Facebook is diving into the interest graph with Interest Lists, a Twitter-like tool that Facebook says can help users “turn Facebook into your own personalized newspaper.”
“Interest Lists” …allow users to make mini-newsfeeds that include the status updates, posts, pictures and stories only from the people and pages a user has added to a certain topical or “interest” list.
The trend among social platforms to adopt interest graph features is most valuable to marketers, even more so than the social graph. Here, Facebook is taking after Twitter and 140 Proof as it starts to emphasize interests over connections.
Twitter Inc has updated its web site for all users with the design changes introduced for beta users in December 2011.
The changes are largely user-focused, but Twitter now offers brands who make heavy use of Twitter’s earned media features a few cosmetic upgrades to the basic user profile, including the ability to highlight a specific tweet at the top of the brand profile. Twitter also introduced a section on its site called “Discover,” which experiments with news curation.
Twitter’s paid media products, such as Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends, and Promoted Accounts, are unchanged.
More news about the redesign:
Why Big Publishers Are Looking to “Sponsored” Posts for Ad Revenue
The moves are part of the shift by many brands to think of themselves as publishers in their own right. As Todd Sawicki, chief revenue officer of Cheezburger, said, “It’s a form of advertising that the online world is uniquely qualified to distribute.”
Our friends at Pandora on brand relevance, social music, and what music to listen to in the office.
140 Proof CEO and CTOs Jon Elvekrog and John Manoogian III speak out in Forbes and in USA Today about the Interest Graph, Facebook’s Ad Platform CPM, and what it means for the social juggernaut to expand its targeting and dominate the feed.
In Forbes:
Jon Elvekrog, CEO, and John Manoogian III, CTO of 140 Proof, a social ad company: The cofounders, who work less with Facebook than with Twitter (thus the name, a play on the number of characters in a tweet), believe Facebook is only now starting to emerge from a long bout with what Elvekrog calls “Googleitis.” That’s the tendency of ad companies to create ad systems that look like Google’s, which is to say automated and focused on direct-response.
Such has been the case with Facebook’s ads until recently, they say, when the company has begun to see results from “a pretty big pivot toward a brand- and audience-centric approach” in the last six to 12 months, says Manoogian. Still, the pair thinks Facebook remains mostly dependent on direct-response ads, a business that Elvekrog notes “isn’t exactly broken” at close to $4 billion in revenues. “But that momentum may slow them from changing too much too quickly” toward the brand focus that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and most ad folks think should be its ultimate mainstay.
In USAToday:
Improving its CPM is a matter of Facebook “targeting” what users subscribe to and status updates from friends, says John Manoogian III, CTO of social advertising company 140 Proof. “They’re not really taking advantage of the feed. They’re still putting most of their effort into the right rail” ads on the side of member profiles, where both attention and clickthrough rates are lower. The feed is where users look, and where ads perform the best.
Score one for the tablet audience: from an e-commerce standpoint, they’re worth more than your average visitor.
Adobe’s newly released Digital Marketing Insights report found that tablet users in 2011 spent 21% more per purchase than desktop users.
Why is that? Demographics have a lot to do with it: if you can afford a tablet, you’re generally more affluent. And the fact that tablets are mostly used on the weekends — prime shopping times — plays into it too.
At 140 Proof, we’ve built tablet apps into our network, and they’ve proven popular with advertisers. If your client is looking for a way to increase brand awareness among affluent audiences like tablet owners, contact us at hello@140proof.com.
2011 was a huge year for social advertising. As agency teams reorganized and scrambled to take advantage of social as a modern media framework, the campaigns got bigger and smarter.
Marketers will face important challenges in 2012, as customers are more savvy than before and late-adopting brands enter the social stream. Take a look at the top 5 upcoming social stream trends of 2012: each one will affect brands’ marketing plan in different ways.
1. Online Video Is Getting Social
“It’s not only in the stream, but video is feeding back into the stream too”
Video is powerful. Brands are learning that adding video to a site increases traffic and improves SEO, and marketing email effectiveness increases 90% when video is used (Creattica). In the social stream, Twitter users post YouTube links 500 times a minute, and Facebook users watch 150 years’ worth of video every day.
What’s your brand’s social video strategy for 2012? Are you increasing the volume of video you produce and share, or building entire campaigns around video content?
(Soon, 140 Proof will unveil a special offering for brands interested in enhancing their video strategy. Stay tuned.)
2. Smartphones Rule
“Brands not mobilizing in 2012 are behind the curve”
The smartphone buying spree of 2011, plus the growing tablet market, means customers are now spread across many devices. Most adults 18-34 own smartphones, and Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley has predicted that mobile traffic will overtake desktop traffic by the end of 2014. This doesn’t mean that you need to hire a team to create apps for every platform, but it does mean you need:
- mobile-optimized digital assets and communications
- a mobile advertising strategy
- a thorough understanding of how customers use devices
At 140 Proof, we help our customers navigate social advertising on every platform, with platform-independent ad units as well as smartphone-only campaign strategies for brands who want to reach that slightly tech-leaning, slightly more affluent audience.
3. Social as a Second Screen Will Change TV Media
“Social will circle back on TV, influencing shows and ad buys”
Social buys are already tagging along to the broadcast TV buy, as we saw last year with Victoria’s Secret Fall TV Continuity (140 Proof’s #1 campaign of 2011).
Additionally, broadcasters are starting to recognize the value of social as the second screen for television. And the fact that TV shows have their own Facebook pages and all the show actors are active on Twitter…the line between social and broadcast will continue to blur.
Social advertising, as a complement to upfront or scatter buys, promises a strategic flexibility that’s tougher to get in the high-overhead world of TV production. TV shows will be designed and promoted with the knowledge that viewers use the second screen as a backchannel. Social advertising campaigns will be built up in advance of show premieres, in increasingly more ambitious efforts to shape public opinion.
4. Big Data Will Start Overwhelming Brands
“Social means big data, and social ads mean bigger data”
At 140 Proof, we’re already up to our ears in big data. Studying the interest graph means we analyze those many-to-many relationships, and the data points multiply like bunnies as our audience members click and Like their way through the Internet. Our Data Science team is dedicated to researching and reporting on the interest graph. And Luke Lonergan of EMC recently told Forbes of companies who underestimate the impact of Big Data on their business: “They are going to miss the opportunity or get overwhelmed. Those with data science teams begin to understand; others don’t see how much it can do.”
The kinds of big data created continues to grow in volume and change in kind, but now there’s a critical mass of teams getting a handle on it. In 2012, R&D teams will have more tools and resources to choose from, as data streams and online behaviors are better understood.
5. Brands That Can Speak It Real Will Win
“Good social strategy supports sustainable customer relationships”
A new surge of brands will be entering the social stream in 2012. This is the year of the late mainstream. If your brand already has a social media and a social advertising strategy, you’re ahead. Why? Because you’ve adopted that socialspeak that people expect in the stream: personal, more lighthearted, and direct.
Read “5 ways to get creative with 140 characters”
And it goes even deeper than tone. AdAge delved into the power of the sustainable relationship at the start of 2012:
The new imperative, according to Rogers, is “How do you, as a marketer, get the subset of the loyal customer who doesn’t just buy your product again but … writes those positive reviews? They share your links and retweet you on Twitter and post a photo of themselves with your product on Facebook and “like” you on Facebook and generate all these network conversations, which go back to the top of the funnel and influence other customers in your network at their own stage of awareness, consideration, preference or action.”
At 140 Proof, we help brands new to the social stream make a home there: by advising on campaign strategy, taking the message to the right audience, and adapting creative to the special tone of the social stream.
“What challenges is your team most concerned about in 2012?”
Let us know in the comments below, or on Twitter at @140ProofAds.
They’re dropping like flies at this year’s CES, the annual Consumer Electronics Show held annually in Las Vegas. Writers from major tech blogs like TechCrunch, Gizmodo, and Business Insider have all reported intense CES fatigue.
TechCrunch: CES is overwhelmingly large
Meanwhile, the show floor itself has evolved (or, really, devolved) into something so mammoth that it would be literally impossible to see all (or even most) of it. It takes up not one, not two, but three separate multi-million square foot halls… and even then, it spills out into ballrooms and side venues all over Vegas.
(Read more at “CES: A Wonderful Example of Not Knowing When to Stop”)
Gizmodo’s Mat Honan goes Ballardian on scene
I fantasize that I am the only one here, in a post-apocalyptic trade show. Alone among these elaborate booths. Free to scamper up on top of them. Free to grab what I want, and actually play with it, like a child. I want to see it all catch fire. I want to pour gasoline in the ducts and light a long fuse, and watch from the street as it burns and burns and burns. My guess is that the flames would be quite beautiful, colored by chemical washes and treated glass. My hangover is killing me.
(Read more at “Fever Dream of a Guilt-Ridden Gadget Reporter”)
For another view into the show and why covering it in the press is such a draining experience, try Steve Kovach’s “One Day in the Life of a Tech Blogger at CES” published by Business Insider.
Is money spent on CES worth it for brands?
Given the saturation of vendors, advertisements, and products at CES, does the conference generate a real return on the investment? Are brand awareness dollars better spent elsewhere than CES, or is the conference now simply a check-the-box expense for gadget manufacturers?
