Tag Archives: FaceBook

Is Facebook suddenly a 13x ROI ad network?

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Facebook in 2012 had a hard time convincing the retail market that it was a mobile commerce player. Facebook opened storefronts with GameStop and others retail partners. They should have been a success. However, all languished and were closed over the course of the storefront trial.

While Facebook may not be the destination that users go to shop, it has proven its value as the preeminent social “influencer” of commerce. Today’s Samsung results vindicate the network and all doubters.

After a three-week, $10 million ad buy with Facebook, Samsung reached over 100 million unique users and generated $129 million in sales! That is a 13x return on a $10 million ad buy.

While these numbers are powerful testament to the social shopping behaviour on the web. Samsung has more than 20 million fans on Facebook and needed to find ways influence their buying decisions. SALES not LIKES drive profits!

Coming out of the tremendous results from Cyber Monday, we know that somewhere advertising and commerce needs to find a closer connection. The market is still in the pursue of a way for sales-driving networks like Facebook (in the advertising world) to connect more seamlessly to commerce conversion network (in the retail world).

PayPal reported a 200% increase in transactions through this past weekend. If Facebook’s reach could be married to a “one-click commerce” checkout, this 13x conversion rate may jump a significant multiple.

In a world where “path to purchase” is a perilous path and we need find ways to better connect these two worlds.

Ochlocracy? Are Facebook’s libertarian roots eroding?

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I was listening to David Kirkpatrick read The FaceBook Effect biking to work this working. The opening chapter is about how Oscar Morales galvanized Colombia against the FARC terrorist group. Hundreds of thousands marched globally off the drum of Oscar’s Facebook page . . .

. . and it struck me as mildly ironic that while Facebook has become synonymous with democracy (a million voices against the “powers that be”), its new Silicon Valley HQ is now at the center of an “anti-democracy” debate.

Facebook proposed this week that it will terminate its community users’ right to vote on changes to site policies. When you give a libertine community certain powers (such as the right to impact the site’s design) it speaks to the core philosophy of an organization.

When the same company says that it is “too big for democracy”, one may take this as a sign that the post-IPO corporate culture is clamping down on what made Facebook a successful social experiment.

I can understand that a corporation may find democracy inconvenient. I can understand that many in this new public company could see this user-based democracy as a slipper slope to ochlocracy.

However, it speaks to Facebook’s libertine roots. It is incredulous to use FARC as examples of The Facebook Effect and then withdraw that same crowd-sourcing element that has enabled the community to grow.

The cost of the digital consumer: Instagram vs. YouTube

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At $33 per user is Instagram a bargain?  YouTube was purchased at $1.65 billion with undeclared but estimated low revenues. The cost-per-user was just north of $50.
However, we know that Google bought YouTube to develop a niche video portal. (A portal that in 2006 was demonstrating an average user time spend of fifteen minutes each day.) Online video was the new frontier and Google made YouTube one of the pillars of its advertising empire and matured the property slowly. Presently YouTube direct content and the YouTube partnership network supports the lions share on online video time spent in North America.

Instagram provides eyeballs – 30 million; however, is the application indispensable, sticky and can Facebook grow the property slowly to extract the value?  Instagram’s global user base spend their time cropping and filter images to make them look upload worthy.

Acquisitions for eyeballs has not been a big win for many buyers. What is the long term content play for Facebook. Is Instagram a mature building block for Facebook or is it a pre-IPO market postioning story?

SXSW roundup interview on BNN (Adult Spring Break)

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It was “adult springbreak”. Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, ACL, Venture Classmates, these are the names Gary Schwartz, President & CEO of Impact Mobile has been discussing in meetings at The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference in Austin.

Watch interview here

Conjugating Mobile: Facebook As Big Brother?

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By Gary Schwartz

The litmus test for the success of any mobile technology is our ability to conjugate nouns and verbs around its products and services. A loving sign is when nouns become a verb and we “Google”, We “Skype”, We “Facebook”, We “TXT”. There seems to be a direct business correlation between becoming part of your consumer’s vernacular and the stock price of the originating company.

Some companies are being proactive.  They are positioning their company for success by making their products and services more verb friendly. Perhaps product marketing teams need to spoon feed marking terms to the public: We “Tweet”, We “Like”, We “Check-in”.

In September 2011, Facebook took this spoon feeding to an entirely new level. At F8 in San Francisco, Facebook’s expanded their one dimensional LIKE vocabulary that has dominated the web. In an attempt to move from she LIKES to he LIKED to they BOUGHT, Facebook has cranked open the commerce dictionary.

We all know that web commerce and communication tools are very Orwellian. Words control actions. Words expand or limit our shopping behavior. Like a well-oiled Orwell Big Brother, Facebook published new mobile commerce words and actions that it called F-commerce. It is a new grammatical system that allow the mobile shopper on TABs and handhelds (oh and PCs and TVs) to buy better.

Facebook kindly published an image of the “Social Commerce Grammar Lesson” on their blog for late night study sessions. Here is a snap shot of their primer:

There are ACTIONS and OBJECTS (AKA VERBS and NOUNS). Verb have been expanded from LIKE to BOUGHT, WANT, OWNS, HEARTS and these verbs can now be added to nouns such as JEANS, CARS, WATCHES, SHOES.

So CONSUMER + ACTION + OBJECT are now a social linga franca for web commerce. Instantly publish desire to your friends. Hannah Schwartz hearts Steve Madden pink shoes at Blommingdales Susan Frank wears Prada from the Guilt Groupe.

Facebook’s blog explains:

“When an action is published, the activity can appear in the user’s News Feed  . . . So when a user is shopping, buying, or wanting in the local store a new pair of shoes, jeans, or car, she can publish this activity  . . .”

First there was TXT

The mobile technology landscape is action packed with colorful language. It seems indicative of the social nature of the channel.  Ten years ago, the 160 character constraint of the txt message birthed a generation of initiatisms, acronyms and abbreviations.  These coded words were strung together by whatever grammatical glue would hold the idea together.

But the goal was not to write. The goal was to send an idea, flirt, info. A generation of instant messagers sent more smiley faces than punctuation. Sexting, Toothing, Connecting has turn the messaging channel into a global secret society generating trillions of one line messages a day. Until the ripe old age of 55 folk are texting more than calling. What is the adage? “A pictogram is worth a thousand words” :)

Over the years the communication and information channels have proliferated. Nearly all our mobile consumer behavior can be conjugated through these channels in natural English. This new instant communication code (according to research done by Dr. Nanagh Kemp of University of Tasmania) has a strong grammar and phonetics structure.

However the various channels dictate meaning. The choice of channel itself dictates much of the meaning. Building on Ryan Copeland oft-quoted tweet: “Twitter = I need to pee. Facebook = I peed! Foursquare = I’m peeing here. Quora = Why am I peeing?”, we could extrapolate that the word SHOPPING can be conjugated across all the channels:

  • Twitter              I need to shop.
  • SMS                 It’s a good time to shop.
  • Facebook         I bought.
  • FourSquare      Here’s where I bought.
  • Quora              Why did I buy?
  • YouTube          Watch me wear.
  • LinkedIn           I’m a professional shopper.

The channel also dictates rules of conduct.  For example hash tag etiquette allows for one but not multiple hash tags in one tweet.

What don’t we conjugate is as important as what we do. We don’t “QR Code” or “scan me”. That is not in our vernacular. We don’t “APP”. These are not communication channels so they don’t conjugate well.

Mobile language will continue to expand as shopper increasing adopts and adapt these channels.

Facebook Rules of Engagement

However, is Facebook’s Social Commerce Grammar Lesson an attempt to control social actions on the increasingly commerce friendly web. Is their action and object framework a brilliant evolution of the LIKE button allowing for consistent experience across the web or is it a way of controlling and targeting their user base?

What is clear is that if the solution that wins is the one that consumers adopt as their shared language; Facebook is strides ahead of its competitors.

Facebook will win if you hear your girlfriend WANTS some GUCCI SHOES  from S5A.. . . Facebook hopes you will not need to “Google” for presents this holiday.