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.

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. 

The State of Facebook Marketing in Infographics

Facebook ads are here, and they’re here to stay. Over the past few months there has been an influx of new, fantastic infographics on Facebook and its emergence as one of the preeminent online engagement and marketing platforms. We decided to share some of our favorites, organized by the current state of Facebook trends, understanding your followers and fans, maximizing the potential of your Facebook marketing campaign, and the future of the Open Graph platform and Social Sharing.

Courtesy of The Social Marketer:
Facebook emerges as the largest ad impressions publisher on the internet

Facebook, once thought of as the future of online advertisements, has become the dominant force in a crowded field of online ad publishers.

Nanigans on the Speaking Circuit: Cornell, Social Media Week NYC & More

Recently the team at Nanigans has been on a bit of a speaking circuit, on topics ranging from Facebook advertising and social commerce to more general startup marketing. Here’s a recap:

Cornell University

Our SVP Product, Rishi Dean, made a guest appearance as professor of digital marketing at Cornell University. As part of his invitation to speak at Cornell, Rishi was asked to create and propose a business case for students to complete. While the full text of that case isn’t publicly available, below are the presentation slides Rishi used to take students through the evolution of online advertising and how the rise of social networking is transforming the space.

Insider’s Guide to Facebook Advertising: Country Targeting — Reach vs. CPC [Infographic]

Part of Facebook’s draw in being such a transformational media platform for advertisers lies in its global connectivity. 75 percent of Facebook’s 845 million active users live outside the United States, with the social network supporting 70 different languages.

With this global user base and a real-time ad marketplace, many marketers face a dilemma in balancing country reach (the number of targetable users in that country) and cost goals when bidding for ad placement on Facebook. We pulled data from the 175 billion Facebook ad impressions managed through our Ad Engine  in 2011 to compare the reach and average cost-per-clicks (CPC) for countries across the globe — featured today on Business Insider:

Casual Games Association: The Present & Future of Social Gaming

We love social games. As a company that works with many game developers, we need to understand the games to effectively advertise them (i.e., we have excuses to play games at work). And, let’s be honest, what’s better than beating a friend at a Facebook game, and having the news published for all your other friends to see? Naturally, we were excited to get our hands on the Casual Games Association’s 2012 Casual Games Sector Report.

The US social gamer audience is expected to rise to 78 million people in 2012, up from an expected 69 million in 2011 and 57 million in 2010. Needless to say, the industry is booming. With an average age of 40 for women and 37 for men, social games are capturing a much wider audience than traditional console games.

10 Interesting Facebook Open Graph Apps and Actions

Aside from its IPO, the big Facebook story over the past week has been the addition of over 60 Open Graph Apps. When these Apps were announced back in September at f8, our SVP of Product, Rishi Dean, wrote two great posts—first breaking down Facebook’s Open Graph platform and announcements at f8, and a second outlining how together these announcements form a “social feedback loop.”