The biggest tech businesses in the world today depend on open source technology like BSD, GCC, and Linux, but few universities are teaching students how to build scalable, profitable startups based on a purely open source approach. Just recently 140 Proof CTO @jm3 was honored to be invited to the Hack Harvard tech meetup in Cambridge, MA to lecture about Open Source and Big Business. It was a great time!
Slides:
We’re pleased to announce our new social ad solution for political campaigns.
Political Stumping Gets Social With New Ad Solution for Political Campaigns
140 Proof, the leading social ad platform for Twitter and Facebook, today launched a new social ad solution for political campaigns that allows candidates to reach large groups of targeted voters within the social stream. 140 Proof social ads enable candidates to amplify their campaign efforts and extend their reach beyond existing followers, putting their messages at the top of the social news feeds of over 100 million potential voters.
Candidates Can Extend Social and Traditional Campaign Efforts Beyond Existing Followers
Whether candidates just want to broaden the reach of their existing tweets and posts, or they’re out to own the social conversation around a Presidential debate, 140 Proof social ads are a natural extension of any candidate’s ongoing campaign efforts. 140 Proof creates real-time, top-of-the-feed ads directly from a candidate’s tweets, allowing them to conduct far-reaching conversations with social audiences at the precise moments that are relevant to their campaigns.
For example, candidates can use 140 Proof social ads to:
- Reach new potential voters: a candidate’s regular tweets and posts are only seen by existing followers; 140 Proof gets these tweets in front of millions of new potential voters.
- Capitalize on breaking news: 140 Proof allows candidates to be first out of the gate with commentary on breaking news and events (and even opponent missteps).
- Augment crisis communications: when candidates must react to negative ads or campaign gaffes, 140 Proof gives them a powerful tool for rapid and far-reaching response.
- Enhance TV and video ad buys: candidates can use 140 Proof to run ads that include a video within the ad itself, drawing more attention to viral campaigns or TV spots.
- Own the social conversation around live events: candidates can run real-time campaigns targeting voters who are watching and commenting on live political broadcasts while on Twitter or Facebook.
Instantly Reach Targeted Groups of Voters on Twitter and Facebook
140 Proof also gives candidates the ability to precisely target these ads to their most coveted audiences, using technology that segments voters based on whom they follow, keywords used in their social streams and other publicly available keys from their social graph. Campaigns can work with 140 Proof to customize their own voter targets, or they can leverage 140 Proof’s pre-built political audience “clusters”, such as Swing Voters; Soccer Moms; NASCAR Dads; Greens; Tea Party; Union Interested; Hispanic; We are the 99%; and many others.
“Twitter and Facebook have become the de facto political platforms that decide elections, and experts are projecting that the ad spend in social media in this year’s election will be 15 times greater than in 2008. To be competitive in the social era, candidates will need to look beyond their existing followers and use tools such as 140 Proof to extend their reach,” said Jon Elvekrog, CEO of 140 Proof. “Candidates should be using their Twitter account as their mouthpiece, and 140 Proof social ads as their megaphone.”
Learn More about 140 Proof’s Political Offerings
All political stories from the 140 Proof Blog
140 Proof Debuts Social Ad Service for Politicians (Vator.tv)
How Political Campaigns Can Leverage Social Media Interview with 140 Proof CTO @jm3 (Ad Operations Online)
We recently had the privilege of taking part in an amazing event to help young startup entrepreneurs.
Far from Silicon Valley tech IPOs and infectious New York startup buzz, some innovators in Michigan are humbly jump-starting their own startup renaissance. The University of Michigan’s Center for Entrepreneurship, an incubator for hackers and hustlers from the UMich Computer Science and Business schools, is creating opportunities to inspire student to launch world-changing startups.
The CFE recently organized a trip for 80 entrepreneurially-minded students to visit San Francisco and Silicon Valley companies, touring offices of growing startups like Twitter, Facebook, Twilio, and others. 140 Proof was asked to make one of its co-founders available for a “Founders Panel” on entrepreneurial life in San Francisco Silicon Valley. We happily accepted, and shared several stories about 140 Proof’s growth as a scalable business, the importance of teams and community, and the primacy of the Valley.
Although the event was professionally recorded, the videos and audio files aren’t up yet, so please enjoy an audio recording of my portion of the panel (no video):
Extra special thanks to Sam Schillace (@sschillace); creator of Google Docs, Dick Costolo (@dickc); CEO of Twitter, and Dug Song (@dugsong); CEO of Duo Security, for joining us on the panel and at this awesome event. We had a great time.
To any students or other CFE members who attended the San Francisco event: we’d love to hear your feedback on the panel, what you learned, what you liked, what you didn’t, etc. Feel free to ping us on Twitter (@140ProofAds) or here in the comments. Thanks!
— @jm3
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was another blockbuster event. Between the sprawling vendor booths and the late-night sponsored dinners and cocktail parties, there were lots of interesting discussions on the future of mobile.
During the 140 Proof presentation on the Mobile-Local panel, we talked about a few key trends in the mobile space. Some of those topics are summarized below.
Mobile advertising is going to have another huge growth year in 2012. One of the most compelling trends in mobile is the desire to deliver audience targeting capabilities to brand advertisers on the mobile device. Of course, here at 140 Proof, we agree that targeted mobile advertising is the future. We’ve been on the cutting edge of leveraging the Interest Graph generated from social feeds to accurately match advertisers and users’ interests for almost two years – via both web and mobile applications.
Mobile payments are getting a lot of attention. Beyond Square and LevelUp, there appears to be at least a half-dozen well-capitalized startups trying to dominate the mobile payment space. The jury is out as to when or if a phone-based payment solution will ever replace the tried-and-true magnetic strip of the Visa-MasterCard duopoly. Sure the phone will replace watches for teens and twenty-somethings, but carrying a wallet is a deeply entrenched habit to break. As long as we still need to carry cash or a driver’s license, is it really that big of a deal to carry around a magnetic strip?
Social is mobile. Now this is a trend that we see unfolding in front of our eyes. Not only is there a huge macro shift to mobile computing devices (smartphones and tablets), but social media is itself becoming more and more mobile. There will always be “research use” of social networks on the desktop and certainly the “taking a social network break while at your work computer” trend wont going away anytime soon. However, the real-time nature and bite-sized consumption aspect of the social feed is perfectly suited to frequent mobile access.
Mobile local will take off. Everyone has heard the recurring tall tale of Starbucks texting you a coupon when you happen to be near a store. This has been technically possible for close to a decade, but the reality is that it simply has not materialized. Advertisers simply aren’t spending big to deliver location-based deals like this. The in-store or near-store mobile ad model based on a push system hasn’t attracted many big brand advertisers. However, a pull system focused on long-tail advertisers (small businesses) bidding to move unsold inventory (empty seats at a hair salon or excess muffins that will go stale in a day) is an interesting spin on mobile local. That said, cracking open the long-tail local advertising market is a big challenge and probably worth a blog post of its own.
I hope you enjoyed the wrap up. In 12 months, we’ll see how many of the trends actually take hold.
SAN FRANCISCO — 140 Proof co-founder John Manoogian III (@jm3) took to the stage yesterday with Intel, Starcom, Ogilvy, Brightroll, and others to bring the gospel of social ad innovation to the people.
Panel: Social Ads: Did Anyone See the Revolution Coming?
A lot has changed in social advertising, to the point where many best practices from less than five years ago are at best irrelevant and at worst detrimental to smart businesses. Social’s sphere of influence is no longer confined to social networks, and the big data generated by sites like Twitter and Facebook influences countless business and branding decisions. Application-based ads are still in play, but they’ve been surpassed by data-driven units influenced by the interest graph (140 Proof) and the social graph (Facebook). Social advertising vendors, analytics companies, and data experts will be asked to share their thoughts on social advertising, discuss how it has evolved, what it means, and how we can look at this evolution to predict where it’s going.
Tweet highlights from panel attendees:
Embedded Tweet www.140proof.com
— John Manoogian III (@jm3) March 21, 2012
Embedded Tweet www.140proof.com
— John Manoogian III (@jm3) March 21, 2012
Embedded Tweet www.140proof.com
— John Manoogian III (@jm3) March 21, 2012
Embedded Tweet www.140proof.com
— John Manoogian III (@jm3) March 21, 2012
Embedded Tweet www.140proof.com
— John Manoogian III (@jm3) March 21, 2012
Embedded Tweet www.140proof.com
— John Manoogian III (@jm3) March 21, 2012
Thanks very much to all who attended, commented, asked questions, and helped spread the world!
Metrics have always been central at 140 Proof — the word “Proof” in our name has always stood for measurable engagement from users, and one of 140 Proof’s technology team’s many firsts was to launch the first social ads platform with full third-party tracking support (DART, Atlas, Mediaplex, etc).
But measurement and analytical discipline have always clashed with wild-eyed creative strategies with big ideas and complicated implementations. 140 Proof and social titans Mekanism, Formspring, and BBDO gathered with @jolieodell in Austin for SXSWi to battle out the age-old conflict between creativity and measurement.
Amazing turnout for #SXepicbattle with @KMaverick @harrisja @jm3 & SarahJane Sacchetti. Very interesting convo.360.io/ZuX9cY
— rachelsklar (@rachelsklar) March 13, 2012
#SXepicbattle panel has been informative, insightful and honest. No BS from these panelists, which is super refreshing. #sxsw
— Erin Rech (@therecher) March 13, 2012
Download the slides
Track the session on Lanyrd
Twitter Highlights
“Essentially, the client is buying a metrics report at the end. Here’s who we hit.” – @jm3 #SXepicbattle #SXSW #HBatSXSW
— Justin Hastings (@jrh_creative) March 13, 2012
Of all #sxsw panels #sxepicbattle headed by @sf_sj was one of the best - great panel, loved the summary. Panels are tricky, this was great!
— Johanna Rehnvall (@JohannaRehnvall) March 13, 2012
Very practical with a #sxsw panel who has prepared summary tweets #sxepicbattle :) ow.ly/i/vtYB
— Johanna Rehnvall (@JohannaRehnvall) March 13, 2012
Thanks…
To everyone who attended, shared knowledge, asked tough questions, and helped make SXSW a great event this year. Extra special thanks to Sarahjane for being an awesome moderator.
For the nerds: please enjoy a 360º panorama of the room by the gracious Rachel Sklar
We stopped by General Assembly in New York to visit friends at some of the seed-stage startups incubating there. Amazing, inspirational space. Stay tuned for a longer post on our visits to the IPG Media Lab, coming soon, and see you all in Austin this week at our panel, Epic Battle: Creativity vs Discipline! 9:30 AM, RISE AND SHINE, friends!
We’re pleased to announce a new option for brand advertisers who are taking advantage of the power of social. Our new, in-app social video ad unit gives brands a powerful new way to drive views and engagement around their videos in social.
Given the rise of social as a second screen for television and the explosion of video in the mobile space, 140 Proof video ad units are positioned to increase engagement around videos and capture the buzz the video campaigns generate.
So what makes the new ad unit so exciting, and why will it be effective for brands?
Like the company’s existing 140-character text units, the videos can show up in the social stream of any app running 140 Proof ads (and yes, they should work on mobile). Users should be able to click and watch the video without leaving the page, rate it, and bring up a feed of all the tweets mentioning the advertiser’s hashtag.
140 Proof CEO Jon Elvekrog (@jonelvekrog):
Our data show that a large percentage of social stream ads include a link to a video. Brands can boost engagement around their videos by creating a rich, native viewing experience that is totally integrated into the consumer’s use of the app and doesn’t take them away from the social stream.
140 Proof CTO John Manoogian (@jm3):
The new video ad unit lets brands get more value out of that expensive 30-second TV commercial that lots of viewers aren’t seeing, since they’re now watching shows on Tivo or Hulu or (ahem) BitTorrent. The social video ad unit lets brands reach those users in a context where they are already looking for ‘the next big thing.’
The new 140 Proof in-app social video ad unit includes:
- Creation and hosting of a customized video viewing experience;
- A state-of-the-art HTML5 Video Player that allows consumers to watch the video from the page;
- An In-App Video Rating widget consumers can use to rate the video within the page;
- A Discussion widget that creates a feed of all tweets referencing the client’s hashtags.
To find out how to integrate social video into your campaigns, get in touch with us at hello@140proof.com.
Read more on TechCrunch: 140 Proof Introduces Video to Its Social Ad Network
