Archive for the ‘facebook’ tag
Facebook’s Growth Since IPO In 12 Big Numbers
$FB is still stuck at $26.25, way down from its $38 IPO price, but it’s made important progress since going public a year ago. Daily users up 26%, mobile monthly users up 56%, and revenue up 38% are some highlights. It’s running out of people to sign up in the developed world, but with this growth and no serious competitor in sight, it’s survived its hardest year yet.
- Likes – 4.5 Billion – Up 67% – Average number of likes generated as of May 2013, up from 2.7 billion likes generated daily in August 2012
- Content Items Shared – 4.75 Billion – Up 94% – Average number of content items shared daily as of May 2013, up from 2.45 content items shared daily in August 2012
[Stats and images provided by Facebook]
Likes and sharing are growing faster than Facebook’s user count, indicating strong engagement. This contradicts rumors that people are tuning out of Facebook. Zuckerberg’s Law, the CEO’s Moore’s Law-style theory, states that people will share twice as much every year. Facebook almost made good on Mark’s claim. It’s important that Facebook keeps that number growing as it’s shared content that keeps people visiting Facebook and seeing its ads.
To do that, Facebook is working on the more immersive mobile experience Home which has increased time spent on Facebook by 25% for its small number of active users. More time spent could lead to more sharing. This year it doubled the speed of its massively popular iOS and Android by switching them from HTML5 to native architecture, which lead to longer session times. It added content-specific news feed to boost browsing, and launched Graph Search to pull additional value out its data and get people to contribute more.
It’s also been beefing up its mobile SDKs for iOS and Android to make it easier for apps to share content to Facebook. That’s a big reason Facebook cares about helping its developers grow — they’re scratching each other’s backs.
- Monthly Active Users – 1.11 Billion – up 23% – As of March 2013, up from 901 million MAUs in March 2012
- Daily Active Users – 665 Million – up 26% – On average as of March 2013, up from 526 million DAUs on average in March 2012
- Mobile Monthly Active Users – 751 Million – up 54% – As of March 2013, up from 488 million mobile MAUs in March 2012
- Instagram – 100 Million Monthly Active Users – As of February 2013
Facebook is still signing up people pretty quickly, but all users are not created equal. While it earned $3.50 per user in the U.S. and Canada in Q1 2013, it only made $0.50 per user in much of the developing world including India and Brazil. Those emerging markets are where Facebook is getting most of its growth, meaning each subsequent 100 million users added is worth less than the last.
Growth in mobile has a similar issue. Facebook can show as many as seven ads per page on desktop whereas it has to be more careful not to overwhelm the small screen on mobile. So as Facebook’s users shift their access medium to mobile, it may earn less on each of them. Facebook is hoping that getting developers to pay for mobile news feed ads to get their apps discovered could counteract this, and that market is poised to grow as more businesses launch apps and the developing world switches to smartphones.
Overall, though, Facebook is still growing strong nine years after launch. The network effect of its ubiquity should not be underestimated. Dislodging Facebook as the premier general purpose social network will require something that’s not just better, but much, much better. Competitors might pick away at certain use cases, but are unlikely to replace it as the core identity provider for the web. Considering Facebook’s willingness to buy out threats like Instagram (which is still growing quickly in the first world), could stave off disruption and let it reign for years to come.
- Local Businesses – 16 Million – up 100% – Number of local business pages as of May 2013, up from 8 million in June 2012
- Promoted Posts – 7.5 Million – Number of promoted posts made from June 2012 to May 2013
- Revenue – $1.46 Billion – up 38% – In the first quarter of 2013, up from $1.06 billion in the first quarter of 2012
- Ad Revenue – $1.25 Billion – up 43% – In the first quarter of 2013, up from $872 million in the first quarter of 2012
- Employees – 4,900 – up 38% – As of March 2013, up from 3,539 in March 2012
- Game Payers – 24% more – Increase from March 2012 to March 2013
There’s no doubt about it. Going public made Facebook focus more on making money. It went from nearly zero revenue on mobile to $375 million a quarter, or about 30% of its total ad revenue. That in large part came thanks to the mobile app install ads it launched late last year. These let developers promote their apps in the Facebook news feed with ads that link straight to download pages in the Apple App Store and Google Play. These stores are getting more and more clogged with apps, inspiring developers to pay Facebook to get found.
Facebook also made big headway with Facebook Exchange, its retargeted ads that use people’s browser histories to show them highly relevant ads. FBX is absorbing advertiser budgets set aside for retargeting. Less successful has been Facebook Gifts, its entrance into direct e-commerce. Gifts has failed to produce meaningful revenue and may need to be overhauled to get more users purchasing real-life presents for their friends. Growth in payments revenue has been relatively slow too, as more game developers move from Facebook’s web canvas where it earns 30% to mobile, where Apple and Google get that cut.
One opportunity that should excite investors is that Facebook started showing ads in Graph Search. While they use the standard Facebook targeting now, they’re expected to incorporate keyword targeting, which could make them a more direct competitor to Google’s wildly lucrative AdWords business. The increasing technological savvy of local businesses could be a boon to Facebook in the future. Right now few of them actively buy social ads, but expect revenue to shift towards Facebook and away from less targeted print and telephone book ads in the future.
Still, Facebook isn’t trying to make as much money as it could. Another year went by without TV commercial-style auto-play video ads (though they’re rumored to be getting closer to this), and it even paused its experiment with a mobile ad network. If Facebook built out these streams it might piss some people off or make them feel like they data is being exploited, but it could definitely produce a huge boost in revenue. Off-site and off-app ad networks could let Facebook leverage its enormous wealth of personal data to power ads elsewhere so it can earn money without showing more ads on its own properties. That potential more than any is an argument for why Facebook is undervalued.
Most importantly of all, Facebook’s efforts to earn more money have not significantly impeded its mission of connecting the world. There are definitely more ads on Facebook, especially on mobile, but the data shows that they’re not annoying users enough to reduce their engagement.
Facebook has grown up. It’s no longer the red-hot startup that could double its user count every year. And it’s not the mature corporation churning out amazing profits by squeezing every last dime out of its data and usage. But Facebook has weathered the storm of going public without letting it destroy its regard for the user experience. It’s now a fundamental utility for most of the world. If it can keep from getting too greedy and stay focused on the long-term health of its community, it will have plenty of time to figure out how to turn the world’s life story into serious business.
Land Rover Gives Thanks And Praises For Its 1 Mil. Facebook Fans
Follower counts in social channels don’t mean much, but no matter how many times a social media expert repeats this fundmental bit of advice, numbers continue to dazzle CMOs and others famished for metrics.
Which explains why Land Rover has made a note of a social media milestone, namely its one millionth “Like” on Facebook.
Even if the occasion isn’t actually all that auspicious, the ad is a nice “Thank You” note to Land Rover fans.
And why not take the opportunity to say thanks for your attention, thanks for buying Land Rover and including the brand in your social updates?
The post Land Rover Gives Thanks And Praises For Its 1 Mil. Facebook Fans appeared first on AdPulp.
A year after IPO, Facebook still down 30% (but the future is bright)
A year ago today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg “rang the bell” to open trading in one of the most hotly-anticipated initial public offerings in history as Facebook hit the stock market. And promptly went splat.
Today, not that much has changed.
After debuting close to $40 and cratering to just under $18 in August 2012, the stock has somewhat stabilized in the $25 region, down 30 percent from its open-day high. And along the way, the story emerged of how Facebook tried to hide some of the mobile risk inherent in its business, and how the company panicked and botched its IPO by using vague positive language in its public prospectus and, apparently, specific negative information about slowing revenue growth to institutional investors privately.
Not to mention the $100 million paid to banks to stabilize the stock — on top of $176 million in IPO fees — for efforts that ultimately failed. And technical glitches that cost the NASDAQ $62 million in compensatory fees.
All of which negatively affected the overall IPO market.
That all said, however, Facebook has seemingly nicely recovered from the disaster — at least from a business fundamentals perspective. Revenue growth was strong in its latest quarterly earnings release, with the company booking $1.46 billion in revenue for Q1 2013, compared to about $1 billion a year ago. More importantly, mobile was significantly up, accounting for 30 percent of ad revenues, and Facebook singlehandedly accounted for 6.5 percent of all online ad dollars spent in the U.S.
Not exactly Google numbers, but pretty good nevertheless.
And the company has massively beefed up its advertising options. It’s now posting retargeted ads right in the news feed, once sacrosanct territory. And, in a move aimed directly at advertising giant Google, Facebook has launched a self-serve tool that allows advertisers to target its users based on what they actually buy and want to buy offline … which is a significant move to targeting the intent graph that Google hits so well by virtue of being a search engine, but Facebook has often missed since its visitors are on the site to meet and greet people. In addition, as soon as July, Facebook will be rolling out 15-second video ads in the news feed, a product that it will be charging major brands millions of dollars for.
All of which is having an effect.
The consensus recommendation for Facebook is currently a buy, with a price target of $34. Most analysts are in the Strong Buy category, with few or none in the dreaded Underperform or Sell slots. And in the past four weeks, analysts have revised their earnings estimates upward by a factor of 6:1.
So there’s a lot of positive in Facebook’s future, and there’s a ton of potential. But it’s still challenging when analysts compare Facebook stock with other internet high-fliers like LinkedIn or Yelp, which rose 148 percent and 48 percent in their first years, respectively.
But at least it’s better than Groupon and Zynga, both down around 75-80 percent.
And, I would argue, while there are a ton of challenges and many very significant competitors — primarily Google — the future for Facebook is bright.
Even if the public start was a stubbed toe.
Filed under: Business, Deals, Mobile, Social 
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How is Social Media Changing Search Marketing?
In this month’s video segment I decided to compile several 30 second soundbytes from the recent Social Media Marketing World Conference. I asked several content creators what their thoughts were on how social media is changing search marketing. Highlights: How Social will impact the way people search: Andrea Vahl, Social Media Examiner Why Social Media is [...]
Author information
The post How is Social Media Changing Search Marketing? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Social media fail: Amy’s Baking Company bakt ze te bruin
Op 10 mei 2013 werd in Amerika een nieuwe aflevering van Kitchen Nightmares uitgezonden. In deze aflevering probeerde chefkok Gordon Ramsay de eigenaren Samy en Amy Bouzaglo van het restaurant Amy’s…
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Big data: hoe pas je het toe?
“It is not the size that matters, but what you do with it.” Big Data is een veelbesproken topic op de marketingagenda. Bedrijven als Google, IBM en Facebook zijn in staat geweest om succesvolle…
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Online Marketing News: Video Trends Map, Content Recommendation Engine & New Google+ Layout
New Google+ Layout: Hangouts, Photos and Stream Reminiscent of Pinterest
Google announced a major update to their social network this week that changes the way Hangouts, photos and the Google+ stream are viewed by users. The decidedly Pinterest-esque layout was just one of many announcements this week out of Google I/O, the totality of which Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Silva dubbed a “wreck.”
“The end result, we hope, is an app that looks and feels great across a family of devices,” Senior VP Vic Gundotra wrote of the Google+ changes. This is in line with Google’s mantra of late: Technology works best when it gets out of the way, and lets people do what makes them happiest: living, learning and loving.
With the announcements of more interconnection of services, Google Maps as a virtual world, Google All Access music streaming and more, Owyang and Silva remind consumers to expect the tools and products to get better, but to know you’re the product. If brands want to play in Google’s sandbox, they’ll ultimately need to pay, they said in summary.
Visit Web-Strategist.com to see the rest of Owyang and Silva’s commentary on what they called a “patchwork set of announcements from a fragmented company,” live from Google I/O.
Online Marketing News Briefs
It’s no surprise much of this week’s news pertains to Google and their products, given their I/O event and a myriad of changes announced this week. However, Facebook also made headlines through their retail social/mobile partnership with Target, as did insightful reports for online marketers from Google and GlobalWebIndex.
Content Recommendation Engine for Mobile Sites Launched by Google
Google has rolled out a content recommendation engine, which makes content recommendations for users at the bottom of the screen on news sites with the service enabled. Sites need just one snippet of code to add this functionality to their site. See more at TechCrunch.
Over Half of Global Internet Users Signed In to Facebook in Q1 2013
Facebook continues to dominate as the most popular social network on the planet, with just over half the world’s online population logging in on the site in the first quarter of 2013. Google+ came in a distant second, with 26% of global internet users, followed by YouTube, Twitter and Sina Weibo. See further analysis of GlobalWebIndex’s report at eMarketer.com.
Target and Facebook Join Forces in Cartwheel Mobile/Social/Retail Partnership
Cartwheel, a new site from a Target/Facebook partnership, has launched in beta and will begin rolling out their mobile/social program for retailers to a select group of participants shortly. The program allows users to browse exclusive deals and sales, with additional savings for social sharing. Learn more about Cartwheel at MediaPost.
Google+ Launches Auto-Hashtagging
As part of the Google+ design makeover, a new feature enables automatic hashtagging in posts. Google will use data from their social graph and analysis to identify hashtagging opportunities and add them to content. Users can remove hashtags they feel are inappropriate. Read more about this new feature at Fast Company.
Mobile Search an Influencing Factor for 84% of In-Store Shoppers with Smartphones
The majority of consumers shopping in-store are using smartphones to help them make purchasing decisions, according to new research from Google. Of those, the vast majority – 82% – are using mobile search, rather than apps or direct navigation to company websites – to access shopping information. Search Engine Watch has additional insights from Google’s Mobile In-Store Research: How in-store shoppers are using mobile devices report.
New YouTube Trends Map Shows Viral Videos Across the US
People in search of a visual way to see which videos are trending across the United States have a new tool, courtesy of YouTube. The YouTube Trends map displays the most popular videos across the country, with the option to drill down by gender, age, location and type of activity on the video.
This Week in the @TopRank Community
Our community – whether at Online Marketing Blog, on Twitter or elsewhere on the web – is a group of insightful, generous marketers always willing to share their experience with other members!
Check out these great tips, comments and quirky news from the @TopRank community this week:
It is very true that we need to be SHOWN how things work. It always makes me laugh when people tell me “I’m a visual person”, as if having a drawing in front of them is the only way they would see it. What they don’t realise is that EVERYONE is a visual person. On the other hand, if you were truly ‘visual’ you wouldn’t need it shown to you – you could see it in your head anyway. That’s what visual creatives do.”
~ from Suffolk Graphic Designer in response to The Power of Visual Content Marketing and Brand Visuals in Action on how your audience learns through content.
Stay tuned to the @TopRank Twitter channel this week for the latest online marketing, social and content headlines!
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Online Marketing News: Video Trends Map, Content Recommendation Engine & New Google+ Layout | http://www.toprankblog.com
Contagion, Social Media, and Why Things Catch On
Jonah Berger, Wharton @j1berger
Jonah Berger, Marketing Professor at the Wharton School, joins the Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss his bestseller Contagious: Why Things Catch on, the science behind those viral marketing hits, and the importance of setting realistic and helpful goals with a viral marketing campaign.
Read on for some of the highlights and tweetable moments, or listen to the full podcast.
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- From ExactTarget, a free white paper called “3 Truths Every CMO Needs to Know About Social Media and the Customer Experience“
- From Expion, a case study about how H&R Block mobilized 90,000 tax professionals in social media using Expion to guide their activity.
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- And from Cision, a free content marketing kit to help you get the most of your brand storytelling.
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Tweetable Moments
“Companies don’t understand the science behind viral. They build it, hope it’ll be successful.” -@j1berger (tweet this)
Catching Fire
Why does something catch fire and become popular, while something else completely fizzles and fades into oblivion? How does social influence work? How does it shape everything, from the products we buy to the services that we use to the behaviors we engage in? All these questions will be answered in Jonah Berger’s new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On.
At the Wharton School at UPenn, Jonah did a six-month study of New York Times articles — over 7,000 pieces of content. They were following what made the most-emailed list and what got left in the dust. What seemed to make people want to share a piece of content? Not surprisingly, useful information was a huge driver of whether or not people shared the content. The most shared articles tended to be movie and restaurant reviews, tips for getting your kid into college, and what to do in a city if you only have 36 hours. “One reason people share is they want to pass along that useful content.”
As a professor, Jonah doesn’t just let his students learn about social media; they have to actually use it. Students who are not already on Twitter are to join it and build up a follower base, tracking who looks at their tweets, etc. They also have to try to make a viral video and get it distributed. Some are successful and get thousands of views, and some only get a few people to see their video. Understanding how something works, after all, isn’t just learning about it; it’s doing it.
So how are companies doing it wrong? Jonah says they’re focusing too much on online content without knowing how it works. “It’s really about understanding how that science works, and thinking about online as well as offline.” Putting together successful content is not about hitting a home run every time; it’s about getting your average up. “You’re not looking for 10 billion clients; you’re just looking for ten more clients.”
Social Media Stat of the Week: Every Facebook Fan is Worth $174.17
Everyone is always trying to put a dollar value on Facebook fans. The researchers over at Syncapse have put together a study for 2013 valuing the average Facebook fan at $174.17. Jeff brings to our attention this week an interview with Syncapse’s executive chief Michael Scissons published in a New York Times blog. The problem, of course, with this type of data is that it is limited and highly circumstantial. The value of Facebook to your business depends entirely on what kind of business you are, what kind of fans you have, what you sell, etc. These things, unfortunately for market researchers, are unquantifiable.
via Syncapse
The study finds that “fans” tend to be Super Consumers and brand advocates. Jeff points out, though, we can’t measure the worth of a Facebook fan without also measuring the worth of a “fan” of the brand who may not happen to “like” the brand on Facebook. After all, you can be a Super Consumer of Coca Cola and not be on Facebook at all. What is the difference, if any, between the value of a brand fan and the value of a Facebook fan of the same brand? “Therein,” Jeff says, “lies the delta of value that aggregating those folks on Facebook creates.”
We’ve said this on the show before: the action of liking a brand on Facebook is a trailing indicator of relationship, not a leading indicator of relationship.
Four Your Information
How did you get involved in social media?
Jonah was not even on Twitter until about 8 months ago, but he started using it for Contagious. “The book encouraged me to get more on social media and work more in that space, not just in studying it but in using it as well.”
What do you like best about social media?
“I think it’s good in that it allows us to connect with people that we wouldn’t often see and get news from our friends and updates about people that we don’t always keep in touch with, so in some ways it’s made us closer.” But it’s not all good; it’s also negatively affected our behavior. “It makes us expect things very quickly, it makes us always look for the next soundbite in someone else’s life, it makes us not pay attention to information all the time.”
Do you have a favorite social network?
No, “I think different ones are good for different things, depending on your purpose.”
If you could do a Skype call with any living person, who might that be and why?
Jonah would like to have a Skype call with famous soccer player Lionel Messi. “Looking at someone who’s been successful in a different industry than you can often help you think differently than you would otherwise.”
See you next week!
About the Jay Baer:
Jay Baer is a hype-free social media and content strategist & speaker, and author of Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.
Contagion, Social Media, and Why Things Catch On is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
Social media bij B2B-organisaties in 2013 [infographic]
Social media vullen een belangrijke rol in de marketingmix van B2B-organisaties. Steeds meer ondernemers zien de kansen en mogelijkheden van deze platformen in. Maar zetten zij deze kanalen ook…
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The Truth About Advertising In 2013
Here’s a quote worthy of your attention:
"The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad." – Howard Gossage.
Let’s face it: we often make out marketing and advertising to be more important than it really needs to be. This doesn’t mean that it’s not important, creative and a part of our lives, but this quote from the famed Mad Man speaks to the reality of a media saturated world… and this quote comes at us long before the Internet and social media made it stupid simple for anyone to be a media channel unto themselves. Ads are everywhere and the game of repetition and saturation is still what captures the attention, but there’s something else happening to the advertising industry that is worthy of thinking about. It’s also worth noting that the people who care most about marketing and advertising is usually us: the people who create it. Those who consume it? They could probably care less.
More than advertising.
If you survey the land of client and agency relationships, what you are bound to find is clients who are asking for much than an advertising campaign, these days. Technology and all of the media permutations that it has created has brought us to this interesting moment in time when clients aren’t looking just for ads, but rather business transformation. They want business solutions to help them augment the brand and build more credibility. Data, research and strategy has slowly crept into the creative department and now the work is much more than a thirty-second spot or a contest. Digital has given us the ability to better inform our idea and the net result is that advertising for the sake of creativity is now more like a stunt than the foundational work of what the brand truly represents.
What a true social media strategy looks like.
Too many inexperienced marketing professionals are pawning off social media editorial content calendars and tone and manner for tweets, blog posts and Facebook as some kind of social media strategy. It is not (don’t be fooled). The more experienced marketing professionals deliver social media strategies that are, in fact, brand strategies (when done right). Transformation is never easy. Transformation is very hard. Sadly, most people are still thinking like advertisers when, in fact, they need to be thinking more like these global brands that are demanding that the agencies that serve them act as stewards for the transformation of business.
Big, big work.
It’s true that sometimes people read ads. It’s true that sometimes people like a brand on Facebook or retweet a promoted tweet on Twitter. It’s true that a lot of brands use these digital channels as another mechanism to put up more impressions in the marketplace in the hopes of screaming louder than the competition. This isn’t what world has to look like. Yes, advertising is still – at its core – the ability to persuade someone to buy something, but the real marketing can be so much more. Delivering business solutions isn’t easy. Delivering business transformation is much harder. Creating a social media strategy that is, ultimately, a better brand strategy may not sit well with the clients, but we have to face the realities of the world that we live in.
It’s not about ads… it’s about solutions. It’s not about the ads… it’s about business transformation. And so, marketing, continues to change and evolve.
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