to charge advertisers $1,500 just to make sure that the hotlink included in the ad is active. In a statement from Meredith obtained by Ad Age, the publisher explained the decision:

    Meredith has made a significant investment in our Enhanced for Tablet editions, providing consumers with expanded content, interactive features and a dynamic user experience. This fall, print advertisers will now be offered an opportunity to appear in the EFT editions of Parents, Better Homes and Gardens and Fitness at no cost. If an advertiser’s creative includes a URL and it is their preference to make that link ‘live,’ there will be a $1,500 production charge. This cost is a minimal production fee associated with the current production process it takes to enhance an advertiser’s creative.

    While Meredith’s $1,500 charge just to have a working hotlink in an advertisement certainly isn’t the steepest price tag around – Conde Nast’s asking fee is $5,000 – it’s still quite a lot of money, especially when considering other publishers either includes the hotlink fee as part of the original advertising cost or, better, some publishers simply don’t add any secondary cost for the hotlinks to work.

    Still, $1,500 as a minimal production fee? I mean, I know enough HTML that I can make a word or phrase into a hyperlink but I could hardly justify charging $1.50 let alone 1,000 times that just to make the link work , so I’ll just assume that Meredith or Conde Nast are conjuring some very complicated sorcery to make these advertisers’ hyperlinks work.

    Given that Meredith also just announced that it will be making many of its popular magazines available via Google Play makes it all the most tempting for advertisers to (presumably begrudgingly) fork over the money for the ad space on tablet editions now that the tablet audience for Better Homes and Gardens just got significantly bigger.

  • Doubleclick For Advertisers/Agencies Gets A New “Path To Conversion” Report

    Google announced the launch of a new report in Doubleclick for Advertisers/Agencies. It’s called Path To Conversion, and it’s available to customers who are already getting the E2C (Exposure To Conversion) report.

    According to Google, the Path To Conversion report provides improvement in the following areas:

    • Easier to use: the data, available in new DFA Reporting is much easier to compile and faster to download.
    • More interactions: the availability of data has greatly expanded. Now you can analyze up to 200 customer interactions (also known as “exposures”) per conversion as compared to a maximum of ten in the E2C report.
    • Custom Floodlight Variables: you can now include custom floodlight variables in the report in order to determine custom conversion details, e.g. order amounts for e-commerce sites or the number of nights booked for travel sites.
    • Enhanced DoubleClick Search integration: Available per interaction: Ad level data including keyword, new DS3 labels and Full DoubleClick Search IDs – for easier optimization.
    • Attribute sales with no clicks: Often you’ll encounter customers who have seen a DoubleClick-served ad from another network, and then went to the advertiser’s site later to buy. Data on these unattributed conversions (aka non-attributed interactions), are now measured in this report. 
    • International support: P2C now supports multi-byte characters in Floodlight Custom Variables and in DoubleClick Search Data (keyword, etc).

    The report is currently only available on a trial basis. Google has invited existing E2C customers to log in, and try the report for the trial period.

  • Facebook Offers To Teach You About Their Ads While You View Their Ads

    Facebook advertising is on a lot of minds these days, which naturally means that it’s also under a bit more scrutiny. Maybe it’s because of this, or maybe they just felt like it was a proper thing to do – but whatever the case, Facebook has just made it a little bit easier to educate yourself about advertising on the site.

    Now, right next to where it says “Sponsored” on an ad, Facebook is displaying a small megaphone icon that when clicked, takes you to their “About Facebook Advertising” page.

    The page explains the basic three step process for how a Facebook ad is born – starting with the “when a business love Facebook very very much” stage and ending with Facebook telling you that you’ve ben geo and interest targeted to see said ad. The page also provides links to look closer into the details of personalized ads, as well as to browse your recently views ads and Sponsored Stories.

    Inside Facebook first spotted the new icon, and they say that Facebook may be tracking which kind of ad was present when users clicked the megaphone icon. Of course, that would allow Facebook to grab info on what kinds of ads users were most concerned or confused about.

    Facebook has been making some changes and additions to its advertising strategy as of late – first allowing advertisers to buy mobile-only Sponsored Stories as well as other individual targeted packages. A new real-time ad bidding client called Facebook Exchange is also said to be in pipeline. Plus, Facebook ads just started to appear on third-party sites like Zynga.com.

    But with change comes conflict. Some users have been unhappy with Sponsored Stories, in particular. They claimed that Facebook has been using their likeness as advertisements without their consent, without compensation, and without the ability to control how it’s being used. And in a recent settlement, Facebook has agreed to let users opt out of having their past activities used as Sponsored Stories.

  • Marketers Agree Facebook Is Vital, Facebook Ads Not So Much

    A few days before the big Facebook IPO back in May, the news broke that General Motors was yanking nearly $10 million worth of paid ads from the network, basically saying that they don’t work (that blow was later softened). Although marketers were talking about the effectiveness of Facebook ads long before GM pulled the plug, that news coupled with the worries about Facebook’s long-term strategy of mobile monetization has created a very uneasy culture around advertising on Facebook.

    Despite all the hubbub, only 4.3% of advertisers say they expect to decrease their Facebook advertising budget over the next year. And over half (56.6%) say they expect to increase it.

    That’s one of the main takeaways from an Ad Age/Citigroup survey of 658 marketers, agency executives, and media executives who refer to themselves as “decision makers” when it comes to social media marketing. It basically boils down to this: marketers really do like Facebook, but they still aren’t convinced that buying ads on the site is really worth their time.

    According to the survey, 86% said they use Facebook as part of their marketing strategy – which should surprise nobody. A strong social presence, especially on the biggest network in the world, is vital to almost any business model. But as a caveat, 88% said they would forgo the advertising and “implement Facebook content,” which refers to all of the free means of promotion on the site (like maintaining pages, making posts). What if businesses’ Facebook strategy of the future involves nothing but free promotion?

    And when you look at that figure from above (56.6% think they’ll increase their Facebook ad budget next year) in the context of all social media advertising, it looks a little less rosy. 72.8% of those surveyed said they expected to increase their overall social media advertising budget next year, leaving a fairly wide gap of folks who are going to make a push into social media – but not Facebook.

    When looking into this discrepancy, the next set of statistics is telling. When asked if they thought Facebook was “useful in driving purchase intent,” everyone was kind of blah. A little over half thought it was “somewhat useful,” while 13% flat out said it wasn’t useful. Nearly one-fifth of respondents said they didn’t know. That means one-third of these marketers either have no idea or have no faith in Facebook as a marketing platform.

    Still, it’s clear that Facebook is still a place you have to be as a marketer, for now. 55% say they already run ads on the site, and nearly 9 out of 10 use Facebook in some sort of marketing capacity. If you don’t currently employ a major Facebook media strategy, you’re simply falling behind.

    And Facebook is making moves to appear more attractive to advertisers. Facebook Exchange, a real-time ad bidding platform, is in the pipeline for one. There are even rumors of a location-based mobile ad service launching some time in the future.

    Plus, Facebook ads just started appearing on third-party sites.

    And if mobile is the future, things may be looking up for Facebook. According to Ad Age, “marketers also expressed strong interest in buying mobile on Facebook, with nearly 28% calling it ‘very important’ and 36% ‘somewhat important’ as a marketing channel.”

    Last week, similar but separate reports emerged and suggested that Facebook may not be struggling with mobile monetization after all. Multiple studies of click-through rates across various types of Facebook ads showed that mobile outperformed desktop ads – and it wasn’t even close.

    While it doesn’t look like marketers are abandoning other forms of advertising and putting all of their eggs in a giant blue basket, it does look like there is still solid interest in Facebook as a true marketing platform. Whether or not it’s worth it to invest heavily in advertising on the site, however, still seems to be unconfirmed either way – at least in the eyes of many industry professionals.

  • Could “Bad Ads” Destroy the Web’s Revenue Model?

    It’s no secret that most consumers aren’t exactly fond of online ads, especially pop-up ones. While there are some very “bad ads” that could result in serious damage to consumers, a lot of online advertisements are perfectly safe and actually have a lot of benefits. In fact, online advertising is the Internet’s #1 source of revenue.

    It is for this reason and others that non-profit organization StopBadware has teamed up with the Interactive Advertising Bureau and tech giants including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and AOL. These organizations have formed an alliance called the Ads Integrity Alliance in an effort to combat “bad ads” and change the perception that so many people have of online advertising.

    Maxim Weinstein, Executive Director of StopBadware As Maxim Weinstein, StopBadware’s Executive Director, explained to us, the “bad ads” that the alliance references consist of the ads that deliver malware, point users to spam, or tries to sell them counterfeit goods. StopBadware began this initiative several years ago as a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and spun off a couple of years ago as non-profit.

    “Our focus has always been on protecting consumers and other users of the Web from harmful software and harmful websites,” said Weinstein. “Bad ads are, of course, a part of that and in fact many badware websites are badware because of the fact that they serve up malicious ads that try to install malicious software on people’s computers.”

    “Our goal at the alliance,” he continued, “is to really focus more attention specifically on the ad side of the world because, up to this point, we’ve focused a bit more on the websites themselves and less on the advertising sector.”

    The alliance has three goals that it wishes to accomplish:

    1. Develop and share definitions, industry policy recommendations, and best practices
    2. Serve as a platform for sharing information about bad actors
    3. Share relevant trends with policymakers and law enforcement agencies

    In a Google blog post, Eric Davis, the company’s Global Public Policy Manager, said “the best way to tackle common problems across a highly interconnected web, and to move the whole web forward, is for the industry to work together, build best practices and systems, and make information sharing simple.”

    Since nearly every consumer has been impacted by a “bad ad” in some form, Weinstein did admit to us that they are “a very real threat.” However, he did say that improvements are being made everyday and that the alliance certainly hopes to bring even more advancements.

    “At the same time, we don’t want to send the message that this is some alarming thing and you can never trust an ad,” pointed out Weinstein. “By far, the majority of ads out there are legitimate and useful, and I think companies are only getting better at ensuring the high quality of advertising on the Web.”

    The alliance does have a challenge on its hands, especially given the stigma that is so often associated with ads. Another test that the alliance must deal with is the aspect of working with policymakers and law enforcement agencies. The past couple of years have shown that potential government regulation of various elements of the Internet, especially in terms of online advertising and behavioral targeting, has only resulted in controversy.

    “A big challenge with regulating this space is that it moves and changes so fast – far faster than the typical pace of government,” said Weinstein.

    “The next big opportunity is to say, ‘Now that companies have innovated on their own, what can we do working together?’”

    Weinstein believes that the alliance has a solid foundation for changing the negative perception that some people have of ads and also that, by working proactively as an industry, self-regulation measures can be found that will appease all parties involved.

    The third challenge surrounding “bad ads” is the fact that online advertising monetizes the majority of free services that we all enjoy and utilize daily. As a result, the issue of “bad ads” needs to be addressed quickly and effectively in order for this successful revenue model to continue.

    “Obviously, it’s important for consumers that they need protected from these “bad ads,” but it’s also important for the companies involved in advertising because they make their money when people click on ads,” said Weinstein. “When people find the ads valuable, and if people are concerned that they’re going to get badware, that they’re going to get a counterfeit good, that they’re going to get scammed by clicking on ads, they won’t click on them.”

    “So, it really is in everybody’s shared interest to work on this together,” he added.

    The alliance hopes that, within its first year, more companies will join the effort and that it will also have useful policy recommendations.

  • You Were Worth a Lot More to Facebook in 2007 When It Was More Private

    You Were Worth a Lot More to Facebook in 2007 When It Was More Private

    So much of what gets said about Facebook these days revolves around what the company is worth, what Mark Zuckerberg is worth, what other Facebookers are worth; or, since the company’s hilariously bad initial public offering, the public conversation has been more focused on how much all of the aforementioned parties have lost thanks to Nasdaq, Facebook shares going belly-up, and general lack of confidence from advertisers.

    But what about you, dear Facebooker? When was the last time somebody checked on the value of you, without whom Facebook would have zero Zuckerbucks in the bank?

    In 2007, the year of your peak worth to Facebook, Pluggio calculates that each Facebook user was worth $152. Since then, each Facebook user’s value has diminished, bottoming out to a measly $17 as of May 2012.

    $17? You could barely pay to go see The Dark Night Rises next month with $17.

    Assuming that there’s any validity to Pluggio’s valuation of Facebook users, there’s an interesting corollary happening with the site and its relationship with users since 2007. The thing is, an analysis last month by privacy firm Abine showed that 2007 was the last time Facebook made an update to its privacy policy that didn’t automatically push user information into the public of the internet. Every update since 2009 has made more and more Facebook user information viewable to the general internet users of the world. Incidentally, following the infographic that Pluggio put together (see below), that timeline of diminished privacy correlates with Facebook’s billion-dollar growth occurring within the same time period.

    Let’s put that into a formula. Since 2007, every change made to Facebook’s privacy policy resulted in less privacy for its users; and since 2007, the company has been raking in more billions of dollars each year (excepting the disastrous IPO that knocked down Facebook’s worth considerably). Anybody wanna take a stab at explaining that correlation using only three three letters?

    Again, assuming that there is some legitimate value to Pluggio’s data, the diminished worth of Facebook users contrasted with the increasing worth of Facebook’s advertisers sort of points to where company’s interests and priorities are these days (here’s a hint: it’s not you, the user).

    If you want to assess how much (or how little) Facebook’s users matter to the company and why they matter (or don’t matter) to the company, it’s simple: follow the money. Do that and you have a fairly plausible explanation for the devaluation of the Facebook user: you simply got bumped aside for advertisers because their pockets are deeper than yours, and Facebook is a very expensive date these days.

    Click here to see a larger version.

  • Does Facebook Have What It Takes to Succeed in Advertising?

    Can Facebook build a strong revenue model out of its advertising platform? This is the big question that a lot of people are asking of late, especially given the social giant’s IPO fiasco. With its more than 900 million users, it’s clear that consumers are fond of the service. However, the question of how Facebook can monetize all these users is the big concern now, especially since it must deal with Wall Street and investors.

    Tom Rikert, Director of Product Development at Wildfire Tom Rikert, the Director of Product Development at Wildfire, which is a company that works closely with Facebook and provides a social media marketing software suite, is familiar with the position that Facebook is up against. You see, Rikert used to work at YouTube and, of course, also faced the challenge of monetizing a massive amount of users through advertising.

    According to him, Facebook is the centerpiece of the majority of brands’ social media efforts. Through Wildfire’s close relationship with the company, it understands that Facebok has a huge audience, a global reach, and that it allows for rich forms of engagement for brands through the use of images, video, and more.

    “We find brands are finding Facebook… to have a lot of staying power, and ultimately… they’ve built an audience [and] they’ve accumulated a lot of fans,” said Rikert.

    “The question is now,” he continued, “what do I do with them to really engage them and to enlist them as advocates for word-of-mouth marketing and to also help them become customers, not just fans or conversation partners?”

    While this is a challenge, Rikert is confident that Facebook can succeed in its advertising efforts. As he explained to us, Facebook has a “treasure trove” of data. This, combined with its user base, could potentially give the social giant a lot of leverage on the advertising front.

    “I do believe, in the long run, that Facebook is sitting on a mound of amazing data on one of the largest audiences in mankind’s history,” said Rikert. “I think if they are smart about how they turn that into dollars through a strategic ad product – mobile [and] ads that could reach across the whole Internet beyond Facebook.com – I think they have incredible legs for long-term growth.”

    Rikert believes that Facebook is being aggressive in its advertising approach but that it has an advantage given all the information it has on users. The social network knows that users can get “ad fatigue” really quickly, which could completely turn them away from the service. But, he thinks Facebook is being smart in its strategy by providing relevant ads based on user’s activities and interests.

    “When done right, ads are actually value add,” Rikert said. “They are connecting people to information they care about and entertainment they care about.”

    “It allows a lot more advertisers to reach the users and gives them the higher comfort level that their ads are gonna be worthwhile and well-received by the users,” he added.

    He, along with Wildfire, feels so strongly about Facebook and its ability to be successful in advertising that he thinks its ad platform will become a critical factor in all online advertising going forward. Specifically, he envisions Facebook having a universal log-in system that could essentially be an open door for all things on the Internet and mobile devices.

    And, to answer the questions about Facebook developing its own version of Google AdSense, Rikert said he could “definitely foresee that” since it already has a “huge footprint of their social plug-ins on hundreds of thousands, if not millions now, of publisher sites.”

    Facebook has also been questioned for its mobile advertising efforts, especially since the company openly admitted in its S-1 filing that its monetization efforts for mobile were yet to be proven:

    “Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where our ability to monetize is unproven, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results.”

    Still, Rikert has no doubts about Facebook’s mobile strategy either. The company has, of course, started out slowly in mobile, but he expects it to pick up its efforts in the near future.

    “What’s gonna be more interesting is when Facebook can take the mobile experience and really tailor ads based on where a user is and what they’re doing [and] who they’re with,” he said. “That’s when the ad becomes super relevant and much more interesting, and I think it will generate greater click-through rates and better results for advertisers, and more revenue for Facebook.”

    Overall, Rikert is confident in Facebook’s advertising efforts and believes the company’s new real-time exchange ads will further its goals of being profitable.

  • Google Says These New Local Ads Will Increase Click-Through Rates By 100%

    Google has redesigned its local ad formats for Google Maps for Mobile. The company says the new formats have performed well in tests, increasing click-through rates by 100%.

    The calls to action, like “click to call” or “get directions” have been made more prominent in the new formats, making them more clickable, according to Google. There’s a new hyperlocal marker, which shows how close the user is to the advertiser’s business location.

    Additionally, when a user clicks the ad, it will take them to the advertiser’s website within the app itself.

    You can see the difference in how the new formats look, compared to the old here:

    New mobile local ads

    “Ads in Google Maps for Mobile are one of many ways advertisers are delivering relevant local answers to people’s questions on mobile,” said Mobile Ads product manager Jay Akkad. “Likewise, a recent campaign from T-Mobile shows how search ads, combined with location extensions, enabled them to reach users close to their store locations across mobile search and maps.”

    “Mobile technology is enabling people to connect with businesses in new ways via smartphones and tablets,” said Akkad. “People use search and click to businesses’ websites, but they are also clicking to make phone calls, find directions to walk into local stores, and more.”

    The new design is rolling out today to newer versions of Android.

  • Zynga.com, Now With More Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories

    Zynga.com, Now With More Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories

    Facebook ads are beginning to move offsite, and one of the most logical and unsurprising places to find them is Zynga.com. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to imagine how many other sites will begin to house Facebook ads and Sponsored Stories in the near future.

    Today, the Facebook ads began appearing on Zynga.com, Zynga’s dedicated platform launched back in March which houses their own games as well as other popular games from other developers. Although Zynga.com was a move away from Facebook, the integration with the social network was still ever-present. Now, when you connect to your Facebook account on Zynga.com, you’ll see a couple of new ads on the bottom right-hand corner.

    The ads resemble what you’d see on Facebook.com, as do the Sponsored Stories.

    The ads say “sponsored,” but also contain a little Facebook icon so that they read “Facebook Sponsored”:

    Facebook added an explanation of these news ads to their Help Center:

    When you connect with Facebook on Zynga.com, you’ll see personalized ads and sponsored stories. The Facebook ads you see on Zynga are the same ads you see on Facebook.com.

    • You’ll only see sponsored stories about activity that has been shared with you
    • You can remove ads that don’t interest you by clicking the X
    • Facebook doesn’t sell information that tells advertisers who you are

    Of course, one has to wonder if this is just the precursor to something much bigger – like an entire slew of Facebook ads on third-party websites. Josh Constine at TechCrunch points out that Facebook recently changed their terms to allow for the showing of regular ads offsite.

  • You’re Soon Going To Be Able To Opt Out Of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories

    Earlier this week, we told you that Facebook had settled a lawsuit centered around their Sponsored Stories with a $10 million cy-pres settlement which would have the money go to charity. The class-action case was brought by five plaintiffs from California who claimed that the Sponsored Stories violated state law by publicizing user data without compensation. They also contested Facebook’s Sponsored Stories policy, which currently does not not allow users to opt out.

    In short, they sued because Facebook has been using their likeness as advertisements without their consent, without compensation, and without the ability to control how it’s being used.

    What we didn’t know, however, is that as part of the settlement, Facebook has also agreed to amend its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities as well as implement an opt-out mechanism for users who do not wish to have their past activities used as Sponsored Stories.

    Reuters reports that “Under the terms of a settlement agreement filed on Wednesday, Facebook members will be able to control which content can be used for Sponsored Stories. Facebook agreed to maintain these changes and other new disclosures for at least two years, according to court documents.”

    Of course, this doesn’t mean that you won’t see Sponsored Stories in your news feed, just that you’ll now have more control over which of your activities can be used as Sponsored Stories that your friends see.

    Here’s exactly what the settlement says under “User visibility and control over Sponsored Stories”:

    Facebook will create an easily accessible mechanism that enables users to view the subset of their interactions and other content that have been displayed in Sponsored Stories. Facebook will further engineer settings to enable users, upon viewing the interactions and other content that have been used in Sponsored Stories, to control which of these interactions and other content are edible to appear in additional Sponsored Stories.

    This little change is supposedly worth about $103.2 million in lost revenue for Facebook, according to the settlement.

    As you can see, the future “mechanism” will allow users to opt out of past activities being used as Sponsored Stories, and there’s no mention of a blanket “opt out of any and all association with Sponsored Stories” option. The fact that users are going to have to go into settings and chose which stories they don’t want appearing as Sponsored Stories again, at least for the time being, seems to be a saving grace for Facebook. The other, more inclusive opt out would be a much bigger problem for the social network.

    The opt out mechanism isn’t the only thing included in the settlement. Facebook will also have to amend its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to say something like:

    You give us permission to use your name, profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name an/or profile picture with your content or information. If you have selected a specific audience for your content of information, will will respect your choice when we use it.

    So, it’s basically fleshing out what a Sponsored story really is in their Terms of Service. Facebook has never misled users in regards to what a Sponsored story is, but this puts it a little more front and center in the SRR. Facebook also agreed to update their Family Safety Center with more information on advertising.

    Earlier this week, we told you how Facebook’s mobile advertising (which only consists of Sponsored Stories) was succeeding in terms of click-through rate – much more than other forms of advertising on the site. After the IPO fallout, analysts have been concerned with Facebook’s ability to monetize mobile – and allowing users to opt out of Sponsored Stories is obviously detrimental to Facebook’s plans in this area.

    Check out the full settlement below, courtesy TechCrunch:

    [TechCrunch] Facebook Sponsored Stories Class-Action Lawsuit Settlement

  • New “Simpler, More Beautiful” AdWords Rolls Out Globally

    Google says it wants to deliver a “simpler, more beautiful” experience across Google products, and the new AdWords design is the latest installment of that strategy.

    Google announced that the new AdWords look is now rolling out globally.

    “The new look simplifies the interface with newly designed menus, tabs, navigation, and buttons so that the important things — such as your data — stand out,” explains Greg Rosenberg with Google’s AdWords User Experience Team. “The latest web technologies have been used to make the interface more visually appealing and zippy, while keeping the features where you are accustomed to finding them.”

    Earlier this month, Google offered a preview of the new look. Below are some screen caps:

    Homepage:

    New AdWords

    Keywords Tab:

    New AdWords

    New Campaign Page:

    AdWords

    The new look will be rolling out over the next several days to all accounts.

  • Nike Admonished For Wayne Rooney Twitter Ad Campaign

    If you are an athlete, actor, musician, etc. – just how far do you have to go to make it clear to your social media followers that a communication is serving as a sponsored advertisement?

    That’s the issue at the heart of a decision concerning England soccer star Wayne Rooney and Nike. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) struck down Nike’s “Make it count” Twitter campaign after a tweet from Rooney and another soccer player failed to meet the guidelines for transparent ad practices.

    Below is the tweet in question. Rooney sent this out to over 4 million followers on January 1st. As you can see, the tweet includes an inspirational message along with the hashtag #makeitcount. The link takes you to a Nike product website.

    Fellow player Jack Wilshere posted a similar tweet near the same time that read,

    “In 2012, I will come back for my club — and be ready for my country. #makeitcount.gonike.me/Makeitcount”

    Wilshere has since deactivated his account.

    These tweets ran afoul of the ASA, whose job it is is to “keep UK ads legal, honest, and truthful,” according to their statement. They ruled that the tweets didn’t properly reference Nike and that Rooney and Wilshere’s followers could clearly mistake the tweet for one that wasn’t sponsored. Nike argued that the Nike url was enough and that people clearly associated Rooney with Nike anyways.

    “We considered the average Twitter user would follow a number of people on the site and they would receive a number of tweets throughout the day, which they may scroll through quickly,” said the ASA. They added that the rules specify that “marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such.”

    Or, as the Committee of Advertising Practice (code writers for the independent ASA) explains it:

    The ads that were the subject of today’s adjudication were tweets setting out their footballers’ resolutions for 2012. The footballers in question sent personal as well as advertiser-sponsored messages from their Twitter accounts. Nike pointed out that the tweets included the hashtag #makeitcount and the URL gonike.me/makeitcount, and argued both the individuals (Wayne Rooney and Jack Wilshere) and their clubs (Manchester United and Arsenal) were widely known to be sponsored by Nike.

    The ASA, however, noted the “Make it Count” campaign had launched around the same time that the tweets were sent, and considered that readers might not recognise “make it count” as a Nike marketing campaign. Even though the ads included links to a Nike website, and some readers might have inferred from that that the primary purpose of the messages was to promote Nike, the ASA considered that it would not be obvious to all readers that the whole tweet was a marketing communication. This is an important lesson: ads must be not just potentially identifiable as advertising but obviously advertising.

    They suggest that in the future, tweets could include #spon or #ad hashtags to make them obvious.

    Of course, social media advertising is a different animal than traditional media advertising and the lines are a bit blurrier. It seems that the thing that makes a Twitter or Facebook campaign so effective – how ads morph into the flow of everyday communications – is exactly why the ASA came down on Nike.

  • New Payvment Product Aims To Ease Facebook Advertising Pain

    New Payvment Product Aims To Ease Facebook Advertising Pain

    Facebook ecommerce platform Payvment announced a new one-click Facebook ad buying service today, which essentially gives merchants a way to turn promotional Facebook posts into ads.

    The service automatically targets ads based on historical social shopping data. The company says it boosts clickthroughs by as much as 25% (compared to standard Facebook ads). Payvment’s algorithm predicts which audience segments are most likely to be interested in a seller’s products based on over two years of social shopping data, the company says.

    “Targeting Facebook Ads can be a bit of a guessing game – it’s hard for sellers to know exactly which audiences will respond to their products,” says CEO Christian Taylor. “Since Payvment powers a majority of the shopping on Facebook, we see patterns that we use to create very effective targeting. No one else can do this.”

    null

    Taylor told us last month that Pavyment has been signing on 1,500 new brands each week, with about 160,000 brands using the platform. Today, the company says it’s customer base is at 165,000. Here’s our full interview with him:

    “The small and medium businesses that use Payvment have historically looked at Facebook Ads as out of reach for their business,” says Taylor. “Either they’re not clear on how they work, or they don’t want to spend money learning as they go.”

    And that’s where he hopes his product can come in.

    The company cites a recent survey of its own customer base, finding that over 60% of them have yet to try Facebook Ads, with 25% saying they haven’t tried them because they don’t understand how to use them. Two thirds of those who had bought Facebook ads said they weren’t satisfied, and cited low click-through rates or poor targeting.

    Payvment’s new product is simply integrated into its existing promotion tool, so perhaps customers already comfortable with Payvment will be comfortable with this option.

    Meanwhile, it seems that some are finding better results with Facebook ads (in the form of sponsored stories) on the mobile side of the equation.

  • Google: Google+ Will Never Have Ads [Update: Actually, Google+ May One Day Have Ads]

    Google: Google+ Will Never Have Ads [Update: Actually, Google+ May One Day Have Ads]

    Update: Apparently Scoble got it wrong when quoting Horowitz, and he did not actually say that Google+ will never have ads. Scoble said later in a comment on Google+:

    Also, sorry to +Bradley Horowitz for getting his quote wrong (apparently he didn’t say they would never put ads on Google+). I’ll work with him to get it fixed up.

    A Google spokesperson pointed out this retraction. When asked if it was fair then to assume that Google+ may one day have ads, they said, “I wouldn’t assume anything – we just wanted to be clear that Bradley never made a comment like that.”

    Original Article: As previously reported, Google’s Bradley Horowitz announced at LeWeb London that Google+ integration is coming to Flipboard. He reportedly said something else at the event, however, that may be much more significant.

    According to Robert Scoble (an avid Google+ user), Horowitz said that “Google+ will never include advertising”.

    “Never is a long time, but it’s clear that they want to provide the industry-leading user experience,” Scoble comments in a Google+ update.

    It seems almost too hard to believe that Google would never put ads on Google+, given that ads are Google’s primary revenue source, and Google wants to integrate Google+ into nearly every other product it has in more and more ways. Google+ is Google’s way of getting the kind of social data about consumers that have made Facebook’s ads so successful. It’s very surprising that Google would make such a bold claim, even if they don’t have immediate plans to put ads next to your stream.

    Surely, many users will be happy to hear it. Will investors?

    Here are some of the related comments from readers on Scoble’s post:

    Ben Greenwood: “No ads EVER on Google+? I do hope they stick to that.”

    Travis Koger: “I have been saying from the beginning that they have no reason to have advertising here. Search is the advertising, along with local when it ramps up more. Search feeds both in and out for G+, therefore there is no reason to add ads here.”

    Vuyo Mtoba: “Yay!! No ads. Now that Flipboard is coming to +Android its the right time. Good move Google.”

    The point about local is certainly valid. Google did just make local search all about Google+ Local.

    The full discussion with Horowitz should be available here soon.

  • Facebook May Not Be Struggling With Mobile Monetization After All

    “We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven… and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected.”

    That quote is straight from the mouth of Facebook, as part of their amended IPO filings prior to going public in May. It was this sort of speculation that was echoed by analysts during Facebook’s massive stock plunge following the IPO. One such analyst cited Facebook’s struggle to monetize their mobile platform as reasoning that the company would “disappear” before 2020.

    Class-action lawsuits were even filed that accused Facebook of concealing “severe and pronounced reduction” in revenue growth prior to the IPO.

    The general consensus from Facebook doubters has been a complete lack of faith that the company could successfully monetize mobile, and since everyone is moving towards mobile, that’s a pretty big kink in their plans. Mobile ads on the Facebook platform have only existed for a few weeks, and as of right now the only type of mobile ad appearing on Facebook are Sponsored Stories in the News Feed (no traditional, right-side ads).

    But some new information from some of Facebook’s Ads API partners suggests that Facebook mobile ads are wildly successful – much more so that desktop ads.

    SocialCode data reported by AdAge suggests that the click-through rate for Facebook’s mobile ads (appearing as Sponsored Stories in the mobile News Feed) is more than quadruple the CTR of all ad placements – and more than double that of ads in the desktop News Feed. They report a CTR of 0.79% for mobile-only ads, as opposed to 0.148% when it comes to all five types of ads combined (mobile only, desktop News Feed only, desktop right-side ads, mobile & desktop news-feed only, and ads across all platforms).

    When it came to the same types of Sponsored Stories ads on desktop, the CTR was 0.327%. CPMs for the mobile-only ads were $7.51, compared to $1.62 across all ad platforms. SocialCode suggested that these mobile Sponsored Stories are “less disruptive” that traditional ads – a point that we’ve speculated on for some time.

    TechCrunch got a hold of some more partner data and the trend appears to be the same. TBG Digital reported mobile Sponsored Stories with a CTR of 1.14% at $0.86 CPC. Total this out and you get $9.86 per 1000 impressions. Compare that to the stats for desktop Sponsored Stories, which see a .588% CTR at $0.63 for a CPM of $3.72.

    You find even more discrepancy when you look at their data for ads across all platforms – 0.083% CTR at $0.88 CPC for a CPM of $0.74.

    Data from Spruce Media and AdParlor followed suit – the latter reporting a 25x better CTR for the mobile ads.

    So…are the mobile ads working? It appears that Facebook’s recent decision to break up the ad offerings and allow advertisers to buy mobile-only sponsored stories has paid off – and will continue to pay off when advertisers see these numbers.

    When you couple that with the fact that Facebook is working on a real-time ad bidding service for more targeted ads and are rumored to be possibly working on location-based mobile ads, the company’s monetization outlook doesn’t look so dire. Don’t look now, but Facebook stock it up for a third-straight day to close Monday at $31.41 – up nearly $6 from its low point but of course still way below the initial IPO price of $38.

  • New iPad Gets A Retina-Themed TV Ad

    New iPad Gets A Retina-Themed TV Ad

    Yesterday was a big day in the tablet world. In case you missed it, Microsoft unveiled the new Microsoft Surface, a 10-inch Windows 8 tablet that boasts a pretty impressive set of features (including a really nifty Touch Cover keyboard case).

    Of course, as impressive as the Surface appears to be – and, Apple fanboy that I am, I have to say it looks pretty darn cool – it has some stiff competition in the tablet market. The tablet market is thoroughly dominated by Apple’s iPad, a fact that doesn’t seem likely to change much in the short term. Just to make sure everyone knows that, a commercial for the iPad began airing last night, right around the time Microsoft was announcing the Surface.

    This new ad, titled “Do It All,” emphasizes the new iPad’s versatility. The ad shows off the iPad’s usefulness for both content consumption and for productivity. In other words, this is effectively Apple telling Microsoft “anything you can do I can do better.” Check out the ad for yourself below: