Infographic: Facebook ads becoming more effective, cost-efficient

Kenshoo Social, a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer, recently examined the performance of Facebook ads among its clients. The company found that from Q1 to Q2 2013, clicks have increased 16.4 percent, conversions have gone up 56.9 percent and ad revenue has risen 28.3 percent.

Todd Herrold, senior director of product marketing for Kenshoo Social, commented on these findings:

The results of Kenshoo Social’s quarterly analysis demonstrate that Facebook is not just a brand awareness and engagement channel but is evolving into a powerful direct response channel, as well.  Advertisers are finding success using Facebook ads to drive toward their direct marketing goals, most importantly conversions and revenue. There are several factors influencing this evolution. Facebook has been steadily optimizing its ad units and launching new ad targeting products designed specifically for direct response, including Custom and Lookalike Audiences, Partner Categories and the Facebook Exchange (FBX).

Kenshoo also put together an infographic showcasing the study’s results.

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Mediabistro Online Course

You’ve mastered writing and editing for publications. But can you crop and resize photos, navigate a content management system, or understand what makes a great user experience? Learn all of this in our Online Production for Writers and Editors class starting Tuesday, August 20th. Hurry – this class is almost full! Register now.

View the original article here

I don’t know what’s going on with game pricing… but to me it looks like games stuff is becoming sort of free

Humble Bundle 4 averages currently about $5.32 or so. That’s like 4 euros. It includes 7 games. That means price per game about $0,76. Iphone apps cost $0.99.

I… honestly don’t know if this is good or bad thing. And for whom.

The good news is that the volume increases: much more people can now enjoy many different games. At least that what happens short-term, and I think it’s pretty evident. If I can buy a gaming bundle with $5, then I can get 10 times more games compared to if I buy one $50 game.

This means that instead of one developer getting my $50, several different developers now get the sum. Or, that I simply can choose to spend just $5 in games and use my $45 to buy whatever stuff I might need. Like shoes. (Since it’s damn wet here in Finland. Where’s the damn snow?)

Anyway.

Short-term, it’s quite obvious that players win in this system. They want games, and if you look at the Humble Bundle games… those are quality. They are highly polished production values. They are good games.

What are the long term effects?

That depends on volume. If volume increases so much, that the end revenues are higher than what bigger prices would generate, then this would be win-win for all. If a developer sells 1000 games, $10 each and gains $10 000 – then it would require 10 000 games sold at price of $1 to reach the same revenue (I am simplifying and not taking into account cost per transactions). If developer can generate same amount of revenue with games that cost $1 rather than $10, then more people will be able to enjoy fun games. I’m not saying that this would happen, I’m just stating that if this would happen then all would be goo.

If on the other hand the developer doesn’t reach that amount, it means he must do something else. He could not buy shoes. He might need to do other stuff that pays and so on. It might mean that he simply cannot produce enough to survive and would end up leaving the industry.

If there are other developers who can survive with smaller amount of money, and can produce enough volume to survive – meaning people are willing to pay for his products – then those chaps would join the industry.

End result is… that this is basic rules of economy. It’s the survival of the fittest. It might mean that some stuff is never made again. It might mean some gaming studios disappear, and all that is left are Click the Cow facebook game.

I think this would be okay, if that’s what players want.

This might sound capitalistic talk, but I believe in the market system. If players are not willing to pay such amounts, and if developers cannot produce quality stuff… then it’s good that the unproductive (by productive I mean “those who develop quality & fun games”) developers are lost.

Alternative would be some sort of group tax paid by all, which would then be used to support various genres in the field. We all would pay N dollars, and these dollars would be directed by the government to produce games. That would be communistic system.

Currently our capitalistic system ensures that players get most out of everything and that each player can decide what they support.

If players don’t wanna pay anything for indie games, then indie games will die. Sure, that might be sad, but it’s also okay. If players don’t wanna pay for AAA games, that industry dies. If players don’t spend money on Facebook games, then that industry dies.

Whatever happens, I like the idea that players have the ultimate decisive power in their hands.

It is up to you which industry you support. And it’s the industry’s responsibility to be flexible and introduce different systems that help generate revenue (to help produce more fun to the players, that’s what they are paying for anyway).

If you support stuff like Humble Bundles, then those bundles will appear more. If you support AAA games, then more of those will happen. If you like Facebook games and spend money on them, then more of those games will happen.

If bundles won’t get enough money long-term, then those will disappear. Humble Bundle has sold $1.5M. If devs get about 70% (the default split), and each game is equal, then 1M is shared between 7 games – that’s about $140 000 per game. If that $140k (minus taxes, transaction fees, bandwidth, salaries, pizzas, company expenses and whatnot) is enough for the devs to keep bringing more, then this humble bundle is good thing – and more will happen, bringing more quality games.

Group control (like for example: “let’s collect taxes to support adventure games”) to my opinion would not be a step in better direction. If we force money to certain group via taxes, then some group gains and some loses, and we lose our decisive vote on where our moeny goes. For example, if you would need to spend $50 yearly to support adventure games, then you would not be able to choose to spend those $50 to support indie bundles or shoe industry or whatever. Taxes mean we’d do collective decision on what to support. I believe that players must have the choice.

If players aren’t willing to pay anything, for example every player would become pirate 100%, then it is up to the industry to stop producing anything anymore – or figure out how to gain money. If players are willing to pay little amounts, then it’s up to the developers to figure out how to make it profitable, or stop producing.

Either way, the end result is that.

I think players must be in control, but also responsible. By pirating everything and giving 0 dollars to producers, the pirates are essentially stating “stop making more games” (or “stop making stupid DRM”).

And at that point the ball is in the developers’ court. It’s now up to us to:

Simply stop making games. That would stop piratism. If people don’t wanna pay, then we can simply stop making games and all go into shoe industry. Or we can try stop making games more convenient (re-think DRM for example) Or we can think alternative price models (humble bundle, f2p, and so on)

I think it’s bit pointless to try argue if the current system is “good”. We are working in a gaming industry. We devs are providing fun (and other) stuff for players. And different market forces affect this, whether we want or not.

We can bitch about the system and try not to adjust and vanish.

Or we can be flexible and perhaps survive.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 18th, 2011 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

View the original article here

Why Selling to SMBs Is Becoming Sexy

For years, VCs have had the refrain of how hard it is to sell to the huge but massively fragmented SMB market.   Invoking the curse of the SMB market was a great way to winnow out our email boxes and/or avoid a followup meeting.

Today, though, SMB-facing businesses seem all the rage.  Why the turnabout?

It’s simple — the migration onto the Web has flipped small and medium sized businesses from the hardest to reach to the easiest to reach businesses.  Today, nearly all SMBs are online — using the Web both for their own business and to find goods and services.  As a result, where larger enterprises still require direct sales, SMBs often can be brought into the sales funnel using very highly leveraged online marketing campaigns, whether it be SEM/SEO, email marketing, or social media.  Large and very profitable software-as-a-service businesses can be built targetting SMBs without ever raising the type of capital necessary for businesses that depend on a direct salesforce.

At Polaris, we’ve had the chance to see this across a number of our software companies, most notably LogMeIn, which went from tiny startup to billion dollar public company in just 5 years and less than $20 million in capital.  With our partner Dave Barrett, who worked closely LogMeIn and its marketing guru Sean Ellis, leading the charge, we’ve since backed a range of companies focused on bringing cost- and -management-effective solutions to SMBs, including the likes of Egnyte (file management), KISSMetrics (analytics), Recurly (subscription management) and a couple other not yet public projects.

OK, so maybe it’s not exactly “sexy,” but it sure is a great way to build highly profitable businesses…

View the original article here

Why Selling to SMBs Is Becoming Sexy

For years, VCs have had the refrain of how hard it is to sell to the huge but massively fragmented SMB market.   Invoking the curse of the SMB market was a great way to winnow out our email boxes and/or avoid a followup meeting.

Today, though, SMB-facing businesses seem all the rage.  Why the turnabout?

It’s simple — the migration onto the Web has flipped small and medium sized businesses from the hardest to reach to the easiest to reach businesses.  Today, nearly all SMBs are online — using the Web both for their own business and to find goods and services.  As a result, where larger enterprises still require direct sales, SMBs often can be brought into the sales funnel using very highly leveraged online marketing campaigns, whether it be SEM/SEO, email marketing, or social media.  Large and very profitable software-as-a-service businesses can be built targetting SMBs without ever raising the type of capital necessary for businesses that depend on a direct salesforce.

At Polaris, we’ve had the chance to see this across a number of our software companies, most notably LogMeIn, which went from tiny startup to billion dollar public company in just 5 years and less than $20 million in capital.  With our partner Dave Barrett, who worked closely LogMeIn and its marketing guru Sean Ellis, leading the charge, we’ve since backed a range of companies focused on bringing cost- and -management-effective solutions to SMBs, including the likes of Egnyte (file management), KISSMetrics (analytics), Recurly (subscription management) and a couple other not yet public projects.

OK, so maybe it’s not exactly “sexy,” but it sure is a great way to build highly profitable businesses…

View the original article here