Internet Advertising : facebook

Advertisers Sour on Facebook

'Net Features : wm-advertising — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:30:00 GMT

A new report out from Social Media Examniner indicates that despite high levels of usage, Facebook advertisers might be starting to sour on the network (despite reports that ad exchanges are doing quite well) as a means to drive awareness and clicks....(read more)

Facebook News Feed Ads Outperforming Google

'Net Features : wm-advertising — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:30:00 GMT

At the end of March, Facebook opened up its news feed ad inventory to the Facebook Exchange (FBX), allowing advertisers to retarget their site visitors . But how have those ads performed? A new report from FBX partner Triggit , from two retail-focused...(read more)

Facebook News Feeds Ads Outperforming Google

'Net Features : wm-advertising — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:30:00 GMT

Set Goals in Facebook's Ad Manager

'Net Features : wm-advertising — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:35:00 GMT

Monitoring your advertising success on Facebook just got easier; because the world’s largest social network has made some updates to its Ad Manager. The updates allow marketers to set a goal for their ads, such as getting more page likes, obtaining...(read more)

Facebook's Audience Reach Bug Wreaks Havoc

'Net Features : wm-advertising — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:30:00 GMT

Your last few social media post on Facebook might have performed better than was actually reported. Facebook indicated, in a blog past last Friday, that coding errors misrepresented actual audience reach metrics on posts since sometime last year. Facebook...(read more)

Measuring the Conversion Power of Social and Search

Administrator — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 13:21:00 GMT

Cloud marketing platform BloomReach recently compiled an infographic looking at how different social media sites can become traffic sources that convert users into customers.

According to the data, it seems increasingly clear that social media is quickly catching up to search as a source of coverting traffic. Although conversions from social only represent around 3 percent of the total number of conversions from search, many of these sites don't send very much traffic to online stores, especially compared to search engines.

The big winner in this study was Pinterest, which is quickly growing as a driver of quality traffic. With a conversion rate of 1.02 percent, it's far ahead of Google Image Search (.54 percent) and social media powerhouse Twitter (0 percent). Furthermore, Pinterest's numbers could potentially get much higher, as there are still many e-commerce companies that are barely using (or outright ignoring) the site. There is a lot of room for growth with Pinterest, as it just hit 19 million users.

For now, however, traditional search is still the best bet when it comes to getting converting traffic, largely because it is a clear signal of an intent to purchase. Approximately 1.62 percent of Google Search traffic will result in a sale, which is quite a bit higher than even the highest converting social media site, Facebook (1.13 percent).

In the end, it seems that the real trick to making social media a viable option for driving traffic that converts is to put effort into delivering quality content, following the trends, and linking to relevant landing pages designed to help users convert.

Check out the infographic below:

Boosting Conversions from Facebook Ads

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:26:00 GMT

Digital marketing software provider Kenshoo is providing some interesting data on Facebook advertising and more specifically data related to conversions and clicks generated from advertising on the popular social network.

For retailers targeting Facebook ads to their existing fans and friends of fans with the goal of driving sales, Kenshoo found that 20 percent of all online retail sales driven by Facebook ad campaigns had multiple Facebook ad clicks in the path to conversion. And, 22.5 percent of all online retail sales that had a Facebook ad click in the path to conversion also had a search ad click in the path. For brands aiming to drive Facebook applications installations, Facebook Sponsored Stories drove a 300% better conversion rate than non-social ad formats.

Sivan Metzger, General Manager of Kenshoo Social, presented these findings at a Marketing API event hosted by Facebook at its New York office. Metzger also provided several suggested best practices to boost conversions from Facebook including using a centralized tracking technology to compare performance of ad types, augmenting FB advertising campaigns which drive traffic to external websites with ads to drive likes for their FB pages, and leverage Facebook's Sponsored Stories functionality to drive engagement.

AT&T, Bazaarvoice Offer Ratings and Reviews on Facebook

Administrator — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 22:10:00 GMT

AT&T has joined forces with Bazaarvoice to enable its customers to read, share and submit product reviews directly on the company's Facebook fan page. AT&T, which has offered product ratings and reviews on its own site since 2008, is the first in the telecommunications industry to bring customer ratings and reviews onto Facebook to help consumers with their purchase decisions and connect more closely with its brand through their peers.

The Bazaarvoice ratings and reviews system allows AT&T customers to share their feedback on devices and accessories. Featured within a ratings tab on AT&T’s Facebook brand page, visitors can review a wide variety of different products by using a five-star scale to measure overall satisfaction.

Users can also view recent reviews that were posted directly onto Facebook or the brand site, and they can browse reviews of featured, top or popular products. Additionally, visitors can take advantage of the “buy it now” functionality, which links directly to the specific product page on att.com to complete their purchase and drive the Facebook-to-website conversion cycle.

Bazaarvoice’s social commerce solutions have served more than 165 billion pieces of customer-generated content on more than 1,000 brand websites such as Best Buy, Costco, Dell and Macy’s. The company connects organizations with influencers through a network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe.

Facebook Overtakes Yahoo as World's Third Largest Site

Administrator — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:44:00 GMT

Facebook will head into the New Year as the world’s third largest website after passing Yahoo in the most recent traffic rankings released from comScore. The research firm’s November 2010 report credits Facebook with an estimated 648 million unique visitors worldwide, enough to finally push it past Yahoo and its estimated 630 million visitors in November.

Google remains the world’s largest Web property with about 970 million unique visitors in November 2010, followed by Microsoft with 869 million and now Facebook. In comScore’s October rankings, Yahoo and Facebook were virtually tied with 633 million worldwide visitors each. Facebook had been gaining on Yahoo throughout the entire year, so it is more or less appropriate that the rapidly growing social networking site take hold of the No. 3 spot as we move into 2011.

Facebook held the fourth position for nearly a year and a half after passing the Wikimedia Foundation sites that include Wikipedia back in August 2009. Other notable sites it has passed along the way during its meteoric global rise include MySpace in April 2008, Amazon in August 2008, eBay in January 2009, AOL in February 2009, and now Yahoo.

Facebook also accounts for almost one quarter of all display ads in the United States, and recently became the second largest video site in the U.S. behind Google.

Keep in mind that Facebook’s own official traffic numbers differ slightly from the comScore data, claiming closer to 550 million worldwide unique monthly visitors. No matter how you score it, the audience is a massive one and the site’s popularity continues to spread across the globe.

Gowalla Integrates With Foursquare, Facebook

Administrator — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 02:19:00 GMT

The latest version of location-based service Gowalla’s iPhone app has an enhanced interface and some smart new features – and one big surprise that is likely to shake up the geosocial community.

Gowalla 3.0 for the iPhone includes a deep integration with rival location-based service Foursquare, though the two companies did not work together to get it done. Gowalla set up the integration through the API, which means that its larger, more well-known competitor was probably as surprised as anyone when the new version debuted in the iPhone app store on Thursday.

That leaves Foursquare with few choices as to how to react to the move. It could block Gowalla’s use of the API altogether, which could wind up causing more trouble for the company in the end; or it can let Gowalla use the API at the risk of hurting its own business. Or, Foursquare could even add the new integration into its own app.

Currently, the integration lets Gowalla users broadcast their location check-ins on the iPhone app, on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook Places and Foursquare, and even lets them earn Facebook Deals and Foursquare Badges through the app. Gowalla has also introduced a new interface where users can view all of their friends’ movements from a Universal Activity Feed, which is an aggregated stream of checkins from not only Gowalla but also Foursquare and Facebook Places.

This alone gives Gowalla’s app the most comprehensive universal check-in feature on the market.

Holiday Ad Budgets Get Social

Mike Phillips — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:00:00 GMT

More advertisers are spending more of their ad budgets on social network advertising this holiday season, according to financial consulting firm BDO, USA. The BDO USA Retail Compass Survey of CMOs examined the opinions of 100 chief marketing officers at leading retailer and consumer product companies* located throughout the country.

They found that:

27% of CMOs claim online advertising accounts for most of their holiday advertising and marketing budget, up from 18% in 2009.

75% of CMOs say they included social networking in their marketing strategies this year, up from 51% in 2009 and just 4% in 2007.

62% say social media advertising accounts for 10% or less of their marketing efforts.

Email promotions were cited as the top online moneymaker on Black Friday by 45% of respondents, yet only the thrid highest traffic driver. (A good argument for targeted email marketing.)

Not surprisingly, Facebook led the way for onilne retail marketing budgets. A full 92% of CMOs say they are focusing their social media budgets on Facebook. That's up from 76% in 2009. Twitter was next (61%), followed by YouTube (20%), LinkedIn (15%) and MySpace (8%) as a key marketing focus.

*Revenues of $100 million to $100 billion.

Better Insights on Facebook Pages

Administrator — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:50:00 GMT

Facebook has launched a new feature of Facebook Page owners and FB Platform developers that provide additional metrics about Page content. If you've been looking for a way to better understand your social media followers - this is it.

Page admins (at least those with at least with pages liked by 30 people) can now see per post impression (PPI) counts for any posted item back to June 25th, 2010. The PPI can be seen in two locations - on the page wall directly beneath each post and now on the Interactions portion of the Insights page.

Geographic and demographic data is also now available. Demographic data (anonymized) is broken down into gender and age. Location data is based on the geographic location of the user as determined by their browser IP address and is limited to at most the top 20 countries and cities. All other demographic information is aggregated and non-personally identifiable. If that weren't enough, insights on media consumptions (video, audio, photos) is available.

There are a few other features that will also be interesting to social media enthusiasts, namely that the data can be exported from the dashboard - perhaps Facebook's first attempt at some data portability. Really interesting development all the way around and lots of good data to dig into - so get started!

Did you know that Website Magazine's Facebook page is closing in quickly on 19,000 fans? Help us push past 20,000 before the holiday - tell your friends!

Some Like-able Facebook Stats from Hootsuite

Administrator — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:00:00 GMT

Hootsuite has added Facebook Insights to enable its pro members the ability see the interaction on their Facebook pages directly from the dashboard of the platform.

Users will be able to see new fans to their page, demographics (region, age, gender), amount of page comments, number of “likes”, new discussions, and the number of new wall posts. While a quick look into the actual Facebook page will reveal pretty much the same information, sans demographic data, for social media power users this is a great addition to HootSuite.

Hootsuite Pro members will also have access to historical comparison to see which way pages are trending. Printable reports which can be shared are also available. Pro plans at Hootsuite start at $5.99/mo – there is a 30-day free trial.

Backup Your Facebook Fan Page

Administrator — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:23:00 GMT

Backupify announced a backup and archival solution for Facebook Fan Pages today, adding to its existing backup support of other Facebook data services including News Feeds, Wall Posts, Photo Albuns and Messages.

As corporations, organizations, and governmental agencies increase their participation on Facebook they are quickly realizing the importance of protecting their data and mitigating the risk associated with hacking, corruption, deletion, and user error.

Solutions like those provided by Backupify, which leverages the latest Open Graph API, enables them to comply with records retention and data reproduction requirements.

“At Facebook, we’re seeing explosive growth spurred by businesses and government agencies that use Facebook to engage with customers and constituents,” said Adam Conner, Associate Manager for Privacy and Global Public Policy of Facebook.

“With the aid of independent solutions like Backupify, organizations can confidently broaden their use of Facebook with the knowledge that their data management, records retention and compliance issues are now addressed.”

Check-in Discounts with Facebook Places

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:21:00 GMT

Facebook announced this week that users checking-in to their favorite destinations can expect to see rewards and discounts from companies looking to draw in new business and lure in existing customers. The product, dubbed Facebook Deals, is an extension of the Places offering.

While the service will be attractive to many brick-and-mortar enterprises there remains a rather significant problem - the number of people using such services is small — just 4 percent of the U.S. Internet population have ever used it and just 1 percent on any given day, according to a survey released Thursday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Facebook said it will launch a test version of Deals with over 20 companies including the Gap, 24 Hour Fitness, and North Face. Businesses will be able to choose whether to reward customers for simply checking in, for bringing in friends or for repeat business. Instead of discounts, they can also offer charity deals. The gym chain 24 Hour Fitness, for example, plans to donate $1 to Kaboom, a charity that builds playgrounds, for each check-in made during a designated 24-hour period.

Smaller social services such as Foursquare and Gowalla already let businesses offer deals to their users, and Yelp announced Tuesday it plans to introduce “check-in offers” later this month. Facebook’s entry into the space is significant however because the company commands the attention of so many more people - 500 million at last count. As such, Facebook could help shift location-sharing from something embraced by few tech-savvy early adapters into something commonly used by a broad range of people.