Published on: 2012-01-30 22:25:12

How did Facebook become worth so much money that it could  file for the biggest IPO in tech history ? By building a highly defensible product, platform, and advertising business on top of brilliant talent and valuable data. It now has several competitive advantages that protect it from disruption and could give it a long life as the primary online identity provider. Here are the 5 components that make Facebook a smart long-term bet for investors, regardless of its exact IPO pricing. Network Effect Displacing Facebook as the mainstream online social network would be next to impossible. It brought authenticated identity to the internet –a crucial utility that compelled users to join. No other service may be able to add on top of Facebook something as valuable as what Facebook added to Myspace, friendster, and other services where you didn’t have to be yourself. Facebook’s ingenius distribution strategy, detailed in The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick , allowed the service to capitalize on this value-add and spread to the farthest reaches of the globe . Eventually the network effect took hold, with Facebook’s ever-growing user base making it ever-more valuable and attractive to new users. And now inertia has set in. Users have invested considerable time into Facebook building their profiles, walls, interest graphs, and most importantly, their social graphs. As Facebook handles a wide range of use cases and a critical mass of any person’s friends already using it, a competing social network can’t just be as good or better, it would need to be massive improvement to lead users astray. The insulation to competition provided by the network effect makes it a safe long-term bet for investors. The News Feed’s EdgeRank Algorithm For five years, Facebook has been collecting data and refining its EdgeRank algorithm , which determines what of all the content your friends share ends up in your news feed, and how prominently. By using Likes, comments, and shares to determine what’s most relevant, Facebook had developed arguably the best automated content curation engine in the world. The news feed also gets to draw on the web’s largest database of photos , and the friend tags they feature which helped Facebook go viral. For new users without tons of data points, Facebook can still predict what they might be interested in seeing. For existing users, especially veterans of the site that actively use its feedback mechanisms, the news feed consistently surfaces relevant content. EdgeRank creates that the highly addicting experience that drives Facebook’s enormous time on site, return visit rate, and engagement. Even if Twitter or Google+ had all the content of Facebook, it could take them years to develop an algorithm that produces such a relevant feed. Talent Mark Zuckerberg sees the future. His product vision allows Facebook to release features that users grow into rather than out of. Zuckerberg has integrated progressive home brewed ideas as well as those that  couldn’t reach their full potential when launched elsewhere. He has pushed the service to constantly reinvent itself, allowing it to stay cool and relevant 8 years after launch. Zuck’s dedication to making the world a better place through interconnection and openness has also attracted other visionaries. COO Sheryl Sandberg ‘s efficiency has made the company very profitable, and her willingness to experiment means Facebook will continue to revolutionize advertising through behavioral targeting and social content-infused ads. VP of Product Chris Cox has led Facebook’s social design movement, where 1st and 3rd party products are made to leverage Facebook’s data and community from the start, rather than bolting them on. With the promise of changing the world and a lean, fun-loving company culture, Facebook has been pulling top engineering, product, and business talent away from larger companies like Google that are saddled with product bloat and bureaucracy. It’s also been aggressively acquiring disruptive startups such as Paul Bucheit and Brett Taylor’s FriendFeed , Blake Ross’ Parakey , Sam Lessin’s Drop.io , and Josh Williams’ Gowalla . The rockstar product designers and executives ensures innovation will continue to flow from within Facebook. The IPO will provide Facebook more cash for acquisitions and give its talent the liquidity they deserve . Though there’s always the chance they could cash out and leave, the ability to sell a little stock and upgrade their lifestyle might keep employees happy enough to stick around. The Apps and Games Platform Facebook has created a gaming platform proven to offer viral growth. While the service has curtailed some of loudest viral channels, organic growth opportunities remain and on-site advertising for games has produced high returns on investment for companies like Zynga. Facebook has fostered an enormous community of developers that pay while populating the site with engaging apps and content, and that won’t ever disappear overnight. Facebook games are often infinite building simulations or twitch puzzlers, have long session lengths, and let users make vanity purchases so they can show off while simultaneously hooking them deeper into a game. They readily produce “whales”, or people who spend orders of magnitude more than the average player. Mobile is emerging as a lucrative platform for Apple and Google, and Facebook is just getting started there, but it does have an enormous install base to work from . By attracting developers early with free growth , clamping down once they had invested, and then taxing them 30% through its virtual currency Credits, Facebook has turned its games platform into a consistent money maker . Now some developers are experimenting with digital media sales and rentals , pay-per-view , as well as offering virtual currency microincentives , showing potential for platform monetization beyond games. Ad Targeting Age, gender, current city, hometown, employers, education, friends, interests, and now in-app activity and ecommerce habits. When users share this data with friends, they’re also sharing with Facebook. This gives Facebook possibly the most accurate and robust set of ad targeting data in the world. With both an self-serve tool and ad reps handling premium accounts, Facebook can provide effective advertising solutions to both local business and international brands. Facebook has developed eye-catching ads by combining this targeting with  social-content infused ad creative . Viewers see the names and faces of friends who Like an advertised brand. Interactions between their friends and brands, such as Likes, app usage, and checkins, can become the ads themselves through Sponsored Stories. These trump, and are increasingly pulling spend away from more cookie-cutter display and search ads targeted through cookies and keywords. Facebook has only begun to monetize through ads. The sidebars where ads primarily appear have been kept small and unobtrusive. Facebook is now mixing ads back into the web version of the news feed , where they’re sure to be seen between organic social content. Facebook has yet to show ads to its hundreds of millions of daily mobile users, but Sponsored Stories could show up there soon too. Finally, it could one day create an ad network that allows other sites to pay to show logged-in Facebook users the same highly targeted social ads they see on Facebook.com.

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The 5 Reasons Why Facebook Is Worth So Much Money

This is a good article called Email retargeting: no-brainer for brands:

Published on: 2011-12-01 05:00:00

Contextual targeting. Behavioral targeting. Search retargeting. Targeting specific consumer sectors has become table stakes in combating banner blindness.

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Email retargeting: no-brainer for brands

Published on: 2011-12-01 05:00:00

Contextual targeting. Behavioral targeting. Search retargeting. Targeting specific consumer sectors has become table stakes in combating banner blindness.

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Email retargeting: no-brainer for brands

Published on: 2011-11-10 22:01:02

I found this post I found for this blog. Read it here – MillennialMedia Q3 Shows Rise in App Downloads and Video Ads

2011 is headed into the home stretch, so it’s time to look back at what the third quarter had to offer. Yes, it’s time for another look at a MillennialMedia SMART report. Overall, the report shows that mobile advertising is still on an upswing which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. What might surprise you are the stats themselves. Like this: Watch Video as a post-click campaign action rose 78% over last quarter. It jumped from 18% to 32% making it one of the top 3 trends of Q3. Video is everywhere. More advertisers are using video to show off features and benefits of their products. Others use video as a source of entertainment creating a positive (and hopefully viral) experience that shoppers will learn to associate with a brand. Application downloads as a campaign destination grew 22% quarter over quarter. Games continue to be the number one download. News applications grew 36% while Smartphone usage popped up 7%. Where do we go from here? Millennial Media says our mobile ad campaigns will be getting more sophisticated. Behavioral targeting combined with mobile device demographics will help companies reach a specific audience with customized ads. Also, the line between brick and online will become even more blurred. The reality is, at least a quarter of all consumers are never really offline and that’s something retailers need to think about if they want to succeed in business.

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MillennialMedia Q3 Shows Rise in App Downloads and Video Ads

Published on: 2011-09-13 12:14:51

Apsalar , a San Francisco startup that offers mobile analytics, behavioral targeting and optimization solutions to iOS and Android app developers and publishers, has raised $5 million in funding in a round led by Thomvest Ventures. Battery Ventures, DN Capital and other existing investors such as 500 Startups and Founder’s Co-op also participated in the round. Founded in 2010, Apsala has raised $5.8 million in funding to date. In a separate release, the startup announced that it has hired Anton Commissaris , a founding member of Mint.com’s executive team, to become its new ‘Chief Revenue Officer’. Apsalar’s set of tools helps app developers and publishers gain insights on how their apps are used through a self-service SDK or API, in order for them to identify and deliver personalized content and offers to users. Commissaris, who became Director, Revenue & Business Development at Intuit’s Consumer Group after the acquisition of Mint.com, will be responsible for driving the company’s sales and business development activities. Don Butler, managing director at Thomvest Ventures, has joined Apsalar’s board of directors. Crunchbase APSALAR Company: Apsalar Website: apsalar.com Funding: $5.8M Apsalar is a mobile behavioral targeting & analytics platform for iOS and Android developers. The company’s user-level analytics enables mobile app developers to optimize conversion rates, increase retention & monetization, as well as enhance user experience within their apps. Apsalar’s innovative cohort-based engagement analyses and conversion funnels are helping major mobile applications maximize their revenues. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was founded by a team of veterans in user-level analytics and conversion optimization. Investors include 500 Startups… Learn more

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Apsalar Raises $5 Million For Mobile Analytics And Behavioral Targeting Platform

Check out this informative article written by TechCrunch. It provides interesting digital marketing information. To see all new blog posts featuring great marketing info, click here

Published on: 2011-08-25 14:22:13

Earlier this month, Monetate , the platform that provides marketers with testing and targeting services for their websites, announced that it had closed a $15 million series B funding round, led by OpenView Venture Partners, which added to the $5.1 million series A round the company raised back in December from First Round Capital and FLOODGATE. With over $20 million in the bank, Monetate has been developing a new platform that gives marketers greater control over messaging and promotions on their websites as well as testing, targeting, and personalization tools. As we reported a few weeks ago , the coolest part about Monetate’s platform is that it can be installed using a single line of code. The startup’s newest version of its cloud-based platform enables marketers to integrate customized content and features between the eCommerce server and the site visitor’s browser. “One of the unfulfilled promises from the early days of eCommerce was that marketers would be able to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time”, says Monetate CEO David Brussin. “With Monetate, we have inserted a new level of agility into the eCommerce marketing experience, providing marketers with the ability to make educated campaign decisions that will directly contribute to increased conversion”. What’s more, as marketers and marketing teams are so often on the go, Monetate 11 allows its customers to test, target, and personalize their websites on the iPad, giving users that extra layer of mobile functionality. Another bonus: All current Monetate users will be automatically upgraded to the new version of its platform. Monetate 11, like its predecessors, aims to cut out the IT middleman by giving control of creating and measuring marketing campaigns and serving customized user experiences back to marketers. They simply enter the “who, what, when, why” of the campaign into the Monetate dashboard, and the platform takes care of the rest, offering users the ability to take advantage of campaign cloning, tagging, and filtering. Marketers will also be able to do automatic A/B testing against a control group, tracking the results in realtime, so that marketers can quickly see the impact their new campaigns will have. Users will also have the added benefit of new targeting options, including geotargeting to tailor messages and promotions to a visitor’s specific location, weather-based targeting, and behavioral targeting. Monetate customers will also now be able to test and deploy their own HTML and JavaScript, target recommendations based on complex business rules, and access all the data they need about traffic segments and purchasing patterns to make informed decisions about the promotions, messages, and other content they deliver to consumers through its analytics and reporting features. Monetate is really a no-brainer for eTailers and eCommerce marketers. It’s a great solution, and along with an infusion of new capital, the startup’s new version may very well have legs. After all, its platform has already attracted brands like Petco, Urban Outfitters, Sports Authority, QVC, Casual Male, Dick’s Sporting Goods, to use its targeting and testing services on their eCommerce platforms — and Brussin told us that the company has added hundreds of millions in collective revenue to these businesses, removing the need for businesses to hire specialized teams and decrease bounce rates and shopping cart abandonment.

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Monetate Gives Control Of Consumer Experience Back To Marketers With New Testing And Targeting Tools

Published on: 2011-08-17 12:19:33

I found this article I found for this blog. Read it here – Consumers Get Wiser to Behavioral Targeting Ways

There is a clothing store, Syms, that has forever had the tagline for their advertising “An Educated Consumer Is Our Best Customer”. A noble idea indeed and one that implies that the more a consumer knows about what they are looking to do the better decisions they will make. In the retail industry, that can make a lot of sense and can help the right retailer. Now, take that same mindset to the behavioral targeting world and there may be some consternation at the idea of a consumer knowing just how much advertisers know about them. This semi-secretive agenda is the game that behavioral advertisers and providers have to play all the time because the perfect world for them would be one where the consumer doesn’t know squat about what an advertiser knows about them and doesn’t care. A recent Harris study as reported by eMarketer shows that consumers are indeed becoming more educated. This continued educating of the online consumer is also starting to shape their views of the online advertising world and just how they interact with it. The following chart shows just how widespread the “I’m not giving information to you” mindset is spreading. As this awareness continues to grow it is likely so will the sentiment to keep things as private as possible even if that privacy is a mere illusion (which let’s face it, it is). Advertisers are going to need to be much more aware of the level of consumer knowledge about just how they get their messages in front of the right people at the right time. Would you say that in the behavioral targeting world, an educated consumer is the best customer?

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Consumers Get Wiser to Behavioral Targeting Ways

Published on: 2011-05-21 00:25:32

I found this article I found for this blog. Read it here – RadiumOne About To Corner The Market On Social Data Before Competitors Even Know What’s Happening

RadiumOne is emerging as a leader in a new breed of advertising networks, with enhanced targeting based on social data. The company is positioning itself to lock in data sources before competitors even get rolling. “Behavioral targeting in advertising led to double digit increases in effectiveness,” RadiumOne’s CEO Gurbaksh Chahal tells me. And he should know, this is his third advertising network. The last one, BlueLithium , sold to Yahoo in 2007 for $300 million . “But it’s commoditized now, and it’s time to innovate and differentiate.” The key is to know what ad to show to a person, and when. That can turn low value remnant inventory to premium ad space, no matter what site or service that ad is being served on. When a user visits a site the ad networks determine in real time, often through an auction, what ad to show you based on the profile that’s been built for you. RadiumOne builds a different profile for you than it’s competitors, though, and may grab ads that others leave untouched (or just pay more). The reason? They’ve built your profile based on what your friends like, too. These ads appear to work. One retailer who was achieving $8 per dollar spent on advertising increased that to $14/dollar spent with RadiumOne, says the company. A credit card company decreased cost per acquisition from $200 to $75. This also makes intuitive sense, of course. The problem is really how to get the right data. Previously only Facebook has a high level view of hundreds of millions of Internet users and are able to build an interest graph based on what those users’ friends like. It explains why Google is so interested in being Facebook – it’s all about the ad dollars. The Data Is The Hard Part How does RadiumOne build the interest graph at scale? Via data deals with all those sharing widgets you see on websites from companies like ShareThis , AddThis and AddToAny . Users of those services spread links on social networks. Through a combination of unique URL shorteners and cookies they are able to create a profile for people clicking on the links, as well as the implied social connection. RadiumOne has deals with many of these widget providers, covering hundreds of millions of Internet users. They combine the data from the partners to extract more useful information about relationships and interests, and then target ads based on that. So if you’re using those widgets, or clicking on links from friends that use the widgets, there’s a good chance you’re seeing RadiumOne served ads around the web. Here’s where things get really interesting. RadiumOne is using the $21 million warchest from their just-announced funding to begin to buy the widget guys outright, ensuring that no one else down the road can get the data. And anyone they don’t buy should watch out. RadiumOne says eventually they’ll probably pay sites to include their widget to get more distribution and data, possibly edging out anyone they haven’t bought. If they pull this off, and there’s no reason to think they won’t, Everyone is going to want to own this company. Chahal, who dropped out of high school to start his first company at 16, may have his third ad network liquidity event on his hands in the near future. I can’t wait to see what his fourth looks like. CrunchBase Information RadiumOne Information provided by CrunchBase

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RadiumOne About To Corner The Market On Social Data Before Competitors Even Know What’s Happening

Check out this informative post written by Marketing Pilgrim – Internet News & Opinion. It provides interesting digital marketing information. To see all new blog posts featuring great marketing info, click here

Published on: 2011-05-04 20:26:15

Advertising on television is far out of the reach of most small businesses, but advertising on online video is very dooable and may be just as effective in the near future. It’s become so accessible, that the respondents on “BrightRoll’s new survey chose it as the category likely to see the biggest spend increase in 2011. 65% of the respondents said they would be shifting money from TV advertising to online advertising. 30% said they felt that online video was equally as effective as TV and that’s likely to swing upward as more people move away from TV and on to some form of computer. When asked about the factors that influenced their decision to buy online video ads, 91% said it was all about the targeting. When it comes to the type of targeting, there is no clear winner. The largest bite, with 27%, was for behavioral targeting.  24% chose contextual and demographics got 21% of the vote. As for what’s stopping most people from buying video ads, it comes down to money, data and education. A clear system for gauging success was seen as an issue for a third of the respondents. A quarter felt that video ads were still too expensive, though it’s possible that they’d change their mind if they were presented with well-documented data. 96% said that research into areas such as TV vs Video, brand lift and impact on offline behavior were important, only 35% of companies said they did this kind of testing themselves. What is clear from this mass of percentages and bar charts, is that slowly, but surely, online video advertising is taking hold. As more people come to understand the ROI and video companies are able to offer more precise targeting, it’s likely to become a common channel for marketers.

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Online Video Ads Expected to See Largest Increase in Spend

Published on: 2011-04-13 20:19:30

When asked which trend has had the biggest impact on search marketing, 40% of business surveyed said it was the rise in mobile internet usage. Following closely behind that was the personalization of search results and behavioral targeting. New tools aplenty, and yet 95% of the search marketing dollars are still being spent with our old friend Adwords. The Bing / Yahoo combo got 70% of the vote and a respectable 47% of respondents said they run PPC campaigns on Facebook. The info comes from the new State of Search Marketing Report 2011 , which is produced by Econsultancy. The results indicate a rise in social media marketing to the point where it’s nearly equal to that of paid search (74% vs 79%). Facebook usage alone has risen from 73% to 84% (that’s general Facebook for marketing, not just PPC). Other key findings include: More companies are outsourcing search and social media . Only 44% of companies are now carrying out search engine optimization in-house, compared to 51% last year. Only 55% are doing social media marketing in-house, compared to 62% a year ago. Companies and agencies are increasingly using third party bid management technology for paid search marketing. Just under half of responding companies conducting search engine marketing rely on basic tools. Overall, Econsultancy is predicting 16% growth in search marketing which is slightly higher than last year’s prediction. If the number is right, we’re looking at 19.3 billion in North America. Where do you stand with search marketing? Are you spending more, less or about the same?

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Rise in Mobile Spurs Growth in Search Marketing