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  • The Small Details Can Make or Break Your Campaign

    At ad:tech New York, Dan LaCivita, President of Firstborn, a creative agency that worked on a well-received campaign for Pepsi’s Sobe brand, along with Rami Jabaji, the Associate Brand Manager for Sobe, showed off the campaign kicked off earlier this year at SXSW in which they created a Flash-based app that allowed users to create fake (but real-looking) tattoos on images of themselves, with the intention of fooling their friends (and mothers). 

    The beauty of the campaign was not only the innovation behind it to begin with, but the fact that it easily translated to a variety of digital options. What started as simply an app at a kiosk at the event was eventually turned into a web application that anybody could use online and a mobile app that allows the user to take a picture of their friends and do the same thing. 

    "In typical client fashion, we asked for a turnaround in like a couple weeks," laughed Jabaji talking about the beginning of the companies’ relationship. The campaign was a success. 

    One small, but very important factor of the campaign was that the tattoos looked real. Otherwise, the whole thing would’ve failed miserably, as the two implied. "Tiny production details can make or break it," said LaCivita, referring to things like the tattoos in the app adjusting to the contours of users’ skin and added redness for a realistic effect.

    Dan LaCivita Talks Sobe Campaign

    While the details will obviously differ from campaign to campaign and brand to brand, these are indeed words of wisdom. The small details can often make a huge difference. 

    Of course, as Jabaji pointed out, it also helps when you can use alcohol to lure people into your kiosk.

     

  • Get to the Point With Your Mobile Marketing

    Get to the Point With Your Mobile Marketing

    I probably don’t have to tell you that mobile marketing is incredibly complex. Why is this? Because mobile encompasses nearly all other forms of media in one. Mobile is talking on the phone, the mobile web, images, video, radio, interactive apps, location, etc. 

    "The challenge here is: how do we balance scale with engagement?" said Jeff Plaisted Microsoft Advertising National Specialist Sales Manager. Here at ad:tech NY, Plaisted, along with Adam Hughes, Digital Media Supervisor at Starcom, discussed a campaign they worked on for GMC. 

    We won’t get into the whole case study here, but just a couple takeaways. "Make it quick," said Plaisted. "Get to the point really quickly and deliver that value."

    Jeff Plaisted of Microsoft Advertising Talks Mobile Marketing

    This is probably good advice for marketing through mobile or through any other channel. While there are certainly exceptions to the rule, it’s getting harder and harder to command consumers’ attention these days, if for no other reason than the fact that there are so many entities vying for it through all different channels.

    That’s why the GMC campaign used an in-app calculator that asked consumers to answer just a few quick questions, rather than a whole bunch of questions. If you’re lucky enough to get them there, don’t drive them away by threatening to use up too much of their time.

    The real reasons to increase you mobile marketing efforts are that mobile is "universal" and "insanely personal", as Michael Becker of the Mobile Marketing Association pointed out.

    According to Becker, there are 6.8 billion people on planet and over 5 billion mobile subscriptions. In the U.S. there are 277 million subscriptions, with 233 million unique users. Is that enough reasons?

    Read here for some mobile marketing tips.

  • Twitter Toys With Promoted Tweets in User Timelines

    Twitter announced today that it has begun limited testing of its Promoted Tweets, announced earlier this year, in users’ timelines. For starters, they’re only doing this with partner Hootsuite for some users.  

    Later, the company says, Promoted Tweets will be available to a wider audience. They simply want to get it right before they roll it out to everyone. 

    "As we have done since the beginning of our Promoted product efforts, Twitter is taking a deliberate and thoughtful approach to this test," says Twitter’s Matt Graves. "We’re carefully looking at how Twitter users react to and engage with Promoted Tweets in the timeline. We want to display Promoted Tweets in a way that’s both useful and authentic to the Twitter experience."

    "During this testing period with HootSuite, we will experiment with where and when Promoted Tweets are shown in the timeline," adds Graves. "Not all HootSuite users will see Promoted Tweets and those who do may see different Promoted Tweets in different places in their timeline. As with Promoted Tweets in search, we will display Promoted Tweets in the timeline when they are relevant. Similar to our Promoted Account recommendations, we use several signals to determine a Promoted Tweet’s relevance to a user, including the public list of whom they follow. We will expand the rollout only when we feel we’re delivering a high-quality user experience."

    Michael Raneri of ZeccoA couple months ago, we talked to Zecco, another partner who has been using Twitter’s Promoted Tweets. CEO Michael Raneri told us Zecco has seen an average increase of 50 percent engagement with promoted tweets versus the company’s standard tweets. In some cases, he said, this increase was as much as 200 to 300 percent. 

    Promoted Tweets were initially only available in Twitter search. It’s easy to see where these could be contextually relevant and increase user engagement here. It remains to be seen just how well they’ll do in user timelines. If Twitter can get relevance right here, it could be pretty powerful.

  • Microsoft, Yahoo Complete Search Transition in the U.S. and Canada

    Microsoft and Yahoo have completed their "Search Alliance" transition in the U.S. and Canada. 

    "As of today, adCenter powers 100% of paid search advertisements on both Bing and Yahoo!, partner sites and publisher networks in the U.S. and Canada," Yahoo and Microsoft said in a joint message to WebProNews. "The search alliance creates a competitive alternative in search, allowing advertisers to reach a combined audience of 163 million searchers in the U.S. and 15 million searchers in Canada via Bing and Yahoo! Managing a single account for both Bing and Yahoo! will let advertisers save time and simplify their campaigns."

    "The transition comes after months of testing and collaboration between Yahoo! and Microsoft, with strict attention being paid to protecting the quality of experience for publishers and advertisers during the upcoming holiday season," the companies said. "The paid search transition comes on the heels of both companies completing the transition of the back-end technology for English-language Yahoo! organic search results in the U.S. and Canada in August."

    Yahoo and Microsoft say that next up, Yahoo Mobile search ads will be transitioned to the Microsoft platform by the end of October. They will then start transitioning international markets next year, with all global customers and partners expected to be transitioned by early 2012. 

    "The organic search transitions will occur first on a market by market basis with paid search to follow," the companies said. "For organic search, the search alliance intends to start with our Spanish-speaking Latin America markets in Q1 2011; for paid search, the next set of markets will be UK, France, Ireland and India in Q2 2011."

    Last month, data from Nielsen showed that Microsoft had taken the number 2 spot in search market share in the U.S. for the first time, and that was even without Yahoo’s help. 

    The companies intended to have the transition ready in the U.S. before the holidays, and it appears that they achieved that.

  • You Can Now View Query Path Reports in AdWords Search Funnels

    Google introduced a new feature to its AdWords Search Funnels today: the Top Paths (Query Paths) report. Search Funnels are a set of reports that describe ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up do a conversion.  

    "Broad match keywords in your AdWords account may be matched to a variety of keywords your users are searching for," explains Gordon Zhu of Google’s Inside AdWords crew. "You bid on certain keywords, but what about the actual queries that these keywords were matched to? You can see Keyword Paths within Search Funnels – and now, you can see Query Paths as well."

    To access them, simply go into the existing Top Paths reports and select the Top Paths (Query Paths) option in the Dimension drop down menu to show the actual queries that were matched to ads and clicked before a conversion. 

    Query Path Reports in AdWords Search Funnels

    The option only shows queries for search ads that were clicked (not for impressions).

    "This data gives even more insight into the searches users make before finding and then purchasing on your site," says Zhu. "With this information, you should be able to better target these users by seeing how they find you, and gain confidence in bidding on keywords that convert or assist in the conversion path."

    Earlier this month, Google launched longer, customizable Conversion History windows in Search Funnels, as well as the ability to only show complete conversion paths. 

  • Android Passes iPhone in Revenue on Major Ad Network

    Millennial Media, which claims to have the largest data set of any third-party U.S. mobile ad network,  reports that Android revenue exceeded iPhone-only revenue for its network. Android requests grew by 26% from the previous month,and 1283% since January. 

    Apple, which has been the leading device manufacturer on the firm’s network for the last year, accounted for 0% of impressions in September. iPad revenue growth increased 316% in Q3, with impression growth increasing by 156% in the same period. This comes as Apple just posted its own highest revenue of all time, and record iPhone and iPad sales. 

    Smartphone impression share grew 7% month-over-month and accounted for 58% of the Smartphone, Feature Phone and Connected Device Impression share for Millennial Media. 

    Here are the top manufacturers and devices for the month, according to the firm:

    Top 15 Manufacturers

    Top 20 Mobile Devices

    As you can see, RIM devices represented 5 of the Top 20 Mobile Phones. The BlackBerry Curve has been number 3 for two months in a row now. Meanwhile, Motorola moved up over Samsung to the number 2 spot on the manufacturer list. 

    The top 4 connected devices were the iPod Touch, iPad, Sony PSP, and the Sony PS3.

  • Google-NBC Universal TV Ad Partnership Dissolves

    Google-NBC Universal TV Ad Partnership Dissolves

    One of Google’s biggest victories in terms of television advertising partnerships has unraveled.  Google and NBC Universal have dissolved the pact they established two years ago, meaning would-be advertisers will lose access to a number of high-profile channels.

    Things got off to a promising start between Google and NBCU in late 2008.  The networks covered by the original deal included Chiller, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, Sleuth, and SyFy (then Sci Fi), which seemed to indicate a fair amount of confidence on NBCU’s part.

    But Steve McClellan reported today, "[S]ources said that NBCU had concluded that there was little value derived from having an Internet company sell its ads."

    Google TvNBCU’s national sales teams are supposed to take over the operation, instead.

    The good news for Google is that NBCU hasn’t cut all ties.  The company was able to say in a statement, "While we are no longer offering NBC Universal inventory through Google TV Ads, NBC Universal continues to be a great partner to Google. . . .  CNBC is an important partner in the launch of Google TV and we are working together on research studies."

    It’ll just be interesting to see whether any other organizations follow NBCU’s lead, or if Google is able to find more partners to participate in its TV Ads program.

  • OneRiot Moves Away From Realtime Search

    OneRiot Moves Away From Realtime Search

    OneRiot said today it is moving away from its realtime search to focus on its online advertising platform.

    Since the company first launched its advertising network in January brands and media companies including Stella Artois, Sony Pictures, AOL and Time have incorporated OneRiot into their digital marketing strategies and have benefited from the company’s realtime social targeting.

    /Tobias-Peggs “We’ve been in the market with two products that leverage the same underlying technology platform: consumer-facing realtime search and an innovative advertising product that monetizes both realtime search the wider realtime social web,” said Tobias Peggs, OneRiot’s CEO.

    “Our advertising platform has taken off like a rocket – both in terms of network growth and the number of advertisers who are seeking to engage with the social influencers across that network. Going forward, we’ll be focusing all our energy on this side of the business. It’s the right business decision – focusing means we’ll move faster and deliver more in this one area. Of course, realtime search is still very important to us, but future investment will be focused on our paid-search syndication product rather than our own organic search destination site.”

    OneRiot partnerships are available to marketers looking to reach social influencers across its network of Twitter and Facebook apps, mobile apps, and social networks.

  • Online Advertising Sets a New Record

    In the first half of 2010, online ad revenues in the U.S. reached $12.1 billion, setting a new half-year record. The total also represented an 11.3% increase over the same period the previous year. It also included the highest second-quarter on record. This is all according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and  PwC. 

    "With the strongest first half on record, 2010 has so far indicated that Internet advertising is back, and better than ever," says PwC Assurance partner  David Silverman. "While the recession clearly affected short term growth in 2009, with double digit growth in both search and display during the first six month of 2010, the long term prospects continue to be strong."

    "Consumers’ appetite for immersive online experiences is limitless as technological innovation and creativity give rise to new forms of entertainment and information in the digital age," says IAB President and CEO  Randall Rothenberg. "This report highlights marketers’ ongoing adoption of interactive media to build brands—and that’s only going to continue."

    Display-related advertising (including banners, rich media, digital video and sponsorships) totaled over $4.4 billion in the first  half of the year. That’s up 16% from the same period in 2009.

    Ad Revenues According to IAB

    Digital video reached its highest half-year performance ever, up 31% from 2009. Search advertising accounted for the largest percentage of overall interactive spend at 47 %. It accounted for  $5.7 billion for the period, up 11.6% from 2009.

    "Interactive advertising revenue is on a strong upward trajectory," adds Sherrill Mane, SVP, Industry Services, IAB. "Nearly all types of ad formats are showing positive movement and marketers across all advertising categories, most notably consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals, are increasing their investment in digital media."

    This is on top of all of the organic search marketing and social media marketing companies are participating in. 

     

  • Yahoo Sets Target Dates For Final Bing Ad Transition

    The last step of transitioning Yahoo Search Marketing accounts to the Microsoft Advertising adCenter platform will begin (much) sooner rather than later.  Yahoo announced late yesterday that the process could in fact start on Monday, and the deadline for completion is the last week of this month.

    That means things are continuing to run on – or even ahead of – Yahoo and Microsoft’s original schedule, which is good news for both companies.  They should begin to realize the predicted cost savings in short order as a result.

    As for how marketers should react, a post on the Yahoo Advertising Blog advised, "Make sure that you have an adCenter account in place-complete with campaigns and budget-no later than October 25.  Otherwise, your ads will no longer be displayed on the Yahoo! Search network."

    YahooAnd the post stressed that it’s also important to "[c]ontinue to manage your Yahoo! Search Marketing account until Yahoo! search ad serving completely transitions to adCenter, which will help ensure that your ads continue to fully serve on the Yahoo! Search network."

    Then the only other thing to do is watch out for volume-related experiments, since Yahoo and Microsoft intend to test the system’s technical capabilities.

    Let’s hope this transition goes smoothly and no one’s left behind.

  • Yahoo Acquires Display Ad Specialist Dapper

    Dapper, a company that deals in both creating and optimizing display ad campaigns, is now the property of Yahoo, Inc.  Yahoo announced the acquisition this afternoon.

    There are at least a couple reasons for Yahoo fans to be excited about this development.  One is Dapper’s impressive list of clients and partners, which includes organizations like AdBrite, AOL, DoubleClick, Expedia, Kayak, Microsoft, and PubMatic.

    Another reason is that Yahoo is also a current partner of Dapper’s, so Yahoo execs are sure to know what they’re getting into.

    Of course, the potential downside there is that onlookers might not see any startling improvements.

    Frank Weishaupt, VP of North America Ad Marketplaces at Yahoo, indicated in a statement, though, "Smart Ads will continue to be an important component of display advertising and the acquisition of Dapper will help Yahoo! to more efficiently deliver dynamic and personalized ads for customers across more of our network."

    And if you’d like a fuller description of what Dapper does, an official release added that it’s "a technology platform providing dynamic display ad creation and optimization.  Dapper enables advertisers and agencies to quickly and easily build dynamic ad creative, leveraging data to automatically show the right product, offer, or message with each impression."

    Unfortunately, Yahoo and Dapper did not disclose the financial details of the acquisition.

  • Android Continues to Demand Marketers’ Attention at a Growing Pace

    Android Continues to Demand Marketers’ Attention at a Growing Pace

    Earlier this year, we asked which would be more critical to marketing between the iPhone and Android. While not everyone agreed, many of you thought Android. We’ve gotta say, it’s not looking like this assumption is wrong so far. 

    New data released by Nielsen indicates that Android was the most popular mobile OS in the U.S. among smartphone buyers who purchased devices over the past six months. The data takes into account a full month of iPhone 4 availability.

    Nielsen Data on Smartphone Sales in August

    "Among all smartphone owners, Blackberry still holds the dominant share with 31 percent of the market, though its lead over Apple is declining," the firm notes. "Twenty-eight percent of smartphone owners have Apple iPhones, compared to 19 percent who have Android devices."

    Clearly Android still has some ground to make up before it catches its competitors that had head starts, but as the charts above illustrate, it’s making that ground up at a pretty good pace. Google TV, due out soon, won’t do anything to slow it down either. 

    Recent stats from Smaato, which serves over 16 billion ad requests from over 7,000 publishers and over 50 mobile ad networks, indicates that Symbian actually beats all other mobile marketing operating systems when it comes to ads clicked (and Nokia’s new family of smartphones are running this), but Samsung just announced it will no longer support Symbian. Also, rumor has it that Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been discussing the possibility of getting Android on Nokia phones. 

    Symbian CTR

    Obviously, you don’t want to ignore any of these major mobile operating systems if you’re trying to maximize your audience, but it helps to know what the people are looking at, and more and more, it seems they are looking at Android. It may be on bottom in the above chart, but how long do you think that will last if sales continue the way they have been? 

    WebProNews recently had a conversation with Tim Nguyen, a sales manager for mobile marketing firm Trumpia, which has worked with plenty of small and large businesses in assisting them with utilizing mobile marketing to drive traffic and revenue. He gave some pointers for effective campaigns. 

    How big a factor is Android in your marketing mix? How about mobile in general? Comment here. 
     

  • Why Google Won’t Reveal Secret Ranking Factors, But Gives Plenty of SEO Advice

    Google’s goal as a search engine is to provide users with the most relevant results for their queries and the best user experience. For this reason, Google keeps its 200+ ranking factors a secret. While some of them are well-known, others are not, and how much weight each is given is perhaps the biggest mystery. 

    Google doesn’t want people to be able to game its system because this will have a negative impact on search results, and make the user experience poor. This is nothing new. Danny Sullivan recently asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt why they couldn’t at least list the factors, while keeping their weights secret. Schimidt basically said that this would be revealing business secrets. Fair enough. 

    While one may understand why Google goes out of its way to keep this information under wraps, some may wonder why they go to the trouble of providing webmasters with SEO advice, tools, and resources. After all, Google is going to deliver the results as it sees fit right? This is the topic of a question someone sent into Google’s Matt Cutts who has provided a video with his response. 

    The question is really coming from the angle that Google should rather not have people optimizing their sites, so they have to buy ads to gain visibility (more money for Google). Of course while Google may want you to buy ads,  this is not the company’s approach. 

    "Whenever the web does well, Google does well," says Cutts. 

    "I don’t think that it has to be something like, ‘Oh, we help websites rank better and they don’t need to advertise,’" he says. "That’s sort of a short-sighted view. We say, ‘Look, we try to help people make the web a better experience, more people will be on the web, they’ll stay on the web longer, they’ll be happier, and…just the halo effect – the reflected effect of all of that is that people will search more, and then a few of the times they’ll click on the ads’". 

    One YouTube commenter on the video says, "Or simply Google wants to ‘teach us’ SEO so people who search with Google find what they want. If a user search[es] for something? and Google return[s] non-related results they wont use it. So Google needs US and WE need Google."

    Another commenter makes a pretty good point. In the video, Cutts mentions that Google could choose to show pop-up ads, and it could made them some money up front, but that this would annoy users, and they might not want to come back. The commenter says, "I consider YouTube ads embedded? in videos just as annoying as pop up ads."

    I don’t think that person is alone. It’s not the greatest thing for user experience. 

  • Google Tests Expanded Category Blocking With AdSense

    There are many, many circumstances in which computer-matched ads might not be a good fit.  Imagine if a site for entomologists somehow got stuck with ads for Volkswagen Beetle parts, for example.  Or if a site meant to showcase funny pratfalls was paired with ads for vacations ("trips").  Fortunately, Google’s testing expanded category blocking with AdSense.

    The category filtering beta used to offer sites’ owners a way to turn down ads from up to five categories.  It was meant to be used in a rather broad fashion.

    Now, a post on the Inside AdSense blog has explained, "General category blocking will allow you to block even more categories of ads from appearing on your site.  We’re testing this feature with 170 more specific categories, including finance, travel, job, and automotive.  This feature will allow publishers to block up to 50 ad categories from among a broad range of 170 fine grained categories."

    Also, as before, the feature will show publishers what sort of impact changes would have on their earnings.

    Note that not everyone will get to take advantage of the new options; they’re only available through the new AdSense interface, and for that matter, will only work in combination with English-language ads.

    Still, the feature shows a lot of promise, and Google plans to polish it and increase its availability in time.

  • Samsung Reportedly Dropping Symbian Support By End of the Year

    Samsung is reportedly dropping support for the Symbian operating system. According to Engadget, the company sent an email to Symbian developers saying they are closing its Symbian forum and removing all Symbian content before the year is over. 

    While perhaps not entirely unexpected, as Engadget points out Samsung hinted at such a move last year, it is interesting timing. Symbian has recently revamped its OS. 

    Marketers may want to take note of the decreased support of Symbian. Recent research from Smaato indicated that Symbian beats all other mobile operating systems when it comes to ads clicked. 

    "Symbian and Feature Phones continue to perform well with a CTR Index of 130 (145 in July) and 120 (118 in July) respectively," the company says. "RIM passes Android in performance, with its strongest month since Smaato’s metrics began. Apple overtook Windows Phone, as it fell by almost half from 98 in July to 58. The Index consists of the average CTR of all devices and this number is set to 100." 

    "Symbian remains the leading OS in both regions [USA and Europe] as Windows Phone and Android both dropped by around 40% in the US (Windows 153 in July 80 in August. Android 103 in July to 60)," says Smaato. "In Europe, Windows Phone and Android dropped in performance, but while Windows remains the second best OS, Android fell to last place."

    Symbian CTR

    That research comes from a company that serves over 16 billion ad requests from over 7,000 publishers over 50 ad networks. 

    A couple weeks ago, Nokia announced a new family of smartphones powered by Symbian. 

  • YouTube Promotion Tools Pass Field Test

    There was big news earlier today in the online video world, with comScore announcing that Facebook had passed Yahoo in terms of monthly unique visitors.  Only YouTube/"Google sites" of course remains in first place, and this afternoon a YouTube product manager took a moment to discuss the effectiveness of the site’s promotion tools.

    On the YouTube Blog, Jay Akkad explained an experiment’s setup: "Our team selected 20 partner videos who upload fresh videos regularly and then we drove as many views to them as possible with a cost per view (CPV) of $0.03."

    Their findings?   Among other things, "Promotion at $0.03 per view increases views per day by 30x when compared to two weeks prior to promotion."  Also, "Partners in the test got 46,000 subscriptions that were directly attributed to sessions with a Promoted Video click.  The cost averaged out to be between $4-$6 a subscriber."

    That’s pretty impressive stuff.

    YouTube’s no doubt hoping to attract more advertising dollars with those figures, and it’s likely to succeed.  Most organizations can afford a test on that scale, especially if they’ve already sunk time and money into creating a series of videos.

    Good luck if you choose to try the promotion tools out for yourself.

  • Facebook Reveals Interesting Info About People Who “Like” Content

    Facebook posted a note sharing some insights into who are the biggest "likers" of content on Facebook, and how engaged they are compared to other Facebook users. 

    "People who click the Facebook Like button are more engaged, active and connected than the average Facebook user," Facebook says. "The average ‘liker’ has 2.4x the amount of friends than that of a typical Facebook user. They are also more interested in exploring content they discover on Facebook — they click on 5.3x more links to external sites than the typical Facebook user."

    "As publishers work to identify the best ways to reach a younger, ‘always on’ audience, we’ve found that the average ‘liker’ on a news site is 34, compared to the median age of a newspaper subscriber which is approximately 54 years old, as reported by the Newspaper Association of America," says Facebook. 

    Facebook’s advice for reaching these people is to implement its various social plugins and publish interesting content to Facebook yourself. Meanwhile the company continues to partner with sites for deeper integration and instant personalization. They recently launched integrations with Rotten Tomatoes and Scribd. A partnership with Skype is expected. 

    Facebook's Open Graph

    The company announced this week that 2 million sites have added social plugins since they were launched five months ago. Of course, these days, it’s hard for publishers to justify not having Facebook like or share buttons of some kind, particularly now that they’re being directly integrated with Facebook search. 

    Advertisers are really going to benefit from all of this liking too, as the more information Facebook users get in their profiles, the better ads can be targeted toward them. 

    COO Sheryl Sandberg says they’re not working on an ad network "right now", but you could imagine what it would be like if they did. They probably will eventually. It’s just speculation, but why wouldn’t they? 

  • Seesmic Updates iPhone App with New Features and Ads

    Popular social media client Seesmic has launched some new updates for its iPhone app. It now supports Retina Display, creating and adding users to Twitter lists, in-reply-to-converation and direct messages in threads, checking private Facebook messages, pull-down to refresh, and Instapaper & Read it Later integration. 

    Seesmic for iPhone now takes advantage of the Retina Display for newer iPhone and iPod Touch devices for a visually improved interface. We also take advantage of Multi-Tasking with Fast App Switching," says the Seesmic team. "A simple pull-down of the timeline, will load new content. We’ve also added infinite scrolling to load additional updates seamlessly when you arrive at the bottom of a timeline."

    Retina Display

    "If you spend a lot of time with Replies and Direct Messages, we’ve organized it to provide you the ability to view your replies and private direct message in a threaded conversation view," says the team. "We’ve also made some updates to manage your Facebook social stream. The Newsfeed has been updated for easier viewing, and you’ll be able to now read your private messages inbox. You can now also take advantage of being able to view the list of your friends, as well as see their profile."

    The List support is probably the most welcome new feature for avid Twitter users. Lists are a big part of how a lot of people use Twitter these days, and Seesmic is still a popular avenue for Twitter usage on mobile devices. 

    Seesmic says it is also experimenting with monetization efforts for its iPhone app, with the use of iAd in the US Market.

  • Forecast Puts Facebook’s 2010 Ad Revenue At $1.6 Billion

    An investment bank that’s been around for over 90 years believes Facebook ads are going to make the social network a whole lot of money in 2010.  In fact, Cowen and Company predicted that the sum will exceed $1.6 billion.

    That’s significantly larger than the last credible estimate to cross anyone’s desk.  Joseph Tartakoff recalled late yesterday, "It was only last month that eMarketer said Facebook’s ad sales for the year would likely total $1.2 billion."

    As for some additional details, Tartakoff continued, "Cowen & Co. analyst Jim Friedland says he expects that number to actually total more than $1.6 billion and non-ad revenue to bring Facebook’s overall sales to nearly $1.75 billion for the year."

    Then, with respect to next year, Cowen and Company/Friedland thinks Facebook is capable of bringing in a whopping $3.2 billion in ad revenue.

    These sorts of numbers are sure to attract a lot of attention, perhaps causing advertisers to spend more money to stand out and causing Google to divert more engineers to the Google Me project.

    It’s also possible they’ll drive up the value of Facebook’s shares in the secondary market and make investors antsier than ever for an IPO.

  • Google Talks Hyperlocal Mobile Ads

    Google Talks Hyperlocal Mobile Ads

    Google has hyperlocal search ads for mobile search, which the company has highlighted today in a post on tis Mobile Ads blog. Google specifically discusses a use-case from Rent-A-Car. 

    In the scenario described, someone has car trouble and is able to quickly find a nearby car rental place from the side of the road as they simply enter "car rental". 

    "Hyperlocal distance information enhances the location extensions ad format with a marker providing the distance between the user and your business location," explains Google Mobile Ads Product Manager Surojit Chatterjee. "This visual cue instantly helps customers who are on the go and close to a point of sale know that your business is nearby which can drive more traffic to your store and generate more revenue for your business.  Users see the hyperlocal ads only if they’ve opted into sharing their location on Google.com. And because the hyperlocal distance feature is built on top of location extensions, users can also easily click to see where your business is located on a map and click to call and connect with your business immediately. 

    Hyperlocal Mobile Ads from Google

    "Hyperlocal distance information is automatically enabled for location extensions and does not require any additional configurations, allowing you to effortlessly perform hyperlocal advertising with your existing location extensions," adds Chatterjee. "Campaigns must also be opted into showing on iPhones, Android OS phones or other mobile devices with full Internet browsers. The ad format is available only on the Google search network and in countries supporting location extensions ad formats. Advertisers are only charged when users click to visit the website or on the phone number shown in the ad."

    Google has also been showing off some interesting innovations in display advertising this week. The company demonstrated four different things at an ad event. More on those here. 

  • Twitter to Replace Account Verification System with Something New

    There have been several pieces of interesting news regarding Twitter. For one, the company stopped verifying accounts, as it has done for celebrities and companies  for some time. The company is working on a new system to replace this. 

    Details about this new system remain a mystery, but Twitter says it will be better. The company’s support team posted the following tweet (hat tip: The Next Web):

    We’re closing the account Verification program to build a better system for users. Check our Help Center for updates: http://t.co/UyS0vhzTue Sep 28 17:39:21 via webSupport
    Support

    As expected, Twitter announced the launch of "Promoted Accounts" as a new way to monetize the service. They didn’t say when the feature would become available, however. 

    The new design of Twitter.com is now available for more people. I’ve got it switched on, and so far I’m liking it for those times I actually use Twitter.com as opposed to some other app to access the service. Twitter wants to see how big of an impact the new design has on user engagement from the site itself. 

    Twitter is also shutting down its @earlybird account, which was designed to provide exclusive deals for advertisers.