Facebook SPMD Brand Networks acquires PMD Optimal

Brand Networks, a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer, announced recently that it has acquired Optimal — a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer — in an effort to expand Brand Networks’ social advertising capabilities. Brand Networks acquired Optimal for $35 million.

Optimal recently won acclaim from Facebook, earning the top prize in Facebook’s PMD Innovation Competition with its Open Signals product, which takes into consideration several factors when managing an ad campaign.

Currently, Optimal is the only company that is both a Twitter Ads API partner and a Facebook Exchange qualified PMD in ads, apps and insights. The company was also one of the first two partners in LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates partner program — giving Brand Networks much more power throughout all social channels.

Brand Networks CEO Jamie Tedford welcomed Optimal to the family:

I’m incredibly excited to partner with Rob and to welcome the Optimal team to Brand Networks. The industry is moving towards consolidation of social marketing and advertising spend and deeper integration with fewer trusted partners that have achieved scale. The combination of Brand Networks and Optimal delivers this for our clients and the platforms we serve.

Optimal CEO Rob Leathern discussed this newest partnership:

My team and I are all thrilled to be joining forces with Brand Networks. We share a customer-centric and innovation-driven culture and vision, focused on delivering deeply integrated solutions to the world’s leading brands and agencies. Brand Networks has built a powerful stack of data-driven social tools, and Optimal has been recognized as the best self-service ads platform in our space. We recently achieved profitability, and look forward to continuing our strong growth both domestically and internationally.

Leathern will join Brand Networks as the company’s Chief Product Officer, leading product innovation. The Optimal self-service ads and analytics platform will continue to be supported. Optimal’s San Francisco headquarters will become a branch of Brand Networks’ West Coast offices. Optimal’s New York City team will join Brand Networks in their office.

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Facebook platform industry hires: Adaptly, Brand Networks

Two Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developers recently announced major hires: Brand Networks and Adaptly.

Brand Networks, a Strategic PMD in all four fields, added Anthony Green, the former Vice President of Development at Facebook PMD Optimal. Green will join Brand Networks as a Senior Vice President of New Business, driving growth into new markets and verticals. Prior to working for Optimal, Green co-founded Concep, a global B2B marketing technology provider.

The company has also hired Jeff Madison, the former Chief Operating Officer of Sparkart Group. He will become Brand Networks’ Vice President of Client Services, where he will grow the account management team to provide improved customer service. With Sparkart, he was responsible for the company’s day-to-day operations, working with major entertainment brands such as Bon Jovi, The Killers, America’s Cup and the UFC.

Brand Networks CEO Jamie Tedford commented on the new hires:

It’s an exhilarating time for digital marketers, as social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn blaze new advertising trails with continued innovation and steady growth. With our Social Marketing Stack, we help the largest brands in the world centralize and simplify their social efforts, empowering responsive social marketing at scale. We are cultivating a team primed to be a driving force as the social marketing space continues to expand and we are excited for the next phase with leaders like Anthony and Jeff.

Adaptly, a Strategic PMD in ads and insights, added JP Lester as its Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining Adaptly, Lester was the CTO of Sony’s Digital Audio Disk Corporation group, leading a global engineering team.

Lester has built a stellar career in the music field, as one of the co-founders of TuneTo.com, which was acquired by Listen.com. After the acquisition, he was instrumental in the creation of Rhapsody, the world’s first legal on-demand music streaming service featuring content from all five major record labels.

Nikhil Sethi, Adaptly’s Co-Founder and CEO, commented to Inside Facebook about the hire:

We’re excited to have JP Lester join the Adaptly team as CTO. … We look forward to the impact that he will have at Adaptly that will take our engineering excellence to a whole new level.

Companies who want their new hires included in the post must contact us directly at justin.lafferty (at) insidenetwork.com. Must be a Facebook PMD or Facebook Strategic PMD to be included.

Images courtesy of Brand Networks and Adaptly Facebook pages.

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Hi Guess The Brand: MORE cheats, tips, and answers

by Gibson Johns, Posted Jun 5th 2013 3:30PM

Looking for answers to Hi Guess The Brand? Can't figure out the brand and stuck on a certain level? Thankfully, our friends at Modojo have done all of the hard work for you and we've gathered more of the answers right here!

To find out which level you're stuck on, check the top right corner of your device's screen and then click on the corresponding photo below to get the answer!

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Facebook hires: head of automotive, VP business communications, global brand designer, software engineers, more

Facebook has hired Brunswick Group’s U.S. Managing Parnter Michael Buckley as its vice president of business communications, according to AllThingsD. Buckley has worked with Facebook previously from his role at Brunswick, which the social network has turned to for strategic communications related to its IPO and other financial news.

Facebook also removed 31 job listings from its careers page this week, likely after filling roles in the areas of software engineering, marketing, sales and others.

Notable positions that seem to be filled include Head of Automotive, Global Vertical Marketing; Strategic Partner Development, Games; and Global Brand Designer.

Software Engineer, Internal Tools (Menlo Park)Software Engineer, Measurement Systems (Menlo Park)Business Operations Associate, Platform (Menlo Park)P2P (Procure to Pay) Specialist (Contract) (Dublin)Revenue Analyst (Dublin)Administrative Assistant – Data Center Operations (Menlo Park)Executive Assistant – Contractor (Hyderabad) (Hyderabad)Compliance Analyst (Dublin)Employment Counsel, EMEA (Dublin)Public Policy Manager (São Paulo)IT Manager (Menlo Park)University Recruiter – Contract (Menlo Park)University Recruiting Events Specialist (Menlo Park)Network Engineer, Provisioning (Menlo Park)Associate, Partner Marketing (New York)Global Brand Designer (Menlo Park)Vertical Content Associate, Marketing Communications (Menlo Park)Platform Product Marketing Manager (Menlo Park)Content Associate, Marketing Communications (Menlo Park)Head of Automotive, Global Vertical Marketing (Menlo Park)Principal, Developer Operations (Menlo Park)Account Manager, Quebec (Toronto)Strategic Partner Development, Games (Menlo Park)SMB Analyst, Swedish (Dublin)Account Manager, Gaming (Dublin)Client Partner, Gaming (Dublin)Client Partner (MENA) (Dubai)Client Partner Brazil (São Paulo)Client Partner Gaming (Singapore) (Singapore)Manager, Global Sales Outsourcing (Japan) (Tokyo)Vertical Industry Manager (London) (London)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

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Fan Appz expands social CRM functionality, offers more insights about brand audience

Social marketing software company Fan Appz today launches a version of its platform with an emphasis on helping businesses understand the audience that engages with their apps and putting those insights to use in other channels.

The Personalized Marketing Platform builds upon the social CRM functionality that Fan Appz introduced earlier this year and offers new ways to view and analyze consumer segments. Fan Appz has also created new ways to bring first-party data to its platform as well as apply social data to email marketing, advertising and other sales efforts.

Fan Appz VP of Marketing Krista Thomas says the company’s goal is to help businesses use social data to improve all marketing and understand fans at an individual level. By doing this, Fan Appz can help brands convert fans into customers and “turn good customers into great ones.”

It starts with “social experience apps.” These are the page tab, web and mobile apps that Fan Appz got its start helping marketers build. The company continues to build out features and improve the creation and customization flow for these. For instance, today Fan Appz released an Open Graph-enabled prediction and trivia game app, a new refer-a-friend feature and additional integration for Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+.

When fans interact with a brand through these apps, the information they’ve authorized to share gets collected and organized in Fan Appz’ system — now built on the SAP HANA platform for speed and scalability. Thomas says this is one of the distinguishing factors of the Consumer Marketing Hub.

The product then allows marketers to sort through the social graph data, behavioral data and direct inputs provided by users, for example, product preferences entered into a ranking app or answers to a poll question. Businesses can also add in purchase data or other information from an existing CRM. They can view and export audience segments to run an email marketing campaign or Sponsored Stories using custom audience targeting.

As we talked about with CEO Jon Siegal when the company launched its Social Database, Fan Appz is looking to serve businesses during the next step of social marketing. If 2009 and 2010 were about establishing a presence on Facebook and building a following, and 2011 and 2012 were focused on the abstract goal of “engagement,” then Siegal sees the next phase being when businesses learn how to truly use social to drive sales. With social CRM solutions like what Fan Appz and others are starting to build, brands are going to be able to personalize messages at scale, making marketing more effective and improving the overall customer experience.

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Brand New Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Lifecam NX-3000 For Notebooks 3-Pack OEM High Quality

The Microsoft LifeCam NX-3000 for Notebooks 3-Pack is a sleek, compact webcam is designed for notebook computers, making it easier than ever to keep in touch with friends and family- anywhere.? It features a pan and tilt functionality that makes it a snap to capture the big picture, however you want to see it along with a built-in microphone automatically picks up your voice with remarkable clarity.

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Hero City Layers the Super Hero Genre on City-Building Gameplay, Developer Aiming to Build Distinctive Brand

Hero City is a Facebook game from developer Paprika Lab that soft-launched on the platform toward the end of April. Thought it hasn’t yet had a big marketing push, Hero City saw enough organic growth to come in at number one on our list of emerging Facebook games last week.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, Hero City currently has 767,405 monthly active users and 89,571 daily active users.

Hero City combines city-building gameplay and adds a layer of superhero camp on top. Players build and upgrade structures to improve the city and then collect superheroes to come live in their city. More superheroes means more advantages when undertaking the game’s quests, and will also give players the upper hand in player-vs-player gameplay, which the developer tells us is due to be added to the game soon.

Paprika Lab CEO John Kim believes that the superheroes give the game a unique spin over other city-building titles on Facebook. “As developers, we’ve grown up watching superhero comic books and movies where superheroes save the city and the world from villains,” he says. “So it seemed pretty natural to combine the superhero and city concepts together.”

The game is currently monetized through the purchase of “instant finish” items to complete buildings quicker, the purchase of in-game standard currency and resources, special buildings and superheroes. Facebook Credits are used as the game’s sole premium currency. The developer has experimented with using its own proprietary hard currency in its previous game Pirate Legacy, and Kim notes that there are “pros and cons to adopting each system.”

“We’ll be rolling out new features around superheroes where some new monetization features might come in,” he adds. “But as mentioned [previously], we don’t want to hurt the user experience by bombarding users with overwhelming monetization features.”

The developer is planning on expanding the game in a number of different ways. Besides simply adding more content in the form of more buildings, decorations and superheroes, Kim says that the game will also be incorporating battles with supervillains, as well as the ability to challenge other players’ heroes in player-vs-player gameplay.

Hero City is not Paprika Lab’s only project, but Kim hopes that it will help the developer form a distinctive brand for Paprika to trade on with future and other existing games. “Our focus is not only to merely make new games, but also to have some sort of a unique taste and style of experience where users will know that this game is made by Paprika Lab,” he says. “We think we haven’t reached that point yet, but basically, we want to create a Paprika Lab brand gaming experience, such as you’d find from Blizzard, Square Enix and id Software games.”

Hero City has enjoyed steady growth since its late April launch, with slightly larger jumps in MAU occurring at the start of the week for the last two weeks. At its current rate of growth, the game will pass a million monthly active users within a week.

You can follow Hero City’s progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

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Brand New Learning Company Cluefinders 6th Grade Adventures With ADAPT Explore 15 Interactive Games

Join the search for the missing ClueFinders in the underground empire of the Plant People! A mighty army of mutant plant warriors threatens to take over the town above. Use your head to tackle tricky challenges, solve a mystery, and save the town from destruction. From cleaning up deadly pollutants to building bridges, every exciting activity builds essential 6th grade skills! Celebrate each new accomplishment with encouraging progress reports.

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Brand New Learning Company Amazon Trail 3rd Edition Rainforest Adventures More Than 100 Plants

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UFC and THQ’s Longtime Brand Marriage Getting Results on Facebook

UFC Undisputed Fight Nation is an officially-branded Facebook MMA game developed by THQ and Embassy Interactive. It is based largely on Mafia Wars‘ style of gameplay, making it immediately familiar to social gamers. The game stands out for its solid growth and deep brand implementation.

The game has shown an all-time high of 560,073 monthly active users and 86,097 daily active users on our data service tracking application, AppData. The game recently made it into the top three of our emerging games by growth. Its MAU figure continues to climb steadily, while DAU has remained fairly constant around the 80,000 mark since a large spike from just over 40,000 around April 13.

The game places players in the role of a rookie Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter. New players pick their initial fighting discipline from a choice of three and are given a small selection of moves which can be trained using energy. Further moves and fighting styles can be unlocked by purchasing equipment, much like missions can be unlocked in Mafia Wars and similar games. Energy is refreshed every few minutes but can also be immediately topped up with premium items or by exchanging gifts with members of the player’s friends list who are also playing.

Besides training, players can also fight other people by choosing a selection of their favorite moves and comparing performance against an opponent. These opponents are drawn from the entire community, not just the player’s Facebook friends list. As such, executive producer Mike Doyle believes that the game will “create an invested, connected community of UFC fans.” Doyle also believes that the game particularly distinguishes itself from other Mafia Wars-type games in these confrontations by “showcasing the actual UFC superstars via authentic fight images — [this is] much more engaging and visceral than a text-based solution.”

As part of the attempt to attract UFC fans to the game, a “contests” feature was recently added, where players of the game are entered into prize draws for real UFC event tickets by completing in-game milestones. Doyle refers to the game as “an integral part of the ecosystem of connected experiences that is the UFC.”

The game is monetized via “UFC Points” which can be redeemed for energy, health and stamina boosting items. The game currently accepts credit card, PayPal, Zong Mobile Payments and offer walls as a means of acquiring these points. Doyle says that the team is keen to “examine creative avenues of monetization” but stresses that the community aspect is also a very important part of the experience. Facebook Credits are not currently supported by the game but Doyle notes that the team plans to integrate the system as required by July. Doyle tells us that as the game continues to expand, players can expect regular updates and improvements, including “continued UI refinement, new camps and techniques and ‘training tickets’ — tokens that can be collected and used to unlock special techniques.”

You can follow UFC Undisputed Fight Nation’s progress on Facebook with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

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Brand New Rockstar Games Bully Scholarship Edition Bully Goes Back To School On The PC

The Rockstar tradition of groundbreaking, original gameplay and humorous tongue-in-cheek storytelling invades an entirely new setting: the schoolyard. As a mischievous schoolboy, you¡¯ll stand up to bullies, get picked on by teachers, play pranks, win or lose the girl, and ultimately learn to navigate the obstacles of the worst school around, Bullworth Academy - a corrupt and crumbling prep school with an uptight facade. The story follows Jimmy Hopkins, a teenager who¡¯s been expelled from every school he¡¯s ever attended. Left to fend for himself after his mother abandons him at Bullworth to go on her fifth honeymoon, Jimmy has a whole year at Bullworth ahead of him, working his way up the social ladder of this demented institution of supposed learning, standing up for what he thinks is right and taking on the liars, cheats and snobs who are the most popular members of the student body and faculty. If Jimmy can survive the school year and outsmart his rivals, he could rule the school. Ready yourself for a hilarious return to campus living with Bully.

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Brand New Learning Company Amazon Trail 3rd Edition Rainforest Adventures More Than 100 Plants

Plan Your Trip: Choose a guide with strong skills, stock up on food and equipment, and begin your adventure from the old port city of Belem. Explore the Amazon: Enjoy canoeing, fishing, and rainforest exploration. Step into the jungle to identify and photograph hundreds of unique animals and plant species. Plot Your Course: Discover the rich history of the Amazon by talking to conquistadors, naturalists and modern day inhabitants. Use their advice, maps, guidebooks and your own instincts to navigate the river.

Price: $24.80

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