Apr
17
Additional sources digested
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Digesting Sources
Real Shop in Facebook World Breathes life into Mars. 2/21/08 Marketing Week.
New application on facebook, Mars Celebrate, allows users to send friends candy. The user pays via PayPal account and a message is sent to the friend. The friend enters their mobile phone number and an SMS barcode is sent to their phone so that they can redeem it at any local store.
People Quoted in the Article:
Lynette Cowan- Client Services director at the Light Agency
Developed Mars Celebrate, says “We began talks with Mars’ Agency Mesh marketing about a facebook sweetshop and they thought it was a perfect match” “It has to be the right brand to fit” – packaged goods
Henry Ellis- head of social media at search conversion agency Tamar
“Its at the mercy of the social graph as well. If Paris Hiliton had launched an application like this it wouldn’t have worked because people don’t like her, but people like Mars”
Blake Chandlee- Facebook UK commercial director
If a brand picks up on a consumer advocacy group that’s targeting them early enough, they can manage that in a much better way.”
Mark Charkin- Bebo’s UK head of sales
“If brands stamp in and try to force sales, it wont work”
“Just because virtual gifts are a success doesn’t mean gifts in an offline environment will work.”
“Sectors like DIY and finance are really looking to add value…You could develop a budget tracker application and off the back of that reinforce your brand. This could potentially lead to cross selling.”
Stone -Microsoft to pay $240 million for stake in Facebook
Stone, Brad. “Microsoft to pay $240 million for Stake in Facebook.” The New York Times. October 25, 2007.
About: This newspaper article discusses the importance of Facebook as a new operating system to run targeted advertising. The author talks about the feud going on between Google, which owns the majority of the internet advertising rights, and Microsoft, who fears they might lose control of the next generation of computer users.
Audience: This article was probably written for people interested in investing into some of these internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Myspace, The News Corporation)
Relevance: The relevance of this is that Microsoft was willing to pay a lot of money for a small part of this website because of fear of losing out on the market in the future.
Key Quotations: “The high valuation also represents a belief that Facebook is creating an important new operating system — one that exists on the Web instead of on personal computers. In May, it opened its platform, inviting other companies and third party developers to create tools for the site and share in the advertising revenues.”
“Facebook boosters say that social networking represents the future of online activity. Advertisers are attracted to these properties because they offer an opportunity to aim ads to particular users interested in their product or service.”
Morrissey – Slide balance user ad seesaw
Morrissey, Brian. “Can Slide balance user- ad seesaw?” Adweek 8/6/2007 Vol. 48 issue 49 p. 11.
About: Widgets are mini slideshows that appear on web pages to give advertisements. Surveys indicate they reach a fifth of all internet users.
Audience: Article written for advertisers and developers.
Relevance: The makers of Slide are trying to get their widgets seen by more people by allowing them to download custom shows. They are addressing the problem of internet advertising being too aggressive at times and scaring the public away.
Key Quotations: “Its alternative offers users the option of downloading branded skins on their photo slide shows, displaying their affinity for movies and series like Discovery’s Last Man Standing. AT&T Wireless has also signed on to sponsor a slideshow that will play a ringtone when a user lands on the page.”
Arrington- Project Beacon.
Arrington, Michael. “Ok heres part of what Facebook is announcing on Tuesday: Project Beacon.” TechCrunch.com. November 2, 2007.
About: Facebook is announcing the launch of project beacon, which is a way for Facebook to work with third parties to target advertisements at their users based on their buying history. Third parties give information about what a user buys in return for a back link to their site in the news feed.
Audience: General public, consumers, social network users.
Relevance: First news that project beacon is building a database of user information. Facebook wants to know personal buying histories of its users so that it can deliver its own custom fit advertisement to the users that will likely buy the product.
Key Quotations: “There are at least two pieces to the network. One is getting more data in about what users do when they aren’t at Facebook, allowing for far more targeted advertising. The second is running those ads, perhaps even off the Facebook network itself.”
Ante- Generation myspace is getting fed up
Ante , Holahan. “Generation Myspace is getting fed up” BusinessWeek 2/7/2008.
About: Study shows that Internet advertising boom is overhyped, people are getting tired of looking at ads on profile pages. The response rate for these ads is very low, making it hard to generate revenue from ads, Google might be losing money.
Audience: Probably written for investors or advertisers looking at the social network to place ads for their company
Relevance: My paper is about what is wrong with social network sites being turned into the next biggest advertising niche, and this article points out the elemental problems associated with this type of advertising campaign. Low user response rate, declining number of members to sites (total overall gain but declining rate of gain) lead to why they are trying to target more ads.
Key Quotations: “What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising,” says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, which places ads for customers on a variety of Web sites.
“The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore”
“Besides the slowing user growth and declining time spent on these sites, users appear to be growing less responsive to ads, according to several advertisers and online placement firms. If advertisers can’t figure out how to reverse these trends, social networking could end up as a niche market in the online ad world, smashing hopes and valuations across Silicon Valley.”
“Facebook introduced an ad program in November, called Beacon, that alerted users to the purchases of friends in hopes of spurring sales. More than 75,000 Facebook members signed an online petition against the effort.”
“video game publisher Green Screen, stopped advertising on MySpace last spring because of a 13-in-10,000 response rate. “It’s really hard to make money on that anemic click-through rate,” says Seremet.”
Karif- Social network sites open up
Karif, Olga. “Social Network Sites open up.” Business Week online. 2/13/2007, p10-10, 1p
About: Announcing that web sites are planning to open their Application Program Interface (API) to developers. Doing this in hopes of attracting more users to the site. In tech jargon, these are called APIs [application program interfaces], and they’re the software hooks used by developers to build new applications that can communicate glitch-free with existing programs.
Audience: Tech geeks, advertisers.
Relevance: Opening up API’s made everything subsequent to fact possible. Third party developers use APIs to make new applications.
Shmidt-Backlash against Facebook
About: Immediately after release of “news feed” and “mini feed” users openly display their problems they have with it. Groups with names like, “official petition against news feed” sprung up all over the social network allowing students to voice their problems with it.
Audience: General Public, social network users.
Relevance: Intrusive nature of news feed initially angered majority of users, however they eventually accepted it. If people had been more passionate about stopping facebook from being so intrusive, the news feed probably wouldn’t be a place to advertise.
Key quotations: “Sponsors now spend thousands to advertise on the site and politicians are also tapping into Facebook. For Zuckerberg, the News Feed allows Facebook users to better keep up with each other. “All the most interesting stuff that’s going on is presented to you,” Zuckerberg told TIME recently. “The analogy would be instead of an encyclopedia, it’s now news. We’re emphasizing what’s going on now.””
Facebook Unveils Facebook ads
Nov. 6, 2007
About: mark zuckerberg unveils an opportunity for businesses to send advertisements to the audience of their choice. “Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.”
Audience: General public, marketing executives
Relevance: Huge opportunity for third party developers to design pages to advertise from.
Key Quotations: Unique Ads with Social Actions “Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system.”