However are social networks like Facebook going to successfully monetize? You've heard that question to death by now. It's an old subject still without a clear answer.
A significant step in the right direction would be to make it much easier for digital marketing agencies to work with social networks.
At times I can find Facebook very frustrating. Take their payment system for example. Facebook will not issue monthly invoices. They won't bill you. Not even the most simple of all finical paperwork. I had my shower replaced a few months ago and the plumber, a sole trader, was able to invoice me! Why can't Facebook do it?
Instead Facebook will only accept credit card payments. Great! You try sorting that out if you're dealing with a hundred Facebook campaigns and nearly as many individual advertisers. Imagine some of those advertisers are franchises without a central budget. It quickly becomes a maze. As someone in our finance department pointed out; "This basically minimises their work and dumps all the admin onto us."
If I'm allowed a bit of paranoia and selfishness then I'll point out the buffer effect too. The money is spent at Facebook. We pay Facebook and the money goes from out account. There could then be a gap before the client pays us... we're paying out before we get paid ourselves (not something affiliate networks do, for example). At the very least that costs us the interest the money could have been earning in the bank.
This is not how big agencies like to work. If Facebook wants to keep the interest of big advertising agencies then it needs to get with the program. Google versus Facebook? In terms of dealing with agencies Google is miles and miles ahead.
GRUMP!
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Facebook needs to improve how it works with agencies
Thursday, April 17, 2008
MSN flying high, Google and Yahoo doing equally badly
Ah. A chart that shows MSN kicking Google into touch. How often do you see that?
The chart, of course, comes from Facebook's newly launched Lexicon. It's great fun to play with.
MSN likely does this well because Facebookers will be inviting each other to chat on 'MSN' - meaning Live Messenger.
Here's a chart that was used to try and stoke the heated console debates we're prone to!
Finaly's first comment was, "Can you get UK specific data?". Sadly not. Not yet.
It's a shame because if you could drill into geographies then you'd have a great tool for predicting retail buzz. Which toys are going to be the big sellers at Christmas? Facebook's Lexicon could tell you. I fear it's a little bit of a blunt instrument for the retail vertical now. It should work for travel (to an extent, at least for hotel room prices) and any international topic.
Monday, March 10, 2008
What Facebook Germany looks like - and problems
Hopefully this isn't another 'me too' post about the launch of Facebook Germany.
I thought it would be fun to see the choice Germans face when they log into Facebook today. Pick your language.
I'm not actually in either of the bigmouthmedia German offices. I'm in Gatwick, London, England (oh! why am I flying the day the 'storm of the winter' hits the south cost?) and am on a T-Mobile hotspot.
I've already touched on Google's problems with these 'annoying' hotspots with confusing IP geolocation so I thought I should point out that sites like Facebook are equally effected...
... except, well, does Facebook has less of an excuse? I've never had a German ad shown to be at Facebook. My profile clearly says I'm United Kingdom based. Is that language option box a compromise between my profile and my current IP address? I suspect not... I suspect Facebook is simply checking by IP geolocation this week.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Fishticuffs
MSN is doing a good job of using display marketing to promote a social media campaign. To be honest it's pretty rare to see this; you tend to need an agency with an excellence in search before you'll find someone okay at social media and you tend to need to find a traditional media buyer before you can find anyone in display advertising. Yeah; there are some notable exceptions!
Animated skyscrapers like the one you see to the left are appearing all over Facebook - and at pretty generous frequency caps too.
A click takes you through to www.fishticuffs.co.uk. Yeah. That's a .co.uk address so if any of you aren't in the UK and are seeing the Fishticuff banners then let me know - as that would be poor targeting.
The main way to get to the game - and it is a game - is via the Live Messenger actions -> games menu. It's a two player game. You take turns slapping each other with fish.
A clever bit is that you can access better weapons/more fish by winning often. As a result there's a built in incentive to encourage your friends to play. 
Thank you to Wenders for letting me hit you with fish in order to demonstrate the game.
At the end of the game users are given the option of syncing in to either Facebook or Bebo. The process is fairly straight forward.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Facebook facts you might not know
I've been lucky enough to enjoy a presentation of the new Facebook Ads by Owen Van Natta who is Facebook's COO. (btw; isn't Van Natta the best surname ever!)
I'm not going to blog my thoughts about the new Social Ads! Ha! Sorry. That analysis goes straight to work, I'm afraid! Well... maybe a little. Beacon looks interesting and I suspect we start to see some other social sites (even forums) start adding Beacon enhanced events (such as starting a thread) and eBay will love it! Pulse becomes a hugely important social media analytics tool if Facebook lives up to today's promises.
Okay! Some stats!
Facebook has 80 applications that have over 1,000,000 users.
Since Facebook Ads launched last night over 100,000 'ad pages' have been created. I know they're free but that's incredible! (Have you noticed any 'fan' mentions in your news feed or mini feed yet? I've not).
London is Facebook's biggest city audience (so bigger than New York, LA, Tokyo, etc) and the UK is the third largest geographic is the system. If I can read my scribbles correctly then I wrote down there are 7,000,000 UK users.
Facebook recruits 250,000 new users per day. That means it doubles in size ever 6 months.
50% of Facebook users return to check their profiles every day. With (currently) 50,000,000 users that means there are 25,000,000 people checking out Facebook each day.
Facebook serves 40,000,000 impressions every day.
I was sitting beside *censored* from MySpace (who work's Display department knows well) and the only comment I could get from him was 'interesting'. Darn. Far from the blogging scoop/scandal that I was hoping for!
[This is one of my Engage 07 posts.]
