Path CEO Dave Morin Joi...

Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin is joining the board of the event ticketing startup Eventbrite , the company is announcing today. The news of the appointment follows what has been, so far, quite a busy year for the startup, which has now sold 60 million tickets, and is expanding globally with websites in eight different languages. Morin, whose background includes time as the former head of the Facebook Platform and several years at Apple, will bring his knowledge of social to the ticketing company, says Eventbrite. Morin joins Barry McCarthy, former CFO of Netflix, Sean Moriarty, former CEO of Ticketmaster, Roelof Botha, former CFO of PayPal and Partner at Sequoia Capital, among others serving on Eventbrite’s Board of Directors. “Eventbrite has long been a believer in the impact of the social graph, and the work that Dave did while at Facebook has had a profound impact on our business,” Kevin Hartz, CEO of Eventbrite says. “Our integration with Facebook Connect in 2008 predicated an exponential increase in traffic and engagement among event attendees,” he added. Eventbrite is heavily benefitting from Facebook integration. In 2011, the company reported that every time an event was shared on Facebook, it generated an additional $2.52 on average in ticket sales for event organizers and 11 clicks back to the Eventbrite page. And this was before the launch of Facebook’s Open Graph in early 2012, and the introduction of “actions” like “bought,” or “want” or “watch,” etc. Notably, Eventbrite was one of the Facebook Open Graph launch partners, but it’s not yet using “actions.” According to Tamara Mendelsohn, VP of Marketing at Eventbrite, however, they’re “working on something now” on that front, and we should see the results of that soon. Facebook is also the number one driver of Eventbrite’s traffic, says Mendelsohn, but the company won’t share how much. As for engagement levels, you can see in the chart below what the impact of Facebook integrations have already had on the company’s business. With Morin’s guidance on deeper integrations, those numbers should jump yet again. Outside of social integrations and global expansion, the company has also been pushing itself forward in the mobile payments space. In March, Eventbrite launched a complimentary credit card reader to go along with its iPad ticketing app “Eventbrite at the Door,” which attaches to the iPad’s dock connector, allowing users to swipe credit cards. Just prior to this, the company had announced a product called “Endurance,” specifically for selling tickets to races and walks, like marathons and fundraising events. And only last week, Eventbrite announced integrations with   SponsorHub  for connecting event organizers with sponsors. “Eventbrite is fundamentally changing the way people create, promote and find events and gatherings in their local communities,” said Morin in a statement. “I’ve been more than impressed by their level of innovation, their commitment to their users, and by their long term focus. The decision to join the board as they forge into making event discovery more mobile and social was an easy one. At the end of the day, we all live for great events.” Eventbrite has been making a huge push towards reaching $1 billion in gross ticket sales this year, about doubling the number of events on the platform in 2011 (458,207 events in 2011) and tickets sold (20,798,509 tickets in 2011). In 2011, Eventbrite sold $400 million worth of tickets, up from $207 million in 2010.

Online Video Plus TV Bo...

We talk about the need to make sure that marketing in the online space isn’t used as an end unto itself. It’s great theory but as it becomes more commonplace and there are successes to be paraded about, more and more marketers will take the advice and blur the lines between on and offline marketing. Google Nederland has produced this video to show the impact of using YouTube to support TV advertising and the impact it can have. In this case the claim is an increase in net reach from between 9 – 12%. Granted, increased production costs are part of this equation but that’s just part of the new game of marketing via video. This video explores this venture. It’s not my kind of thing personally but considering the target audience it makes sense. Of course, this promotion may have had the success it did because of the market in which is was delivered. Will this work in the US? I have no idea but I do believe that marketers are going to need to experiment with more deals like this in order to cover their bases. The media consumption patterns of consumers are becoming less static and predictable as more options exist. If marketers aren’t in more places and drawing connections between brand messages in different venues they could be leaving sales on the table. Have you seen any strong uses of video that have enhanced and even boosted the performance of TV campaigns? WIll this become more of the norm or is it just for certain marketers and not for others? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

Video: A Talk With Newt...

ClickZ Politics interviews Vincent Harris of Harris Media about the impact Gingrich's campaign cuts might have on his digital efforts.

Was Analytics Google’s ...

We all like to debate the merits of Google’s social media efforts. It makes for some spirited back and forth but the truth is that Google is not a social media giant today and may never be. With today’s announcement of social media integration into Google Analytics we may now have a vision into one way that Google could put a hurt on the likes of Facebook and Twitter without having to be a social media giant. You see, the world of social media is a lot of hype and promotion. However, the industry gets painfully clumsy when talk of measuring success and failure comes around the table. With this product introduction, Google could hold an important key for marketers. As a result maybe, just maybe, marketers will be looking more closely at more social media channels (including one Google+ ) and see the value of being in even more places. The Google Analytics blog tells us …. as the social industry matures, marketers and web analysts need true outcome-oriented reports. After all, although social is growing in popularity, brand websites – not social networks – remain the place where people most often purchase or convert. That’s why we’re releasing a new set of Social reports within Google Analytics. The new reports bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about – allowing you to better measure the full value of the social channel for your business. We wanted to help you with 3 things: -Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions -Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs) -Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs I think by now you get the idea that you can find plenty of deep dive blog posts for report details around the industry blogs. That’s not necessarily where we play so I do invite you to “get into the weeds” with various reports like the Overview, Social Sources and the Activity Stream. All very cool things for sure and ones that will be jumped into with gusto by marketers who are starving for this kind of data. What strikes me about this entire thing is the list of Social Data Hub partners that is included in the Google Analytics offering that allows for further examination of social media impact with partner social outlets that include Blogger, Delicious, reddit, Google+, Read It Later, Disqus and about 15 more. Missing from that list, however, are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. So is this important? I believe so. If marketers will have a chance to find out more information about how certain social channels contribute to true KPI’s (like revenue and anything that drives it) they may start to pay more attention to these channels. Will that mean they will ignore Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? Of course not! That’s crazy talk. It could, however, help to shift their mindset away from the Big 3 a little bit more and help them discover ways to reach better sources of more measurable, and possibly more passionate, consumers. And it doesn’t hurt the folks in Mountain View that marketers can now see Google+ impact more directly either. With these reports available, Google may get brands to promote a Google+ presence more which, in turn, could bring more people to the social network thus growing numbers in ways that are impactful (ie more than just Internet industry insiders) rather than just for hype. Imagine if WalMart wanted to see the impact on sales of smaller outlets and started to say “Join Us on Google+” in their ads? Do you think John Q. Public might start to take a look? It makes sense if you think about it. While the ability to measure the impact of social media more precisely is indeed big news, the bigger story could be that Google has truly capitalized on what it does best: make sense of a lot of information. Let’s face it, even if Google hired the top social media minds the market’s preconceived notion of Google and social is that they are not in the same room together. Maybe Google has recognized that rather than fight that battle they can flank their social adversaries by doing what they do best rather than doing what they aren’t so great at. What’s your take on this offering? Are you excited? Would you like to see more insight into other smaller (and possibly more manageable and profitable) social options? These are interesting times we live in, aren’t they? Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Measuring Facebook: The...

Marketers brace for the impact of Timeline on the Facebook Insights metrics.