Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Bringing Video Ads to Games: Supersonic Raises $4.2M and Crowdstar Partners with Jun Group
- Vitrue Acquires GamesThatGive So Clients Can Engage Via Charity Donation Apps
- Report: Facebook Advertising by Brands For Their Pages Increased 1900% Year Over Year
- New Zynga S-1 Docs: Traffic Guarantees From Facebook, but No Canvas Ad Revenue
- New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Vitrue, Efficient Frontier, Tealium, Hearsay and More
| Bringing Video Ads to Games: Supersonic Raises $4.2M and Crowdstar Partners with Jun Group Posted: 19 Jul 2011 05:33 PM PDT Israeli social game monetization platform and Facebook approved offer partner SupersonicAds today announced that is has raised a $4.2 million first institutional round of funding led by Greylock Israel. The money will go towards building a sales team so it can solicit more European and Middle Eastern game developers and advertisers using its BrandConnect product. This allows brands to place video ads in games and reward users with virtual goods or virtual currency such as Facebook Credits. In related news, major social game developer Crowdstar has partnered with social video ad network Jun Group to allow its gamers to earn rewards for watching commercials. The SupersonicAds funding and Crowdstar deal should both help expand incentivized view video ads to more Facebook games, and accelerate the shift of ad dollars away from television and towards social games, particularly those on the Facebook Platform.
Supersonic Ads came out of stealth in April 2009 to provide offer walls for european games. It later added video ads to its offer walls, but with time discovered that serving opportunities to complete video offers during gameplay caused more users to partake so it launched BrandConnect. The product places a widget within a social game that displays signage such as “Earn Free Credits”, and when clicked opens the video offer. It has been used by Kellogg’s, Intel, and Disney, and boasts stats including over 50% (and up to 80%) of people exposed to a campaign view the entire video, 20% then Like the Page of the brand advertised, and 40% later visit the brand’s website. In May of this year, Facebook announced that it would deepen its partnership with TrialPay to serve video offers from the Facebook sidebar and within games, and that SupersonicAds and several other video ad networks would contribute inventory. Then in June, SupersonicAds became Facebook approved offer partner, meaning it could reward users with Facebook Credits for completing “hard offers” – direct response offers that require a user’s personal information such as making purchases or signing up for subscriptions. These partnerships make SupersonicAds one of the only companies allowed to serve both hard offers and soft offers (those that don’t require user personal information such as video offers) on the Facebook Platform. Now to fill this inventory SupersonicAds needs a bigger sales force, so it secured this round of funding.
With television watchers increasingly using digital video recorders that let them skip commercials, advertisers need to consider where else they can place their compelling, high-production video ads. Along with video streaming services such as Hulu, which recently implemented Facebook Connect, social games are becoming lucrative real-estate. By solving a gamer’s needs by providing virtual currency or goods for watching ads run through services such as SupersonicAds and Jun Group, brands can not only make users watch the entirety of their ads, but instill a positive impression on them as well. |
| Vitrue Acquires GamesThatGive So Clients Can Engage Via Charity Donation Apps Posted: 19 Jul 2011 03:02 PM PDT Page management company Vitrue has acquired GamesThatGive, a developer that allows brands to offer games to their fans in which engagement triggers donations to charity by the hosting brand. The acquisition will allow Vitrue to provide its clients with GamesThatGive games, helping them generate brand lift through sustained exposure to gamers and the good will generated by their donations. Game mechanics that encourage Liking of a brand’s Page and sharing with friends will also help Vitrue clients gain new fans.
Vitrue is one of the larger Facebook Page management companies. It serves brands including AT&T, McDonalds, Ford, and Best Buy as well as agencies such as Digitas and Saatchi & Saatchi with its licensable Social Relationship Manager platform. This includes a suite of promotional engagement apps for driving brand exposure and fan acquisition. The company has been in business since 2006, and has taken a total of $33 million in funding, including a $17 million Series C round in February of which may have in part been used to pay an undisclosed price for the charity game developer. The GamesThatGive acquisition will augment Vitrue’s app suite with versions of simple, classic games such as Snake, Breakout, Columns, and solitaire that can be offered within a branded wrapper and linked to from a business’ Facebook Page. Users are compelled to play because time spent in the game and completion of levels cause donations to be made to a charity of their or the brand’s choice.
GamesThatGive has already powered games on the Pages of brands such as Starbucks, Master Card, and UNICEF, as well as existing Vitrue clients such as Best Buy. The company claims that some of its games average over 40 minutes of game play per session, draw 80% of visits from returning players, and “have achieved over 100% virality, bringing in over 1,100 additional fans for every 1,000 fans driven to the game.” These stats are reasonable, considering Facebook users are often eager to act for social good as long as they can share the news of their contribution with friends. GamesThatGive also uses a unique style of Like-gate, where users can double the donation their play generates by becoming a fan of the hosting brand. This type of incentive probably has a high conversion rate, and combined with wall posts by existing gamers translates into a powerful fan acquisition mechanic.
For more on how brands can market themselves within social games, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook. |
| Report: Facebook Advertising by Brands For Their Pages Increased 1900% Year Over Year Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:23 PM PDT Facebook Ads API tool and managed-spend service provider TBG Digital has released its Global Facebook Advertising Report for 2011 Q2 (.PDF). The report indicates that the number of Facebook ad impressions brands bought to gain fans for their Facebook Pages increased 104% in Q2, and 1900% year over year. TBG Digital says it ran 60 billion ad impressions in 2011 Q2, and just under half were brand advertising of this nature, so we can interpret that the actual number of impressions of ads for brand Pages run by the company’s clients has grown from approximately 1.4 billion to 27 billion. Other key findings include that ads aimed at driving sales had a more than 350% higher conversion rate when aimed at existing Facebook fans, advertising by retailers has grown significantly to 36% of total impressions, and Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad unit produced a 32% lower cost per acquisition. The report shows that Facebook Pages have become so important to brand presence on Facebook that brands are aggressively increasing spend on fan acquisitions. It also demonstrates building a fan base produces clear return on investment by lowering the cost of attaining sales and additional fans.
The data for TBG Digital’s report analyzes a total of 200 billion impressions ran in 21 countries by 167 clients of the company’s licensable ad management tool and managed spend service. The tool and service both allow clients to tap into Facebook’s Ads API to more efficiently create ad variants, A/B test to find top performing creative and targeting combinations, optimize bids, and analyze results in order to get a higher return on spend than would be possible by running ads manually. Showing Facebook as a good place to advertise is in the interest ofTBG Digital’s business, so one could expect there to be some potential for bias. However, the company had the report’s methodology and conclusions verified by The Psychometrics Centre of University of Cambridge. In the recent past TBG Digital reports have shown that Facebook's Sponsored Stories ad units provides a 46% higher click through rate, a 20% lower cost per click, and an 18% lower cost per fan than Facebook's standard ad units. For those less familiar, Sponsored Stories take the actions of friends such as Liking a Page and turns them into Facebook sidebar ads that show the friend’s name and face. TBG Digital also indicated that by advertising to Facebook fans rather than non-fans, acquisition costs can be lowered for registrations by 44%, for event signups by 33%, and for purchases by 15%. Brands Push to Gain Fans Before Price IncreasesBrands, recognizing the value of Facebook fans, have been pouring money into upping their Like counts this year. In 2010 Q2, most Facebook advertising pointed offsite, either to brand websites or purchase sites. Total share of impressions pointing offsite has since dropped to just above 50%. Now, ads pointing to Facebook Pages now make up nearly half of all impressions, having risen 1900% since 2010 Q2, and 104% during 2011 Q2. This data is based on 170 billion ad impressions for 146 clients. Brands may be concerned that as adoption of Facebook by businesses increases, so will the cost per acquisition of fans. Therefore, brands are trying to amass large fan bases while doing so is still relatively cheap. The shift towards ads pointing within Facebook benefits the social network, as clicks of these ads lead to it being able to serve more ad impressions. With High Conversion Rates for Fan-Targeted Ads, Retail Spends MoreThe retail and finance industry spending on Facebook ads significantly increased during 2011 Q2 when analyzing 120 billion impressions. Retail now makes up 36% of all Facebook ad impressions, and Food and drink industry spending has also increased. A 60 billion impression study shows that retail advertising saw the highest click through rate, followed by arts and entertainment, and food and drink.
TBG Digital conducted a study of 170 billion impressions that included 150 billion impressions of ads aimed at driving sales by two major retailers. It concluded that advertisers are able to attain an average 435% higher conversion rate when targeting fans instead of non-fans when trying to attain sales, loyalty program registrations, and event RSVPs. Many companies have spent the last year concentrating on building their fan base, and are now ready to monetize these fans with conversion-oriented ads. With a growing set of ecommerce applications allowing retailers to sell products from their Facebook Pages, high CTR, and high conversion rates when advertising to their fans, retailers are finding Facebook a lucrative place for their ad dollars. Sponsored Stories Produce More Qualified ClicksAs we noted, TBG Digital previously reported that Sponsored Stories can increase CTR and lower CPC and cost per fan. The reduction in acquisition cost goes beyond Facebook fans though, with the new report showing a 32% lower CPA when using Sponsored Stories instead of standard Facebook ads. However, this study only looked at 208 million impressions.
This indicates that the social context and trusted recommendation produced by Sponsored Stories that display the names and faces of friends make users more likely to become fans, make purchases, register, or RSVP. A combination of low cost and high performance means Sponsored Stories could become a core component of many Facebook campaigns once more advertisers learn how to use them. TBG Digital also included data about changes in average CPM and CPC pricing for Facebook ads. The report indicates that CPC prices rose in several major markets including the US. However, we’ve received conflicting reports from other Ads API tool and service providers so we’re hesitant to make a steadfast conclusion about changes in ad rates at this time. We’re following up with Facebook and additional Ads API partners and will soon release a study looking at ad rate data from multiple sources. Overall, the report suggests that interest in Facebook ads is growing, the channel is proving to perform for many industries and desired conversion types, and that Facebook’s newest ad units can drastically improve advertising efficiency. |
| New Zynga S-1 Docs: Traffic Guarantees From Facebook, but No Canvas Ad Revenue Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:04 PM PDT A recent set of updates to Zynga’s S-1 document sheds new light about the company’s business position, as it prepares for an initial public offering. For starters, Google has indeed invested, although the terms were not disclosed. More interesting is the special relationship that Facebook and Zynga have formalized over revenue and traffic, in two developer addendums. (You can find the full set of docs here, although sadly some of the most interesting bits have been removed). At first glance, the terms read as if Zynga had a special deal with Facebook, where it gets a portion of the ad revenue from Facebook ad units that run alongside its games in canvas apps. However, the terms specific that it is not canvas app ad revenue – instead, it’s referring to Zynga web sites like FarmVille.com, or even Facebook ads that might run within games. We asked Facebook about the matter and got this response: “When we reached our agreement with Zynga last year, we discussed the possibility of displaying ads sold by Facebook on some of Zynga’s own pages. This isn’t something we’ve opted to do so far, and we are not working on an ad network right now.” > Continue reading on Inside Social Games. |
| New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Vitrue, Efficient Frontier, Tealium, Hearsay and More Posted: 19 Jul 2011 08:00 AM PDT A few non-gaming companies active on the Facebook platform brought on engineers and sales staff this week, but there seems to be a lull in summer hiring in general among them. If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we'll get it into next week's post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn. Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry. Here's this week's list of hires:
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Meanwhile, Crowdstar’s partnership with Jun Group will bring video offers to popular games such as It Girl and Happy Aquarium. However, since the Jun Group is 
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