Facebook’s advertising machine is growing fast, and it’s growing big: estimates put 2011 ad revenues at some $3.8 billion. But it’s also a system that is always being tweaked as the company tries to turn its vast trough of users into more cash.

The latest changes, you may remember, are an attempt to convince advertisers that they should be focusing on engagement more than click-through rates — what Mathew characterised as an appeal to “forget about clicks”. From the outside, it may be difficult to understand why this matters — but here’s some data that might shed some light on what Facebook is doing and why advertisers love fan pages so much.

Courtesy of social analytics firm Campalyst, we have information on a campaign run for Blue1, a Finnish subsidiary of Scandinavian Airlines. Through August and September, Blue1 ran a campaign across three different channels: a Facebook page with regular status updates; Facebook ads targeted on potential customers; and more traditional display ads.

Here’s what they found: branded fan pages — and the updates that users see — are vastly more successful than other ways of advertising on Facebook.

To be more exact, Facebook Pages convert people into customers at a far higher rate than other forms of advertising. The conversion rate is four times higher than ordinary display ads and more than six times higher than traditional Facebook ads. And when they do convert into purchases (airline tickets in Blu1′s case) people who are fans spend more: an average of 30 percent more in this case.

This makes sense, of course: somebody who visits a fan page has already declared their interest in a given topic, and so they are clearly more likely to purchase. But it’s also interesting in terms of how Facebook limits access and visibility, because the most important way to get people to visit a fan page is through status updates that appear in news feeds.

Here’s another intriguing stat: these click through rates are achieved despite the fact that — at best — only a third of fans actually see updates in their feed. On an average day, just 14 percent of users who are already fans of a brand will actually see updates that brand makes.

Given all of this, it’s not hard to see why Facebook has been slowly expanding the data available on fan pages and encouraging people to look at engagement stats while at the same time reducing the ability of those pages to inject themselves into the news feed. Now it can charge advertisers to get into people’s streams with what it calls Sponsored Stories.

“What Facebook did with the Sponsored Stories was give brands a tool to pay for reaching more people and boost the reach of their fans through the fan pages,” says Campalyst CEO Jevgenijs Kazanins.

“Effectively, they are saying that reaching fans in the stream is hard (and it became even harder due to changes in the stream) but there is a way to increase it by buying Sponsored Stories.”

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Source: http://acravan.blogspot.com/2010/09/echo-chamber-echo-chamber-cocktail.html

We regularly fear living in an echo chamber (this is especially true for us because our blog serves as a feedback forum from regular participants, even if many of the inputs driving its content originate from industries unrelated to marketing). In fact, the foolish, mutual reassurance of ad folks is one of the most common criticisms of our industry. But recently a study came out that got me to reexamine the so-called echo chamber.

The report was authored by Sinan Aral (NYU, Stern School of Business) and Marshall Van Alstyne (Boston University, School of Management) and ran in the American Journal of Sociology. It can be downloaded here.

The historical thinking around how one gets new, diverse information via their networks has placed a tremendous amount of emphasis on “weak ties,” those people you don’t know very well and don’t speak to very often. The most often cited study in this work is by Mark Granovetter and was done in 1973, before the invention of the web and digital social networks. Letting an outdated study drive our thinking in this space is an issue, as it assumes technology is simply facilitating what was previously true about relationships, rather than evolving it.

What’s more modern and practical about Aral and Van Alstyne’s study is that it accounts for bandwidth. In a world of unprecedented connectivity and content generation, the format of information shared (say 140 characters of text) and the frequency with which it’s consumed have to be accounted for. It seems ridiculous this day and age to think the depth of my relationship with people is the determining factor of getting new information from them. Aral and Van Alstyne ask a more contemporary question than simply where new information comes from. They ask “where does one find the most novel information per unit time?” In other words, they’re accounting for bandwidth. You talk to closer ties more often and distant ties less often, a critical issue neglected in the previous thinking about the value of weak ties. Bandwidth is simply too important a factor to ignore in a world where contact across miles, economic classes, and belief systems is easier than ever—especially when said contact is frequently asynchronous.

Aral and Van Alstyne also discuss a point about strong ties I found interesting: those who know you well know what type of information is novel for you. That’s a filtering mechanism we know most readers of this blog employ regularly (just glance at how community members caveat and source what they share back to us as the managers of the blog).

This natural filtering is what’s really the heart of the matter because it addresses homophily (the idea that we surround ourselves with like-minded people, or more colloquially, “birds of a feather flock together”). People who think like us, seek out our blog. We do the same, following twitter accounts, listening to speakers, taking meetings with those we think are similar to us. Thus, the echo chamber, right? We all just tell each other what we want to hear, limiting our new thinking.

Wait a minute. As someone who has a core job responsibility of innovation (i.e., “the introduction of something new”—in this case to BBH), I should fear an echo chamber more than anyone. Instead, I’ve found this supposed echo chamber is inhabited by people that are my most efficient means of learning something new. When I find time to be in the stream, I’m inundated with novel information. That’s partially because I’m forced to filter people based on how frequently I expect to be engaged (“I want to hear anything she says, but she says so much I have to tune her out”—efficiency decisions relating to bandwidth). Simultaneously, the very people I choose to listen to are filtering for people like them (or should I say “us”?), wanting to avoid saying something they can only assume I know—otherwise I may just have to filter them.

It may be an echo chamber. But at its core is a virtuous circle.

‘We help well known brands do what they do best‘ is a common theme when it comes to corporate advertising. The objective is to associate Brand X (usually a smaller or lesser known brand) to with Brand Y (a large, well known brand of repute) and hope that there is a positive rub-off on the former.

A campaign running in the latest issue of HBR for Xerox caught my attention. Released first in 2010, the campaign ‘explores how Xerox helps iconic brands with business process and document management, freeing them to focus on what matters most – their real business’. Xerox, a well-known brand was associated with photocopying first and then with ‘document management’. I guess conveying that they are also about IT Outsourcing, Customer Care and so on warranted an association with other brands.

Images: Via

What I liked was the juxtaposition of well-known characters from iconic brand companies and dramatizing the mundane business processes they could be doing, at the cost of their real job. The campaign involves a website and a TV campaign too; but the print ads were the stand outs for me.

The Times of India is auctioning print advertising via an online bid platform, auctioning premium print ads during the Diwali Season, via bid.indiatimes.com. For this, the company has created new premium advertising spots in the newspaper, over and above the regular inventory, to meet demand during the advertising season, for the newspapers the group will publish between the 20th and 25th of October. The papers in which ads are being auctioned include the Times of India (all editions), Bombay Times, Delhi Times, and the Mirror newspapers (like Bangalore Mirror and Mumbai Mirror).

Speaking with MediaNama, a Times of India spokesperson said that the idea behind the auction was set up because of significant demand for Diwali, and with around 80% of normal ad spots already sold, they “But we wanted to see if we can do create new spots, and fulfil new demand. We decided to make new ad spots which normally advertisers can’t get, and put them up for sale in a transparent ad auction.” The new ad spots include a Skybar ad just under the masthead, Ear ads next to the mastheads, and a Spine ad, which goes across the spine of the first and the last page, which is like a binding for the newspaper. Control is being exercised on who can bid, reports Exchange4media, since agencies have been given usernames and passwords.

Will it work beyond Diwali? Our take is that it’s worth a shot. While there are sites like Ads2Book, they are primarily for booking classified ads online, and don’t really offer premium ‘display’ inventory to anyone who can bid. Auction platforms aggregate demand from small advertisers as well, and if you keep the base price high enough, it could work in your favor. On the flip site, because rates are transparent this way, advertising revenue wouldn’t be too difficult to track because of limited newspaper inventory. ”The rate card exists because there is a lot of inventory over the year. It’s for the super premium ads like during Diwali that you would try to do it. We’ll probably experiment with other places, ” the spokesperson said.

Why premium inventory instead of remnant inventory? The company says that they normally have 80-90% inventory sold, and inventory is dynamic in print because pages change all the time. There is some element of contraction and expansion to accommodate that, and inventory can either be replaced with in-house ads or content. “The desire to make smaller money and try to cannibalize with lower rates is not of interest to us.”

In any case, instead of a sales force going and selling ad spots, there could be a situation wherein, to an agency or an advertiser, a visualization of how a particular ad unit would look in the newspaper could be shown, and there is potential for ads to be placed directly by the agency, through the web, perhaps helping reduce the cost of sale of ads for the company.
*Reach India’s Digital Industry Decision Makers: Advertise on MediaNama. Contact sales@medianama.com. For more info, click here.

A sample Circulars ad for Macy’s.

Google is testing a new kind of ad unit called “Circulars,” designed to mimic the full-page inserts traditionally found in newspapers.

These large-format ads act like destination sites, where users can explore specials being promoted at nearby retail locations. The ad format is scheduled to be unveiled formally at an Advertising Week event in Manhattan later this week, a Google spokesperson tells Mashable.

The ads, which will be personalized based on a number of factors including location and query, will pop up when viewers click on search or display ads. The ad format is compatible with desktop, mobile and tablet devices.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Nick Fox, VP of product management at Google, said Circulars were designed in response to retailers’ requests for advertising that would drive online visitors into offline stores.

“[Retailers are] trying to understand what the answer is in the digital age to the offline print circular,” Fox said. “They’re trying to understand how to get their online visitors into their stores. And this is our answer to that.”

More About: Advertising, Google, google circulars

Confession time.

A few months ago I found myself on a long flight with nothing to watch. I had already seen the many Hollywood blockbusters along with the documentaries and news specials that were being shown on-board. In a moment of weakness, I decided to watch the Justin Bieber documentary, Never Say Never. I thought Never Say Never was a live "concert" film mingled with some backstage footage of the teen heartthrob blow drying his hair, playing Xbox with Usher or clips of young girls professing their love to The Bieb. I put the word "concert" in quote marks earlier, because I wondered how much of the live footage would truly be live. I know nothing about Justin Bieber other than he was discovered on YouTube by his now-manager Scooter Braun. With over a decade of music industry experience, I've had my own fair share of interviewing these types of teen sensations. Many of them don't last more than five years in the music industry (and the majority of them flame out sooner). It's not cynicism. It's a matter of fact that the music industry (and mass populous) have a short attention span for this genre. Today's Justin Bieber is yesterday's New Kids On The Block (or Backstreet Boys... or...). And, there's always something new and different right around the corner.

Crying.

The movie captivated me. Justin is not only portrayed as a very smart and focused young man, he is a musician. A true musician. He cares about playing, writing and performing. Yes, the glitz is there and there are plenty of scenes with Bieber horsing around and clips of young girls professing their love to him, but it's a touching and personal story. A key figure in Bieber's success is his manager, Scooter Braun. After seeing some videos on YouTube, Scooter moved Justin and his mom from his home in Stratford, Ontario into a townhouse in Atlanta where they struggled to get Justin a record deal. It's a very touching and real story. In a few scenes I found myself holding back tears and in other scenes, the tears were flowing. Laugh all you want, but his story is both impressive and inspiring, it almost seems like it's impossible that it's a work of non-fiction.

This is where you come in.

Scooter Braun shared the stage with pro-skateboarder and entrepreneur, Tony Hawk, at this year's Google Zeitgeist event. During their panel discussion on music, entertainment and new media, the host, Sal Masekela (ESPN X Games) asked Scooter about his use of Social Media to build Justin's audience. Scooter re-iterated a key point from my recent Blog post on direct relationships (more on that here: What The Next Five Years Will Be About): when Justin was turned down by the music industry, it only fueled them more to use Social Media to create that direct and tangible relationship with the fans. Their strategy worked so well, that Justin, Scooter and the entire Bieber Fever crew truly do control the relationship between Justin and his fans. When further pressed about using Social Media as a marketing channel, Scooter said something that fascinated me:

"It's not marketing. It's real."

It's true and it's powerful and it's the number one reason why corporations are not all that successful with these platforms. Instead of using Social Media to be real, they're using it as another engine of advertising. I often say that Social Media is the most exciting form of marketing because it allows for real interactions between real human beings. It's so basic. Justin could just communicate and connect to his fans. He could (virtually) touch them, share with them, play with them, inform them and ask them. Scooter used five words to describe the new realities of business: those who think that they can simply advertise and not balance it out with being real (creating connections and developing direct relationships) are going to struggle - deeply - with loyalty and long term success. While Justin may have a long, hard fight ahead of him to prove his mettle in the music industry as something more than a teen sensation, brands could learn a lot from him and Scooter about the power of being real by creating real relationships.

Being "real" - it seems so basic and simple. Then again, we all know what they say about common sense... it's not all that common.




Tags:

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Facebook sucked up most of the oxygen in the technology world on Thursday, with the launch of a series of fairly radical transformations of the giant social network, which now reaches about 800 million people (we’ve collected our coverage of the f8 conference here). So where does that leave Google and its Google+ social network, or Twitter and its goal of becoming a real-time social newswire? Facebook’s changes have clearly upped the ante for Google, which desperately needs the signals that come from social activity to feed into its search and advertising algorithms, but Twitter is playing a somewhat different game, and Facebook seems more like it could be a partner rather than a competitor.

At Facebook’s last f8 conference in April 2010, the social network launched its “open graph” platform and plugins, which allowed any website to create Facebook “like” buttons and widgets and connect those to its content — and millions of websites have done so in the months since that announcement. In a sense, Facebook extended its tentacles outward and grabbed hold of activity that was occurring elsewhere on the Internet, then incorporated that into the site and showed it to users. Masterminded by CTO Bret Taylor, this was a fairly massive shift in what the site was about. No longer did people have to go to Facebook to interact with content; they could do it anywhere.

The latest changes are partly about reversing that process, and creating more reasons for users to spend time on Facebook itself and engage with content there. Social apps like the ones launched for Spotify and Hulu let users watch movies and listen to music within Facebook; social-reading apps like the ones launched by The Washington Post, The Guardian and News Corp.’s The Daily let users read stories from those publications within Facebook and share them with others; and other social apps let users share their physical activity and so on. All this takes place on Facebook — which is a risk for media companies, as I tried to outline on Thursday.

The introduction of “frictionless sharing”
In addition to the launch of social apps, Facebook changed the way sharing of that activity happens, and effectively removed the necessity for publishers or services to use the “like” button — a fairly significant move, as MG Siegler noted at TechCrunch. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described it, the need to click a button to share things was getting in the way of users sharing, so the new process (where users give an app or service approval once and then all their activity is automatically shared) creates what he called “frictionless sharing.” Items a user is reading or listening to or otherwise interacting with simply show up in the new “ticker” section of a user’s page.

These substantial changes to the way users interact with Facebook and Facebook-based apps are a significant threat to Google in trying to grow its Google+ network. Before the new features were launched, as well as others that came before f8,  Google’s new offering looked pretty competitive: the addition of “Circles” to create groups of specific friends was something Facebook didn’t really have (although it has had Lists for some time), and it made it easy for people to share photos and other content. It also had the advantage of being an “asymmetric” network like Twitter, which meant that anyone could follow another user without having to get their explicit approval.

Then Facebook launched “smart” lists, which make it easier to group friends and connections on the network, and just as quickly launched a “subscribe” feature that added an asymmetric aspect to the service — allowing users to get updates from people even if those other users weren’t their friends. Now, the social apps and frictionless sharing have upped the ante even further: what does Google have that can offer these same kinds of features? Although Google+ has an API now that allows developers to connect their apps and services to it, there are no “social apps” for Google+ yet, and no services that can feed content into the network as seamlessly as those from Spotify and Hulu.

Even when those apps appear, which they undoubtedly will, Facebook has something Google doesn’t have and may never have: namely, 800 million users who spend huge amounts of time on the site — according to Zuckerberg, the network saw over half a billion users in a single day recently. Google may be huge, but the idea of it as a social network is still relatively new, and so it has an uphill climb even to gain awareness with non-geek users, let alone chip away at Facebook’s dominance. There will be a certain contingent of users who resent the fact that Facebook is trying to take over their lives and become “the consumer OS,” as Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff put it, but their numbers might be too small to make a real difference.

Google gets frozen out, but Twitter plays a different game
The risk for Google, as we’ve described before, is that through these new services and features, Facebook starts to accumulate an even larger body of data about the activity of those 800 million people — and about their desires as well, since the network is expected to launch a “want” button soon. That is gold for an entity like Google, not only because those signals are important for search but because they are increasingly important for advertising. And there is virtually no chance that Facebook is ever going to share any of that information with Google, or provide it in a form that allows for easy scraping.

And what about Twitter? As I’ve argued in other posts, I think Twitter is playing a different game — one that Facebook may be trying to get into with some of its changes, but isn’t well-suited for. In a nutshell, Twitter isn’t a social network at all, and never really has been. It allows for social behavior around information, but it is not in any sense a one-size-fits-all social destination with timelines and social apps and games, and all the other things Facebook (and Google) want to offer. It’s designed to do one thing well: short bursts of information, like a real-time social newswire. And it can target users based on that.

Real-time news isn’t something Facebook is very good at. It may talk about changes to its news feed making it “your personal newspaper,” but that news is still mostly about friends and what they are doing. The addition of news sources via the subscription feature — and the rollout of social apps from news publishers — may change that mix somewhat, but it’s not going to provide what Twitter provides. There’s also the risk that Facebook’s frictionless sharing simply produces too much noise for many users, as the site tries to be all things to all people. So long as Twitter focuses on doing one thing well, that will be its ace-in-the-hole. Google, however, badly needs some more cards.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Tambako the Jaguar and See-ming Lee

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NewNet Q2: Google closes the quarter with a bangPost-IPO strategies for LinkedInPlayers and Strategies for Real-Time In-Stream Advertising

The media is already dissecting yesterday's Facebook event, where the company unveiled major new changes to their platform. Par for the course, really. Drama always accompanies any change to the Facebook site or platform.

But I see drama brewing in a place unaccustomed to it, and involving a different kind of media — the media buying agencies that wield most of the money spent on advertising on the Facebook platform and the companies they represent.

It would seem that the more time consumers spend on Facebook (over 53 billion minutes a month, according to Nielsen), the more the advertising economy would benefit, as more advertising inventory — what Facebook sells and media agencies buy — becomes more plentiful.

But alas, something appears to be broken, or breaking.

The classic, traditional media buying agencies (the big ones, most of them owned by the ad agency holding companies) are used to buying nouns — impressions, commercials, search results, clicks. These are "things" that display once, and then disappear, unless more of them are bought. Publishers have traditionally sold those "things" to them in an environment that operates with fairly little friction. Everything fit on a spreadsheet, or through an ad network. Even when optimizing to a transaction, they do so with tacit knowledge of what each transaction is worth.

One of the most significant new Facebook platform changes emphasizes their move towards making consumers' connections to content and activities more meaningful. Simple and vague "likes" are giving way to "listening to", "read", "hiked", "eating". The Facebook graph is becoming verb- and story-based. It presents a tremendous opportunity for advertisers to create and amplify positive engagements consumers are having with their products, or the lifestyles those products represent.

If all this doesn't sound like something that media agencies do for a living, you're right. Earning, amplifying, and optimizing towards engagement is just not what media agency systems and personnel are meant to support. Technology platforms here and there sprout up to help them do it better, but even those platforms become commodities if engagement-driven efforts are not handled and managed expertly, in an always-on way. Facebook's massive reach and importance to the web at large, and its major engagement-maximizing changes on the horizon, mean engagement-led (and not impression-led) advertising has never been more important.

To make the most of Facebook's changes, brands must:

Understand what the value of each kind of consumer engagement is to their business.
Be comfortable with the fact that they are generally not actually "managing communities" on Facebook, but rather, programming content and engagement channels.
Create experiences that enhance other experiences.
Find each and every way to ensure that as many of the right people have those experiences as possible, so they can efficiently affect their short- and long-term business goals.

Engagement across — and through — the Facebook platform will demand that these aspects be managed holistically and be optimized towards engagement. And as Facebook finds its way into other areas of media and our lives, this will become even more important. Siloed agencies don't help make these kinds of things happen. Silos are for storing. And Facebook is about sharing.

Media agencies have always been about breadth, reach and conversion. Advertising in social media should always be working towards a goal of delivering meaningful engagement at scale, and augmenting the value of the media that exists between people. This requires complicated planning, strategy, and execution across disciplines that are not in the wheelhouse of traditional media buying agencies — or in the wheelhouse of many agencies for that matter.

It is not all a loss for the classic media buying agency. As Facebook collects more data, and (likely) eventually begins powering display advertising infused with its data and intelligence, impressions can continue to be bought at scale, helping to deliver a brand message to as many people as possible — which will always be necessary.

But a comprehensive advertising plan now demands an engagement component that complements reach and frequency models. The dawn of the engagement age and agency is near, and the upcoming Facebook platform changes will only bring it about sooner.

Be prepared.

Facebook’s bold list of changes, announced Thursday, will put more pressure on advertisers to come up with compelling content and integrate themselves further into consumers’ lives. The big loser? The “Like,” which will have a smaller role in marketing, industry analysts say.

One big change is that Facebook has added a control in the top right of each story that users can check to unmark a top story. Facebook will use that information over time to automatically edit the feeds. Since users now have more control over their news feeds, brands with boring or irrelevant updates will have lower visibility. (They will still show up in the Ticker, however.)

Marketers, who have been told for years that they’re actually publishers now, will have to put that into practice, says Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, a digital marketing firm. “Facebook is a channel, albeit a collaborative one, that needs to be programmed,” says Schafer. “We need to get people to share and interact with more content.”

How to do that? David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation for 360i, says Facebook will now be about branding actions. “Before on Facebook it was about getting people to ‘Like’ the brand,” he says. “Now, it’s about getting people to take social actions enabled by that brand.” For example, if a consumer posts an update about a run they just took, that’s a prime opportunity for Nike. “If your run is powered by Nike, you might still wear Adidas,” says Berkowitz, “but Adidas will have to find something else that’s social about its brand to become part of your story.”

Nir Refuah, vice president of McCann Digital in Israel, says that with Facebook’s redesign, consumers will be creating a “digital autobiography” in which brands will have to integrate themselves. “First Facebook became the digital ID of everyone, and now it will try to gather our whole life story,” says Refuah.

The emphasis on lifestreaming rather than merely using the platform to amplify a message means that apps will become more of a vehicle for branding. But, like the marketing messaging, Schafer says apps will also have to be genuinely interesting to consumers and their friends. “Apps with utility that allow you to consume more or participate more will be more important,” says Schafer.

Thinking of marketing as storytelling isn’t a new concept, but the redesign will extend the metaphor. Sponsored Stories, an ad unit Facebook introduced earlier this year, are a good example, Schafer says, of marketing messages that could be of interest to consumers and their friends. How? Instead of offering basic information, like “Jim checked in at Starbucks,” Schafer suggests that something more specific such as “Jim checked in at the Starbucks on 14th Street and ordered a cappuccino,” might be a relevant part of that consumer’s life that day and of interest to friends.

The change will require new thinking from marketers who had merely tried to accumulate as many fans and “Likes” as possible. Jenna Lebel,managing director of strategy at Likeable Media, says the “Like” is “a little less relevant now,” and that marketers will have to work harder to earn their place in news feeds. “Your content is going to need to be absolutely amazing,” she says.

Colin Murphy, social media director at Skinny, a digital ad agency, thinks overall, the changes are a challenge to marketers and agencies. “He really threw down the gauntlet today,” Murphy says of Mark Zuckerberg. “You actually have to deliver something of value to a customer rather than just being a person spamming.”

Here’s a look at the new Timeline, and you can view images from the event below.


Andy Samberg and Mark Zuckerberg




Beast's Facebook Page




Ben Parr and Jennifer Van Grove




F8 programing team




Zuck Dog




Beast




Before f8 Keynote




"I'm not really friends with these people"




Andy Samberg




Andy Samberg




Timeline Mobile




Mark's Timeline




Mark Zuckerberg




A View of Timeline from the Audience


Courtesy of Robyn Peterson

Mark with Timeline




Zuckerberg's Cover




Timeline




Timeline




Timeline




"Any Verb, Any Noun"




Reed Hastings




Reed Hastings




Spotify CEO Daniel Ek




Spotify CEO Daniel Ek




Watch Netflix and Hulu from Facebook




Nike+




Mark Zuckerberg and Words With Friends




Washington Post Social Reader




Running and Eating




Brett Taylor




Brett Taylor




Chris Cox




Chris Cox




Facebook Memories




Mark Zuckerberg Closes F8




Mark Zuckerberg Closes F8




More F8 Coverage:

Facebook Changes Again: Everything You Need To Know
Prepare Yourselves: Facebook To Be Profoundly Changed
Facebook Now Has 800 Million Users
Facebook Timeline: Here’s What It Looks Like [VIDEO]
Facebook Open Graph Seeks to Deliver Real-Time Serendipity
Yahoo Hooks Up With Facebook for Socially Curated News
Facebook Adds TV & Movies to the Stream
What Do You Think of the Facebook Changes? [OPEN THREAD]
Facebook Reveals Major Updates at F8 [LIVE BLOG]
Facebook Timeline Redefines User Profiles
Spotify Comes to Facebook [PICS]

More About: Advertising, Facebook, Marketing
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Ad stalking

"The area is part of the “Special Midtown District” that has its own distinct zoning code. Part of the mission of these regulations is to preserve and protect the “unique combination of building scale, large illuminated signs and entertainment and entertainment-related uses” that are central to Times Square’s history."

Ever wonder why Times Square, New York is the way it is? Surprisingly, you can blame the zoning laws that forbid any kind of tasteful restraint and subdued advertising.

"Earlier this year, the federal government created a program to help promote international tourism to the United States. And while I'm sure the result will be a forgettable series of montage spots that are heavy on landmarks and cowboys, I'd like to offer an alternative: Find a way to use the video below, "Guy Walks Across America""

As good as any tourism ad could get in today's citizen-created videos; helps that it feels real.

How feminist blogs like Jezebel gin up their page views by exploiting women's worst tendencies.

Check out this vintage ad by Humble Oil, found by Al Gore in a Life from 1962: "Each day Humble supplies enough energy to melt 7 million tons of glacier!"

That's what I call truth in advertising.

"That's the thing about Apple marketing. They don't talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.

Contrast this with the Droid ads, which actually scare my friend's two-year-old daughter away from the TV when they come on. The dark, rainy background, the spinning globe of glowing apps, the robot hands poking at them, nary a human in sight."

From 10 to 24 March 2010, IKEA develops an interesting event in four important metro stations in Paris. Furniture collections are currently displayed in high-traffic spots, giving the potential customers a chance to interact with the brand by checking out the products.

The furor was kicked off by comments from Anamitra Banerji, the head of product management and monetization at Twitter, who told MediaPost.com that “We are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase.” He declined to give an exact date on when the micro-blogging site would launch an ad platform

"If 1% of folks watching #SB44 change mind and mail back #2010Census form, taxpayers save $25 million in follow up costs,"

Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall,

Opting out of a network does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the network from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your Web preferences and usage patterns.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says the San Francisco start-up is watching the outside initiatives closely as it prepares to launch its own fee-based services this year

Thousands of dancers jammed a major London train station in a Facebook-driven "flashmob" mimicking an advertisement for a phone company.

Variations on the “Google should pay me for X” theme have been around for some time now, and the precipitous decline of content-related industries — among them book publishing, newspaper printing and music distribution, to name just a few — has only accelerated the number and frequency of these complaints.

The New York Times (NYT) became the second to last major newspaper to run a front page display ad today. But nothing like our Times of India who had a full-front-page ad for Indya.com

we are compiling a list of 17 Beijing 2008 Olympic Advertisements. In this post, you can see how different companies conveyed their marketing/promotion message for their products or services for the Olympic season.

Two cups of McDonald’s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news.

You’ve seen him plenty of times on sitcoms; he’s the dumb, bumbling, idiot dad, husband and boyfriend who appears useless at everything but bringing home a paycheck. The message: Guys are dumb and women have to lead them around.

Cool advertising prop.

Ad campaign from Tiji TV

Manage your Ads, Control Who Sees Them

If you have watched a good porno you’ll notice that there are certain elements that make a porn star famous and successful, other than them looking good without clothes.

Swedish furniture giant IKEA has converted the Kobe Portliner Monorail into a moving showroom before the April 14 opening of a new retail outlet at Port Island.

Functional yet beautiful

"Is it always illegal to kill a woman?"

Simply arresting photos

Heh.

It was a clause in the original contract that reserved to the show’s creators a slice of any revenue generated apart from actual broadcast on Comedy Central. At the time, it was unclear where any of that extra revenue might come from.

The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness calls upon Apple to rethink their new media campaign.

I'm sure we own 1000x more for 1000x less.

...bobbies are getting a haircut. Amazing and creative Photoshop job.

The downsides of contextual advertising.

Now do you really feel hungry?