The ClickZ editorial team would like to thank our readers who came to this blog on May 18, 2012 when we were experiencing technical difficulties on the ClickZ.com site. May 18 was a milestone date in online advertising history, as Facebook launched its IPO on the NASDAQ. In recent years, ClickZ has tracked the maneuvers of Facebook as they affect online advertisers closely, and now you can visit ClickZ.com as usual to read up on the latest on Facebook and anything else important in digital marketing news and expert opinion.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Friday, May 18, 2012
For Do-Not-Track Users, Tailored Twitter Won't Work
by Kate Kaye, ClickZ
Twitter will now acknowledge when users have enabled Do Not Track on Firefox browsers - as well as other browsers that enable DNT. As the news of Twitter's DNT decision was announced today, the company introduced a refined personalization system for suggesting accounts to follow - a system that's reliant in part on the type of tracking DNT would disable.
Here's what Twitter's recognition of DNT means in practice: When users who have DNT enabled on their browser visit any web page that features the Twitter tweet button (just about every content or e-commerce site has one) Twitter will not track that page visit. Typically, as soon as any page that features a social sharing button loads, such as a Facebook or Twitter button, it is recorded by the social platform associated with it.
In addition to Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsers also enable DNT mechanisms. Yahoo has also said it plans to implement one soon.
"Current adoption rates of Do Not Track are 8.6% for desktop users of Firefox and 19% for Firefox Mobile users," noted Alex Fowler, Mozilla global privacy and policy lead, in a blog post today.
To be clear, whether a user has DNT enabled or not, Twitter will still track when a user clicks to a tweet a link through the Twitter buttons on pages across the web.
The Federal Trade Commission's CTO Ed Felten broke the Twitter news today at an Internet Week event in New York. Twitter later acknowledged its support for DNT in its own tweet. Meanwhile, at least one Washington lawmaker has gone on record supporting it. Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey, a Democrat who often makes public statements about online and data privacy related issues, called Twitter an "industry leader," in a tweet and subsequent press statement.
Markey is one of many legislators backing various privacy bills. The co-chair of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, Markey co-sponsored the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011.
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry also praised Twitter's DNT decision in a press statement. Twitter's "announcement proves that exercising respect for people's choices on how, when, and where to have their information collected is something that responsible, competitive companies can do. I hope others will follow." Kerry has sponsored his own Privacy Bill of Rights bill.
The FTC currently is working with industry groups and the U.S. Commerce Department to develop a DNT standard. Meanwhile, privacy efforts are arguably more advanced in Europe, where large site publishers are scrambling to ensure compliance, or at least prepare for an EU privacy directive calling for a standardized global do-not-track framework by June.
In other Twitter news, the firm said today it will now customize suggested accounts to follow, but that feature won't work if users have DNT turned on in their browsers. "If you have DNT enabled in your browser settings, we will not collect the information that enables this feature, so you won't see any tailored suggestions," noted the company in a blog post.
"By recognizing which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days," said Othman Laraki, director, growth and international at Twitter in the post.
7 Big Facebook Advertising Stories Before the IPO
by Christopher Heine, ClickZ
Facebook's anticipated IPO today is just the latest chapter in an already fascinating 2012 for those watching the social media giant's advertising-related moves. The company's developers have been pushing out new ad products as well as iterations of older ones, while attempting to put a highly monetized global brand in front of Wall Street investors.
Indeed, it's been a busy four-and-a-half months for CEO Mark Zuckerberg & Co. And the recent road to a $100 billion valuation hasn't always been a smooth one.
Following are seven of the biggest Facebook developments this year from the lens of digital marketing news.
GM Takes Antisocial Stance
By now, nearly everyone has read about the auto brand's rather vague on-the-record assertion earlier this week to the Wall Street Journal that it was done buying Facebook ads. With Facebook's 900 million audience at hand, it is debatable whether GM's stance is temporary or long-term.
At any rate, GM's statements were startling for no other reason than that brands, agencies, and tech vendors have been typically uncomfortable speaking any kind of ill will toward Facebook in recent weeks. For GM to do so in this IPO week of all weeks seems to call out that it's not only time for Zuckerberg and his team to put on their so-called big boy pants for investors, but for budget-minded advertisers, too. If GM's bold remarks about Facebook signal the end of a walking-on-egg-shells era, it could be healthy for the digital advertising community.
Instagram Purchase Bolsters Mobile Aspirations
Facebook has been routinely criticized by users for its less-than-stellar mobile app. As a result, industry watchers have questioned whether Facebook can effectively monetize its platform on mobile.
The purchase of popular photo-sharing mobile app Instagram, for $1 billion, could address that shortcoming. What Facebook does with Instagram to bolster its mobile ad products could be one of the more interesting marketing industry stories going forward this year. For web promotions, Starbucks and other brands have begun using Instagram-filtered photos in their Facebook Premium Ads in recent weeks.
Premium Ads Get Mobile Distribution
Facebook announced multiple ad products at its marketing conference, dubbed fMC, during late February. A key revelation: mobile ads were finally part of the eight-year-old social media company's marketing services.
For Premium Ads purchases, companies started getting promotions delivered in mobile users' news feeds if they or their friends liked the brand. While mobile ads are not being sold separately, the development was important for Facebook to evolve toward offering marketing to smart phone users.
A Low-Risk Groupon Alternative
Also at fMC, Facebook Offers - a deals platform for retailers and CPG companies - was unveiled as a low-risk platform that could attract businesses large and small. Facebook, for the time being, appears committed to letting brands use Offers for free, under the idea that enough of them will buy ads to further distribute the deals on the social site, effectively monetizing the feature. At no cost, the Offers can be rolled through the news feeds of brand fans at the same frequency as regular posts.
Conversely, Groupon and other deals players like LivingSocial and Google Offers take up to 50 percent of the sales cut when consumers redeem vouchers. More than anything, Facebook Offers has probably made the company more lucrative as a one-stop-shop for branded social media management, including social commerce.
Improved Page Insights
Facebook also made its Page Insights a real-time product in February. The product upgrade was designed to rid the system of lags that, according to marketers, sometimes had lasted several days.It was the next logical step after the social media firm diversified its analytics package during October 2011. Before then, in terms of metrics on the social site, brands were essentially limited to how many "likes" their posts and ads were accruing.
The enhanced version permit brands to more clearly see what is working versus what isn't. It also gives brands a better view into why they were generally investing in the social site in the first place. The new metrics included a buzz gauge called People Talking About This, as well as Friends of Fans, Weekly Total Reach, and a dashboard feature that lets marketers see analytics for up to 500 brand posts.
Logout Page Becomes Ad Real Estate
A smaller but intriguing fMC announcement involved offering brands takeover-styled ads on Facebook's user logout pages. Ford was one of the first brands to purchase the ad unit, appearing on the pages in late March.
People visiting the Facebook logout page were greeted with an image of the sleek 2013 Mustang, in black. It was a still of the video, which could be played directly on the logout page. The large image was accompanied by the post, "Seen the latest Mustang spot? Watch now, then grab a Mustang badge."
Unlike GM, Ford remains confident in its social-heavy strategy, telling ClickZ earlier this week that it wanted to "accelerate" such efforts rather than scale them back.
App Center Will Likely Create New Ad Inventory
Last week, Facebook unveiled App Center, a platform where its users can search for mobile and web apps while also seeing recommendations based on their social graphs. It caught the attention of mobile marketers who lament how hard it's been to get their apps in front of consumers. Julie Renwick, director of mobile for ad agency Ogilvy North America, characterized the move as "a game shifter."
To be clear, Facebook won't sell products in its App Center. Instead it will likely promote apps that use the Facebook log-in, allowing the company to accrue even more consumer data and potentially offer advertisers better targeting.
But it's plausible to imagine Facebook monetizing the App Center by offering developers featured spots for mobile and web. Just as is the case with buying Facebook ads for "likes" on the site, brands may want to maximize their app real estate by promoting downloads.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Women and Swing State Visitors Big on Facebook
by Kate Kaye, ClickZ
Hitwise released several data points yesterday about Facebook's audience in preparation for the social site's highly anticipated IPO, planned for Friday. The web measurement firm determined that one in every five page views in the U.S. happened on Facebook. In addition to other staggering traffic and time-spent numbers, Hitwise revealed some factoids that should help marketers get a better grasp on the site's audience composition.
Political advertisers will be interested to know 10 states, including 2012 battlegrounds Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina, account for 52 percent of visits to Facebook. California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Georgia complete the year-to-date list.
Hitwise also reported that users in several states including one other battleground state - Iowa - are more likely to visit Facebook than the online population as a whole, on average this year. Also on that list are West Virginia, Kentucky, Maine, Vermont, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Alabama.
And, while it doesn't match the huge gender gap on Pinterest, where some reports show upwards of an 80 percent female audience, Facebook does skew toward women, according to Hitwise. The firm said 56 percent of Facebook's audience are women.
Where does the largest volume of visitor traffic to Facebook emanate from? The New York City DMA, reported Hitwise.
Keep in mind the Hitwise data "does not include all mobile traffic," which, if factored in could alter the numbers presented here.
Some more Facebook U.S. audience data from Hitwise:
- The site attracted 9 percent of all U.S. web visits in April 2012.
- Facebook brought in more than 400 billion page views this year and more than 1.6 billion page views per week.
- In April 2012, 96 percent of visitors to Facebook were returning after a previous visit.
- On average, users visit Facebook for 20-minute intervals.
Nielsen also has some recent Facebook stats. The measurement firm said in March time spent by U.S. users on Facebook averaged 7 hours.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Centro Throws Down Gauntlet to Ad Exchange Arbitragers
by Kate Kaye, ClickZ
The firm, which has a legacy of working directly with local and vertical media publishers to connect them with advertisers, has partnered with data management and security company Krux to launch the private, invitation-only exchange. The exchange will include inventory exclusively from premium publishers, according to Centro, which says it will help its publisher partners garner higher CPMs for ads because it won't let their audience data leak onto other exchanges. It also will allow publishers more control over the advertisers buying their inventory, the company claims.
Media logistics firm Centro is launching an ad exchange to help combat what the company believes is dragging down ad prices paid to publishers: mainly the current ad exchange ecosystem. The Centro Brand Exchange will operate differently from others, and promises to protect publisher's audience data that can sometimes be bought and sold by exchanges without publisher consent.
Ad exchanges "failed on their promises to deliver" higher CPMs to publishers, said Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker (photo, right), who met with ClickZ last week to discuss the new offering. "Exchanges and [supply side platforms] haven't really helped publishers," he added.
He argues that arbitrage - the buying and selling of publisher's audience data by several middlemen - has become the name of the ad exchange game. He suggested many advertisers go to exchanges to target their ads to audiences of those premium publishers when the users are elsewhere online, thus reaching the audience at a much lower cost than when sold direct from publishers - and in arguably less valuable inventory. The result, said Riegsecker, is that the audience that the publisher pays to produce valuable content in order to attract does not reap the ad dollars it legitimately deserves in return.
"We're putting the rest of the market on notice to say, 'Guys, this has to stop.'"
The buying and selling of digital audience data has become a big business, and it could be difficult for Centro to build up enough inventory to make it worthwhile for advertisers to want to buy through the exchange. Still, Centro's promise to advertisers is higher quality inventory than what's in other exchanges. Riegsecker said he will appeal to publishers to participate by exposing the data dissemination problem.
Centro was founded by Riegsecker 11 years ago, and got its start helping advertisers buy local digital ad inventory. The Chicago-based company has 300 employees, 26 offices, and more than 400 agency clients, according to Riegsecker. Centro recently re-branded to highlight its evolution to a data-driven media buying and selling management technology and services firm.
The company also recently named members to its board, including Andrew Swinand (above photo, left), founding partner of Abundant Venture Partners and former Starcom MediaVest Group president, global operations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)