Intelligent Performance Marketing

Facebook Rewards Users For Watching Ads

Friday, May 6, 2011

Facebook introduced a new program yesterday that rewards its users with “Facebook Credits” for watching ads. This is an expansion of the partnership Facebook has with social game provider TrialPay and its DealSpot product.

The Skinny

This is a great move for Facebook, who has come under pressure for low click through rates of its ads. Nothing increases user engagement like bribery. However, advertisers should evaluate the quality of these clicks and determine the true value of this traffic. I am skeptical that incentivized traffic will lead to the same quality of customers as non-incentivized traffic. This is not to say that the traffic will not be valuable…just that it may have a different value.

Facebook is a major player in the online display advertising market and their market share continues to grow each year. It is critical for them to find a way to make their ads more valuable for advertisers.

Filed in Display Advertising, Social Media | |

RockMelt – Love it or Hate it?

Monday, November 22, 2010

We’ve been trying out RockMelt’s new social media browser at the office and the general consensus is….fun, but not when you’re trying to work.

Likes:

  • The Share button makes it super easy to post directly to your Facebook page or twtter account.  No more logging in (which let’s face it can sometimes take forever to load), no more finding an article, then going to a short URL service, then going to twitter.  One button does it all.

  • The search tool bar shows results without leaving the current page so you know what you’re getting before you commit to abandoning the page. It gives more control of which rabbit hole you go through…is that page better than the one I’m one? Do I really need to leave the page I’m on? Maybe I should change my search inquiry?

What I have a love/hate relationship with:

  • The App Edge – I love the icons with the update count. It reminds me to check the sites, but at the same time it helps me forget what I was doing in the first place. I’m trying to run a report and all of a sudden I’m knee deep in an article about Apple’s carbon fiber based iPad housing patent and have no idea what I was doing. So if I’m at home, I love the App Edge, if I’m at work, I hate it.
  • The Friend Edge – If you’re going to use the Friend Edge I definitely recommend “starring” the people you want to chat with. Otherwise you’ll spend half your day looking at pictures of your friend’s sister’s ex-boyfriend’s, friend from high school who just got married to that guy across the street. I also recommend you make yourself “offline” to avoid awkward old connections chatting you up when you’re in a meeting.

Overall, I really do like RockMelt – it’s fun, clean, and convenient. For work purposes I’d rather it integrate with Basecamp, but either way it’s going to be a game changer.

We have a couple invites so leave a comment if you’re interested!

Filed in NETexponent Fun, Social Media | |

New Media is People. BlogWorld 2010

Friday, October 22, 2010

Before the jet lag from the west coast finally catches up with me, I would like to take some time to recollect the experiences and insights I’ve obtained from attending BlogWorld in Las Vegas last week.

Last Wednesday, Sal Conca, Noelle Huter, Regina Black (Audible’s Marketing Manager) and I flew to Vegas to represent audible.com at BlogWorld & New Media Expo. The main reason we attended was to announce our brand new Podcast Sponsorship Program, in addition to finding bloggers who’d like to promote Audible through their affiliate program!

Audible Booth

Regina, Sal, Val, Noelle at the Audible Booth

The Audible Podcast Sponsorship Program is a separate affiliate program just for podcasters. If you have a podcast and you’d like Audible to sponsor it, all you have to do is visit www.audibletrial.com/signup. Once you sign up, we’ll set you up with copy points and your own custom URL to refer your listeners to. If your subscribers visit your URL, they will receive a FREE audiobook download and a 14-day free trial of the AudibleListener Gold Plan. Podcasters have seen success with promoting Audible because people who listen to podcasts also have an affinity for listening to audiobooks.

For more information about the sponsorship program and Audible, listen to our very own Sal Conca’s interview with BlogWorld radio. He really killed it on here.

BlogWorld was the perfect place to find podcasters because they had a ton of sessions on podcasting. For example, there was a session specifically about how to sponsor your podcast!

In addition to the podcasting stuff, overall this was definitely an interesting conference because we met so many unique individuals and learned about new social media companies and tools. For example, at the BlogWorld party on Thursday night, we met Nomadic Matt (a blogger who records his journeys all over the world) and Benny the language hacker who goes to different countries with the goal of mastering the language of each.  What fun jobs!

One innovative social media company is Paper.li, which is great for Twitter users (like me) who have trouble keeping up with all of the links that their friends share.  Now you can turn your twitter  into a daily newspaper that makes content easily digestible by categorizing your articles. Additionally, we were happy to be “booth neighbors” with Plixi (formerly TweetPhoto), which is a photo sharing network that integrates with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and FourSquare!

BlogWorld party at Liquid

Val, Sal, Noelle & Regina at the BlogWorld party at Liquid

Finally, the closing keynote made me really consider the “New Media” industry as a whole.  As Penn Jillette put it, “there is no new media.. it’s people.” He believes that, despite what critics may say, Twitter and social media actually INCREASE intimacy. They give people an outlet to talk about the things that matter the most to them and share their own opinions. His thoughts definitely made me reflect on how some businesses solely use social media to promote themselves or participate just because “everyone is doing it.” Instead, they should really learn to love New Media since it’s the closest they’ll ever get to their customers. A word of advice: embrace your followers, listen to their requests, and most of all: be honest.

BlogWorld Expo 2010 in my opinion was a great success and I hope to get the opportunity to attend next year. Thanks, Audible!

PS: Congrats to JohnnyJet for winning our booth giveaway – a brand new Amazon Kindle 3G!

Filed in Affiliate Marketing, Events, NETexponent Clients, Social Media | Tagged , , |