With the Beta launch of Graph Search today, Facebook aims to let users search through all their friends’ data in one place — rather than having to hop from profile to profile, page to page. CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes the initiative as a third pillar alongside its other core social products, Newsfeed and Timeline. “Graph […]
Moontoast has snagged a $5 million Series B round to support its social advertising product, which aims to remove barriers to engagement on Facebook with richer interaction capabilities. The three-year-old company, based in Nashville and Boston, will use the money to further develop Moontoast’s Social Activation Engine, and to hire up in biz dev, sales […]
Last month we noted that search intent data had come to the Facebook Exchange, in the form of a partnership with search retargeter Chango. The deal represented something of an incursion by Facebook on terrain that’s long been lucrative for Google. Now Facebook has done it again, adding search retargeting firm Simpli.fi to the FBX […]
As part of what it describes as a refocusing of its business on its social enterprise ad software (SaaS), Spruce Media is cutting jobs in the account management and design areas. The strategic shift comes just after landing a $15 million debt financing deal late last year when Spruce Media trumpeted strong momentum with clients. From […]
Having just closed a new $7 million round of round of funding for his social ad platform company, Optim.al CEO Rob Leathern is expecting his 30-person operation to more than double in size in the coming year. But, don’t tell Leathern that Optim.al is a Facebook ads company. He says emphatically, “We think of ourselves […]
Facebook has added retargeting firm Chango to its list of preferred partners for Facebook Exchange, bringing a powerful aggregator of search intent data to the real-time bidding marketplace. The move is notable in that it represents an incursion by Facebook on the “intent currency” of Google (Bing and Yahoo too), after a period of failed […]
Fan acquisition has been a major (and much derided) goal of Facebook advertising campaigns for years, but the door is closing on easy “likes.” A November 21 change to Facebook’s ad creative policies for Page Post Ads has significantly hampered the ability of brands to grow their Facebook audience by using a “like” call to […]
While anyone can follow a social media conversation stream through hashtags, social media ad tech provider RadiumOne is now starting to sell targeted ads off of these signifiers in real-time. The idea is to become part of consumers’ conversations as they’re taking off, not after they’ve already “trended” on Twitter or other social platforms. RadiumOne’s […]
A quick search on Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer directory reveals that the number of real-time bidding partners for the Facebook Exchange is 12, three fewer than were announced back in September. What gives? Contrary to appearances, the three missing companies — [x+1], Optimal, and Kenshoo – have not been kicked off of FBX for violating […]
With the launch of an Ads API access yesterday, LinkedIn joined a very small club of social companies that allow developers of outside platforms to customize and sell into their paid media products. The club shrinks further if you count only household names. Of the roughly 8 social companies with ad APIs, Facebook is the […]
Traditional branding exercises often focus on questions that can seem a little silly. What color is your brand? What shape? Percolate founder Noah Brier says his company sprang in part from the realization that “What does your brand consume?” also needs to be part of that equation. The company, which has been compared to Buddy […]
Just ahead of Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving and the official start of the holiday shopping season — Facebook is broadening its e-commerce platform, Facebook Gifts, to include a wide range of big name retailers and digital content companies. The social network presented the announcement at a press conference at FAO Schwarz, the […]
Facebook’s Exchange is in full swing outside the U.S. Speaking at the AppNexus Summit in New York this week, Facebook VP global partnerships Blake Chandlee noted FBX buyers can now access audiences in the Asia-Pacific region and in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. A spokesperson later confirmed the expansion and said Facebook is actively […]
GraphEffect “has it all” on the Facebook platform. Or almost. The company holds three of Facebook’s four badges (Ads, Pages, Insights) and was recently named one of Facebook’s 12 Strategic Preferred Marketing Developers. But its positioning is unique relative to a number of other marketing platforms playing in the Facebook ecosystem. Through its Shift collaboration […]
An hour after producing a Q3 earnings report that exceeded Wall St. analysts’ expectations, Facebook CEO and chairman Mark Zuckerberg came out swinging against doubts about the social network’s mobile footing. “I want to dispel this myth we can’t make money on mobile,” Zuckerberg said in prepared remarks. “The reason is, we haven’t really tried […]
Today at Salesforce’s Cloudforce conference in New York, CEO Marc Benioff said CMOs are like “fighter pilots without a cockpit” when it comes to social campaign management. “They’re going to want all the analytics, the ability to listen, place media, test media, run A/B tests,” he said in response to an AdExchanger question. “They’re going […]
Earlier this week Facebook launched a new ad format geared to app developers, called Mobile App Install Ads (AdExchanger story). Its entry has the potential to disrupt the current field of companies that have sprouted up to drive app installs — including mobile ad networks and companies that incentivize downloads. But first it has to […]
Facebook has expanded a test of mobile ads for app developers who are looking to drive installs, a bright spot in the paid mobile media landscape. The beta program was announced in August, with a select group of developers including Kabam, Fab, TinyCo and Big Fish. As of today any developer can sign up to […]
While the media and tech press watch Facebook and Twitter minutely for their respective ad strategies to emerge in a more defined way, professional social network LinkedIn has been slowly growing its ad business through its Marketing Solutions unit. As the company pointed out in a research note released Friday, 72 percent of LinkedIn’s revenues […]
Since we kicked off our series of Q&As with Facebook Ads API badge holders (scroll down for full list), Facebook’s partner regime has continued to shift. Most recently it created a new class of Preferred Marketing Developers called “Strategic PMDs.” Brand Networks is among the 12 companies promoted to that new program. The company was […]
It’s increasingly clear that new school ad broker Facebook has pegged its sales strategy to a decidedly old school way of looking at media – that is, digital reach and frequency planning embodied by Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings product. Speaking at the IAB’s MIXX conference today, Facebook head of measurement and insights Brad Smallwood preached […]
Most of the advertisers that have shared early results from the Facebook Exchange are small- to mid-sized, direct response focused companies (AdExchanger story). On the list are Shutterfly, Hootsuite, GoPro, and SurveyMonkey. But that’s slowly changing. Media agency Arena Media is going public with data from Dominos pizza delivery, a much larger brand. During a […]
With experience in the Wall Street professional services world, Ampush CEO Jesse Pujji and his co-founders, Chris Amos and Nick Shah, have seen the big data of financial trading desks and their offshoots. And, that’s one reason the trio decided to move into the online ad business and start Ampush in 2010. Pujji told AdExchanger […]
With Facebook Exchange now three months old and officially out of beta, agencies have started to get a sense of the possibilities. In many cases they’re working through holding company trading desks to source audience and measure results on the fledgling marketplace. For Omnicom Group agencies, that means collaborating with Accuen. AdExchanger spoke with Josh […]
When building a technology platform, self-service isn’t always the Holy Grail it seems to be – at least initially, as Spruce Media founder and CEO Rob Jewell discovered. A couple of years ago, his company was an early Facebook Ads API partner, and after seeing Kenshoo and Marin Software take a self‑service approach to channels […]
Facebook is rolling out a “small test” of mobile ads on non-Facebook sites, a spokesperson told AdExchanger today. The move is an extension of its current ad sales and serving relationship with Zynga, and the first time the company has signaled interest in combining its data with outside media impressions. Yes, it’s an ad network. […]
How far into the social marketing story are we? Unified Social is betting this summer’s big acquisitions (Buddy Media, Vitrue, etc) are just the opening volleys, and that the coming years will see the rise of enterprise class social dashboards capable of integrating presence management, paid media, and downstream “earned” media tracking. The company’s Social […]
Yes, indeed. There are quite a few blue eyes at Chicago-based Blueye Creative, launched by managing partner Shannon Smith in 2004. And, there’s also the blue branding of the Facebook preferred developer program, which the company has been a part of since 2010 according to partner and VP of product Abby Ross. Ross joined Smith […]
A job description for Gokul Rajaram might look like this: “Lead ad product strategy for the world’s dominant social media platform. Scale world of mouth marketing in a way that’s relevant to a billion or so users with myriad devices, nationalities, languages, and cultural reference points. Do it in a way that unlocks the spending […]
Facebook’s new Sponsored Results search ads became official last week, and early data from Nanigans suggests they may hold a good deal of appeal for performance-driven marketers. Since going live, the sponsored results ads have delivered Nanigans customers 23x higher click rates while costing 78% less than the average cost-per-click commanded by Marketplace Ads. In […]
