Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- Facebook’s Partnership With eBay Will Bring It Ad-Targetable Data on What Users “Want” and “Own”
- Facebook Ad Click Through Rate Up 18%, Cost Per Click Down 10% Says TBG Digital
- New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Warner Bros, King.com, TinyCo and More
- How to Create a Facebook Subscribe Widget for Your Website
- Horoscopes, Calendar, Tabs, Yahoo, Badoo and The Guardian on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
| Facebook’s Partnership With eBay Will Bring It Ad-Targetable Data on What Users “Want” and “Own” Posted: 12 Oct 2011 06:39 PM PDT
By establishing a partnership with some of the world’s largest ecommerce platforms, Facebook will be able to increase the size of its footprint on the web. The Open Graph integrations will also provide Facebook with extremely valuable data about the purchasing intent and history of its users that advertisers may be willing to pay high rates to target. By gathering explicit data on what users want to buy or already own, Facebook could steal ad dollars from search engines where ecommerce stores currently advertise to reach users while they’re making a decision on what or where to buy. Previously, Facebook had left third-party developers such as Beetailer and Zibaba to allow ecommerce platform users to integrate Facebook features such as social plugins or import their products into Page tab app storefronts. Now Facebook is building its functionality directly into X.commerce, Magento, and GSI so users of these platforms will be able to add social features themselves.
Through the partnership with Facebook, eBay ecommerce platform merchants and developers will be able to add “Want” or “Own” buttons to products without going through seperate software vendor. Users will be able to click these buttons to share with friends that they want to buy something in the future, or already own a product and would recommend it to friends. These news feed stories will drive traffic back to to ecommerce stores, helping them boost sales. Store owners will also be able to power wish lists, registries, group buying, and other features with the data from these buttons. These opportunities make eBay’s ecommerce more attractive to merchants. Facebook stands to make a lot of money off of the partnerships as well. It will soon allow advertisers to target users based on their Open Graph activity. For example, an athletic clothing retailer could target ads to users that said they owned any product on a specific sporting goods site, or a jewelry store could target ads to anyone who said they wanted a certain brand of necklace on any website. Right now, advertisers can only target users based on the Pages they Like. The “Like” relationship is ambiguous, though. Advertisers can’t tell if users are already customers and have the money to buy a certain class of product, or if they merely dream of one day being able to afford the brand Page’s products.
By working the Open Graph protocol into X.commerce, Magento, and GSI, all the users of these ecommerce platforms could soon be feeding Facebook this valuable data in exchange for referral traffic. While Facebook pitched the Open Graph as a way to get users sharing more about themselves, its now becoming clear how this sharing is key to Facebook’s monetization plans. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Ad Click Through Rate Up 18%, Cost Per Click Down 10% Says TBG Digital Posted: 12 Oct 2011 01:52 PM PDT Facebook ads are getting cheaper and users are clicking them more, says a new report from Facebook Ads API partner TBG Digital. From the second to the third quarter of 2011, click-through rates increased 18.5% while the cost per click decreased 10.8%. Brands are also allocating more of the spending on these ads to send users to Pages and applications versus driving traffic to their websites. TBG Digital’s 2011 Q3 Facebook Global Advertising Report is based on analysis of 255 billion ad impression from 216 clients across 192 countries. Most of the results we discuss look at five major markets: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Canada. The methodology has been approved by the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, indicating that the results should be accurate. We have omitted any findings we believe might be significantly biased due to the types of clients TBG Digital has recently signed. In the past, the popular Ads API tool provider has released reports showing the high efficiency of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad units and ads that target existing fans.
Click Through Rate Increased 18.5% The increase in Facebook ad click-through rates is likely related to a simultaneous increase in Page Like and application install campaigns. Users may be more inclined to click these ads than those pointing offsite because Pages can be instantly Liked from these ads, and app installs don’t require users to leave the social experience of Facebook. The CTR went up the most in the United States and Germany, while prevalence of campaigns linking offsite in UK may have stunted CTR growth in the region. Advertisers looking to boost their CTRs should consider pointing their ads within Facebook rather than to external websites. Cost Per Click Decreased 10.8%CPC fell in all major markets except the UK for an average decrease of 10.8%. The increase in CPC may be related to the fact that 87% of campaigns run in the UK point offsite, which TBG says “can yield higher CPC prices”. However, now Facebook ads pointing offsite can include social context — the names or faces of friends who’ve Liked that website. This could reduce CPC next quarter for offsite-pointing ads. With ads getting cheaper, more advertisers may be willing to shift spend from offline or other online channels to Facebook.
Brands Spend More Advertising for Pages and Apps, Less for WebsitesBack in 2010, most Facebook ad spend by brands went to promoting external websites. Since then, brands have significantly increased their spend while allocating more of it towards their on-Facebook presences. 53.7% of spend is now on gaining fans for a brand’s Page, up from 47% in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, less of brand spend is going to advertising their websites. This shows that brands have caught on to the value of owned marketing through distributing updates via the news feed, and are willing to spend to get users to Like their Page and thereby subscribe to these updates. A single visit to a Page can lead to a Like that generates long-term value for a brand, while websites generally have much weaker retention mechanics.
The proportion of spend allocated to promoting branded applications has also grown, up to 6% of brand spend from 4% last quarter. Brands are looking to start a viral marketing loop by pushing users to their Page tab applications from which they can share content with friends. This draws new potential fans to the brand’s Page and can also seed Sponsored Stories. Overall, the trend in Facebook advertising is for brands to use paid marketing through Facebook ads to jump-start earned marketing through Pages. Facebook has created a valuable way for brands to stay in touch with potential customers that in some ways is replacing email. Brands are willing to pay to grow the fan counts, knowing they then won’t have to pay to reach those users in the future. The whole system benefits Facebook, as Page ad clicks keep users onsite and seeing more of its ads. More Likes of Pages also means more updates that can be filtered through the news feed to provide users with compelling content every time they log on. To learn how to create integrated Facebook marketing campaigns that combine ads, Page posts, applications, and Sponsored Stories visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Warner Bros, King.com, TinyCo and More Posted: 12 Oct 2011 12:50 PM PDT The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., King.com, Midasplayer AB, OpenFeint, Lolapps, Liquid Entertainment, Games Cafe Inc., TinyCo, CrowdStar and Storm8.
   Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How to Create a Facebook Subscribe Widget for Your Website Posted: 12 Oct 2011 10:46 AM PDT Last month Facebook launched the Subscribe feature that lets users select to receive the public updates of people they’re not friends with, similar to following someone on Twitter. However, Facebook has not released an official Subscribe widget or badge that users can be install on a website to ask visitors to Subscribe to them. Here we’ll walk-through how to use Facebook’s existing profile badge creator and its ability to display the name of your latest Facebook Note to make a Subscribe widget. You can add this badge to any website to help you gain more subscribers and get more impressions and clicks on your updates.
The Subscribe feature is a powerful way for individuals on Facebook to gain a massive audience for their content. Rather than creating a Facebook Page and trying to get fans, you can collect subscribers who will see in their news feed any updates you set the privacy visibility of to Public. By gaining more subscribers you can become a thought leader and drive traffic to any link of your choice. However, right now the only way to ask people to Subscribe to you is to share the URL of your Facebook Profile. Facebook may release an official Subscribe badge or widget in the future that lets users instantly Subscribe without visiting your profile, but until then, you can use our unofficial method to create one. 4 Steps to Creating a Subscribe Badge1. Visit the Subscribe about page and click “Allow Subscribers” to activate the Subscribe feature to add a Subscribe button to your profile.
2. Go to the Notes app and select to “Write a Note”. Title the Note with the text you want to have appear as a call to action in your Subscribe badge. For example “Click this badge to visit my profile and subscribe to my public updates” or “To receive my public Facebook updates in your news feed, click here and then click ‘Subscribe’”.
3. Visit the Facebook Profile Badge creator and click “Edit this badge”. Select the layout that fits your website, and check the Items boxes to include your profile pic, name, and latest notes, and then save your badge. Your badge will now display the title of your latest Note, so if you publish any new unrelated Notes you’ll need to republish a Note with a call to Subscribe as its title.
4. While viewing the preview of your badge click the “Other” button and copy the badge’s HTML code. Paste this code into your website’s code to begin displaying your Subscribe badge.
You’ll now have a profile badge that displays a call to action to Subscribe to your updates. When viewers click the badge, they’ll be brought to your Facebook profile where they can click the Subscribe button. Soon you’ll have a growing base of subscribers reading and clicking your public updates. More strategy guides for using the latest Facebook features to grow your business can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 12 Oct 2011 08:18 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
MyPad for iPad topped our list this week with 663,600 DAU; the app is set for iPad users to use Facebook and Twitter on their tablets. Then there were a bunch of horoscope apps that either auto-post to the feed, ask users to post daily to their Wall or auto-invite friends. Horoscopes grew by 576,400 DAU, Daily Horoscope by 233,200 DAU and Günlük Falınız – The Fortune Teller and 210,600 DAU. Birthday apps, that promise to let you create a birthday calendar but require you to invite your friends to the app before use, included MyCalendar – Birthdays with 346,400 DAU and the German version MeinKalender – Geburtstag with 223,200 DAU. Then tab apps included Static HTML: iframe tabs with 314,700 DAU, Static Iframe Tab with 247,000 DAU and Static IFRAME Tab : Pin Icon with 144,500 DAU. The rest of the list included the Yahoo app with 325,900 DAU. Then there was the photo profile banner app with Banner de perfil en espagnol with 297,700 DAU. The Guardian's app grew by 202,800 DAU. Finally, dating app Badoo grew by 161,500 DAU in Mexico, Italy and Turkey. All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday. |
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With explicit knowledge about how a user is connected to a product, advertisers can get clicks from users who are more likely to actually make a purchase. This means they’ll be willing to pay a higher cost per click. Imagine how much more a luxury car company would pay to advertise to a user who says they own a BMW M3 convertible than one who says they simply Like BMW. Advertisers may even pay more to reach one of these Facebook users than they’d pay Google to appear next to a search for “BMW M3″.
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