5 Ways Savvy e-Commerce Companies Are Leveraging Facebook Ads

This article was originally published here on Inside Facebook.

Following social gaming, e-commerce companies have been early adopters of Facebook advertising. We have had the opportunity to work with innovators in the industry over the last 2 years, including Fab.com, Gilt Groupe and Nordstrom’s HauteLook, helping them hone their Facebook advertising strategies to acquire new customers and deliver positive ROI. In fact, their needs and goals have helped refine our product roadmap.

Savvy e-commerce companies are increasingly realizing they can leverage Facebook Ads to meet specific business goals — those that live both on and off Facebook, and that go far beyond the Like. In the online advertising world, using paid media to drive business results beyond awareness is known as “performance advertising,” and it’s something our software was built from the ground up to introduce to the world of Facebook. Our Ad Engine measures the user engagement that happens after someone clicks on a Facebook Ad, and uses that information in real-time to inform bidding and optimization of creative and audience targeting.

With this experience in mind, below are 5 business goals e-commerce companies are driving to and optimizing for as part of their Facebook advertising campaigns:

Nanigans Receives ‘Hottest Boston Company’ Award

Nanigans is excited to announce being a recipient of Lead411’s 2012 ‘Hottest Boston Company’ award.

Lead411 conducts research on the fastest growing technology companies in the United States, for customers like Gartner and ADP. Their city-by-city ‘Hot List’ awards were created to recognize quickly growing companies in this space.

In Boston, a pool of 1776 local companies from the software, wireless, hardware, internet and media industry were researched in the process. That list was narrowed down to just 62 award recipients that represent the hottest, fastest growing companies in the Boston region, chosen on their merits of achieving a 100% increase in revenues or receiving over $2M in venture capital in the last two years.

The third annual Boston award, Nanigans is honored to be recognized alongside other Boston technology leaders like HubSpot, JumpTap, uTest, Care.com, Black Duck Software, Backupify, CustomMade, Gazelle, and Gemvara. We want to thank Lead411 for the award and recognition, and congratulate all our fellow award recipients!

2012 is off to a great start for Nanigans and its Facebook advertising software, from new clients, partnerships and product features to the exciting campaigns managed through our software by the largest and most sophisticated advertisers on Facebook.

This award tops off another consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for Nanigans, and we look forward to continuing to grow and innovate in 2012!

Final Four Weekend: It’s a Kentucky Nation on Facebook [Infographic]

With this weekend’s Final Four match ups between Kentucky and Louisville as well as Kansas and Ohio State in mind, we decided to dig into the buzz surrounding each team, their coaches, and top players on Facebook. We tapped our Facebook advertising software, Ad Engine, for the data, and found that Kentucky trumps in popularity in every category we examined. We took this a step further, identifying which team each state is cheering for this weekend. We compiled the results in the following infographic:

Facebook’s Social Business Blueprints

Following the success of their fMC event earlier this month, Facebook released two white papers (commissioned by Forrester Research) to empower marketers to approach social more strategically, and which highlight how paid media fuels social momentum.

Facebook introduces the white papers by underscoring that 95% of VP and C-level marketers believe we live in a connected world, “where people are connected to the things they care about through social media.” The implications of this for businesses? Traditional, one-way, push marketing is replaced by two-way dialogue (which can be initiated by consumers) and offers the opportunity for brands to connect more authentically with potential and current customers. Perhaps more consequential, it means the veil and tinted glass covering how your company engages in business has been lifted.

NCAA March Madness on Facebook: Which Bracket is Most Popular?

March Madness has arrived—the time when Bracketology becomes an accepted form of science. Analysts and fans alike continue their last minute dissections, searching for something that could signal an upset (we’re looking at you Syracuse). Users of Facebook are no different, taking to the platform in hordes to discuss each team and hurl a few well placed insults at their peers from other schools. Freecast has taken advantage of the interest on Facebook, and partnered with TNT, TBS, TruTV and CBS to stream all the games live onto Facebook.

So, who is interested in March Madness on Facebook? We dove into our Facebook campaign data to find out.

Kony 2012 on Facebook: Breaking Down Invisible Children’s Reach

Over the past week, Facebook, blogs and the twittesphere have all been buzzing about Invisible Children’s new viral video campaign, Kony 2012. The Invisible Children non-profit began with a simple, but difficult concept — make people care about Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord who routinely kidnaps and uses child soldiers to maintain his power. The organization’s campaign goal was clear: make Kony famous (or rather, infamous) by creating a video so compelling, that hundreds of thousands of people would join the cause.

One week and 70 million views later on their 30 minute video detailing Kony’s regime, Invisible Children by all means achieved their goal. To put this feat into perspective, the Old Spice Guy took 5 months to reach the same level of YouTube views.

So, who are these new found supports? We dove into our Facebook campaign data to find out.

Nanigans Partners with Advertising Agency Hill Holliday, Accelerates Introduction of Ad Engine™ to Existing Clients

BOSTON, Mass. –- March 1, 2012 (BusinessWire) — Nanigans, Inc., a Facebook® Ads API developer focused on helping marketers maximize ROI from their Facebook advertising campaigns, has been selected for partnership in Hill Holliday’s Project Beacon program.

Hill Holliday’s Project Beacon program was designed to offer strategic counsel and promote collaboration between the agency and ad tech startups. With the goal of bringing innovative advertising technologies to market faster than ever before, Hill Holliday will provide client introductions as well as offer strategy, product development and growth advice to Nanigans as part of the partnership.

“A Facebook strategy has become foundational to marketers today. Nanigans offers a platform that allows advertisers to measure and optimize their Facebook ad spend to meet specific goals on and off Facebook, such as registrations, viral shares and purchases,” explained Seb Maitra, SVP and Group Media Director at Hill Holliday. “We find Nanigans’ transparency, strategic guidance and focus on ROI optimization extremely helpful as we seek to maximize the impact of our clients’ footprint on Facebook.”

Live from fMC: Facebook Courts Big Brands, Positions Itself to Secure Share of TV Spend

Facebook’s much anticipated and first ever Facebook Marketing Conference, fMC, kicked off at 1PM this afternoon in New York City. We were excited to have been invited to the event, and take a first look at new Facebook products aimed at courting large businesses looking for an online media channel with the scale currently offered by television. With 845 million users across the globe who are spending an increasingly larger portion of their time on the social network, Facebook certainly fits the bill.

The Keynote: Facebook’s Impact on Society, through Storytelling.

The keynote began with Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg eloquently outlining the internet’s impact on society, and Facebook’s role in introducing a platform where individuals are connected to other people and entities — ultimately providing them a voice on the web.

“When the internet happened, it changed our lives. It changed our lives around the provision of information,” she shared. “Technology is powering us; it’s powering who we are. This is a shift – a shift to the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of friends. … History is filled with examples of when individuals had a voice and made a difference. The difference now is that people can have this voice at scale.”

She set this stage to then outline how the Facebook platform is helping marketers forge deeper connections with individuals.

Facebook Advertising: Revenue, Market Share and Projections

Over the past several years, Facebook ads have gone from being a new notion to representing the largest market share of online display ads. eMarketer recently published a report projecting worldwide social network ad revenues to grow by the billions. Over a four year period from 2011-2014, social network advertising is expected to grow from a $5.2 billion industry to a $11.87 billion industry.