Facebook has just announced two new programs that “underscore how vital the agency community is to what’s possible on Facebook.”
First up, Facebook unveiled the first-ever Facebook Creative Council, which is kicking off this week at the Cannes Lions advertising summit. Facebook says that the council will “serve as a sounding board” for dealing with “priorities for agency creatives.”
The council will include some big time ad execs, whose job is to advise and direct –
Jeff Benjamin (JWT), Colleen DeCourcy (Socialistic), David Droga (Droga5), Rob Feakins (Publicis), Toshiya Fukuda (777), James Hilton (AKQA), Linus Karlsson (McCann), Amir Kassaei (DDB), Nick Law (R/GA), Mike Lazerow (Buddy Media), Tor Myhren (Grey), Rob Reilly (CPB), Mark Tutssel (Leo Burnett) and Mark Waites (Mother)
The other big announcement coming out of Cannes Lions on Monday was the Facebook Studio Edge, an ad education program – or as Facebook calls it a “social learning and recognition program” that lets ad agencies in on the latest and greatest from the world of Facebook.
Facebook Studio Edge is modular, with 10-15 minute self-guided courses that are focused on a topic such as apps, Pages and ads. Each course is interactive and new courses are updated as needed, so that participants are always up to date on the latest in Facebook marketing best practices.
Plus, there are badges for completion of the modules. Facebook Studio Edge is only open on a very limited basis right now and will open up fully in the coming weeks, although Facebook was unspecific about the actual timeline.
According to Facebook, a recent report concerning a new location-based mobile ad product was misleading.
Earlier, we told you that Facebook’s Carolyn Everson confirmed the development of the product to Bloomberg, who reported that the company was “readying” a mobile ad product that would target users based on their precise location.
We’re not talking generic location ads based on zip code like you might see on the web – but real-time advertising based on your GPS coordinates. Let’s say you are driving around near a pizza place – Facebook could push a sponsored story to your News Feed about how your friend recently liked that pizza chain, or even recently checked-in there.
But Facebook didn’t actually confirm any new product, they say. The quote from Everson simply talked about the possibilities of such a product.
“Phones can be location-specific so you can start to imagine what the product evolution might look like over time, particularly for retailers,” said Everson. “We’ve had offers being tested over the last couple of months.”
Facebook has said that the statements were misinterpreted and a spokesperson told me that “We’re always looking at different opportunities across mobile, but we have nothing to announce this time.”
So, there may not be any imminent location-based mobile ad platform coming our way, but you have to admit that it sounds like something that could wind up happening in the near future. Talk about mobile monetization? Super-local ad targeting could be just the ticket.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: To anyone concerned with Facebook’s future ability to monetize their mobile platform, this could be some comforting news. For some users, it is bound to be a little less exciting.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Facebook is in the process of “readying” a mobile advertising product that will target users based on their geographic location. The ad platform would use up-to-the-minute data to determine the most effective ads to show users – for instance I might see an ad for a pizza place around the corner from where I’m standing.
Of course, location-based advertising isn’t new to Facebook – users have been shown desktop ads based on their zip code for awhile now. Real-time mobile targeting could greatly enhance the specificity of the ads, however.
“Phones can be location-specific so you can start to imagine what the product evolution might look like over time, particularly for retailers,” said Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s vice president of global marketing solutions. “We’ve had offers being tested over the last couple of months.”
As of right now, the only types of ads the appear on Facebook’s mobile platform are Sponsored Stories, which appear in the news feed. With Sponsored Stories, advertisers can pay to promote a user’s activity (for instance “liking” their page or playing a game) after the fact, so the ad appears to have originated organically, from users’ friends.
And earlier this month, Facebook broke up their advertising packages to allow for mobile-only Sponsored Stories. Advertisers now have five different ways to specifically target their ad dollars.
Plus, Facebook is reportedly making some moves in another form of targeted advertising. Last week, we told you that the company is planning on launching what they call “Facebook Exchange,” a real-time ad bidding platform that will let advertisers target users who were just looking at a product on their site, but left before making a purchase.
Are you ready for commercials on Xbox Live? No? What if I told you you could interact with them via the Kinect controller, would that change your mind? Still no? Look, I get it that you don’t want any kind of advertising when you’re playing with your game console, but since you can’t stop the inevitable from happening, aren’t ads that respond to Kinect commands better than the typical 30-second TV commercials that won’t stop appearing and interrupting a TV show?
Look, I know it’s a hard sell, but you might as well embrace it, because the technology is here and these kinds of advertisements–NUads–are on the way. The good thing is, if you don’t like them, you can always wave them away, right? One hopes, anyway.
These NUads offer a new kind of interactive technology, powered, of course, by vocal and movement commands from the Kinect. From Microsoft’s perspective, these interactive commercials will be a “game changer” for the typical 30-second TV commercial due the viewers ability to engage the advert directly, provided you consider a response to Kinect command engaging. A quote in Microsoft’s press release reveals the idea behind NUads, besides the collection of user data:
“NUads marks the beginning of a new era for TV advertising. It delivers the one thing traditional TV advertising is missing — engagement,” said Ross Honey, general manager of Xbox LIVE Entertainment and Advertising. “We developed NUads to breathe new life into the standard 30-second spot. With NUads, brands can get real-time feedback from audiences, making TV advertising actionable for the first time.”
It’s odd that TV advertising is mentioned, because besides being the output device, the TV really serves no other purpose in relation to the Xbox or Xbox Live. It’s not the same as CBS pushing the latest Cialis ad copy to aging husbands who happen to be watching “the big game.” Furthermore, another reason to disagree with the “TV advertising” label is because the video for NUads distinctly says, “XBOX Live Advertising introduces NUads.”
Aside from the output device, the modern television doesn’t come into play with Xbox Live, especially in relation to broadcasting commercials. Anyway, here’s a sneak peak of what Xbox Live users can expect to see soon:
As indicated throughout, the Kinect will play a major role in the interactivity promised by NUads:
Consumers can enter the poll with a simple wave of a hand or a voice command while viewing the commercial. Consumers get a real-time tally of the answers so they can see how other Xbox LIVE subscribers are voting, and advertisers get real-time feedback from consumers to help inform future campaigns.
While the bold section emphasizes the Kinect, the last part of the quote should be of interest as well, especially for those of you who like to maintain an idea of privacy. Not only can advertisers get feedback based on user interaction, as Geeks Are Sexy points out, Microsoft has applied for a patent that can track a user’s mood based on facial expressions. Furthermore, based on this data, appropriate ads are given. Does this mean if you’re best girl just dumped you, ads for Match.com will be served to you?
It sure sounds like it.
Is this the kind of advertising you’d like to see in the future or is your privacy of more concern to you than get tailored advertising? Then there’s this line of thinking, courtesy of Reddit: “If XBOX wants to put advertisements on their dashboard, then users should not have to pay for XBOX Live.” What about real commercials in Xbox Live? Shouldn’t that remove the burden from the paying public as well?
Websites in Slovenia and Estonia are just now getting access to AdSense. Sites in these countries can now earn money through Google’s popular publisher program, which enables sites to show ads from Google’s network.
Google announced as much in a post on its Inside AdSense blog, where product sales lead Ulrike Jung tells publishers:
If your application for AdSense with a Slovenian or Estonian website was previously disapproved for being in an unsupported language, you’re welcome to resubmit it by logging in with the original login details you provided.
For now, you’ll be able to access the interface and help resources in English, as we heard from your feedback that you’d prefer to begin using the program in the meantime. Rest assured that we’re working to provide help content in these languages in the near future.
We’ve just added Estonian and Slovenian to our list of supported AdSense languages (http://goo.gl/cLsQm). If you manage sites in Estonian or Slovenian and already have an AdSense account, simply place new ad units on your policy-compliant pages to start earning. We’re working to continue expanding our program to more languages, so stay tuned!
For those new to the AdSense program, you might find some useful resources in Google’s AdSense Help center, where it offers a code implementation guide and an optimization lab.
Google, Twitter, Facebook, AOL and the IAB have joined forces to form the Ads Integrity Alliance, geared toward keeping protecting users from ads that contain badware. The initiative was announced today by StopBadware.org.
The organization says the alliance will develop and share definitions, industry policy recommendations and best practices, serve as a platform for sharing info about bad actors, and share relevant trends with policymakers and law enforcement agencies.
“The Ads Integrity Alliance is a natural extension of StopBadware’s mission to make the Web safer by combating badware,” said StopBadware executive director, Maxim Weinstein. “No one can address Internet-scale threats on their own, so we’re bringing together industry leading organizations to tackle the problem collaboratively.”
In a blog post, Google’s Global Public Policy Manager, Eric Davis, wrote, “In 2011, Google alone disabled more than 130 million ads and 800,000 advertisers that violated our policies on our own and partners’ sites, such as ads that promote counterfeit goods and malware. You can read more about our efforts to review ads and also see the numbers over time. Other players in the industry also have significant initiatives in this area. But when Google or another website shuts down a bad actor, that scammer often simply tries to advertise elsewhere.”
Google put out this video about how it keeps ads safe a few months ago:
“No individual business or law enforcement agency can single-handedly eliminate these bad actors from the entire web,” Davis added. “As StopBadware has shown, 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.”
StopBadware is currently looking to hire a program manager to oversee the operations and growth of the alliance.
Facebook is about to launch a new advertising program called Facebook Exchange, which could not only be a massively profitable venture for the company, but according to them, could improve the relevancy of the ads that you and I see on a daily basis.
The premise of Facebook Exchange is pretty simple: When you visit a site (other than Facebook) and spend some time looking at a product, but don’t make the final purchase – that third-party site will be able to follow you to Facebook and target you there with a highly specialized ad.
For example, let’s say that I spent a good while checking out a new watch on a third-party retailer’s site (that has enlisted a demand-side platform) – let’s go with Swatch. Although I didn’t actually end up buying the watch, I was on the site long enough for them to determine that I was very interested in it – so they hit me with a cookie.
If the advertiser (in this case Swatch) wanted to pursue me beyond the walls of its site, the demand-side platform would contact Facebook and use an anonymous User ID to show intent to target me. Now, the next time I log in the Facebook, that cookie alerts everyone to my presence and the advertiser is allowed to make a real-time bid to show a pre-rendered ad to me.
And if everything goes according to plan, I’ll see a perfectly targeted ad for that blue Swatch watch I was eyeing earlier that day – or even earlier that week.
There are currently 8 DSPs involved in the testing of Facebook Exchange: TellApart, Triggit, Turn, DataXu, MediaMath, AppNexus, TheTradeDesk, and AdRoll.
Of course, the first question on everyone’s mind is “how can I opt-out?” According to Josh Constine at TechCrunch, users will not be able to opt-out of the program completely from inside Facebook. But they can opt out of future Facebook Exchange ads from individual DSPs. Apparently, if a user Xs out of one of the targeted ads, they’ll be given a link where they can opt out of future ads.
And as far as privacy goes, Facebook says that they won’t give up your data – all of that juicy social graph stuff (biographical, social, etc) in combination with the cookie-based targeted ads. However, I have a feeling that many users still won’t be too thrilled with this level of tracking across multiple sites (although it’s not uncommon at all across the web).
But, there’s no denying that this is a possible lucrative hit for Facebook, a company who has seen its stock price plummet since its IPO and who has had to stave off concerns about their monetization strategies. This is a pretty bold advertising strategy, and could excite advertisers due to its highly specific and real-time approach. “Give ’em exactly what they want, exactly when they want it.”
Facebook Exchange will launch in a more widespread format in the next few weeks, according to the report.
Hopefully you remember the faces of the people you are close enough to Skype with. Why else would you Skype with someone in the first place, right?
Well, remember those fellow Skype users’ faces well enough that you won’t forget what they look like when Skype begins to roll out its Conversation Ads, which will start appearing today. The ads will be appearing in the calling windows of Skype users who neither have Skype Credit or a subscription whenever they’re making one-to-one audio calls using Skype for Windows. As you can see in the example provided by Skype in the lead image of this article, the ads will temporary fill in the space where you would normally see the face of your Skype partner.
While the idea of ads popping up during your conversation with your distant, dearly ones, Skype is putting a positive spin on it in hopes of stalling your judgment:
While on a 1:1 audio call, users will see content that could spark additional topics of conversation that are relevant to Skype users and highlight unique and local brand experiences. So, you should think of Conversation Ads as a way for Skype to generate fun interactivity between your circle of friends and family and the brands you care about. Ultimately, we believe this will help make Skype a more engaging and useful place to have your conversations each and every day.
Not to be presumptuous, but I imagine the only conversation these ads will stimulate between interlocutors are the same conversations that unwanted ads always stimulate: complaining about ads. Then again, if you’re one of the ones that would rather not pay for a service, that service has got to be paid for somehow. At any rate, Skype assures users that the quality of the calls will remain the same and you won’t be interrupted by any commercial jingles since all the ads will be silent.
If you’re a marketer looking to take advantage of the new tool, Skype says that the conversation ads will be available for purchase in 55 markets where Skype is available.
So, Skype users, maybe now is the time to start considering giving credit to a good idea and pay up a little bit of money so as to not see the conversation ads in place of your Skype chatters?
As if you didn’t have enough to worry about when it comes to protecting your personal information from the jackals of the innernets, here, come have more to worry about: Microsoft and Yahoo are selling users’ personal data to political campaigns so that they can better target the audience of their political ads.
Honestly, this news shouldn’t be that surprising since the process of running for any important public office in the United States is, at least in this big social century, nothing more than an aggressive exercise in venture capitalism so why shouldn’t political campaigns get the same perks and access as other enterprises do? It’s probably better to go ahead and accept the fact that elections are less democratic routine and more a corporate charade of cash-stitched hand-puppets so that we can get over our expected outrage at news of tech companies selling our personal information to political parties.
Microsoft and Yahoo are Voltron-ed together in the Search Alliance that allows users of Microsoft’s adCenter or Yahoo Search Marketing to target users across both Yahoo and Bing search engines with personalized ads. According to ProPublica’s Lois Beckett, the two companies are helping political campaigns deploy consumer-tailored ads by using people’s names, zip codes, and other user information that people submit when they sign up to use one of Microsoft or Yahoo’s services. By paying for access to user information, campaigns can strategize how best to target political ads to people browsing the internet the same way other advertisers deploy retail ads to specific people.
And where does your right to privacy fall in all of this? Never thought you’d ask.
Microsoft and Yahoo said they safeguard the privacy of their users and do not share their users’ personal information directly with the campaigns. Both companies also said they do not see the campaigns’ political data, because the match of voter names and registration data is done by a third company. They say the matching is done to target groups of similar voters, and not named individuals.
While the two companies may indeed be going through a third party to ensure the anonymity of users whose information is harvested for political parties, I’d wager that a determined sleuth would not have too much difficulty tracking back the breadcrumbs of data to sniff out a person’s true identity.
In a recent report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that assessed which companies were doing their part to protect user privacy and which were slacking off, both Microsoft and Yahoo received poor scores, especially when it came to teling users about data demands and maintaining transparency about government requests for private information.
What’s supremely ironic about Microsoft selling user information to political campaigns via third-parties is that just last week the company announced that its upcoming Internet Explorer 10 would come with the ‘Do Not Track’ feature automatically enabled, which tells third-party advertisers to get lost but doesn’t shake off those advertisers with whom users have direct interactions, such as Microsoft if you’re using IE10.
Alternately, the two biggest online advertisers, Google and Facebook, told ProPublica that they are not like Microsoft and Yahoo in that they don’t hock personal data to political campaigns. Instead, they sell it off to everybody else.
The Obama and Romney campaigns declined to share their methods for targeting potential voters with ads. The only response the Obama campaign would give up is that this habit of info-buying for the purpose of targeted campaign ads is something both Democrats and Republicans have done in the past, and so since it’s been done before they don’t see a problem with doing it now. Alternately, the Romney campaign just sat on their hands and didn’t say anything.
As I already mentioned, there isn’t any real reason why political campaigns shouldn’t be allowed to target their online ads when retailers are allowed because the end goal is identical: make people pay attention to your brand and hopefully commit to your side. In the end, it’s less about Microsoft and Yahoo failing at online privacy – those companies aren’t exactly doing anything different than how normal advertising goes – and more of a reminder that electioneering really isn’t any different than trying to target somebody with an online ad for green corduroy pants because they looked at a pair yesterday.
$1.3 billion billboard featuring advertisements from Skydive Dubai and Denver-based Go Fast energy products recently went on-display in the city. The reason for the billboard’s outrageous price tag: It features a real guy in a jet pack who flies around the advertisement, technology that costs roughly $500 per second to operate. No word on how much the space would have cost without the gimmick.
“The billboard involved a man with a Jet Pack, initially hidden within the billboard, who emerged from the billboard and flew around it for approximately 20-30 seconds, before landing back on the billboard,” the news release explained.
In regards to the cost, Skydive Dubai offers up the following mathematical equation. “The seconds of flight time for the billboard in Downtown Dubai would cost a minimum of USD 500 per second. If the number of seconds in a month (60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 30 days = 2,592,000 seconds) is multiplied by USD 500, the total amounts to approximately USD 1.3 billion for the month long fly time for the billboard.”
Another reason for the high costs has to do with the billboard’s location, which is positioned at the entrance of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in Dubai. Not only does it feature state-of-the-art innovation, it’s also situated for maximum visibility. This is the ultimate advertising package, as it’s sure to leave an impression on anyone who lays eyes upon it. However, with a price tag of $1.3 billion per month, Skydive Dubai might be flat broke by the time all is said and done.
For an example of the billboard in action, take a look at the video below.
Like all the other good, well-adjusted teenagers, the internet is learning to become a more social animal. With 8.38 billion webpages available for the 2.27 billion people online across the world, there’s a lot of different things you can do with your time online. However, as expansive as the content on the internet may be, internet users reportedly spend 22.5% of their time online mulling about on social networks and blogs.
Brain Host, a provider of web-hosting services, took at look at just how social the internet is becoming and what people are doing when they’re diddling around on their laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
The social internet user apparently isn’t shy about admitting to having some brand loyalty, either, as 53% of active adult users of online social networks say that they follow a brand. Given everybody’s murky understanding about the effectiveness and value of a brand’s followers are on a social network, one thing seems for certain: the potential to generate some kind of advertising revenue exists, just nobody’s really figured out a way to consistently utilize advertising on social networks.
While there’s a significant amount of time being spent being social online, what’s most striking about Brain Host’s findings is that the biggest time-occupier for online people is the perplexing activity that is nondescriptly known as Other. Seriously, people said they spend 35.1% of their time on the internet doing Other, more than social networks and blogs, more than reading the news, more than watching videos or movies, more than emailing or playing games – more than anything. Other. Just doing Other.
How is that people can’t account for 35.1% of their time online? This tells me one of two things. One, it suggests that there are lots of people spending way too much of their time doing the online equivalent of compulsively flipping TV channels.
If that isn’t the explanation, then it could be that we’ve been terrorized into being such a non-disclosing group of people when it comes to talking about what we do online that everybody’s more likely to plead the Fifth now when you ask them what they spend their time doing on the internet. Given that Facebook and its cohorts are encouraging us to never stop sharing our personal information, demurring to do Other might just be a natural recoil from that direction.
Microsoft very much wants people to get a head start with getting familiar with its upcoming Windows 8 so that everybody hits the ground running when the operating system launches later this year. The company has been letting loose some developer tools into the wild lately like tools for developing Metro style apps and now the company has released the Microsoft Advertising SDK Release Preview in order to start buttering up advertisers.
Ian Ferreria, a group program manager with Microsoft’s Ads Research & Development team, made the announcement yesterday in Microsoft’s advertising blog:
Amongst other improvements and bug fixes this release includes drag and drop support for both Visual Studio 11 and Expression Blend as well as additional creative capabilities that can be leveraged to create compelling and relevant consumer experiences. For more details, browse our documentation here.
We listened to developers and made some minor API changes based on the feedback. One breaking change is around error handling. We have included an error code to help developers manage the experience i.e.
var errorEventHandler = function (sender, evt) {
// use either or both of evt.errorMessage or evt.errorCode
We have also made investments in creativity with a new set of experiences that advertisers will be able to enable via the Microsoft Advertising SDK.
Microsoft has also stated that while it doesn’t expect the APIs for the Advertising SDK for Windows 8 to differ significantly between the beta releases and subsequent releases, it does point out to developers that they’ll need to repackage the app after the official release in order to receive payouts. Regardless, the company offered up walkthroughs for deploying ads in an app using either HTML5/JavaScript or XAML/C#.
The 2012 fiscal year is off to a good start for internet advertising as the first quarter welcomed a record-breaking $8.4 billion in revenue, more than any previous first quarter. The news comes by way of the semi-annual Internet Advertising Report, compiled by Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC U.S., that found that this first-quarter record is a 15% increase over the first quarter of 2011, marking $1.1 billion more than last year.
Given that people are shooting from more screens than ever these days, that type of constant exposure and content searching seems like it could only yield better and more opportunities for online advertisers to generate revenue, and it’s an opportunity they aren’t going to let pass them by. “More online consumers than ever are taking to the internet to inform and navigate their daily lives—by desktop, tablet or smartphone,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “Marketers and agencies are clearly–and wisely–investing dollars to reach digitally connected consumers.”
David Silverman, Partner, PwC U.S., concurs that the internet is becoming a highly lucrative market for advertisers.
“The year-over-year growth between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012 sets quite a milestone,” said he said. “Moreover, a 15% increase over the comparable period in 2011 is a solid affirmation the internet is delivering on its promise to attract consumers and the advertising dollars that follow.”
Earlier this year, eMarketer predicted that Facebook’s ad revenue would climb up to $5 billion although the company’s growth rate would probably stall out in subsequent years, during which time Google is expected to surpass Facebook and become the top seller of online ads.
In 2011, Facebook’s online display ad revenue was $1.73 billion and is expected to increase to $2.58 billion in 2012, then more to $3.29 billion in 2013. Google’s ad revenue was $1.71 billion in 2011, is expected to reach $2.54 billion in 2012, and then continue to increase to $3.68 billion in 2013. If eMarketer’s predictions are true, and the other top five ad-selling companies – Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL – continue to increase their ad revenue this year as well, record-breaking online ad revenue might become a repeated story throughout 2012.
A new study released today by comScore demonstrates that a television is no longer the only place that consumers are getting their watchable jollies thanks to computers, tablets, and smartphones all capable of delivering your favorite sitcoms and dramas. This incorporation of multiple screens into the consumer experience is reshaping how people develop loyalty to certain brands and how they stay engaged with content and brands simultaneously across different platforms.
That people are using non-televisions to watch traditionally television-delivered things isn’t really anything new, and while the new study doesn’t indicate any immediate upheaval in the way that brands target consumers, it does reinforce a trend that more people are going online-only when it comes to where people watch shows. More, consumers are increasingly going for the cross-platform, multi-screen experience for their entertainment and, although this might be obvious, the more screens a person has surrounding them, the more engaged and loyal those consumers are to a brand.
The study, which collected information from 10,000 participants in the United States and followed the reach of 10 broadcast network and cable brands, shows that 25% of consumers engaged with a brand via online access and 12% did so through online video. TV is still the screen de jour for most consumers, though, as 90% were TV engagers. What’s more is that 11% of consumers were the digital-only types while another 17% were doing the multi-screen dance. A solid 72% however remain committed to their TVs as the sole source of access to a brand.
“Once TV-centric media brands now engage with their consumers across a variety of digital touch-points,” said Joan FitzGerald, comScore VP of TV & Cross-Media Solutions. “While this enhances the quality of brand engagement, it also increases the complexity of media planning and analysis by orders of magnitude.”
Those consumers who were either multi-screen swingers and sought out online video content of a brand appear to be the most loyal, although that isn’t entirely surprising given that most of the time when a consumer goes for a brand online, they’re likely doing it more actively than passively, as is the case with television ads.
It’s peculiar that digital platforms aren’t supplanting TVs but rather just becoming a second media provider that runs alongside TVs. Does anybody ever watch TV nowadays without a tablet or smartphone somewhere within arm’s length? These implements for more media are never far from our grasp and nobody wants to choose one over the other: they want to have all the MTV they can handle. The study found that 60% of consumers accessed TV and online content of a brand during concurrent 30-minute intervals. 29% of consumers were dabbling around on Facebook while they watched TV, suggesting that it’s no longer enough to simply sit down and watch something. People want to share their invaluable opinions about tonight’s episode of ‘Law & Order’ or complain about the results of ‘American’s Next Top Model’ in real-time, not tomorrow at the office watering hole.
The most unsurprising aspect of this report is reflected in the age demographics of consumers. Overwhelmingly, more people under the age of 34 had made the transition to digital-only engagement but adults over 50 haven’t quite made the jump to abandon television altogether. Instead, the over-50 crowd is more likely to go the multi-screen route and to be users of TV and online video.
Consumers of all walks of life want to be able to access content across different mediums and platforms. This report from comScore indicates that there’s a whole new breed of media consumers growing out there who aren’t shackled to a TV set and would rather access material via some internet-connected device.
Hopefully studies like these will make it apparent to companies like HBO that their neolithic attitude toward providing access to content really needs to be updated.
When choosing your landing page, Google says, keep the following in mind:
– When people like yourself browse the web and visit websites, they make a quick decision on whether to stay or move on (good thing bounce rate isn’t a a ranking signal).
– Studies have shown that you only have a few seconds to convince potential customers to engage with your website after they land on it.
– To make sure your page “seals the deal,” Google says to ask yourself: is the page featuring what you promised in the ad, can people easily find what they are looking for on your site, and what do you want them to do on your site (include a call to action)?
At time when Facebook’s potential to generate revenue from its mobile platform is largely uncertain, one of the company’s social media contemporaries seems to be doing just fine with the mobile market. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told a group at a conference in San Francisco this week that the micro-blogging site sometimes generated more revenue from its mobile services than it did from the web during the last financial quarter.
Costolo credited the success of Twitter’s mobile advertising strategy to the mobile-friendly design of the service. “We’re borne of mobile,” Costolo told the conference attendees when explaining the difference between Facebook and Twitter. “We have an ad platform that already is inherently suited to mobile, even though we launched our platform on the Web and only started running ads on mobile recently.”
Twitter amped up its advertising strategy earlier this year by introducing Promoted Tweets into the news stream of its mobile platform and on Twitter.com in addition to adding a Promoted Account feature.
So far, 2012’s been a year of milestones for Twitter. Last month, the site passed the marker for 6 million registered accounts and has as many as 140 million active users. Increasingly, and similar to Facebook, the majority of Twitter users are accessing the site via mobile device instead of the web.
Costolo’s been good for Twitter’s revenue growth since he took over in 2010. This year, the company is expected to pull in $269 million this year and that number could climb as high as $540 million by next year.
Google announced today that it is integrating AdMob into AdWords, enabling its over a million AdWords advertisers to run campaigns across over 300,000 mobile apps running AdMob ads on over 350 million mobile devices. Of course, it can all be managed from the AdWords interface.
There’s a new campaign type in AdWords called Display Network only (mobile apps):
Advertisers can launch mobile app campaigns from AdWords, and target specific devices or specific manufacturer brands, in addition to the already available targeting by operator, wifi or OS version. Another targeting option is by individual app. Google says it will soon provide an estimate on the number of devices reached and impressions targeted.
“It also helps AdMob developers and publishers increase their revenue by giving them access to a large number of new advertisers,” says Jonathan Alferness, Director of Product Management, Mobile Ads. “AdWords advertisers can now manage, measure and adjust search, display and video ads, reaching people on more than 2 million websites and hundreds of thousands of apps, across all screens.”
Google says the move complements DoubleClick Digital Marketing, which it announced earlier this week.
“As mobile usage continues to explode, businesses increasingly need to adapt their marketing strategies to mobile platforms and mobile-specific consumer trends,” says Alferness.
As far as developers are concerned, Google Mobile Ads product manager Vishay Nihalani says, “All filters you currently use for AdMob ads will be respected for AdWords ads as well. However, please be aware that your filters will still not apply to Google Certified Ad Networks. You will be able to opt out of showing ads from Google Certified Ad Networks if you require filters across all your inventory.”
AdMob’s network reaches 23 countries, each generating over one billion ad-requests last month, according to Google. That’s up from 11 countries in April 2011.
Meanwhile, Google has also been working on a redesign of the AdWords interface, and this is now available for preview.
“This refresh aims to get the interface out of the way, so that the important things – such as your data – stand out,” says Greg Rosenberg on the Inside AdWords blog. “We integrated the latest client side technologies to make the AdWords interface more visually appealing and scalable.”
The Interactive Advertising Bureau and the IHS Screen Digest have sized up the mobile ad market, and have concluded that it was valued at $5.3 billion in 2011.
By region, it breaks down like this: North America 31.4%; Europe 25.9%; Latin America 3.5%; Asia-Pacific 35.9%; Middle East & Africa 3.2%.
“As mobile accelerates its global footprint, it is vital that we measure the worldwide and regional opportunities for advertisers,” said Anna Bager, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB. “This key IAB initiative provides an accurate gauge of mobile market developments across the globe, with the aim of helping our members and the industry achieve even stronger growth through mobile.”
Here’s a closer look at the numbers:
Things are looking pretty good on the search front, as you can see. Google, as you may know has been criticized for its monetization of mobile, though CEO Larry Page is “very bullish” on mobile going forward. Google just announced integration of Google Offers into its Schemer app, so that is another potential source of mobile revenue (assuming Schemer becomes significantly popular, which is a pretty big assumption, admittedly).
Google Schemer, Google’s most recent answer to Foursquare, is now being used to bring you Google Offers. Who would have thought?
“We have been pilot-testing this Google Offers integration for the past few weeks and have received wonderful feedback from our users (thanks!). We’re now excited to open it up to more users,” writes Schemer Front-end Engineer Huy Nguyen on the Google Commerce blog.
It should be noted that Schemer is more than just a Foursquare clone, and is more about “to do lists,” which is what makes the Offers integration interesting. As my colleague Shaylin Clark recently put it, “Basically if you take social networking, check-in services like Foursquare or GetGlue, and a giant to-do list for your life and shake them all up together, you’ve pretty much got Schemer.”
So Google can serve you offers based on things you want to do.
“Maybe you’ve always wanted to ‘Go Skydiving’? You might receive an email with a killer deal on a tandem jump from a skydiving company in your area, in which case the time is ripe to jump out of that perfectly good airplane!” says Nguyen. “Maybe you’ve been meaning to check out what the deal is with that mysterious mansion down the street. Schemer will help you quell that curiosity at the most opportune (and money saving!) time with a brief email.”
The Schemer Google+ page posted:
Schemer26 minutes agoNew Cool Feature Announcement: Schemer Integration with Google Offers
Ever get that moment in Schemer right after you click “I want to do it” where you go, “When will I really do this?” “Well, now Schemer can help you go accomplish some of those adventurous schemes (and save you some money too!)
We are excited to announce Schemer’s integration with +Google Offers to help you do schemes you’ve been meaning to do. Schemer has been piloting this integration with a limited number of schemes and today we are officially introducing our users to it.
Now all you need is to muster up some courage for that skydiving stint you’ve always wanted to check off!
User can purchase Google Offers deals directly from Schemer’s detail page. Users can opt out of the emails (though Google promises to only send them when hey’re related to things you’ve already specifically said you want to do).
You know how everyone is worried about Facebook’s ability to monetize their mobile platform in this tenuous post-IPO period? Today, they might have just taken a significant step in at least moving in the direction of assuaging some of those concerns.
Now, if you want to be a mobile-only advertiser, you can do so with Sponsored Stories. Before, advertisers couldn’t specify exactly where they wanted their Sponsored Stories to appear. Starting today, they can pinpoint exactly where they want their ads to show up.
Facebook now gives five options to advertisers making purchases through the ads API and Power Editor:
All placements: this option includes right-hand side +News Feed desktop+ News Feed mobile
All desktop placements: this option includes right-hand side + News Feed desktop
News Feed (desktop and mobile): this option includes News Feed desktop + News Feed mobile
News Feed desktop: this option includes News Feed desktop only
News Feed mobile: this option includes News Feed mobile only
As you can imagine, this kind of control has been oft requested from those who purchase Sponsored Stories, so advertisers have to be happy. And the happiness that comes with the ability to target to just the news feed or just the mobile news feed could entice them to be a little more free with the ad dollars.
Here’s what Facebook had to say in a statement:
Facebook is always looking for ways to improve products and has responded to requests from marketers to control the placement of their sponsored stories. As companies are promoting services more frequently on mobile, this option gives them the opportunity to focus on specific placements that will impact them most directly.
Sponsored stories that appear in the news feed (whether it’s desktop or mobile) feel more natural than stories that appear on the right-hand side, and may be a better option for some businesses. Sponsored stories simply take already-completed activities such as “liking” a page or topping a high score in a game and promotes them, so they often feel more organic that other types of ads. Users’ inability to opt out of sponsored stories has been a point of contention, however, and Facebook just settled a lawsuit out of court a couple of weeks ago regarding that point.
But, these Sponsored Stories are the only ads that users currently see when accessing Facebook mobile, and they aren’t going anywhere. Having the ability to put all their eggs in that basket could excite some advertisers who wish to use a scope instead of a shotgun when it comes to their targets.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has announced it’s considering adding Mark Zuckerberg’s trademark grin to the list of endangered species, the agency said in a statement today. Public sightings and documentation of his grin in the wild have diminished significantly over the past several weeks, owing to citing the Facebook CEO’s increased strife and scrutiny following his company’s shabby initial public offering. The agency is concerned that the over-hunting for the once-flourishing Zuckerberg grins will endanger the future sustainability of the expression’s survival.*
The poll found that four out of five Facebook users have never been enticed to make a purchase of a product or service due to advertisements or user comments on the site. General Motors’ decision to pull its paid advertisements from Facebook last month seems to corroborate this finding. The automotive company said the reason it was pulling the ads was because, simply put, they didn’t believe the ads worked.
Facebook’s struggled to convince marketers that ads on the site actually do work, but what’s worse is that it’s going to be hard for Facebook to improve the efficiency of its advertising services if people are spending less time on the site, which appears to be the latest Thing to Worry About for Zuckerberg and Company. Another troubling finding to come from the survey: 34% of Facebookers said they were spending less time on the site compared to six months ago; only 20% of users said that they were spending more time there. Of the people who were spending less time on the site, the biggest reason they cited for visiting less was that the site is “boring, “not relevant,” or “not useful.”
It would appear that people kinda miss having that direct contact to other Facebook users and aren’t so keen on this voyeuristic hyper-social direction that Facebook has taken with the implementation of auto-posting apps for activities like social readers and Zynga games. Adding to Facebook’s waning relevancy is the fact that simply friending or following a person or page isn’t even a real guarantee that you’ll be a party to their updates.
While that still leaves just shy of 6 million users visiting the site at least as much as usual (if not more), if Facebook was having trouble encouraging 9 million people to engage those advertisements, the prospects of convincing a two-thirds of that number to do so isn’t exactly the most promising endeavor.
The company’s IPO hasn’t done much to win any favorability among users, either, as some people think that it seems to have broken the stock market as 46% said Facebook’s IPO has made them less favorable of investing in the stock market in general. Since the company’s IPO on May 18, shares have declined 29% and currently hover just below $27.00, $11 lower than the company’s IPO price of $38. It’s one thing to take down advertisers in Facebook’s slow, Crisco’ed slide down into Lonesome Town, but it’s another thing to drag down one of the biggest institutions of capitalism. Who knew such a thing were possible?
While the IPO hasn’t done Facebook any favors, the general pall that’s growing over the company is that it’s being viewed as a business now and less like a personal communication tool. Perhaps it’s become apparent to Facebook users that they are nothing more than a product or currency for the company and, better late than never, have realized they aren’t so comfortable with being commodified like that.
*This statement from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is actually completely made up.
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