American Express Uses Z...

Zynga and American Express are back together again in a new deal that will give prepaid card carriers ways to earn extra Farm Cash. American Express, which has long been known for catering to high-end consumers, is moving downmarket. They’ve got a new platform called Serve , which is kind of a catchall service that supports many payment methods from traditional plastic cards with magnetic stripes to NFC to QR codes to basic online payments. The partnership with Zynga is meant to onboard new Amex customers and could give the credit card company the so-called FarmVille demographic. “Zynga has a very large customer base,” said David Messenger, American Express’ executive vice president of enterprise growth. “This partnership isn’t for existing credit and charge card customers. It’s about trying to appeal to a new segment. These customers may be Millennials. They may be somewhat underserved in terms of banking. They may only use debit, cash and check.” FarmVille players will be able to plant an American Express-branded tree in their farms. If they plant the virtual tree, they’ll be nudged to register for a prepaid card and American Express’ Serve program. Then after that, they can add money to their Serve account and activate the card. The first five purchases of $25 or more with the card will earn users extra Farm Cash. Other rewards will probably be added later on and the program will probably eventually include more games too. Zynga’s chief marketing and revenue officer Jeff Karp says whatever revenues the American Express deal brings will fall in under advertising. He didn’t say how much revenue the Amex deal might represent. About 8.7 percent of Zynga’s $321 million in revenue last quarter came from advertising. The rest came from virtual goods. “This deal highlights how we can bring brands to life,” he said. “We’re blurring the lines between real world and virtual world.” This isn’t the first time the two companies have worked together. Two years ago, Amex allowed Zynga players to earn exclusive virtual goods through their rewards program like purple cows, manx cats and virtual outdoor fountains. 

Imgur Partners With Bri...

Imgur has built a massive audience for the sometimes amusing, sometimes adorable images and memes that it hosts. Now it faces another challenge: Making money. With 2 billion monthly page views , advertising seems like an obvious business plan. The problem, says CEO Alan Schaaf, is that “the Imgur audience has always hated ads.” So yes, the company runs a banner ad on each page, but the audience probably sees it as a necessary evil. They probably won’t be happy with a second ad, Schaaf says, so a different approach was needed. That was the impetus for a new ad that’s running today, prepared by creative agency Mekanism for Brisk iced tea. Instead of just running another ad, Mekanism and Brisk created an image that borrows from the Scumbag Steve meme . It looks pretty similar to other Scumbag Steve images, with a photo of Steve accompanied by a dick-ish message — except this time, the message is promoting Brisk (you can see the ad above). Mekanism even got approval from the “real” Scumbag Steve (i.e., Blake Boston, the guy in the photo) to use the picture. This is going to be Imgur’s first experiment with a new Promoted Image ad unit, where the Brisk ad will be featured in Imgur’s image gallery. The hope is to run campaigns that don’t feel like ads to the Imgur community, but rather just other pieces of content. And even though it may look like a whipped together image, Mekanism Brendan Gahan’s says the look and message was carefully considered, going through round after round of revisions. The edginess of user-generated content sites can sometimes scare brand advertisers away, but Chris Oates, who manages the Brisk brand for owner PepsiCo, says this kind of ad made sense, since meme-style content seems to resonate with Brisk fans. Schaff admits that there’s some controversial or offensive content on the site, but he says Imgur works hard to make sure that the images featured in the gallery are advertiser-friendly. “Most viral content is not offensive content, it’s not pornography,” he says. “It’s really good, quality content.” Brisk plans to follow the Scumbag Steve ad with another ad, with a new meme, in a few weeks.

ClarityRay Battles Ad B...

Some of you are probably reading this post with ad blocker right now — and to be honest, I don’t blame you. Sure, there’s the occasional amusing or genuinely useful ad, but not terribly often, so why not install a plugin and avoid the whole mess? Of course, those ads make money, so if ad blockers become widespread enough, it could be a real problem for online publishers (who have enough problems already). Israeli startup ClarityRay says it’s not something looming in the misty future — it’s happening now, and it’s only going to get worse. In a recent study, the company claims to have looked at “over 100 million impressions across several top-tier publishers in the US and Europe” finding that 9.26 percent of all impressions were blocked. The likelihood that someone is using an ad blocker varies significantly by browser — Firefox users are the most likely to use a blocker, followed by Safari (the desktop version) and then Chrome. The report goes on: The combined market share of Chrome and Firefox is only increasing. Moreover, the great popularity of ad-blockers points to a strong public need; as awareness increases, a free, widely available solution that is one-click away on every platform is bound to increase its consumer adoption. It is, therefore, our estimate that ad-blocking will double within 20 months. The company’s logic, at least as presented here, didn’t quite convince me that ad blocking will double, but I’m not debating the larger points. Naturally, ClarityRay is offering a solution. “We believe ad-blocking today is a lot like how pirate MP3′s were before iTunes: they point to a valid consumer need, but do so in an unsustainable manner business wise,” says co-founder and CEO Ido Yablonka. In other words, Yablonka wants to provide an alternative that addresses the complaints of the “ad intolerant” while allowing publishers to make money. To that end, the company offers two complementary products — one that bypasses ad blockers, and another that allows publishers to offer subscriptions for an ad-free version of the site. So if you’ve installed and ad blocker and you visit a ClarityRay customer, you’ll still see a single ad, Yablonka says. Don’t want to see it? Then pay. At the same time, Yablonka acknowledges that each publisher has its own audience and its own needs, and he says ClarityRay customizes the program for customer based on crowd analysis. Even though the company hasn’t received much coverage from the press, Yablonka says it’s already live with several large publishers, totaling 1 million unique monthly visitors. (I’ve asked him to point me to a customer site that we can see the technology in action, and I’ll update if he does.) ClarityRay has also raised $500,000 in funding from Saar Wilf, who sold his company Fraud Sciences to eBay for $169 million, and is now serving as the company’s chairman.

comScore: 1 In 5 Videos...

According to online analytics company comScore , Americans watched 37 billion online videos on sites like YouTube, Yahoo and Facebook in April. In total, 181 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 1,307 minutes of online videos last month. Those numbers are virtually unchanged from last month, but one area that has seen pretty spectacular growth over the last few month is online video advertising. According to comScore, U.S. Internet users watched almost 9.5 billion video ads last month. That’s about 60 ads per viewer. What makes this number even more astonishing is that it was only in March of this year that the number of video ads topped 8 billion for the first time. Overall, the number of overall video views and the number of minutes they watch online video has remained pretty stable. There are some small changes at the bottom of comScore’s top 10, with Amazon making a reappearance in seventh position with 30 million viewers and Turner Digital dropping out of the list. Google’s sites, of course, continue to dominate the charts with 158 billion viewers, followed by Yahoo (53 billion) and VEVO (49 billion). Facebook, which is obviously having its day in the sun today, saw the number of video viewers on its site drop a bit from 45 million to 44 million, but in return, those viewers stuck around for 27 minutes now instead of just 21.3 minutes last month and also watched more videos per viewer than the month before (264 million). As for video ads, Hulu leads the pack here with 1.6 billion ads streamed last month (though that’s down quite a bit from 1.75 billion the month before). Google is a close second with 1.3 billion ads delivered, followed by BrightRoll and video ad exchange Adap.tv. With 48.6 ads per viewer, Hulu, also delivered a higher frequency of ads than any other service. YouTube, for example, only showed its average viewer 17.7 ads. In total, video ads reached almost 52% of U.S. Internet users.

Study Says Social Media...

In a shocking development, a research company has chosen this particular week, of all weeks, to post their forecast for what is in store for social media ad spending in the US over the next several years. Do you think it was just dumb luck that it coincides with Facebook’s IPO ? Hey, who can blame BIA/Kelsey for jumping on the train that is the Facebook IPO Express? Here is the picture version of this predicted US social media spend through 2016. Let’s consider the whole Facebook IPO thingy in light of these numbers. In 2011, Facebook did somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 billion in revenue. That revenue is in total, not just in the US. What percentage of revenue is international I don’t know. Right now US users number somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million which would be about 17% of Facebook’s total user base. It is likely that the US market spends more than most, however, and it is fair to think that the US proportion of revenue contribution is higher than that 17% of total users. With the US numbers for ad spend which are projected here, one wonders where all the revenue will come from in the future to support the reported valuation Facebook will receive this Friday. Let’s compare this to Google whose market cap sits just below $200B but did just under $38B in revenue last year and is tracking to go well north of $40B this year. Does anyone else see a disconnect with valuing Facebook at 50% of Google’s market cap while only currently generating less than 8% of Google’s total revenue? Marry that with the Kelsey numbers that caps the social media advertising spend potential at $10B annual in TOTAL for the US (remember all that spend won’t be just for Facebook) 4 years from now and you have to scratch your head just a little. Facebook will need to do something other than advertising especially if that facet of their business is being called out by some as ineffective . The other side of the Kelsey data shows that Facebook’s idea that their advertising value is best for big brands could be right on point as much of the ad spend will be on a national level. But wait. If national big brands will be the bulk of ad spend in social media in the next four years (according to this study only mind you) but Facebook is being outed as being ineffective by some big brands (which could be turned around to also read that said big brands and their agencies are clueless as to what they are doing in social media advertising) then where is all the revenue for Facebook going to come from to support what is supposed to be an earth shattering IPO? One assumes that it would have to be the international market that Facebook is banking on but with a shaky world economy and very different approaches to media and advertising in different areas of the world (as well as China currently being a walled garden of sorts) how reliable will that be for Facebook? I am not a financial analyst. I have not done any type of in depth analysis here. I am just looking at some numbers that are being thrown around and wondering if Facebook math is creating a “1 + 1 = 3 or more” scenario. I have no skin in this game and I, like the rest of us, would figure out a way to carry on in this world if Facebook were to do a MySpace. I’m not saying that will happen at all but anyone who can add 1 + 1 and get the correct answer should have a few questions here, don’t ya think? I would also be just fine if Facebook hit a grand slam and killed this thing. It will be what it will be. So what do you think it will be? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!