Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Marketers Sit on Facebook's Mobile Sidelines

Image by benarent via Flickr

Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Wanted: Tall, blue, handsome site with over 100 million friends who will invite me to your party. -- A. Marketer

There have been so many big numbers tossed out about Facebook lately, you'd think the site was in the lottery business. Fellow columnist Cathy Taylor last week mentioned how Facebook provides nearly 8% of the traffic to Google and Yahoo, and how people spend more than three times as long as Facebook as on any other site. Days earlier, Facebook celebrated crossing the 400 million user mark.

The number that stands out the most to me is this one: 100 million. That's how many mobile users access Facebook across a range of devices -- actually, it's more than that, and growing daily. The safe bet is in time that the mobile user base will nearly mirror the overall user base, and that most of its usage will derive from mobile users. Facebook is in an especially strong position to benefit from the mobile boom, as mobile measurement firm Ground Truth noted this month that 61% of mobile Web pageviewsare served by social networking sites.

Facebook is second to MySpace on Ground Truth's January list oftop ten mobile sites ranked by page views, with other entries including Mocospace, FunForMobile, AirG, Cellufun, Mbuzzy, and Myxer (Google and Yahoo made the list too). The firm noted, "Just as eBay, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter popped up seemingly out of nowhere to join the top ranks of the wired Web, there is no doubt that some of the mobile Web startups from today or tomorrow will be standalone companies in the top 10 mobile Web sites of 2020."

Some of that reasoning's a stretch. I talked to one mobile vendor recently whose business was largely based on feature phones, the catch-all category for anything that's not a smart phone. He said that they'll milk the much larger feature phone user base for the time being, and when that dries up and everyone's on smart phones, they hope to adapt to the new marketplace. Many such companies won't make it. The feature phone market will be alive and well for some time, in the U.S. and abroad, and Facebook even just launched Zero, a completely scaled-back mobile site for those with bandwidth issues.

That has to rattle marketers a little. The whole promise of mobile was that it would open up new audiences who could be targeted wherever they were. Yet Facebook offers nothing like that. How dare Facebook scale down its site even more for mobile users! It's not like users could see ads or even easily access Pages before. Where are the homepage ads? What about geotargeted mobile alerts? Come on, Zuckerberg, give us something!

Lisa Foote, commenting on Cathy's article, summed it up well: "Making the hill even steeper to climb is consumers' increasing use of Facebook via mobile devices... Marketers who are already late to the social media party are going to find it's not a static target --- making it even harder for them to catch up in 2010." It's especially hard when there's no proscribed way to market to these users.

That's going to change, of course. It might not change for Zero anytime soon, which is more of an issue for global marketers, especially in emerging markets where the need for Zero should be strongest. The most lightweight versions of Facebook's mobile site won't appeal to its frequent users who appreciate many of the features available on the Web. So what about Facebook for iPhone, with 27 million active users, or Facebook for BlackBerry, with 15 million monthly active users? What's taking Facebook so long?

First, they're biding their time and growing their user base. No one's forcing their hand here, as they've gotten to 400 million users without caring too much about what others think of them. The second is that they're waiting to pull the trigger on an ad model that makes sense for their specific site and how it's used. Facebook just dropped Microsoft's banner ads on its site because they weren't contributing to the Facebook experience. The engagement ads and self-service ads running currently are customized to work for Facebook, not anyone else, creating a new experience for consumers without totally reinventing the wheel on the back end for marketers. Expect Facebook mobile ads to be built from the ground up.

No matter how long Facebook takes, marketers with mobile applications can currently take advantage of Facebook Connect. Any app that incorporates content sharing, messaging, or finding friends can use Connect to grow the app's audience and increase users' engagement with it. In some cases, Connect will be the predominant reason an app gets any social traction.

Beyond the app scene though, marketers have to go stag. Facebook's perfectly happy expanding its audience of 100 million mobile friends and doesn't want any chaperones butting in yet.

Offerpal Befriends Direct And Brand Marketers

Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

 
One emerging business model that has caught on in social media is not particularly social at all. The model, especially prominent in supporting the booming social gaming business, allows marketers to target consumers with cost-per-acquisition deals that earn consumers points or virtual currency in the games.

Among the best known players in this field is Offerpal, which says it reaches more than 150 million consumers. After missing the company's CEO George Garrick last month both when he was in New York and I was in San Francisco, we finally caught up on the phone for an exclusive interview. While Offerpal has typically targeted direct response marketers for lead generation programs, new and upcoming programs will cater to brand marketers too.

Note that his answers below are paraphrased, except where in direct quotes, and some of the questions were added later for clarity.

Offerpal Overview

Offerpal reaches consumers who don't want to spend money for points or virtual currency. Offerpal's consumers are typically teenagers - younger people who may not have credit cards.

The first rewards were offers, but there are other ways Offerpal is providing value for consumers subsidized by marketers. Shopping Offers was introduced a few months ago. A video product is coming out where consumers will get rewarded for watching ads.

How do the leads from these offers compare with customers acquired through other channels?

We'll see if the quality of the response from these offers will turn out to be lower than purely voluntary responses (consumers who are not incentivized to respond). If someone sees an ad for Netflix and signs up for a new account, they're probably more interested than someone who suddenly needs some game points. The lifetime value is probably not going to be as great. The economics are probably going to settle out over the remainder of the year, and that's  OK. "If you look at customers acquired through different channels, they're always going to have different values."

The quality of leads may not be lower at all though. "I don't know that it's going to turn out that way. There's an argument that can be made in the other direction." You can say the type of person playing a social game is a heavier user of DVDs and watches more movies, which offsets the fact that you're incentivizing them to sign up.

It takes a long time to calculate lifetime value. "Ideally you need a lifetime... I don't think there's enough data yet." Offerpal has been around a couple years but social games only really took off at the beginning of last year. Part of the challenge is that "up until recently, a lot of the offers were coming through exchanges and networks... If you're coming through a network like Commission Junction or ValueClick, the marketer can't really tell where the lead is coming from." Better data is just starting to become available.

How will the new data affect pricing?

"Most marketers expect to be paying the same regardless of the channel... I think over time, the advertisers look at additional visibility into the source of the leads and their acquisitions and they will adjust the pricing by source... At the end of the day it probably doesn't make that much difference because unless a new channel comes along that suddenly is a significant source of customers and is significantly different in terms of lifetime value, it really wouldn't make that much of a difference."

What else is Offerpal doing to attract brand marketers?

"We have a number of things coming along that are targeted to brand marketers and more of the Ad Age type reader than the Direct Marketing News reader." [Editor's Note: MediaPost welcomes all such readers.] "The brand marketing world is spending a lot of money, and we think that social environments in games are a great way to reach people, especially certain demographics that are harder to reach through traditional media." Consumers playing these social games are arguably more engaged than TV watchers because they want to get the reward.

You're discussing the offers' role in social gaming. Do you see the offers themselves becoming more social?

"I don't know. It depends on what the marketers and what the agencies come up with." As more research and understanding come out of this, that's a reasonable thing to expect to happen, but that's really up to the marketers and agencies. "We don't design the offers... Typically, marketers do want to take advantage of the environment and the state of mind the audience is in."

Consider  Groupon - they come up with an offer that's only available if a certain number of people sign up for it. TownHog does that too. "We will always be looking for things like that to embed in our offering. I wouldn't rule out actually developing some of our own offers at some point."

What impact did the ‘scamville' brouhaha have? [For background on this, read Garrick's comments in TechCrunch.]

"I think there's a lot of opportunity that's still being left on the table because of the controversy that happened a couple of months ago. There's still an excessive amount of hesitancy to engage in non-cash alternatives. While I can understand that, there are a lot of users who would engage at a deeper level in these games and applications if there were non-cash alternatives available."  

LeeAnn Prescott Gives a State of Social Media in Numbers

LeeAnn Prescott, a longtime research analyst friend, is sharing some great research on social media. I've embedded her presentation below and shared a couple bullets from VentureBeat (there's far more there, where she's a regular contributor), and you can find more analysis on her Research-Write blog.

A couple highlights:

• One in four (25%) US Internet page views occurred at one of the top social networking sites in December 2009, up 83% from 13.8% in December 2008.
• Nearly one in 10 visits went to one of these sites in December 2009, versus 5.8% in December 2008.

Social Networking By The Numbers, December 2009

View more presentations from LeeAnn Prescott.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Debate the Pros and Cons of Google Buzz in Ad Age

I wrote a post about Google Buzz that appeared in Ad Age's Digital Next today.

I'm torn on the service, more than usual as far as these go. It got to the point where I played out a debate in the post, using the upbeat Dr. Jekyll and the misanthropic Mr. Hyde as foils.

Hyde: It feels just like Google Wave, one of the more disappointing of Google's product launches. It had so much promise and became irrelevant so quickly. I don't want to get duped again, so this has to be a dud.

Jekyll: It's nothing like Wave. One of the biggest problems Wave had was that it wasn't integrated with anything. The whole point of Buzz is the integration -- it appears in Gmail; you can read and respond to updates from any Gmail client; and it integrates a number of social media services.

Hyde: It does nothing for marketers, except to provide more impressions for those sponsored links that run in Gmail.

Jekyll: Wrong again, as marketers participating in social channels such as Twitter, Flickr and YouTube can find their content and messages spreading even further as more people use Buzz.

Now that I've used a bit more, I'm leaning far more to the Hyde side where I'm about ready to give up on it. I'm not sure it adds value and it feels like a distraction. But I'm especially curious as to how the mobile angle plays out.

I welcome your take here or at Ad Age, where there's far more posted than the excerpt I shared here.

Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Peeps: One More Reason to Believe in Easter, if Just for the Candy

Full disclosure: the product featured here was sent to me by a friend.

Fuller disclosure: he wasn't asking me to blog about these at all. He just had some inside information about the latest Peeps product and knew I loved this kind of stuff. I'm really just blogging it for fun. And since the product's so new, there's barely any content out there and I figured it'd be fun being among the first.

After all that, the post's pretty short. A friend sent me a box of new dark chocolate covered marshmallow peeps. I ate too many. I gave some out at EventCamp NYC 2010. I didn't have enough to share them with my office. They're very good - they don't quite replace the normal Peeps covered in sugar crystals (I still love those), but they are a great complement.

But before all the destruction was done, I photographed and shot video of the experience. I've embedded the Flickr and YouTube versions below. Since it was a box of them, the YouTube one counts as an 'unboxing' (the meme of shooting a video of opening a new product - usually associated with tech gadgets like an iPhone or Wii).

Enjoy. And if you want the physical goods, either wait until they're rolled out close to Easter, or buy them in milk or dark chocolate - by the box.

Final disclosure: I like milk chocolate even better, which of course figures since it's not as 'good for you' as dark chocolate. But these dark chocolate ones were pretty damn good.

Open for Debate: Blogging and Photo Sharing Ethics

Here’s a fun situation for you: you’re in a limo with a well known lifecaster – you know, one of those people who shares everything they’re doing on the web. She spends a good chunk of the ride talking about lifecasting. You’re on your way to a blogger party. You take a couple pictures (with the flash), along with a bunch of other pictures you’re taking.

Question 1)

Do you need permission to post those pictures of them?

Question 2)

Do you need permission if you’re posting pictures of them with the subject’s name?

Question 3)

Say a photo shows a bit of leg, but nothing as risqué, but nothing so much as event a hint of underwear or anything PG-13. Do you need permission to post it?

Question 4)

Does it matter if they knew you were taking the picture or not?

 

These questions, not surprisingly, are based on something I’m dealing with right now. This goes back to the Consumer Electronics Show last month, as the lifecaster later sent me an email entitled “Ethics of Photography Request,” and insinuated my posting the photo without her permission was unethical.

I’m curious what you think, and I may well have more to follow up on later.

Thanks.

Follow up: there’s already one great comment, and I’m curious to get others. Do we need more formal photo policies?

And one final point: while the questions may be leading and may reflect bias, I’m hoping to learn from this – and namely learn from the community.

The Antisocial Bowl

 This column was originally published in MediaPost, but due to some editorial snafu there that I don't yet understand, a number of people were left off my list of thanks. I intended to thank:  Reprise_Media, StacyGratz, dwag29, yeahthatskosher, 4GreenPs, inakiescudero, jaymandel, natashaF8, getshust, persia13, and aarongoldman.

The column is below, as published in MediaPost, and if I get an explanation as far as why they'd cut people out, I'll let you know.

The AntiSocial Bowl

If social media has finally gone mainstream, where was it during the Super Bowl? It wasn't visible in many of the spots.

With Facebook passing the 400 million user mark and so much of the buzz about the ads happening on Twitter, you'd expect more social media love from the ads. Instead, the Web site URLs at the end of the spots tended to go to the advertiser's main site. Where were the callouts to become a fan, follower, or friend?

Here are ten reasons why social media wasn't front and center during the Super Bowl ads:

1) Social belonged elsewhere in the architecture. Marketers must make decisions on where social media fits within their digital architecture. Frequently, their main site serves as the hub that links out to their social presence elsewhere, and those social properties link back to the site.

That doesn't have to be the case; a social network, blog, or microsite could serve as a hub, or it may be a decentralized approach without a hub but with the pieces still connecting together. For Super Bowl advertisers, their hub tended to be either their homepage or a page within their main site. Brands with an active presence in social media had an opportunity to direct consumers to their social channels from their sites, yet that's where a number of marketers fell short.

2) The spot was just the beginning of the experience. Volkswagen best illustrated this by running a punching commercial with a callout to "play punchdub at vw.com," where a Facebook-centric game allowed visitors to send virtual punches to friends. The TV spot works on its own without a Web component, but the social addition may extend the life of the campaign much further.

3) There was a failure to integrate. Integration of any sort remains a hurdle for most marketers. I'm referring to integration broadly because it's a stumbling block in just about every possible way: traditional and digital, paid and earned media, paid and natural search, bringing various agencies together during the planning - the list can go on. It's a safe bet that the challenges of integration and a lack of communication prevented some of these ads from being more social.

4) Social media informed which ad ran. I love this quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Google's blog (which I found out about through MediaPost's Online Media Daily): "We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience." In short, Google did its market research and felt it could boost the impact of its videos by running it on TV.

5) The ads themselves were use- generated. I'm referring to the Doritos ads, which outnumbered the total of touchdowns from both teams last night. The user-generated and selected ads could have had more social tie-ins, but that's missing the bigger picture. It's also telling that the whole concept of user-generated advertising hasn't taken over. Overall, the spots were more of the same professionally produced sketches of anthropomorphized animals, celebrity guest stints, ironic slapstick, and near-nudity (from Megan Fox to guys in tightie whities) that we've come to know, love, and forget about two days later.

6) The focus was on listening. Here's a headline I hope is never again newsworthy, via Computerworld: "Intel to monitor social networks on Super Bowl ads." I give Intel credit for sharing what it's doing. Intel spokesperson David Veneski told Computerworld, "It's the first time [Intel has] gauged audience reaction around an event by using social networks." One would think that with an investment of $2.5 million per half minute, this is part of the cost of doing business . The cost of one second of Super Bowl airtime ($83,000) can buy a year of premium access to most social media monitoring tools, and several months of analysis from most service providers. This is the last year to let this story pass for news.

7) The order was reversed: social media promoted the ads. A funny thing happened on the way to the Super Bowl: brands from Coca-Cola to Bud Light used social media to plug their Super Bowl spots. This can seem counterintuitive; this year's Super Bowl was watched by over 100 million viewers nationally, so it's not like the ads need promoting. Yet brands took advantage of their social channels to extend the experience, whether by pushing out Facebook status updates, live tweeting during the game, or using digital word of mouth to spread the word before and after.

8) The ad was about social media. In one ad Megan Fox used mobile social media to cause worldwide havoc, while in another Vizio plugged getting Twitter and Flickr on your TV (giving Twitter a potential new slogan: "what to watch when 'Jersey Shore' reruns aren't on"). So yes, I counted as many ads about social media as I did ads about men in underwear. What a milestone.

9) The ads were for Web sites. If a marketer is trying to get you to a Web site (Godaddy, Monster, Google, TV.com, CarMax, Cars.com, HomeAway, Teleflora), going to their social presence on a different site would be counterproductive.

10) They just forgot. Hey, it happens. As the Colts know too well, there's always next year. And unlike the Colts, marketers can spend a few million bucks to guarantee their spot in the game.

Lastly, thanks to a number of Twitter friends for bandying around a few thoughts on the ads during the game, among them natashaF8, getshust, persia13, and aarongoldman.

Want Your Message to Spread? The Answer - Dandelion Marketing - Is Blowing in the Wind

My friend Jeremy Epstein, who happens do so a fair amount of marketing for authors and is a great writer in his own right at the blog Never Stop Marketing, just came out with a great, brief read a little longer than his usual entries. Go figure - weeks ago I convinced him to add it to Scribd for easily downloading and of course I then didn't have time to write it up.

The overall concept is to think like a dandelion to get your message to 'go viral.' It's hardly the only analogy in here - rather than getting too literal with the floral motif, he pulls in lessons from Johanes Gutenberg, Karl von Clausewitz, Microsoft Research, and then the Cluetrain Manifesto for good measure.

One of the great takeaways here is around prototyping, which he quotes Tim Brown's summary of "failing faster to succeed sooner." And hence it goes back to the dandelion - with lots of opportunities for spreading and pollination.

It's all of 11 pages - long enough that you may want to print it out and mark it up, short enough that you don't need too long to get the gist of it. But you may well want to keep it around to read a few times. I know I'm due for another run-through.

Dandelion Marketing: How to Increase Your Odds of 'Going Viral'

My Social Media Presentation and Twitter Coverage from Event Camp 2010 NYC

I'm used to speaking at events (see the list here), and I'm used to speaking about social media, but today presented a new challenge: speaking to event planners about using social media.

It's a fantastic community at Event Camp 2010, connected largely through Twitter and social channels and just meeting each other today for the first time. You can follow a lot of the buzz by checking out hashtag #ec10 on Twitter. 

I'm including two things below: my presentation, available on SlideShare (you can even use the shortened URL bit.ly/ecdavid), and then the Collecta real-time search widget of anything mentioning my Twitter name (@dberkowitz) and #ec10 so you can see what people tweeted about the talk, or what I tweeted. You can also get your own customized widget at widget.collecta.com (I plugged this in my talk too - it's very useful). 

A Social Playbook for Marketing Events - Event Camp 2010 Keynote

View more presentations from David Berkowitz.

Not Just One Right Answer: Social Media Week Tackles Higher Education at McGraw-Hill

I originally published this post on Social Media week's blog

Friday’s Future of Social Media in Higher Education hosted by McGraw-Hill Student Innovations offered five great professors (matched with a masterful moderator) to explore the challenges and opportunities in using social media to advance higher education. The faculty included:

Adam Ostrow Editor in Chief, Mashable.com - @adamostrow

Dr. Kathleen P. King Professor, Fordham University; President, Transformation Education LLC  - @drkpking

Greg Verdino VP Strategy & Solutions, Powered; author of microMARKETING - @gregverdino

Mary Casey NYU Student and Founder of Jatched.com

Vineet Madan VP Strategy & Business Development, McGraw-Hill Education

Yianni Garcia (Moderator) Marketing Specialist, GradeGuru.com  - @yiannig

On to the panel coverage…

Yianni: One in four students in 2 or 4 year programs are taking at least on course online.

Question: How does social media play a role?

Kathleen: Distance education is moving more swiftly in community and 2-year colleges. Community colleges can respond more quickly to changes in demographics, the economy, etc. Four-year-universities and research centers can’t move as fast. Distance ed is a good connection for us with social media – the faculty’s already using technology, and students are embracing it. Working on using other tools like Twitter, Facebook, etc. We also must address the needs of non-traditional students – this used to mean older students in their 20s through 70s. That term “non-traditional” are outnumbering traditional students.

Mary: Beyond distance learning and online courses, there’s the trend around open content. There are intellectual property issues, but they can spark interest from those not present in a class.

Vineet: Of 12 million college students, only 6 million are 18-24. A big reason for dropouts is lack of engagement. We need to promote engagement more than just enrollment.

Greg: Students want to text with deans or people admissions offices.

Adam: Social tools present new ways for students to participate, rather than the old way of getting graded just for showing up.

Question: How do you use various tools to engage students?

Mary: Blackboard is great, but it’s not collaborative and archival. You can only collaborate with students in your class, that semester. NYU has taken the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn under its umbrella. They’ve tried to develop collaboration between that and Stern Business School. Needed: apps for collaboration. Gradeguru is one that fits in, provides incentive for collaboration - “it’s kind of revolutionary.” Facebook’s Courses application: you can submit which classes you’re enrolled in to get opinions of a class. Another: Dropbox – lets more than one user edit documents at a time.

Question for Mary: Are you using Google Docs extensively?

Mary: Yes, a fair amount.

More on apps…

Vineet: Tegrity records courses, sort of like a DVR for college courses.

Kathleen: Skype - ‘it’s like Kleenex now’ – everyone uses it.

Yianni: How will we make these technologies more compelling to engage students?

Mary: I want to bring up augmented reality to overlay digital technology over the real world. Would love to use it in history classes.

Greg: Students are already using platforms. If we know that 85% of college students are on Facebook, You need to go where students are.

Kathleen: Faculty need to learn how to use these tools professionally. Many colleagues don’t get the professional use. She takes issue with Greg and Adam saying they don’t remember their education well – they don’t remember their formal education but they’re examples of lifelong learning.

Adam (responding to another question): Technology will lower the cost of so many things for education – so much of what you need is on your phone. The iPad will play a big role in furthering that, replacing textbooks and adding even more.

Audience question (from Sanford): How do we align incentives between professors there to teach (but often to get tenure and get published) and students there to learn?

Kathleen: There is no incentive in most universities for engaging with social media or even for faculty to engage their students. We have to start with the professor first, and we have to look to the institution. Most universities: publication and research is how you get tenure. If I’m spending 20% of my time doing innovative things, it’s counterproductive. It’s detailing me from my goal and livelihood. What has to be done: we have to integrate innovation in teaching and excellent teaching. Teaching must be raised to be more important than the merit and tenure system.