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TBG Digital loses Facebook PMD badge

Posted: 15 Oct 2012 03:35 PM PDT

Social media advertising company TBG Digital has been suspended from Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer Program for violations of the rules related to talking about new product tests, CEO Simon Mansell tells us.

The London-based company still has access to the Facebook Ads API so it can continue to manage campaigns and offer its self-serve ONE Media Manager. However, TBG Digital has lost its ads “badge” and missed out on an opportunity to join the class of Strategic PMDs that participate in alpha and beta tests. Mansell says his company is in discussions with Facebook’s partner management team about how to be reaccredited.

Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer Program is a community of developers building tools for social marketers and advertisers. There are four areas that companies can be certified in with badges: ads, apps, insights and pages. These preferred developers receive some support from Facebook and can use the badges in their own marketing materials.

Facebook announced a new Strategic PMD Program in September. It includes 12 companies that are among the largest spending and most trusted partners, though Facebook hasn’t been explicit about what qualifications a PMD needs to join the “Strategic” group. TBG Digital is on track to spend between $120 million and $150 million on Facebook this year, but incidents where employees spoke to clients about new ad products or made comments to the press about Facebook news put the company on the chopping block.

Facebook’s PMD policies mandate, “Product discussions with Facebook regarding new or existing products are considered confidential. Developers are not to discuss non-public products or plans unless provided explicit permission from Facebook even if public documentation exists.”

Mansell said in a statement:

“We have resolved the processes that led to this and are working closely with Facebook to regain our accreditation in the coming months. The suspension of the acceditation doesn’t affect our ability to do our job as we still access the API in the same way as we have since 2009. Facebook is our most important partner, however our clients pay our bills and helping them achieve their goals will always be our first priority.”

It doesn’t seem that Facebook has a formal process for re-entry into the PMD program, and neither company provided details about what TBG would need to do in order to regain its ads badge. We’ve heard of companies losing PMD status, but it’s unclear whether any have rejoined.

TBG Digital has 150 employees in eight offices across the U.S., Europe and Australia. It has worked with brands like Dell, Heineken and Energizer, as well as agencies like Mediacom, OMD and 360i.

Facebook did not comment on TBG’s dismissal from the program.

Travel company sees $25 in bookings for every $1 spent using Facebook Custom Audience targeting

Posted: 15 Oct 2012 11:55 AM PDT

Facebook ad optimization company AdParlor says the new "Custom Audience" feature for targeting users by email address has delivered 25x return on investment for one client.

AdParlor says it enabled a "large forward-thinking travel company" to run ads directed at Facebook users who had previously stayed at one of its hotels. The Custom Audience feature allows advertisers to upload CSV or TXT files — in this case, a segment of the travel company’s existing database of guests. Facebook then hashes the data so users' identities and information are protected. Facebook runs this list against its own hashed database of users to find matches. The matches are then eligible to see relevant ads.

For this campaign, the travel company wanted to drive qualified users to a reservation page with a special promotion from the hotel. AdParlor says the ads resulted in $25 in room booking revenue for every $1 spent on Facebook advertising. The company did not share how many users it targeted or other details about the campaign, but AdParlor CEO Hussein Fazal says, "We have run over 100 million impressions for this advertiser with a majority leveraging custom audiences."

It's worth noting that the ads in this campaign were marketplace ads in the right rail of Facebook. These were not Sponsored Stories or Page Post Ads in the feed, which are known to be among the more engaging options on the social network. However, with a highly relevant promotion, the travel company was able to catch users' attention and drive conversions.

As companies have been discovering by testing the Facebook Exchange, which allows remarking through cookie-targeting, Facebook’s small ads on the side of the page are not as ineffective as some advertisers have suggested in the past. Now that advertisers can bring their own data to the table — whether from a CRM database or through real-time bidding — these placements are more powerful than ever.

TechCrunch recently shared some promising early results from other Facebook ads companies testing Custom Audiences. Nanigans helped a gaming company achieve more than 5x return on ad spend with Custom Audiences compared to ads that target users by interest.

SocialCode says one of its Custom Audience campaigns delivered new Likes at 15 percent lower cost per fan. The conversion rate of impressions to Likes was 87 percent higher than with other targeting efforts.  Users who Liked the page after being targeted with Custom Audiences were also more engaged with the page — sharing, commenting and taking other actions on posts — than fans who were targeted by other means. As we’ve previously written about, Custom Audiences makes it much easier for companies to find the consumers who are most likely to support them.

And as AdParlor found for its travel client, Custom Audiences also work well for direct response campaigns. Facebook shared results from OpenSky, an e-commerce site looking to get members who hadn't bought anything recently to make a purchase. It used Custom Audiences combined with interest targeting to deliver ads about top products in different categories to users who would be most interested in them. Facebook says OpenSky saw a 30 percent better conversion rate by using Custom Audiences.

Last Call: Take Our Survey and Help Make Inside Facebook Even Better

Posted: 15 Oct 2012 09:00 AM PDT


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Farmville 2, Scribd, Samsung Mobile, Smart Deals, Viddy and more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

Posted: 15 Oct 2012 08:05 AM PDT

Zynga’s FarmVille 2 once again takes the No. 1 spot on our list of top growing Facebook apps by monthly active users this week, adding 13.5 million new players.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 380,000 and 13.5 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain %
1.  FarmVille 2 47,000,000 +13,500,000  + 40%
2.  Scribd 23,500,000 +2,200,000  + 10%
3.  schoolFeed 25,700,000 +1,400,000  + 6%
4.  21 questions 10,200,000 +1,200,000  + 13%
5.  Instagram 34,700,000 +1,100,000  + 3%
6.  Samsung Mobile 21,300,000 +1,000,000  + 5%
7.  Photo Love 8,000,000 +700,000  + 10%
8.  60 Photos 6,200,000 +600,000  + 11%
9.  Between You and Me 4,900,000 +600,000  + 14%
10.  Smart Deals 530,000 +521,000  + 5,789%
11.  Viddy 1,600,000 +500,000  + 45%
12.  Spotify 22,500,000 +500,000  + 2%
13.  Fanta-Players 660,000 +440,000  + 200%
14.  Diggle 820,000 +420,000  + 105%
15.  4shared 5,000,000 +400,000  + 9%
16.  Truth Game 4,600,000 +400,000  + 10%
17.  Pinterest 19,600,000 +400,000  + 2%
18.  Skype 16,100,000 +400,000  + 3%
19.  Nokia 14,700,000 +400,000  + 3%
20.  Bubble Pirates 570,000 +380,000  + 200%

 

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Thursday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

tirsdag den 16. oktober 2012 at 08.12