gravatar

Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook bug prevents some users from creating event ads

Posted: 01 May 2012 05:33 PM PDT

Some users with a new version of the self-serve Facebook ad dashboard are unable to to create ads to promote their events, we've discovered.

A Facebook spokesperson confirms this is a bug in the ad tool. As a result of the bug, users will not be able to see any of their events from the drop-down menu within the tool. There are a few workarounds for users who want to get the word out about an event, but these ads are not as effective as traditional Facebook event ads because they do not always include a button to RSVP.

One option for users affected by the bug is to create an event through a Facebook page rather than a personal account. Then users can indicate that they want to promote a specific post from that page. The event should appear from a drop-down menu. The resulting ad has more words and a smaller photo than traditional event ads, which is likely to make it less effective. Also, users who are not fans of the page will see a "Like this page" call to action rather than "Join," which Facebook uses in event ads to let users RSVP with one click. (Note that our sample screenshots include the “Invite Friends” call to action because the user already Likes the page and has joined the event.)

Another option is for users to create an ad, either from their page or personal account, and promote it as an external URL, rather than a native Facebook event. This gives event organizers full control over the headline, body copy and image for the ad, but does not include a "Join" or Like button. The benefit here is that the image will be the same size as it would be for traditional event ads. However, users might be less likely to click the ad if it appears as though it is leading them off-Facebook. It will also be harder to track how many users RSVP as a result of the ad versus other means.

Facebook did not offer timing on when the issue with event ads will be resolved.

Facebook platform sent 160M users to mobile apps in April

Posted: 01 May 2012 02:43 PM PDT

Facebook says it sent more than 160 million visitors to Facebook-integrated mobile apps last month, according to a post on the company's developer blog.

Native mobile games like Zynga’s “With Friends” titles, popular apps from Spotify, Pinterest and now Viddy and Socialcam are among those that benefit from Facebook’s mobile discovery channels. The social network’s mobile platform also helps web apps like the Washington Post Social Reader, Flixter and BranchOut.

Visitors from Facebook accounted for 1.1 billion visits to iOS and HTML5 apps, meaning an average of more than 6 visits per user. These numbers are up from February when Facebook said it drove 60 million users to mobile apps an average of about five times per month. Next month is likely to be much higher since the social network began supporting mobile discovery for native Android apps last week.

Facebook says iOS video sharing app Viddy now has more than 16 million registered users, in part because of Open Graph integration that shares user activity between the mobile and desktop versions. Because of similar functionality, networking web app BranchOut has seen more than 18 million people come in from the social network in the past 28 days. Facebook also highlighted movie review and info mobile web app, Flixster, which has seen a tenfold increase in the number of visitors from Facebook in the past four weeks. These visitors generated a total of 15 million visits in the same period.

Facebook also made a point in its blog post that seven of the top 10 grossing iOS apps and six of the top 10 grossing Android apps integrate with Facebook through single sign-on or Open Graph.

Facebook's mobile platform allows HTML5 and native iOS and Android apps to get distribution through News Feed, bookmarks and requests. When users navigate to mobile app links from Facebook, the appropriate native app will open on a user's device or lead to a download page if the user doesn't have it yet. Developers also have the option to integrate Facebook Open Graph, which lets games automatically publish stories about user activity, including reaching a new high score, leveling up, earning an achievement or surpassing another friend playing the game. These stories are distributed through mobile Timeline and News Feed and can drive traffic back to a mobile game.

Buddy Media acquisition of Brighter Option results in new BuyBuddy ad platform

Posted: 01 May 2012 01:07 PM PDT

Buddy Media today announced its new BuyBuddy platform for managing Facebook advertising campaigns.

BuyBuddy is the result of the social media management software company's acquisition of Facebook Ads API partner Brighter Option in February. Buddy Media has integrated the advertising product with its page management tools to create the type of unified system that large brands are looking for to make decisions and track success on social platforms.

Facebook has been shifting its advertising model away from traditional display ads toward one where brands promote page posts and user activity. This new emphasis on content is what led Brighter Option to become the first company to combine the Ads API and Insights API so businesses could easily see how posts were performing and create ads accordingly. Ten days later, Buddy Media announced it had acquired the company.

BuyBuddy CEO and founder Peter Goodman says today's announcement is more than just a name change. (Goodman retained a CEO title in the acquisition.)

"We have integrated [Buddy Media and Brighter Option] products to work more in harmony," he says. "This also allows us to leverage more information Buddy has on their end and bring in more of Buddy's proprietary statistics."

For example, Buddy Media tracks conversions off-Facebook and generates some of its own engagement metrics for the content brands share through the platform. Bringing content marketing and content advertising into a single system will allow advertisers to better optimize their campaigns for different actions.

"What consumers engage with drives a brand's paid and owned strategy," Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow says. He adds that online content marketing could also help inform what brands do beyond Facebook, "What becomes a TV ad is an extension of what people respond to in the social sphere."

Lazerow also shared the following statistics about BuyBuddy:

  • 1,000 clients with users in 91 countries
  • 1 million clicks per day (90 million total) in Q1 2012, up from 54.1 million total clicks generated in Q4 2011
  • 127 billion impressions in Q1 2012, up from 92 billion in Q4 2011
  • 1.6 million total ads created in Q1 2012, up from 1.2 million Q4 2011
  • Increased CTR by 90 percent and reduced cost per click by 45 percent for Work the World
  • Helped Great British Chefs achieve an average clickthrough rate of .07 percent versus the Facebook benchmark of .02 percent

New Facebook platform industry hires: Ifeelgoods, Scale Venture Partners, Nanigans, Strutta, more

Posted: 01 May 2012 12:13 PM PDT

Ifeelgoods hired an SVP of sales, Scale Venture Partners hired a new executive-in-residence, Nanigans brought on a technical advisor and Strutta has a new director of marketing, among other notable hires made this week at Facebook platform companies.

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 our next post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes either from the companies themselves or 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:

Ifeelgoods

  • Tyler Hoffman, Senior Vice President of Sales – former managing director of commerce sales at Google

Scale Venture Partners

  • Eric Tilenius, Executive-in-Residence – former general manager at Zynga.

Nanigans

  • David C. Parkes, Technical Advisor – also works as a professor of computer science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University.

Strutta

  • Joeline Hackman, Director of Marketing.

Vitrue

  • Elisha Phoenix, Visual/UX Designer – former designer at Razorfish.

AdParlor

  • Mike Empey, Sales Engineer – former software development support specialist at Research In Motion.

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook for Every Phone, sports, ‘Titanic,’ ‘Twilight,’ more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook pages

Posted: 01 May 2012 08:26 AM PDT

A mobile Facebook application's page topped our list of growing pages this week, as well as several sports-related pages, musician pages and popular movie pages. Pages on our list this week grew from between 407,800 to 3 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

# Name Total Likes    People Talking   Daily Growth   Weekly Growth
1   Facebook for Ever… 80,790,898    2,818,833 +409,717 +3,094,252
2   Neymar Jr. Oficial 4,445,814    192,932 +57,585 +994,630
3   Titanic 22,183,616    929,544 +116,079 +972,265
4   Adele 27,024,951    768,499 +100,039 +845,502
5   LMFAO 16,163,504    670,358 +105,064 +672,273
6   Eclipse 5,109,773    24,133 +3,285 +668,451
7   Cristiano Ronaldo 7 1,008,868    22,920 +660 +650,258
8   The Simpsons 49,359,384    698,323 +74,991 +612,437
9   Will Smith 30,236,479    542,234 +66,896 +582,162
10   Breaking Dawn 5,637,272    235,682 +33,741 +577,535
11   Bruno Mars 22,524,923    483,186 +69,259 +523,922
12   Shrek 24,984,423    451,007 +58,978 +497,385
13   Harry Potter 45,153,224    679,188 +56,735 +486,619
14   Samsung Mobile USA 4,753,967    493,589 +52,436 +461,300
15   Resident Evil 5 655,578    15,711 +177,775 +455,448
16   Pitbull 19,107,971    648,436 +60,939 +449,386
17   Jeremy Lin 954,881    552,606 +34,979 +438,508
18   Real Madrid C.F. 27,425,705    1,507,348 +47,111 +426,426
19   FC Barcelona 30,127,581    1,245,044 +54,251 +420,084
20   Snoop Dogg 17,334,450    468,430 +49,096 +407,855

Facebook for Every Phone grew by more than 3 million Likes during the past week. Users of Facebook’s feature phone app are prompted to Like the page when they log in. Sports pages, specifically football clubs and stars, were very popular. Footballers Neymar Jr. Oficial and Cristiano Ronaldo, as well football clubs Real Madrid C.F. and FC Barcelona made the list with growth in the hundreds of thousands. These pages post copious photos and videos related to game activity, rallying fans around the team.

Movie-related pages continue to be very popular, even when they don’t post very frequently. These pages are ready have a tremendous fan base, thus a single post generates a lot of activity. For example, a video on the "Eclipse" page received tens of thousands of Likes and a video on the "Titanic"  page received more than 2,500 comments.

Musicians continue to have momentum on Facebook. Adele, LMFAO, Pitbull and Snoop Dogg made the top 20 this week. These artist pages post photos and other info from tours or performances.

Finally, the popular TV show "The Simpsons" continues to see growth on page based on a combination of popularity and frequent posts, and the Samsung Mobile USA page is currently giving away phones and other related prizes. The Samsung page seems to be running Facebook ads — including premium logout ads — to get new fans.

 

onsdag den 2. maj 2012 at 07.36