Facebook will make all kinds of pretty pennies when it goes public later this year, but the company has already been filling its coffers through a booming ad business. The average CPM for those ads running along the right rail of friends’ Facebook profiles and brand pages have jumped 41 percent year over year since the first quarter of 2011, according to social advertising firm TBG Digital.

For the report, released April 16, TBG Digital analyzed impressions it had managed on Facebook for clients between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012.

The 41 percent jump may not seem so substantial when considering the units’ growing adoption among advertisers, but from the last three months of 2011 to the first three months of 2012, the average CPM rose 11 percent for right-rail ads targeted to U.S. users only. TBG attributed the rate increases to Facebook becoming more attractive to advertisers, despite slowing user growth.

Experiencing even steeper growth in the quarter-over-quarter period were ads bought on a cost-per-click basis. TBG said that the average CPC for U.S. Facebook campaigns grew 20 percent quarter over quarter—even as the average clickthrough rate for examined U.S. campaigns fell 8 percent between Q4 2011 and Q1 2012.

For an apples-to-crabapples comparison, Google’s most recent quarterly earnings statement noted that average CPCs fell 12 percent from Q1 2011 and 6 percent from Q4 2011, although those numbers include search and display ads running on Google-owned and network sites.

But the advertisers whose campaigns saw the biggest percentage rate increase amid Facebook’s rate boom were those seeking fans. TBG said the average cost per fan acquisition for U.S. campaigns increased by 37 percent between Q4 2011 and Q1 2012. That number is likely to change with Facebook repositioning its ads for interactive as opposed to acquisitive ends, as demonstrated in the company’s announcements during fMC, its marketer conference, in February.

Retailers accounted for 23 percent of the 372 billion impressions examined by TBG, but financial services companies had the most expensive advertising costs, per TBG. The company attributed the expense to the fact that 91 percent of the vertical’s ads directing users outside of Facebook. TBG had said in an earlier report that ads keeping users within Facebook can see CPC rates reduced by up to 45 percent.
TBG did not disclose specific cost numbers for any of the rates mentioned.

Source: adweek.com

Most journalists love Twitter because it’s a fast, punchy way to share news in real time, as has been witnessed this week during James and Rupert Murdoch’s testimony to the Leveson Inquiry. But when it comes to news sites looking to appeal to the general reader, Facebook is making an unexpected resurgence. And the reason for this is Facebook’s Social Reader technology, introduced by founder Mark Zuckerberg last autumn.

This software means that when a Facebook user is logged into the social networking site and also visits a “partner” news site, it can automatically post an update to that user’s Facebook news feed, telling their friends they’ve read that story. This has been dubbed “friction-less sharing”.

So Facebook, with its 901 million users, is having a dramatic effect on sites which have signed up such as the Independent, the Guardian, the Washington Post and Yahoo! News.

Click-through-rates — the number of users who subsequently clicked on a news story — have trebled in the first three months of this year compared with the last quarter of 2011, according to advertising agency TBG Digital, which specialises in social media ads.

Simon Mansell, TBG Digital chief executive, says this shows that Facebook “works well for sharing news as well as gaming and photos, an offering which other social networks — such as Twitter — have dominated to date”. The Guardian’s Facebook Social Reader app has been installed by 11 million users, the Independent’s has been installed by nearly five million. More than 21 million users of Yahoo! News have opted in to its Social Bar application.

According to some of those involved, around 20% of users regularly arrive at a news story via social media. If a story goes viral, it can reach 40%.

This is threatening the dominance of search, ie Google, although that site is still responsible for around 40% of page views on these news websites. People heading directly to the news site, rather than via social or search, accounts for the remaining third of views. Facebook and its Social Reader are also bringing in a younger audience with about half of those clicking on news stories via Facebook aged under 24.

Other news sites, including the Evening Standard, sister paper of the Independent, are set to sign up soon.

There are two main ways to use the software: the Guardian and the Washington Post have built their own Social Reader section within Facebook and others, such as the Independent, have embedded Facebook into their own site which will know if you are a Facebook user and display on the side of the page what you and your friends have been reading.

Some don’t like that idea and there are opt-outs, so a user can choose whether to block others from seeing what he or she is reading.

“It’s related to age,” says Mansell. “Maybe I don’t want to share that I’ve been reading about, say, Viagra. But younger people are less concerned. There’s a generational thing.”

Facebook says it only gives anonymised personal data to its partners and advertisers.

However, if Facebook users are also happy to share personal details about themselves with an external website — for example, to register to make online comments or take part in a competition — then suddenly it opens up greater targeting possibilities.

“Companies can plug in and know who these people are and their friends — obviously with permission,” says Mansell. “And when it’s plugged into Spotify, Yahoo, Zynga and so on, that’s pretty powerful.” He gives the example of how “a news site could target all the Coke fans with a Pepsi ad”.

For the time being, Facebook doesn’t charge news sites. There is no sharing of revenue, so the news sites get to keep any ad income — although for pages within Facebook, the social networking website can still run its own ads such as Sponsored Stories on the right-hand side of the page.

Ian Maude of Enders Analysis says charging may not be a priority for Facebook for now, as it challenges Google. “The wider macro-strategy for Facebook is for people to find and access content through Facebook,” he says.

However, Facebook has to think about its stock market float, valuing it at up to £64 billion, expected next month. Earlier this week, it reported a slowdown in advertising growth in the first quarter of the year.

So Facebook could look to charge for news in the medium term — as it has done by taking a 30% slice from social games company Zynga when it sells virtual products to users.

Mansell says: “I think Facebook will let these publishers grow until they become so significant to these companies that they couldn’t switch it off — and then they’ll ‘tax’ them. Facebook is like a country. They let people build things in the country and then charge them.”

For now, however, most news sites are simply glad that Facebook is boosting their readership.

Source: London Evening Standard

Winner: Best Viral category for the Vodafone ‘Evolution of mobile’ campaign
Winner: Marketing on a Shoestring category for Heineken ‘Music Matcher’
Winner: Agency of the Year

Congratulations to all TBGers, old and new.

The Facebook PMD Program recognises companies that have developed technologies in one or more of the following specialty areas: Page management solutions (Pages), ads management solutions (Ads), services and platforms for building socially enabled integrations (Apps), and/or tools for Page Insights analysis (Insights).

Following its enormous success in Facebook advertising, TBG has been awarded a PMD Badge qualifying in 2 areas – Ads and Apps. Qualifying in these 2 specialty areas recognizes TBG’s consistent high-standards in areas of campaign management, reporting, services and platforms for building socially enabled integrations.

Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital, commented: “We are constantly seeking to develop our products and services on Facebook for our clients and it’s great to be part of the PMD Program. We look forward to using our status on the PMD Program to continue our goal for innovation and great services for our clients, making it an even more effective platform for them.”

The PMD program aims to help developers build products that make social marketing easier and more effective. Companies accepted into PMD program must clearly demonstrate unique capabilities that help marketers achieve increased efficiency, and visibly extend beyond the functionality of Facebook’s native tools.

For more information, please visit https://developers.facebook.com/preferredmarketingdevelopers
Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

Facebook’s advertising rates have shot up 41% on a year ago, an authoritative new survey today suggested, boosting hopes for the social networking website’s planned $100 billion (£63 billion) stock-market flotation.

The figures, compiled by ad agency TBG Digital, one of the biggest spenders on Facebook, show that the cost of advertising was rising even as the website increased the number of ads it carries on each page.

“It’s good news for Facebook,” said Simon Mansell, chief executive of TBG Digital. “Facebook has seen an increase in pricing at the same time it has grown the number of ads per page to seven which you would naturally expect to actually deflate prices.”

TBG Digital, whose survey is audited by Cambridge University, is believed to be responsible for just under 10% of all advertising spend on the world’s biggest social media site, which was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 and has more than 850 million users.

Another key finding to emerge from TBG Digital’s quarterly survey is that the number of Facebook users clicking on news stories has almost trebled compared to just three months earlier thanks to so-called “social readers”.

This software means that when a Facebook user is logged into the social networking site and also visits an external “partner” news website, it will automatically post an update to that user’s Facebook news feed, telling their friends they’ve read that story.

The Independent, The Guardian, The Washington Post and Yahoo News are among the news websites that have already signed up as partners with Facebook’s social reader technology.

Click-through-rates — the number of Facebook users who subsequently clicked on a news story — have surged 196%, says TBG Digital. The Facebook “social reader” service is free to news websites at present but Mansell said the jump in click-through rates suggested Facebook might be able to make money from it in future in the same way that it has done from gaming.

He added that it showed Facebook was becoming important for sharing news in a way that “other social networks, such as Twitter have dominated to date”. The continued strength of Facebook comes as Google co-founder Sergey Brin warned in an interview with The Guardian today that the social network and “walled garden” phone apps were making the web less free.

Source: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/business/business-news/facebook-floatplan-fillip-as-advertising-rates-surge-41-7647494.html

Facebook had a great Q1 2012, with a 41 percent increase in ad rates (the cost-per thousand impressions that advertisers pay), according to TBG Digital, a major seller and manager of Facebook advertising campaigns.

This bodes well for Facebook’s Q1 earnings, which the soon-to-go-public social network has yet to report.

The only bad news: performance softened somewhat in the U.S., where Facebook’s growth overall is slowing.

TBG’s conclusion was based on a sample of 327 billion ad impressions from 235 Facebook advertising clients. What follows are TBG’s estimates of Facebook’s Q1 ad performance, accompanied by commentary from TBG CEO Simon Mansell and his team.

Source: Businessinsider.com

Simon Mansell, chief executive officer of TBG Digital, talks about social network advertisement performance and strategy.
He speaks with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Click here to view the interview

Source: Bloomberg.com

Twitter is currently attracting higher CPMs than other social networks, according to early data about Twitter’s ad platform from TBG Digital.

The snapshot, taken from data for 10 brands across different sectors, shows some early trends for the paid ads across the microblogging site. TBG Digital said that while it is a snapshot of emerging trends, it was only taken form a small sample of impressions, compared to the data it currently tracks on Facebook.

The data found that the CPM rate for Twitter was higher than most social networks partly due to the way the ads are in-stream, rather than sitting on the side of the screen, which is attractive to advertisers.

Other trends outlined in the research found that for the category of ‘news’ Twitter click-through rates were much higher on Twitter than on Facebook. However, categories such as ‘travel’ and ‘consumer electronics’ were currently gaining a higher click-through on Facebook (see chart below).

The trend towards Twitter being used more for news consumption is also shown in data around what times of day ads see most engagement.

According to the research, conversions differed dependent on the time of day, with 6am-12pm and 8pm-12pm being the most successful on Twitter, the times of day when users are more hungry for information and news (see chart below).

Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital, said, “The conversions and cost per follower differ at different parts of the day and on Twitter the best times are in the morning and the evening. This can be applied to the fact that a lot of people use Twitter for news consumption. Facebook differs because it tends to peak at lunchtime, when people are using it for their downtime.”

Twitter itself is echoing this point as Tony Wang, general manager of Twitter UK told new media age in February that he thought Twitter offers access to the ‘information graph’ (nma.co.uk 27 February 2012).

“Brands see the power of reaching people on their information graph. People make the mistake of automatically putting Twitter into the social category. There are definitely social aspects to Twitter but it goes beyond this. It’s about getting content from thought leaders, getting news,” he said.

According to TBG’s data in territories where Twitter is relatively new, such as Brazil, the cost-per-follower is very low, while follow rates and click-through rates are very high. Comparatively, the US has high cost-per-follower but the follow rate and click-though rate is below average. The UK is currently sitting in the middle for all metrics (see chart below).

Source: Click here to view nma.co.uk

Pages, which were described as being mission control for your business on Facebook. The focus is still on building stories that your fans and their friends will be interested in. The design of the new business pages now reflect the user timelines launched late last year and therefore include a cover photo and the opportunity to add milestones. A new addition however is the ability to pin posts to the top of your page.

Reach Generator, which increases the number of your fans who see your stories. The average post only reaches 16% of fans but this “always on” delivery tool (managed by Facebook) guarantees that you will reach at least 75% of your fans each month and 50% each week. A point to note here is that you must have at least 500,000 fans in order to take advantage of the Reach Generator and the minimum booking period is three months. Facebook describe this is a loyalty builder as you brand is regularly in front of the user.

Premium on Facebook, which is a suite of ad placements which provides high impact across the network. These placements include the right hand side of the home page, news feed on home page, positioning on log out and, for the first time ever, news feed on mobile devices. Ads can be delivered to fans or non-fans and are expected to be part of an ad campaign.

Facebook described how they see the progression of advertising on its network. Brands are advised to publish compelling posts on their new Pages and then amplify these messages outwards using Reach Generator and Premium on Facebook. Page Post Ads are the equivalent “Marketplace” placement.

So those are the three headline products. What else was unveiled?

New ad placements. As mentioned above, Premium ads now also appear in two new places: on the Facebook log-out Page and mobile News Feed. As highly engaging Marketplace ads occasionally appear on the homepage, likewise they may appear in the News Feed, both on desktop and mobile. Please note that mobile ads are available in the US only at the moment on iPhone, android and the Facebook mobile site. They will be launched in other countries in the coming months.

Offers. Offers are a direct replacement for the mobile-based Check-in Deals. Starting the process from your Page, you can create an offer post for free and then convert it into a Page Post Ad. Redeeming the offer is very simple for the user. They click on the highlighted link and the full offer details are sent to their email account. As always, there’s a viral opportunity as the user’s interaction with the offer is pushed into their timeline.

What Next?

Start preparing your Facebook Page. You have until the 30th March to get it in order. At the same time, ensure your posting strategy is in line with what Facebook recommends; post once a day, keep the length to less than 90 characters and include images or videos to increase double engagement rates. It’s also really important to connect those who own your page with those who buy the media for it – they will be working very closely from now on. If you need help, or would like to test one of the new ad placements, then please give your account handler a call.

TBG Digital featured in a recent Financial Times article – “Facebook rewrites the rules of adland”

Groups such as Vitrue and Buddy Media, which license page management software to companies for a monthly fee, as well as TBG Digital and Brighter Option, which buy social ads for the companies, then keep a percentage of the sale, are earning healthy revenues for themselves at the same time as they feed traffic and ad dollars to Facebook.

Goldman Sachs has called the chief executives at both Vitrue and TBG Digital in recent weeks, the companies said. The bank has been vigorous in contacting companies in this field as it attempts to position itself more prominently with technology companies, after landing top underwriting spots behind Morgan Stanley on some of the hottest tech IPO filings – most recently Facebook.

To read the full article go to ft.com