Facebook appears ready to launch a new set of premium ad units, and, based on a review of documents which purport to describe them, the social network would seem to be doubling down on two core principles that mark fundamental departures from traditional advertising.

First, Facebook is making the new ads social by default, meaning they will automatically show users when their friends have already Liked the advertiser. And the new formats will draw their content exclusively from posts to brands’ Facebook Pages, rather from advertising copy written independently.

Combined, these features make two statements about where Facebook believes the future of online advertising lies—at least in its particular universe. It is saying that ads based on content, rather than messaging, have a better chance of hitting home, and that ads involving tacit endorsements from the people you know have a better chance of capturing your attention.

“When people hear about you from friends, they listen,” the Facebook materials say. “We’ll expand your ad with stories from friends who have already connected.” (“Stories” is Facebook’s shorthand for a wide varitey of interactions on the site. In the case of ads, it seems to refer to the fact that the ads will display which of a viewer’s friends have Liked the brand.)

Facebook has not commented publicly on the new ads (presumably they will discuss them at a marketing launch event in New York next week). But the materials describing the new units were posted to Scribd earlier this week. The news was first reported on GigaOm. The documents are below.

More at: http://www.fastcompany.com/1818952/facebooks-new-ad-units-reveal-a-future-that-is-social-by-default

More at: http://blogs.webtrends.com/2011/06/facebook-marketing-even-more-takeaway-tips/

A recent study has shown that Pinterest is more popular with men than women in the UK. This is, at first glance, quite surprising seeing as 83 per cent of Pinterest’s US users are women.

However, a closer look at the data reveals that many UK users are in fact professionals working in the media industry. This perhaps explains why the gender split is more even in the UK (44 per cent female, 56 per cent male) compared to the US, where women have adopted the site for social rather than professional reasons.

More at: http://www.thinktank.org.uk/blog/2012/02/uk-pinterest-users-buck-us-trend.php

 

As the number of Facebook commerce apps grows, choosing the right one to partner with is now an important decision to get right. One of the leading app developers is Ecwid. To illustrate how their platform can deliver real-world revenue gains, the company analysed 2,000 of its user accounts and found that an increase of 15% was enjoyed when using the app. Ecwid itself now has over 10 million ‘likes’ and has reported that total revenue via its Facebook stores jumped by 40% last year.

“Ecwid 10.2 makes it as easy as possible for website owners, of varying level levels of technical expertise, to start monetising their sites,” said Ruslan Fazlyev, founder and CEO of Ecwid. “Traditionally, users would be required to build and maintain a separate e-commerce site; pay for a hosted e-commerce solution; or add additional code to add individual ‘Buy Now’ buttons to their site, all of which can be a time consuming and costly exercise. Ecwid 10.2 not only makes it easy to set up an online store, but it also now offers store owners greater levels of customisation than ever before.”

Ecwid is the first and only store builder created entirely in AJAX. This means website owners can be confident that buyers are able to use the shopping cart regardless of device or browser type and without the need to install a Flash plug-in. Ecwid 10.2 is available in 40 languages and integrates seamlessly with major CMS and site builder platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Parallels Web Presence Builder and now also any site created using Microsoft Office 365, providing them with e-commerce functionality.

Over the last year, you may have noticed that a once-niche trend not only crept into the mainstream, but is starting to really make a big splash. Gamification has become one of the hottest buzz words in the industry and is probably in the process of taking over a website or user experience near you.

For the uninitiated, gamification, said simply, is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Over the last year, even large companies and enterprises are starting to get in on the game, with Gartner saying that all CIOs should have gamification on their radar, and M2 research predicting that the gamification market will reach 2.8 billion in direct spending by 2016.

Okay, so it’s on the rise, we get that, but let’s take a look at some of the players that are helping to take this trend to the next level. Three companies in particular are currently creating some buzz in the space: Badgeville, Bigdoor and Bunchball.

Badgeville started by making a big splash center stage at Disrupt in the fall of 2009. The company took home the Audience Choice Award at Disrupt, has since gone on a tear and is poised to have a great 2012. (Check out Rip’s original post on Badgeville’s prospects here.)

Badgeville Co-founder and CEO Kris Duggan pulls no punches when it comes to one of the most visible and early adopters of gamification, the check-in king: Foursquare. The CEO says that Foursquare was early in its attempts at gamification, but that its incentivization models remain fundamentally flawed.

Duggan points to the “Mayorship” system within Foursquare: “You have literally hundreds of people and only one mutually-exclusive point of recognition, the Mayor. What happens to the other hundreds of people? Not only are they not engaged, but you don’t take into consideration different types of users.” Duggan believes you need to engage not only the heavy user, but medium and light users as well. Rather than a one-size-fits-all methodology, you can appeal to each user type and incent them accordingly.

More at: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/12/no-longer-an-awkward-teenager-gamification-grows-up/

New research about digital marketing trends published today shows that social media engagement is rated as both the top priority and most exciting opportunity for companies this year.

But while the fourth Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing, published by Econsultancy in association with Adobe, shows a huge appetite for social media programmes, there is a worrying lack of commitment to investment in associated analytics and measurement. 

Research for this report found that, along with content optimisation, social media engagement is rated as the top priority for digital marketers out of a range of digital-related marketing activities and disciplines.

Asked to indicate their top three priorities for the year ahead, companies surveyed by Econsultancy and Adobe found that these areas will be more important in 2012 than other disciplines including conversion rate optimisation, mobile optimisation and content marketing.

Social media analytics lagged behind in ninth place. 

More than 600 companies surveyed for this report were also asked about the ‘most exciting’ digital-related opportunities for their organisations in 2012. 

More than half of client-side respondents (54%) said that social media engagement featured among the three most exciting opportunities, way ahead of mobile optimisation (38%) and content optimisation (37%). Again, social analytics is much further down the pecking order, this time in eighth place.

More at: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8995-social-media-engagement-is-the-top-priority-for-digital-marketers?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Pop sensation Lady Gaga is launching her own social networking website exclusively for her fans.

Gaga, 25, has used online forums to boost her worldwide appeal and has become the first celebrity to register 18 million followers on Twitter, Daily Star reported.

Now the `Poker Face` hitmaker is putting her technology skills to use by founding her very own networking site for her devotees, who she lovingly calls “little monsters”.

The site, called littlemonsters.com, is currently being set up and the webpage invites fans to register with their email address.

The site has been set up with the help of social media start-up company Backplane, in which Gaga is an investor.

More at: http://zeenews.india.com/entertainment/and-more/lady-gaga-to-launch-own-social-networking-site_105483.htm

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QR codes are one of the most often asked about topics, but up to now I’ve pretty much avoided the subject. That’s mainly because it’s been three years since foursquare launched, but there’s still no good way to check in using a QR code that works across all the major platforms.

I recently checked out foursQR on the iPhone and it’s a pretty good solution for iPhone users. No, it’s not the answer for everyone, but it works very well in certain cases.

You can quickly create a PDF QR code sticker on foursQR’s site for any venue and put it wherever you like – provided you have the owner’s permission of course.

What’s it good for? Any place that you check in often and that you control. I’ve put one on the wall next to my desk at the office. I can check in using foursQR in less than 10 seconds thanks to its automatic check-in function at places I’ve added as favorites. It’s a fast and easy process.

More at: http://aboutfoursquare.com/iphone-app-uses-a-qr-code-to-check-you-in-on-foursquare/

More at: http://mashable.com/2012/01/29/pinterest-retail-infographic/

Tweets sent by Rio Ferdinand and Katie Price promoting Snickers are to be formally investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority.

Following complaints, the ASA will look into whether the tweets were in breach of advertising rules by failing to adequately inform the public they were part of a marketing campaign.

Ferdinand and Price, along with Ian Botham, Amir Khan and X Factor’s Cher Lloyd have all been paid to promote the chocolate bar.

When Sky News contacted Snickers earlier this week, a spokesperson said a series of “teaser tweets” had been sent out to “comply with social media regulations” to “ensure Twitter users knew they were enjoying promotional tweets”.

But the ASA will investigate whether it was clear the celebrity was getting paid to advertise the product.

Katie Price also tweeted a picture with a Snickers bar

In a statement the regulator said: “The ASA has launched a formal investigation into tweets by Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand to establish whether Mars’ @SnickersUK#hungry#spon campaign is in breach of the Advertising Codes.

“We are investigating two points: (a) whether it should have been stated in the ‘teaser’ tweets that they were marketing communications and (b) whether the hashtag “#spon” in the final ‘reveal’ tweet made it clear enough that that tweet was a marketing communication.”

More at: http://news.sky.com/home/showbiz-news/article/16157569