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Facebook Roundup: Search, Revenue, Traffic, Music, Plixi, Egypt, and Prineville

poster — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:15:09 +0000

Facebook Integrates News Stories Into Search – Facebook now displays items friends have Liked on third-party web sites within the suggested matches drop-down menu of its top search bar. Articles are not surfaced solely on the number of Likes a given article receives, the company explains, and adds that the feature launched to all users two weeks ago (people are just noticing now ). Greenpeace Goes After Facebook’s Prineville Center – Environmental activism group Greenpeace has started a campaign to get Facebook to say “no” to using coal-derived electricity at its new Prineville, Ore. data center. We’ve previously reported that Facebook would be using both renewable and non-renewable energy at the center. What’s more, the center is already doing a pretty good job of being environmentally-friendly by using naturally cold air to cool servers, an evaporative cooling system, re-using server heat for offices and reducing electricity usage. Latest Facebook Revenue Estimate: $2B – Facebook’s latest revenue estimates for 2010 are hovering around $2 billion, TechCrunch reported this week. We’d previously reported that the company’s 2009 revenues were almost $800 million and that the company was now on track to bust $1 billion this year , although previous reports have also put the run-rate at $2 billion. Most of the company’s revenues stems from advertising. [Image also via TechCrunch ] Facebook Traffic Eclipses Search Traffic at Gawker – Gawker’s marketing team put together some interesting data showing that its Facebook traffic is increasing across all sister sites and also that this social traffic is increasingly more important than search traffic. Specifically, Gawker gets 20 million monthly visits from social sites (up from 10 million last fall) and 7.7 million of that comes from Facebook. [Image via AllThingsD ] Microsoft Founder Sues Facebook – Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, went on a lawsuit rampage last week, filing against against not only Facebook , but eBay, AOL, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples and YouTube. Allen alleges that all the aforementioned companies are infringing on his e-commerce and search patents. These patents stem from Allen’s work at Interval Research in 1992; it closed in 2000 and some of the patents include very general descriptions for browsers, attention managers and alerts to users. TweetPhoto, Now Plixi, Integrates Facebook – TweetPhoto has changed its name to Plixi and the company enables users to share and interact with photos on both the Twitter and Facebook platforms. Plixi aims most of its products towards Facebook and other social networks, such as its check-in service for photos. The company was founded in 2009 and recently raised $2.6 million in investment from several angels, as well as Canaan Partners and Anthem Venture Partners. Egyptian Govt Monitors Facebook – The Egyptian Ministry of Interior has created a department especially to monitor Facebook activity in that country, according to Global Voices Online . This department includes 15 people who work 24 hours a day in three shifts, including two police officers and three engineers. They are tasked with monitoring criticism of the current president, Hosni Mubarak, and his son and presumed heir, Gamal. How to Access Facebook in Vietnam – As we reported at the beginning of the year, Facebook is being blocked by the Vietnamese government . However, the web site Viet Tan has published an extensive guide on how to get around government controls, mainly by accessing “lite” versions of the social network, such as the mobile site. Despite the censorship, Vietnam has 1.2 million users according to our most recent Global Monitor Report on Inside Facebook Gold . RootMusic’s Facebook Player Collects Royalties – RootMusic launched a YouTube tracks feature allowing musicians to collect royalties on every song played on Facebook. Through the free 520 pixel-wide version of the BandPage media player, musicians can collect revenue from every song played on Facebook; some artists currently using the service include 50 Cent and Maroon 5. See our previous coverage for more details about the company.

Ads API Profile: Marin Software Provides Audience Segmentation Across Facebook and Paid Search

A.Orr — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:38:19 +0000

Facebook’s performance advertising system lets buyers target users based on identity, location, interests, and Facebook connections, but it doesn’t provide the control to utilize these targeting parameters on a large scale. To allow companies to build more powerful tools for designing and managing ads, Facebook released an Ads API last fall. One company offering a tool which make it easy to create segment-targeted ads and optimize for specific metrics is Marin Software . The company comes from having developed search marketing software, and does a notable job providing flexible options for businesses on Facebook who also rely on search traffic. Here’s a closer look. Marin Software’s product is designed to save time and maximize returns for enterprise class marketers. Those who license the browser-based tool can create, manage, and track Facebook ads alongside paid search campaigns on a large scale. Users can integrate the tool with other analytics programs, utilize algorithmic bidding, monitor the paths consumers take to conversion, and use advanced segmenting options to target very specific audiences. Company Profile Marin Software was founded in 2006 as a paid search management application developer, building tools for advertisers and agencies spending over $100,000 a month on marketing. While offering some planned services and best practices to help its 200 current clients maximize the value of the tool, it doesn’t actually manage any campaigns itself. Upon the release of the ads API, Marin Software assigned some its 130 employees to develop competencies around Facebook ads. This summer, Marin Software entered the social network advertising arena by adding Facebook ad management capabilities to its tool. A dozen clients,including advertisers Education Connection and Macy’s, and agencies Red Bricks Media and Razorfish, are on track to purchase $3 million a year in Facebook ads and track 15 billion impressions through the tool. Clients are charged a percentage based on their total spend volume : 4.5% on $100,000 to $250,000 per month down to 2% on anything over $2 million per month plus prior tier percentages. Marin maintains its headquarters in San Francisco and offices in New York, Chicago, London, and Singapore. The company has raised a total of $33.5 million in rounds led by Benchmark Capital, and DAG Ventures, with its most recent Series D round also joined by Focus Ventures, Amicus Capital, and Triangle Peak Partners. Segmentation, Optimization and the Road to Conversion Marin Software’s browser-based tool opens to a dashboard in which users can see individual and aggregated graphs and charts of performance statistics from Facebook ads and paid search channels like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. The ability to see which channel is providing the lowest cost per click helps users determine where to allocate their spend. Different ad variations from across channels can be assembled into groups to allow users to collectively track all their ads linking to a certain product, targeted at a specific region or interest group, or that use a certain creative. For busy managers who don’t want to constantly monitor all their ads, users can manage by exception. Filters allow users to focus on ads and campaigns that need attention, such as only showing those with negative click-through-rate changes. Universal search quickly locates specific ads or campaigns, and a find and replace feature facilitates making edits to multiple ad creatives simultaneously. One-time and recurring reports in categories like traffic/cost or gross profit can be easily generated, customized, and formatted. Specialized conversion/revenue reports can be made to track different business types like hotels, lead generation, phone or email marketing, reservations, and commerce. They can be branded with a company logo, exported to PDF or Excel, or hosted at a URL to allow users to import updates to their analytics whenever they want. The tool can also be integrated with analytics systems like Omniture, Coremetrics, Dart, and Atlas. One of the most innovative features of Marin Software is the ability to optimize bidding based on your business model. Performance marketers can optimize for margin, those looking to generate leads can minimize cost per lead, and e-commerce businesses can optimize for net margin. Users can even optimize for custom conversion types such as capturing an email address. Soon, users will be able to optimize for Facebook-specific conversion types such as visiting a Page or viewing a Facebook video. To keep each ad fresh, users can enable dynamic creative rotation based on time intervals, or decreases in CTR or impressions. For example, a new image or headline could be rotated into your existing targeting parameters every five days or when CTR slips more that 20%. Marin Software’s audience segmentation feature allows users to take an ad or ad group’s audience and divide it into many targets. For instance, an ad aimed at males who like “Hiking” could be segmented into five age buckets and five different states, instantly creating 25 different targets for a single headline, body, image and destination URL. Multivariate testing can be performed and monitored in this way, and spend can be allocated to the targets with the highest conversion rate or revenue. One of the biggest advantages of managing paid search and social network marketing in the same system is the ability to accurately divide spend for the highest ROI. Since Facebook is rarely the last click before a purchase, you can use Marin Software to find out where Facebook is in the funnel. The Paths tab shows the sequence of channels a customer took to make their purchase, such as visiting a company’s Facebook Page, then performing a Google search and clicking on that company’s ad, leading them to convert on the website. Without this feature, despite the Facebook Page swaying the customer’s opinion, you wouldn’t know Facebook had anything to do with the conversion. The Paths tab also reveals insights such as users who visit Facebook then click a search ad spend more per conversion than those who only click an ad. Marin Software is strong where many other ads API tools aren’t. Its audience segmentation, conversion-based bidding, dynamic ad rotation, and analytics are all high quality. While it isn’t as good at producing thousands of ad creative variations as Techlightenment’s Alchemy , the ability to see Facebook ad spend in the context of search marketing campaigns gives users the big picture necessary to optimize returns efficiently. Ads API Spend Will Grow Alongside The Tools Marin Software’s VP of Marketing & Partnerships Matt Lawson believes the ads API industry will grow swiftly over the next few years. As Facebook enhances the functionality of the ads platform, “advertisers will get better ROI and they will shift more dollars to the Facebook channel.” Similar to how spend increased on Google search ads as optimization and analytics tools were released, Lawson sees the same thing happening as Facebook ads API tools develop. Once the allocations between social network and paid search marketing level out, advertisers will need to optimize across channels. “People are interacting with more ads in different mediums and channels – and [Marin Software is] finding what the key levers are to pull.” One pain point for Marin Software’s clients has been around Facebook’s ad creative approval process. Creative rotation is delayed and the edited ad is pulled as Facebook approves an ad’s new image. This is especially frustrating since image approval takes much longer than text approval in paid search. “Hopefully in the future Facebook will allow us to keep an old ad up and running until the new one is approved.” Lawson expects that improved day-parting, a feature requested by many ads API tool clients, will be integrated into the platform in the near future. While Marin Software has some ways around the current lack of functionality, he thinks a platform side solution would result in more consistency in ad inventory and a more uniform experience for Facebook users. While considerably newer than others in the emerging Facebook Ads API industry, like TBG Digital , Marin Software will continue to provide a tool enabling a holistic approach to search and social network advertising.

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Ads API Profile: Marin Software Provides Audience Segmentation Across Facebook and Paid Search

Ads API Profile: Marin Software Provides Audience Segmentation Across Facebook and Paid Search

poster — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:38:19 +0000

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Ads API Profile: Marin Software Provides Audience Segmentation Across Facebook and Paid Search