Facebook mobile ads offered better-than-expected results at the end of Q3, 2012 and now some analysts believe Facebook mobile ads revenue will overtake Google mobile ads by the end of 2012.
Reporting firm eMarketrt predicts that Google will generate $339 million in mobile ad revenue in 2012, a large increase fro the company previous estimates that ranged from $45 million to $100 million.
The firm notes that Facebook is expected to grab an 18.4% of the mobile ad market compared to Google’s current 17% share. Google is also expected to be down from 23% of the mobile ad market in 2011. read more
Espalhe Guerilla Marketing wants to take two random Facebook users and have them tie the knot and they want to do it in celebration of a new ad campaign they are running for cough drop company Halls Brazil.
The marketing firm announced through the Halls Brazil Facebook page that they will work to select to random strangers who are willing to tie the knot.
Esphale was able to roll out the viral campaign to more than 3 million Facebook fan followers in which they say this new approach takes the idea of “online dating” to a whole new level by merging it with new media advertising, social media and a once in a lifetime “giveaway.’
To participate users post their photo to the Facebook page and then choose a partner. Those “contestants” can then also choose their own bridal party.
Once contestants have been entered public voting will begin and the two “winners” will be flown to Las Vegas where they will get married in the famous Little White Chapel. read more
Facebook ad engagement in the United States hasn’t been kind to advertisers falling by 8% in the final quarter of 2011 and Q1 2012. While engagement has taken a steep decline Facebook has begun to charge 41% more money for ads worldwide.
Part of the ad drain comes from Facebook’s saturation of ad spots, going from four to seven ads on many pages, a consideration that often leads to lower click-rates as site users have more ad choices to choose from.
Facebook has been able to increase ad prices dramatically while stuffing pages because demand is still outweighing supply. Fro example last year Facebook last year displayed 372 billion ad impressions in almost 200 countries.
Advertising for Facebook however goes beyond simple click-through driven ads, the site needs to prove that it can drive traffic to major sites and Facebook increased its click-through rates for news sites by 196% thanks in large part to the company’s social readers which allows company’s such as Yahoo, The Washington Post and others to display recently read stories on users Facebook walls. read more
Each day nearly 37 million Facebook users click on the “Log Out” option of their account and now Facebook has announced plans to capitalize on those log out requests.
The company revealed on Wednesday that starting in April when a user clicks “Log Out” they will be served with “Log-Out” ads or “Stories.”
According to Mike Hoefflinger, director of customer marketing at Facebook nearly 37 million people log out of Facebook each day.
Listed as one of four new “Premium” ad spots during the Facebook Marketing Conference in New York the premise behind the new spots is to shift ads to brand Pages that don’t look like traditional ads but are instead based on status updates, questions and videos that are generally more interactive for users. read more
With hundreds of millions of Facebook users now engaging on the social network through the use of Android, iPhone and iPad apps it was only a matter of time before the company began serving ads to those platforms and that time now appears to be as early as March.
Sources close to the world’s largest social network say executives at Facebook have already discussed proposed advertising plans with advertising agencies and plan to offer paid “Featured stories” in mobile news feeds as a way to supplement ad space on smaller mobile device displays.
By mixing in sponsored ads with friends feeds users don’t lose screen space and only receive ads that match their interests and the interests of their friends.
Facebook has estimated that almost half of its 845 million users access the network via mobile devices, even one ad served per user per day would mean billions of new ad impressions for the network. read more
Facebook on Tuesday announced that “Sponsored Stories” are now appearing on the pages of each users Facebook account via the new “ticker” option located on the far upper right hand corner of their screens.
Still under a great deal of scrutiny by Facebook users who don’t like the new News Feed and Ticker revamp that rolled out in September the new feature places ads directly inside a users ticker right next to other status updates, link shares and other information from their friends list.
The plan is part of Facebook’s inevitable push to have as much information as possible placed in front of users, for example Spotify playlists can now be seen in a users profile.
Speaking about their decision to add the sponsored feature into their news feed a Facebook rep noted:
“Sponsored Stories now appear in Ticker on the home page, Sponsored Stories are an extension of News Feed, so we think it’s natural that they appear in Ticker.” read more
Facebook took some time at “Advertising Week” in New York to announce a new type of ad format as well as a new analytics tool meant to encourage brands to post more “compelling content.”
Based on the new format an ad will expand if a friend “Likes” the brand. Once expanded the new user will be able to see other comments about the brand while adding their own comment.
The ads are added to “Sponsored Stories” and “Social Ads” which tell you if a friend interacts with a brand.
According to Facebook their own research with Like Ads supporting a Starbucks campaign showed that fans spend 8% longer interacting with the new ad format compared to other formats currently offered by the social network. read more
I don’t get Facebook’s advertising policies, I constantly receive crappy ads asking me to lose weight, work from home and perform other mundane tasks that I don’t want or need, yet when someone tries to send me to their Google Plus profile in the form of an advert, a site where even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a profile those ads are deleted and the advertiser is banned from the networks promotions system.
That’s the exact scenario that happened to Michael Lee Johnson this week when he created a Facebook ad which asked Facebook users to join him via his Google Plus profile.
Not only did Facebook shut down Michael’s Google Plus ad campaign, they shut down all of his other advertising campaigns on the social network and then banned him from using the advert system all together, even for non-Google Plus ads. read more
Epic Unfriend: Have 8 million Facebook users in US, Canada, and Europe pushed the deactivate button?
Facebook lost nearly 8 million active users in May this year and posted lower new user registrations in May, leading to speculations that the social networking giant’s target of reaching 1 billion users by February might take a bit longer.
Notwithstanding that Goldman partners put a stamp of approval on the $50 billion valuation for Facebook early this year, being the biggest and most active social networking site on the planet could provide strong support for appraisals of share prices should Facebook push through with an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2012. That is if Facebook actually opens up more of its financial documents and trumps the vital signs of LinkedIn.
Apart from dreams of pouring over the Great Fire Wall of China like a tsunami and continuing to find new user growth in late adapter countries, there is the idea that Facebook’s ubiquitous presence through social media stream integration and comments on sites will continue to propel its growth in years to come.
Facebook wants users to watch entire ads from their advertisers and to accomplish that goal they are now paying site visitors to view adverts. Launched on Thursday the company is now offering Facebook Credits to watch certain video based ads.
Facebook Credits can be used to purchase in-app products, such as products found in Farmville and they can be used on Facebook’s new Facebook Deals platform, a competitor to Groupon that offers daily deals with offers often discounted 50% or more on retail goods and services.
The price for watching an ad isn’t huge, right now just one Facebook credit ($.10), but it does signal a new way to engage users who might typically exit video ads as they appear. read more
Facebook mobile ads offered better-than-expected results at the end of Q3, 2012 and now some analysts believe Facebook mobile ads revenue will overtake Google mobile ads by the end of 2012.
