Why Facebook Ads Are Undervalued By 800%

Facebook advertising is even more powerful than previously thought. Advertising efficacy is usually assessed using the “last click,” meaning that the point of interaction right before the conversion is considered.  But this methodology has become outmoded in the context on Facebook advertising because people simply aren’t in buying phase when playing around on the social network, making it highly unlikely that a brand advertising on the site will get an immediate conversion. Most Facebook ad clicks lead to a conversion at a later time and through a different channel. But last click analysis would have inaccurately attributed these conversions to last channel in the purchase path. Quite often this shows search as the beneficiary because when people are ready to buy...

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Google Leads Investment In Facebook Gamer Kabam

If you play Facebook games, then you are familiar with Kabam games. The company is the maker of Kingdoms of Camelot, Dragon of Atlantis and Glory of Rome. The company receives $85 million in a financing round led by Google’s venture arm, helping the startup expand in Asia, hire developers and make acquisitions. The investment is also being co-led by Pinnacle Ventures, and now values Kabam at about $500 million. The Bay Area company has raised $125 million since it started five years ago as a sports and social media group, but transformed into creator of social games. Kabam was formerly called Watercooler, and changed name last year. The size of its personnel has shot from 25 to 400 since 2010. Click here to read more on Social Time...

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PastPost Recalls What You Did On Facebook Last Year

Can’t remember what you did yesterday? Yeah, we can’t either. Well, a new application intends to fix that. PastPosts, created by tech veterans Jonathan Wegener, Matt Raoul and Benny Wong, sends users a daily email — if you didn’t log in every day last year, you only get messages on days that correspond to when you’d used Facebook in the prior year. The daily missive comes in an easy-to-read format showing wall comments, posted photos, status updates, and more from your personal Facebook archives. Wegener said the idea came from an app the guys created for Foursquare a few months ago called 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo that does pretty much...

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Ex-MySpace Exec Launching Facebook Alternative

This is probably the most far-fetched pitch I’ve heard yet: a social network billing itself as an alternative to Facebook, created by MySpace alumni. MySpace, for the few of you that don’t know, literally was the Facebook alternative until Facebook beat them at their own game. Now there are plenty of social applications looking to fill gaps in Facebook’s experience. There are even a few that are trying to use privacy as the key selling point, just as Altly is. However, most of these startups never received traction and thus never received an investment of any significant size. Altly appears to be the exception, starting off with a round of funding from some influential investors. I can understand where the investors are coming from: Use Facebook’s branding to build a brand off...

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SURVEY: 2 In 3 Small Businesses Are On Facebook

Roughly than two-thirds of small business owners have a presence on Facebook. That comes from a survey of 1,132 small business owners by Webs.com. Webs.com found that 68.6 percent, or 591 respondents, use Facebook the most for their business. Over three quarters of the survey respondents plan to increase their use of social media this year, while almost one in five plan to maintain the same amount of effort they did in 2010. And 25.3 percent said they update social media several times a day, while 16.7 percent said they posted once a day. When asked whether they see social media as a viable way to communicate with their customers, 62.1...

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D.C. Facebook Employees Get A New Boss

Joel Kaplan, a former staff member under George W. Bush, will join Facebook and lead the Washington D.C. office. Previously an executive vice president at Energy Future Holdings, Kaplan has very strong ties to the Republican party. Facebook is in need of growing the company’s D.C. efforts as they want to “demonstrate to policy makers that [they] are industry leaders in privacy, data security and safety,” the company said in a press release. Evelyn Rusli of the New York Times is calling this a “significant coup.” Given the increasing scrutiny surrounding Facebook’s privacy practices, it’s critical that they continue to add staff members to increase their influence within the beltway. It also sounds like a great career change for Joel Kaplan. According to the Times, he’s leaving a...

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How To Succeed At Facebook Advertising

Gordmans opened two new stores in Minneapolis and promoted them with several Facebook campaigns, working with BlitzLocal.com. They created two different types of campaigns: one advertising an event, and another advertising a tab. Both were targeted at the city level. Because the scope was so narrow, tests included adding the city name as part of the ad image itself. Overall though, these ads definitely helped in garnering more visitors. Sponsored Stories Outperformed Regular Facebook AdsThere are two types of sponsored stories – a sponsored like, which targets friends of your fans, and a Sponsored post, which shows messages to existing...

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