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Facebook Is Testing Threaded and Ranked Comments on Pages (via Social Fresh)

Facebook is testing threaded comments with some pages.

This would allow users to reply to specific comments on a page post and break those comments off as a separate discussion on the page.

These threads would appear on the news feed as well. This is currently being tested on a few pages, not personal profiles.

A screenshot below shows how these appear on a Thai page (HT InsideFacebook.com):

Why threaded comments are important

Obviously, from the community management perspective, this will be extremely helpful for direct engagement with individuals on a page. For conversations that branch off of a page post (but may not have anything to do with the post such as negative feedback on the company itself), this will allow the brand to have its response easily found in the thread.

Conversations will be easier to follow and users will receive notifications on replies. This will be tremendously helpful in responding to customer service inquiries where there are a lot of comments but the page’s response might be buried within the regular comment feed.

Additionally, if this does roll out to all pages, there will be ramifications on the analytics and measurement side. Suddenly, conversation threads will need to be measured for engagement, rather than just the post itself.

“Most popular thread” will surely need to be highlighted in any metrics we gather for a brand, as this will help identify not only active community members, but hot topics and subtopics.

Some more comment fun was announced as Facebook is also testing ranked comments as part of the comment upgrade. This would put comments with high engagement at the top of a post thread, rather than displaying the comments in chronological order as it currently does.

Why ranked comments are important

This makes the ability to reply to threads even more useful as when there is a crisis or need for a page response in the comments of a popular post, the page’s response will no longer be lost in the comments simply because of time of post.

If a discussion is getting high traffic and engagement on your page, you should be monitoring it anyway as a basic community management tactic. This makes that discussion more prevalent to your page’s other fans when they see the content.

It also forces pages to be engaged in the discussion on their content. While not every post will require a response, this makes it harder to ignore lively conversation on your page. Remember, Facebook doesn’t measure sentiment so it doesn’t matter if the comments are positive or negative, it just measures their engagement levels.

Again, this also will in some way impact Facebook Insights as conversation engagement levels will have to be factored into post engagement levels. A post that doesn’t necessarily get a ton of “likes” could have a lively discussion stemming from it.

#facebook #social media #social fresh

The Future of Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing had been headed toward more and more automation, but as online consumers grow more and more wary of blatant advertising (CTRs on paid search, social media, and display ads is way down) customized content is becoming more and more the norm with companies like BuzzFeed leading the way. Fascinating read for anyone in digital marketing!

Native Advertising: Media Savior or Just the New Custom Campaign?

Publishers and Marketers Seek Solutions Beyond the Traditional Display Ads (via Ad Age)

If you're having trouble seeing past the glare emanating from some of your favorite websites these days, it might be the "new" shiny monetization method that carries one of the following labels: native advertising, custom content, sponsored content, branded content, content marketing or perhaps the very latest: collaborative content.

While there are varying definitions of each, the underlying thesis beneath them all is that web readers, viewers and social-network users are more likely to respond positively to marketing tactics that don't look like advertising and instead take the form of the rest of the content on the website or platform. On Twitter, that means promoted accounts and tweets; on Facebook, sponsored stories. And on media properties, that amounts to written, video or image-rich posts that look a lot like the editorial content on the site and which would make proponents of church-and-state divides between advertising and editorial departments cringe.

Mercedes ad complements its content on TheAtlantic.com

But whatever form these content-centric marketing products take, the rush of media companies looking to invest in them tells you one thing: They believe a sole reliance on display ads isn't the best way to turn, maintain or grow profits. The question, though, is whether custom content will grow into a go-to revenue source for media properties across the board or just a few select properties that do it best. "The enthusiasm for content marketing is partially an acknowledgement by the industry that banner ads can't be our best and only answer," said Jeff Lanctot, chief media officer at digital ad agency Razorfish. "There's an appetite for finding something new and different to help brands stand out."

Some, like BuzzFeed, are betting exclusively on written posts or image galleries, on which advertisers and their agencies collaborate with BuzzFeed's team to create or distribute. A recent one from Campbell's Soup contained photos of "15 Animals Who Are Behaving Like People." (No, the connection to the Campbell's brand is not clear to us, either.) Others, such as The Atlantic, are using advertiser-sponsored articles to drive better results of display ads on that same page, since they've found that click-through rates increase more than one-and-a-half times when an ad is placed next to a piece of content from the same advertiser. For example, TheAtlantic.com is promoting a series of Mercedes-sponsored posts that contain video interviews with innovators across different industries.

And then there are those such as Gawker, who say they aspire to have custom content eliminate the need for display ads, though they seem a ways off from realizing that goal. Gawker property Gizmodo has been the home of Intel-sponsored posts, the most recent of which is titled "Photographing Bikini-Clad Surfers in Paradise Is a Tough Job, But Someone's Gotta Do It."

Whether the trend is new depends on whom you ask. Detractors say this is a modestly modern variation on old-school advertorials. They also say it's more about differentiating than real innovation. Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, contends that custom content is too labor-intensive and cost-prohibitive to widely displace traditional ad units, since advertisers typically don't run the same sponsored posts across a wide swath of different websites. "Customization passes costs up and down the supply chain," he said. (It's worth noting that part of the IAB's mission is to help drive the adoption of ad-format standardization in an attempt to grow the overall industry -- the opposite of customization.) Believers say the approach is different when developed in a way to maximize sharing on social networks, producing coveted, so-called "earned media."

One way BuzzFeed is trying to fight the scale argument is by testing out running its "story units" on other sites such as The Awl and Demand Media's Cracked.com in an effort to create its own kind of native ad network. Because it has to pay a revenue split to those third-party sites, this tactic cuts down on BuzzFeed's margins -- which regularly surpass 50% -- but extends its reach and perhaps attracts a new set of advertisers. For example, the Cracked.com home page recently displayed a story unit with a "Sponsored by Geico" tag and the headline "The Most Delightful Moments From Your Childhood in 28 Pictures." Clicking on the unit sends readers to Buzzfeed.com to read the post.

Reach is still critical. If you talk to agencies and brands, few are close to turning their backs on display advertising altogether. One of the more progressive digital marketers, Intel, said display ads will continue to play a big role in its digital advertising repertoire. "We leverage display for reach and frequency and driving to the right experiential destination, whether that's Intel.com or a custom [content] program," said David Veneski, Intel's U.S. media director.

At the same time, Intel has executed custom-content campaigns with more than a dozen different properties this year in an effort to publicize the ultrabook category to millennials. That's undoubtedly a positive sign for publishers betting on custom content, but Mr. Veneski throws up a red flag when he explains what next year will look like: probably as much content being created, but with fewer individual partner sites. "It's a tremendous amount of work," he said of developing individual content programs for each partner site.

The challenges of the content model extend to publishers as well. At The Atlantic, Publisher Jay Lauf says he hasn't yet settled on the best way to value and charge for custom content (right now, The Atlantic charges a higher cost per thousand impressions, $40-plus, for an advertiser's ad that runs next to its sponsored content because of better performance.) At BuzzFeed, the business team has gotten used to missed opportunities to connect a specific brand to a timely meme because of agency turnaround times.

"The challenge, of course, is most brands cannot approve a viral sponsorship in an hour," BuzzFeed President Jon Steinberg said. Could Mr. Steinberg envision a day in which an agency or advertiser embeds an employee in a media company with whom they do a lot of business to help expedite content campaigns? While that hasn't happened at BuzzFeed, CEO Jonah Peretti said his team does meet with some of its advertisers on a weekly basis for this very reason.

If that doesn't sound like a sustainable way for a new industry to grow en masse, it's because it's not. Instead, Mr. Peretti is betting that we will eventually see a rise of agencies dedicated to content marketing, as we saw search-engine marketing shops pop up in the early days of AdWords.

Razorfish's global chief media officer, Jeff Lanctot, can see this future as well, especially as more of the buying of pixels is pushed through ad-buying automation technologies. "People should manage content marketing, brand integration, social campaigns and other innovative initiatives," he wrote. "Machines should manage banners."

What the speed of that transition will look like seems to depend on an entity's agenda. One year from now, BuzzFeed's Mr. Steinberg believes most major digital-media companies will sell a content-marketing product. The IAB's Mr. Rothenberg, on the other hand, sees a select few properties that continue to garner attention for their customized advertising products unique to their environment. At the same time, he predicts "global adoption" of the IAB's Rising Stars Display Ad Units -- a collection of six new ad formats that the IAB has been promoting to drive adoption by media properties of larger, more interactive ad units that big-name brands may find more attractive."It'll kind of look like the way media industry is today, where you have a balance heavily weighted toward standards," he said.

Inside the BuzzFeed Pricing Model

A $100,000 campaign with BuzzFeed typically nets five to 10 posts for an advertiser, according to Jon Steinberg, its president and chief operating officer. But BuzzFeed doesn't charge advertisers on a per-post basis; instead it charges advertisers a cost-per-thousand-impressions price for the thumbnail images and "story units" on BuzzFeed that tease the branded content and drive people to the posts.

CPMs are also the standard for how BuzzFeed charges advertisers to seed their content into standard IAB ad units around the web, as well as to push content onto the home pages of other sites, such as The Awl and Cracked. (BuzzFeed says these days it's doing less of the former and hopes to do more of the latter next year.) Mr. Steinberg said the average CPM across all ad units for a campaign typically comes in around $9.

BuzzFeed charges advertisers cost-per-click prices to advertise their content posts in Facebook ads and Twitter-promoted tweets, and cost-per-view charges for branded video that Buzzfeed seeds onto other websites for advertisers.

Lastly, BuzzFeed charges a daily fee to advertisers who want their post to remain fixed in one of the two top paid spots on the BuzzFeed home page. The unit to the right of the main editorial headline (see "13 Animals Who Know It's Business Time," above) costs $8,000 a day, but will increase to $10,000 in 2013 because home-page traffic is growing, Mr. Steinberg said. Likewise, the top "story unit," which appears as the second headline in the stream of homepage content, will rise from its current price of $12,000 a day to $14,000 in the first quarter of 2013.

#adage #buzzfeed #digital marketing #online marketing #native advertising #display ads

Social Media Promos are Great SOMETIMES

Love this article, check it out. It's so important to provide value to your fans, but there are ways of providing value that don't involve discounts and giveaways. Great tactics sometimes, but not every time:

Why You Should Quit Running Those Successful Facebook Promotions (via Social Media Today)

In a recent infographic from Lab42’s blog it was revealed that 34% of consumers like brands on Facebook for promotions or discounts, and 21% of consumers like brands for free giveaways. Doing some simple math for you, that equates to 55% of all Facebook brand Page likes that are driven by people’s desire to get something for free or to save a few bucks. Pretty compelling information, but there are two sides to this story.

THE GOOD…

I can speak from personal experience that social media promotions and giveaways, if executed and promoted properly, can be excellent fan acquisition tools. Without a doubt, promotions and giveaways are one of the fastest ways to attract new fans to your brand page, and can be run for just about any budget. Three of the many benefits of running a social media promotion or giveaway include:

Fan Acquisition

Acquiring new fans is not only great because it gives you more people to speak with, but it also provides social validation to prospective fans that your community is desirable to be a part of, which should even further grow the size of your community.

Builds Buzz

A social media promotion, giveaway or discount gives you something to talk about and that your community and prospective community members will get excited for and to share with their social graphs.

Creates Value

Creating value for your social communities should be a top priority of all social media marketers. This can be done in several ways such as educating your fans, entertaining them, or in this case, through offering something tangible.

… THE BAD

With such compelling evidence to support the value of social media promotions, giveaways and discounts, it can be easy to become dependent on these tactics for growing your community and overuse them. I’ve heard from a good number of people who experience success with promotional programs that they immediately want to execute their next in hopes of achieving some of the same success. This enthusiasm is understandable, but there are some issues. Drawbacks of running an excessive number of promotional or giveaway programs can include:

Community Churn

When executed with great frequency, it will become an expectation of your community that you will be providing tangible value with promotions or giveaways. If you don’t satisfy this expectation, you should expect ‘unlikes’ as a result.

Reduced Engagement

For consumers who are drawn to your brand page because of a promotion or giveaway, their predisposition to engage with your non-promotional content will be reduced versus consumers who are drawn to your community for other reasons.

Attracting Irrelevant Consumers

Social media promotions, giveaways and discounts attract ‘gamers’ and ‘discount hunters’ who spend an inordinate amount of time entering contests or finding discounts wherever they can online. Undoubtedly you’ll attract some of these, which should be taken into account when measuring basic success metrics.

Additional Costs

By the very nature of promotions, giveaways and discounts, there are hard costs involved beyond existing overhead. Be ready for these, and when you’re building your budgets, be sure to plan for lesser thought of costs such as fulfillment, legal council, and any necessary regulatory filings.

Don’t take this post as my advising against running a social media promotion, giveaway or discount-based program. If executed properly, these can be fantastic for attracting new consumers to your community, rewarding existing fans, and building your brand, to list a few positives. This said, be careful to not over rely on these activities and ignore a better-balanced strategy including the creation of meaningful content and relationship building.

#social media today #facebook #promotions #social media #fan acquisition #social media promotions

No, Google Shouldn't Open Retail Stores

"Google is half-pregnant in the gadget business." Interesting take, and I half-agree with this article. Yes, Google is unlikely to see success without a place to showcase their products, but Google's business model is not set up to support physical retail stores. Maybe through an outside partner, this would work, but launching a Google store is a big step that requires a lot of resources to support.

Check out Business Insider's article below. What do you think of this idea?

T Mobile

The new Nexus. It looks beautiful! You'll never buy one.

Google rolled out a slate of new "Nexus" tablets and smartphones today.

At least at a glance, the gadgets look highly competitive with—if not better than—Apple's recent slate of new gadgets. Google's new gadgets also seem to be considerably cheaper. And have some features Apple's don't have.

So the launch of this new slate of Google gadgets will probably trigger an ephemeral orgasm of praise in certain corners of the tech press...

And then they'll be completely forgotten.

Why?

Because, in the case of the tablets, no one knows where or how to try them and buy them.

And because, in the case of the phones, Google is still working with only one small carrier (T-Mobile) and otherwise hallucinating that it will be able to persuade people to pony up for an "unlocked" phone they haven't tried and buy it without a carrier subsidy—something that only a tiny segment of the phone market would even think of doing.

For most people, trying a tablet is an important part of buying a tablet. You don't want to drop $200-$800 on something unless you're confident you like it. And some of the folks in the tablet business—namely Apple and Microsoft, but especially Apple—now have physical stores in which you can try and then buy their tablets. But Google doesn't.*

Yes, Google sells its tablets through Office Depot and other quasi-irrelevant physical electronics dealers. But so does everyone else. And the salespeople at Office Depot have a lot of tablets they can comfortably recommend before they ever get to a Google tablet.

The way most people buy phones, meanwhile, is by going to their wireless carrier's stores (or a wireless carrier's stores), trying a few phones, and then buying one for $199 or less with a two-year contract. The only carrier that Google is doing that with is T-Mobile. Otherwise, Google wants you to buy the phone from Google.com for ~$300 and then go get a contract with a carrier somewhere. Very, very few potential buyers will do that.

(Yes, ~$300 is a great deal for an unlocked high-end phone—much cheaper than the ~$600 unlocked iPhone. But the point is that most people would rather have a subsidized $200 phone with a contract than a ~$300 phone without a contract. These folks are going to have to pay some carrier a bill every month regardless, so what difference does it make if they're locked in for a little while?)

In other words, right now, Google is half-pregnant in the gadget business.

Google is building great gadgets, but it has no real distribution system through which to sell them.

So a reasonable question for Google is:

"What are you really doing here?"

Is Google just fooling around?

Or is Google going to suck it up, put its carrier-disruption dreams on hold**, and pay the real price of admission to today's smartphone and tablet manufacturing business—building out a major distribution system?

* Yes, as many of you will rightly point out, there is another gadget seller in the marketplace that doesn't have physical stores or carrier distribution—Amazon. But Amazon has a few things that Google doesn't have: 1) The world's biggest online store, and 2) 100s of millions of customers who have been buying media and gadgets from Amazon for years. Those are both huge advantages. But Apple's physical stores have become such a competitive weapon that even Amazon has got to wonder from time to time whether it should be building out some stores.

** Sometime soon, perhaps next year, someone will take the next step in the smartphone-carrier-disruption dream, which will be to buy up a huge block of wholesale data and resell it to consumers who buy unlocked smartphones, thus alleviating the need for any sort of "voice" contract. (Folks can just use Skype or Google Voice or something). Amazon is in a great position to do this, as is Google. But no one's taken the plunge yet.

#google #apple #microsoft #business insider #gadgets #amazon

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My predictions for iPhone/iPad screen sizes after the release of the iPad mini

-awkwardturtle26

NHL Draws Fan Ire With Instagram Meme Fail (via Mashable)

The NHL wants hockey fans to “keep calm and pin on” while the labor dispute that’s already cost the league more than two hundred games continues to drag on. But a Wednesday morning Instagram post (seen at right, and linked here) encouraging its 81,000 followers to do so by checking out the NHL’s Pinterest page backfired and drew a barrage of cynicism, snark and animosity online.

The post was a play on the popular — some might say played out — “Keep Calm and Fill-in-the-blank On” meme that’s derived from an World War II British propaganda poster reading “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

That format lent itself well to mockery, however, from people ticked off that the NHL would issue a call to Pinterest action while depriving sports fans of actual hockey games.

“Keep calm and eat shit NHL,” read one user comment. “Keep calm and get the lockout over with!” read another. Most of the 150-plus comments the photo had received by mid-morning expressed similar sentiment.

The lockout is currently in its 39th day, as players and owners try to reach a suitable labor agreement. Central points of contention include how to split league revenue and the maximum length of player contracts.

#NHL #hockey #social media #pinterest #mashable #lockout #social media fail

Facebook Messages Update Rolls Out To More Users (via Mashable)

We’re closer to seeing a widespread updated version of Facebook Messages.

In August Facebook announced that it would be giving Facebook Messages a whole new look, but didn’t announce when it would be bringing that look to users. Two months later, most Facebook users appear to have still not received the update.

The announcement in August teased a new side-by-side layout to messages, allowing you to see your most recent conversations on the left side of the screen and see a whole conversation on the right. It also allows you to insert photos and emoticons into messages.

Search and Navigation will also be improved in the updated Messages, allowing you to search by sender’s name or keyword from the main messages view, keyboard shortcuts will also be available to access some of Messages functionality.

On Wednesday, Facebook user Interactive Swim posted a picture of the welcome note for the updated Messages which recently hit its page, indicating that the feature may be starting to roll out to additional users.

A Facebook representative confirmed Wednesday that the updated version of Messages will be rolling out to all users. But the representative declined to indicate a time frame for that rollout.

#facebook #facebook messages #social media #mashable

5 Ways to Avoid Embarrassing Moments on Social Media (via Jeff Bullas)

This past weekend I had some friends over. We watched some TV, drank some wine, and then something strange happened.

The conversation tapered off… I looked around, and everyone had pulled out their smart device of choice and was checking Facebook. The conversation started again when everyone realized that one mutual friend, in particular, had posted some nonsense that was part insight, part proverb, but mostly annoying.

We all agreed that this friend needed to stop posting inanities or he would be hidden, or worse, defriended. This of course led to a discussion of a new form of etiquette, “social media etiquette,” and some of the stuff was so good, I had to get out a pen and paper and start on this post. Here are 5 ways to avoid social awkwardness and having those embarrassing moments on social media.

1. The Comment vs. the Like

One of my friends gave this amusing anecdote. His friend posted “What’s Worse than burnt toast?”

to which my friend replied:

“No toast at all?”

Innocent enough, but what he failed to predict was that, for the rest of the day, his phone was going to be pinging with push notifications about burnt toast, and what is really worse than burnt toast (no butter was a suggestion).

Use the “Like” button

If you want to contribute to a conversation, but don’t want to be inundated with everyone’s comments pushing to your smartphone, consider the simple “like.” Perfect for announcements of an engagement or a photo of someone’s newborn baby.

Socially Awkward:

You like that someone’s grandmother has died. Also, liking your own status.

2. Unfriend or Filter?

The person who was posting inanities that seem to only be interesting in a group setting with plenty of wine is at risk of being filtered, but no one was willing to unfriend…

Socially Awkward:

Unfriending as a form of hiding from your newsfeed. Unfriending is really insulting. It’s not as simple as “I don’t care about what they have to say, I’ll just unfriend them.” If you want to be able to look that person in the eye at work, or in your social life, you are much better off just filtering them out of your home timeline, put them on a limited view, a restricted list. Unfriending should be saved as a last resort.

3. The Wink ; )

I had a friend on Facebook for whom we had to stage a “Facebook Intervention” because she could not get the hang of the smile vs the wink. She would post “just had a quiet dinner at home with my boyfriend. ” or “On my way to work ”

Socially Awkward:

Inappropriate winking. The wink is reserved for a “tongue in cheek” implication. If you just want to add some cheer to your posts or your tweets, use a smile .

4. Hashtags on Facebook

Hashtags don’t link on Facebook. They work on Twitter and Instagram, but not on Facebook.

Socially Awkward:

Hashtagging on Facebook. If you post to your Facebook page with a hashtag, know that it’s just going to look like a tic-tac-toe symbol to your friends and fans, and those unfamiliar with Twitter may not even understand what it is.

5. Social Philosopher

Some people us social media as their way to abstractly comment on their lives and the world. I’m sure everyone reading this article has at least one friend or is following someone who fits in this category. This is an actual post by someone on Facebook:

Socially Awkward:

“Too much information” posts. Being dark and deep is fine, but broadcasting it stream of conscious style to your fans or followers? That’s a little awkward. What are your friends supposed to say to that? Are you even expecting a response? Would “liking” it be appropriate? What about a retweet? Social media has taken down barriers for sure, but think long and hard about how much you want to voluntarily share with people!

#social media #social media etiquette #facebook #twitter

FACEBOOK: People Don't Want to Get Online, They Want to Get on Facebook (via Business Insider)

Today, a billion users. Tomorrow, the world.

Vaughan Smith, Facebook's head of corporate development, said in a speech Friday at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in San Jose, Calif. that people in emerging markets didn't want Internet access per se—they wanted to get on Facebook.

Ina Fried at AllThingsD reported Smith's remarks.

“Facebook is one of the key reasons users are doing this,” Smith said. “They are not saying they want to get on the Internet in emerging markets. They are saying ‘I want to get on Facebook.’”

Because Facebook users in the rest of the world are accessing Facebook primarily on smartphones, Facebook has revamped its product-development efforts to focus on mobile, Smith said.

The conundrum for Facebook: Right now, those mobile users are far less profitable than the ones it signed up in the US, Europe, and other developed markets.

But those are short-term worries. If everyone in the world is on Facebook, be it on a phone or the desktop, we're pretty sure Facebook will do well for itself.

#facebook #business insider #mobile

It's Time for Facebook to Charge Brands for Fans (via AdAge)

Facebook is in trouble. Investors know it. Brands know it. And Mark Zuckerberg knows it.

Fortunately there's a solution. A simple solution.

Facebook should charge brands for fans.

It's a fundamental change in Facebook's business model. But it's not that difficult to execute. And Facebook has made successful pivots before.

The reason the switch is needed is that Facebook is simply not great for advertising. It was created as a "social utility." It is a public space, like a neighborhood playground or a public park.

As human beings, we operate in two contexts. One is transactional -- searching, hunting, negotiating, acquiring. One is relational -- connecting, sharing, collaborating, creating.

We have an innate sense of which context is appropriate. Say you have a friend who sells cars. There are certain contexts in which it is OK for him to treat you as a prospect. Maybe when you're kicking back and watching a football game. Other times are inappropriate -- like in the middle of your child's birthday party.

It's sometimes hard to know where that line is, but we all know when it's been crossed.

As a social space, Facebook is poorly suited to traditional advertising. Facebook's analytics and new retargeting feature, Facebook Exchange, don't solve the core problem. It might be a little better to talk about deals on minivans instead of convertibles at the birthday party, but it's still not great.

With the recent development of sponsored stories, Facebook wants brands to be more conversational and create sharable content. This is better than traditional ads, but there is still a fundamental problem. If brands successfully engage with fans on their own pages, they don't have to pay Facebook anything. So the more successful you are as a brand at engaging your fans, the less you need to pay Facebook.

Take GM, which got a lot of attention for stopping paid advertising on Facebook. GM had been spending about $10 million a year on Facebook ads. Many people thought that GM was pulling out of Facebook. Not so. In fact, GM spends $30 million a year maintaining its presence on Facebook, of which Facebook doesn't get any.

Furthermore, since the cost of having a fan is zero, brands have an incentive to pump up their fan counts as a proxy for success on Facebook. That's why you see all sorts of sweepstakes to "like us on Facebook."

Imagine instead that brands paid for active fans instead of ads or sponsored stories.

Now everyone's incentives are aligned. As the number of fans grows, and the level of engagement grows, brands don't mind paying because they are getting more engagement, Facebook gets more revenue, and fans get more value (or else they wouldn't be participating).

In addition, the "pay for fan" model solves the mobile problem. Now Facebook doesn't have to worry about how to deliver ads onto tiny screens.

Finally, "pay per fan" moves the discussion of measurement from "How many fans do you have?" to "How much is a fan worth?" This is a far more productive conversation.

There are any number of ways to structure the pricing in this model. The best is probably a base charge with additional fees based on level of engagement. There can also be variable pricing depending on the level of analytics you receive about your fans' profiles and activity. Again, the purpose is to align the incentives, just as pay per click does for display advertising.

There's lots of talk about native advertising these days. But if Facebook is a public park, then dressing up the billboards to look like trees doesn't really solve the problem. Better to have brands sponsor the baseball fields, water fountains and picnic tables that improve the experience for everyone.

Bottom line: It's time for Facebook to stop selling ads and start charging for fans.

#facebook #adage #fans #revenue

How Google Could Lose Its Grip on Mobile Search (via Mashable)

If you think Google has a commanding lead in the traditional search advertising market, you should check out how the company’s doing in mobile search.

Last year, 91% of the global market for mobile search went to Google, according to IDC. What’s more, while search is 47% of the desktop ad market, it comprises 70% of the mobile ad market. “What’s interesting is that number has gone up, not down,” says Karsten Weide, program VP, media and entertainment for IDC. “We thought it would normalize, but that’s not what’s happened.”

While Weide expects search to approach desktop levels within a few years, for the foreseeable future, mobile advertising will primarily be about search — and search will be controlled by Google.

Why? Odds are your smartphone comes with Google as its default search engine. In the third quarter, Google’s Android and Apple‘s iOS comprised 85% of the smartphone market, according to IDC. Both use Google.

SEE ALSO: Peek Inside Google’s Vast Data Centers

True, you can swap out Google for another search engine, but Weide estimates that three-quarters of users don’t do that. Moreover, “Google is the Kleenex of search,” he says. No matter how good the competition is, consumers will continue to believe that Google is the gold standard.

But while Google has a lock on search at the moment, there are a few (unlikely) scenarios in which Google could lose its substantial lead. Such an occurrence is hardly unthinkable in tech — remember when Yahoo dominated search and Apple looked hopeless compared to Microsoft?

1. Microsoft Makes Serious Inroads

Microsoft is looking to its Windows 8 phones not only to crack the mobile market but to give its Bing search engine a greater share of mobile search, as well. In 2011, Bing‘s share was just 2% of the mobile search market, even though the company claimed 10.8% of the desktop search market in 2011, according to eMarketer.

However, Microsoft has some reason to hope. For one, its Windows 8 phones have been well-reviewed and boast differentiating features, including a customizable interface that may earn more of a market niche. Second, Weide says mobile carriers are frustrated by Apple and Google’s hold on the smartphone market and are eager to help a new entrant along as a power check.

For those reasons, Weide predicts Bing will have a bigger share of the mobile search market by next summer.

“Bigger” is a relative term, though. If Windows 8 phones break into the high single digits or even the low double digits by next summer, it will be considered a huge hit. But “we’re talking about a small market share,” says Roger Entner, an analyst with Recon Analytics. “Who cares?”

Entner says the only way that Bing could be a real counterbalance in mobile search is if Microsoft agrees to load Bing as the default search engine for iPhones, an unlikely event.

Stefan Weitz, the senior director at Bing, says it’s up to Apple and customers to decide whether Bing should be the default on the iPhone.

2. Apple Develops Its Own Search Engine

Another possibility is that Apple kicks Google off the iPhone. This is a more plausible scenario, considering the company’s recent moves. Two Google apps — YouTube and Maps — are no longer standard on the iPhone. If Apple developed its own search engine, it would instantly capture 17% of the market. (Android had 68% market share of the global market in the third quarter, according to IDC.)

Speculation about an Apple search engine rose after the company hired William Stasior, an Amazon executive, to take over Siri in October. Stasior had previously worked on Amazon’s A9 search engine.

While Apple is doubtlessly eager to boot Google off its mobile OS, though, the case against doing so can be summed up in one word: Maps. Apple suffered serious PR damage in September when it replaced Google Maps with its own, vastly inferior Maps app. One can only imagine the outcry if Apple swapped out Google for a mediocre or poor search engine. All the more reason to hold its nose and make a deal with Microsoft.

3. Android Hardware Makers Swap Out Google

Imagine if Google’s hardware partners decided to offer another search engine instead of Google. Sound unlikely? Well, it already happened. Back in September, review units of Amazon‘s new Kindle Fires sported Bing as the device’s default search engine. Though users could switch in Google (or Yahoo) if they wanted, as Weide notes, that’s fairly unlikely.

Weide says Samsung could use its considerable market heft to make a similar move. Doing so would likely strain relations with Google. Officially, Google does not bar any of its partners from using whichever search engine they like, but since it is providing the OS for free, doing so would cut off a revenue source — advertising — for the company. “That’s the whole point of Android,” Entner says.

4. Yahoo Makes a Big Comeback

The biggest longshot of all is that Yahoo somehow returns to its glory days and begins making serious inroads into mobile search. Right now, the company has about 2% of the market, but has no mobile OS of its own and hence no leverage to convince hardware makers to offer it.

Not all is lost, though. Weide believes that if Yahoo were to offer a truly superior mobile search app, consumers would seek it out. The trouble is, it doesn’t at the moment. “A lot of consumers would go the extra mile if Yahoo had a good product,” he says, “but it’s not out there.”

Whether new CEO Marissa Mayer will be able to resurrect Yahoo is, of course, a $60 million question. So far, Mayer hasn’t articulated a mobile strategy for the company. Yahoo declined to be interviewed for this article.

5. Voice-Controlled Search Reshuffles the Market

Of course, nothing remains static for long in the tech industry. While “mobile search” conjures images of consumers tapping on their smartphones, many are talking to them instead. If the technology improves, that may become the norm. At the moment, Weide believes Siri is not ready for prime time. “Right now, Siri is a gimmick because it doesn’t work that well,” he says. “Over time, it might have an impact.”

Google’s voice search is similarly klugy, though the technology keeps improving. However, there’s always the distant possibility that a new entrant will come out of nowhere and take a significant share of the market.

How does advertising fit into this picture, though? Imagine talking to your phone only to hear a 10-second ad before getting your search result. “Stay tuned for spoken commercials in search results,” Weide says. “They have to make money somehow.”

6. Mobile Search Undergoes a Radical Reinvention

Perhaps the most likely scenario in which Google loses control of mobile search? If the notion of “mobile search” is radically redefined. Microsoft’s Weitz predicts that by 2015, 40% of searches will come from within apps. Already, he says, consumers are executing searches via Open Table and Flipboard, rather than through traditional search engines.

In such a future, it will be tough for anyone — Google included — to make money. “One of the key challenges is it’s really hard to monetize,” Weitz says, referring to app-based searches.

The waters get further muddied if you view search the way Weitz does: as a chain of events rather than a “single query and get out” action. Imagine, for instance, sitting on your couch and viewing a cooking show on TV. “You could point [a device] at the TV and say ‘Bookmark that recipe,’” Weitz says. Since your phone understands what you’re looking at, it could then procure the ingredients and have them delivered to your house. “You’re going from intent to task completion,” Weitz says.

Such a vision blurs the line between advertising, retail and even mobile. After all, what’s so “mobile” about sitting on your couch? But it’s a future that no one — not even Google — has any claims on.

#mashable #google #apple #microsoft #bing #mobile #mobile search #search engines #yahoo #android

Why Marketers Are Still Struggling to Prove ROI (via AdAge)

In an environment of ever-increasingly available data, proving marketing ROI should be easy. Furthermore, the advancement of marketing science offers proven methods to understand marketing impact on not only long-term brand building, but also short-term sales performance.

So why are many chief marketing officers still struggling with proving value? At Deloitte's 2012 CMO Summit, we learned that more than half of the participating CMOs felt insufficiently prepared to provide hard numbers.

What we have observed is that the same characteristics that make some CMOs so successful may unintentionally make the task at hand harder. Here are the three most common types:

The data perfectionists Data perfectionists seek data completeness and purity. When their operating realities hamper their pursuit of data happiness, they may feel these limitations preclude meaningful insight.

Another operating reality is "too much data." The exponential rise of new and unstructured data such as social text creates gaps in IT and data infrastructure. Instead of establishing a marketing-measurement system based on available data, the perfectionists wait for the next big IT investment.

The fighter pilot "Sales have been declining. I need more budget to hit the goals." This concern is particularly pronounced for CMOs in industries going through life-stage changes such as telecom, life science and automotive. A marketing-ROI discussion often triggers concerns of budget cuts.

This singular focus on budget is like a "top gun" fighter pilot being so fixated on a single target that he fails to anticipate other bogeys in the area.

During life-stage changes, an industry's go-to-market structure alters, and consumer responses to demand stimulus shift. An example is marketing in wireless. Ten years ago, new subscribers were mostly acquired through carrier-branded stores. A key role of marketing was to drive traffic to stores. Today, more than 40% of new subs are gained through comparative-shopping retailers, such as Walmart, Amazon and Best Buy. Channel marketing and point- of-sale incentives become new battlegrounds.

Perhaps instead of asking "How much should my marketing budget be?" we should ask "Where are the new battlegrounds for marketing dollars?"

The innovators Will a data-driven approach based on historical inferences optimize out new and unproven marketing tactics? Left unattended, there is a real risk of past data choking future stars.

Yet great marketing is all about innovation. Similarly, innovation should be core to designing marketing-measurement systems. The key is to apply techniques to balance the known and unknown.

Practical steps to ascend Business success and career growth are built upon a CMO's ability to deliver and prove value. As a Spencer Stuart survey showed, a CEO's top expectation of the CMO is showing bottom-line results.

Recognizing which persona type is slowing you down is the first step. Several practical steps may follow:

1. Ask the right questions, then define data needs; when in doubt, check if the marginal cost of new or better data exceeds their marginal value.

2. Examine how market change has affected the role of marketing along the consumer path to purchase, and account for all touch point impact.

3. Always set aside budgets for new and innovative tactics, which can be "exempt" from ROI comparison against established tactics; test and learn.

Marketing ROI, at its core, is a fact-based way to approach marketing portfolio planning and investing. So take smaller steps get quick wins, and make your dollars work harder for you!

#adage #roi #marketing

Only 6% of Fans Engage With a Brand’s Facebook Page (via Mashable)

Big brands like to tout the number of fans they have on Facebook, but a new study suggests they may want to start focusing more on the core audience who actually engage with their Page.

On average, just 6% of fans engage with a brand’s Facebook Page via likes, comments, polls and other means, according to a study from Napkin Labs, a Facebook app developer that works with brands and agencies. Of those fans that did, the average engagement was the equivalent of less than one like over the course of the eight weeks the study was conducted.

Napkin Labs analyzed fan engagement for more than 50 brand pages, including consumer electronics companies, retailers and more, with between 200,000 to 1 million fans each. The researcher found that having more likes doesn’t necessarily mean having more engagement. In fact, the more Facebook fans a brand has, the lower the percentage of engaged fans tends to be. For example, brands with between 900,000 to 1 million fans had 60% less engagement than brands with 500,000-600,000 fans.

What really drives the engagement on a brand’s page appears to be the core group of devoted fans — or what Napkin Labs refers to as “superfans.” The study found that, on average, the engagement of each one of a brand’s 20 most engaged fans is equal to that of 75 average fans. Each month, the so-called superfan likes 10 posts, shares five pieces of content and comments once. What’s more, these fans tend to get significantly more likes and comments on their posts than average fans, which helps drive up engagement on the brand’s page even more.

“Every business has to measure what they do and make sure that it is effective. Likes can be part of that measurement, but we need to start looking beyond that a bit, and start looking in more depth at what fans are actually doing,” Riley Gibson, the co-founder and CEO of Napkin Labs, told Mashable. As part of this, Gibson argues that brands need to focus on interacting more with their existing fan base rather than just focusing on growing their numbers.

Indeed, this may become even more important soon as reports suggest that Facebook has tweaked its EdgeRank algorithm, which determines how much content from advertisers appears in a user’s news feed. As a result, some brands have reportedly seen their reach decline on Facebook. However, engaging more with devoted fans could help brands broaden their reach on the social network.

“If you can get fans involved, get them talking about the brand, the engagements of each of those fans gets pushed to their friends feeds,” Gibson said. “So you can actually build more presence in the news feed by engaging your core audience.”

#facebook #facebook pages #facebook marketing #mashable #fans

Facebook Experiments With Profile Completion Meters (via Mashable)

You’ve probably never felt pressure to fill out your About Me section on Facebook - that may change.

Recently some users began noticing a percentage meter that encouraged them to complete their profiles. Filling out their current city, where they work and where they’re from yielded a higher percentage. Once at 100% the profile is considered complete.

This is one way to potentially improve ad-targeting options. Added personal data will give advertisers more information to target specific locations, demographics and ages. Earlier this month, Facebook launched a feature akin to Pinterest that allowed users to “want” products. These pushes are ways Facebook may be looking to drive advertisements toward more specific audiences.

#facebook #mashable #social media #profiles

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