Buddy Media acquisition of Brighter Option results in new BuyBuddy ad platform

Buddy Media today announced its new BuyBuddy platform for managing Facebook advertising campaigns.

BuyBuddy is the result of the social media management software company’s acquisition of Facebook Ads API partner Brighter Option in February. Buddy Media has integrated the advertising product with its page management tools to create the type of unified system that large brands are looking for to make decisions and track success on social platforms.

Facebook has been shifting its advertising model away from traditional display ads toward one where brands promote page posts and user activity. This new emphasis on content is what led Brighter Option to become the first company to combine the Ads API and Insights API so businesses could easily see how posts were performing and create ads accordingly. Ten days later, Buddy Media announced it had acquired the company.

BuyBuddy CEO and founder Peter Goodman says today’s announcement is more than just a name change. (Goodman retained a CEO title in the acquisition.)

“We have integrated [Buddy Media and Brighter Option] products to work more in harmony,” he says. “This also allows us to leverage more information Buddy has on their end and bring in more of Buddy’s proprietary statistics.”

For example, Buddy Media tracks conversions off-Facebook and generates some of its own engagement metrics for the content brands share through the platform. Bringing content marketing and content advertising into a single system will allow advertisers to better optimize their campaigns for different actions.

“What consumers engage with drives a brand’s paid and owned strategy,” Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow says. He adds that online content marketing could also help inform what brands do beyond Facebook, “What becomes a TV ad is an extension of what people respond to in the social sphere.”

Lazerow also shared the following statistics about BuyBuddy:

1,000 clients with users in 91 countries1 million clicks per day (90 million total) in Q1 2012, up from 54.1 million total clicks generated in Q4 2011127 billion impressions in Q1 2012, up from 92 billion in Q4 20111.6 million total ads created in Q1 2012, up from 1.2 million Q4 2011Increased CTR by 90 percent and reduced cost per click by 45 percent for Work the WorldHelped Great British Chefs achieve an average clickthrough rate of .07 percent versus the Facebook benchmark of .02 percent

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Brighter Option combines Page Insights, Ads API to improve Facebook ad planning

Facebook Ads API partner Brighter Option announced an update to its Social Ads Manager tool that makes ad creation and optimization more efficient. Most notably, the company now integrates the Page Insights API to help businesses choose effective ad creative for page post ads.

Page post ads are a relatively new offering from Facebook. Instead of developing creative with a headline, body copy and image, businesses can promote posts they already made on their Facebook pages. Brighter Option now shows posts’ engagement metrics within the ad creation section, which gives advertisers more context than Facebook’s self-serve dashboard and other ad tools provide.

Brighter Option CEO Peter Goodman says part of the goal with this feature is to solve some of the problems that result when companies have different agencies doing advertising and page management. Bringing page insights to the ad builder increases efficiency and we imagine it will encourage advertisers to rethink what type of content works best in Facebook ads.

The Social Ad Manager has come a long way since we profiled the tool in 2010. The London-based company has introduced several features that make Facebook ad planning and campaign management less onerous. We liked the easy navigation between analytics and scheduling, the find-and-replace feature for making copy changes across multiples ads, the ZIP code area map and shortcuts in the creative builder. For advertisers seeking a software solution rather than managed services for Facebook advertising, Brighter Option is worth testing. The company offers a free trial of its tool.

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New Facebook platform industry hires: Brighter Option, Wildfire and Banyan Branch

Banyan Branch hired a new Senior Vice President of Client Services, and Brighter Option and Wildfire hired account staff this week in our look at Facebook platform hires.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into our next post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes either from the companies themselves or from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

Banyan Branch

Jennifer Blank Hecht, Senior Vice President of Client Services – formerly the Seattle Program Director for Social Media for Wunderman.Erik Arpe, Account Director - previously Account Director at Visible Technologies.Stephanie Camp, Account Director – was a Global Account Manager working with Microsoft in Seattle and Ridley Bikes brand in Belgium, as well as Kirkwood Mountain Resort, Boston Medical Center and Allied Feather and Down, and Starbucks Germany.

Brighter Option

Marc Judlin, Account Executive – a recent graduate from the University of Sussex.Louisa Matheson, Account Executive – a recent graduate from the University of Bristol.

Wildfire

Katie Mulligan, Account Executive – formerly an Associate Director, Social Entrepreneurship at Miami University.Aaron Landman, Small Business Executive – was previously a Sales Associate at Wildfire.

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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New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Wildfire, Vitrue, BranchOut, Brighter Option and More

Among the top hires this week among platform companies on Facebook, professional networking application BranchOut lured Chris Merritt away from his position as vice president of global advertiser partnerships at Yahoo. Similarly, ad software provider Brighter Option brought on Randall Lloyd from his previous post as senior vice president of sales at Rock You.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into next week’s post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

BranchOut

Chris Merritt, VP of Sales and General Manager of Enterprise Products – Now with BranchOut, just left Yahoo as VP of global advertiser partnerships.Dan Arkind, Advisor - Now with BranchOut, co-founder of JobScore and previously a recruitment consultant/coach at Indico Group.

Brighter Option

Randall Lloyd, Managing Director of North America – Now with Brighter Option and formerly senior VP of sales at Rock You.

Wildfire

Noah Weissman, Social Media Marketing Strategist - Now at Wildfire, also co-founder of Zoku & Juice, and formerly an account manager at Faktura Media Agency.Tom Logan, Sales Associate - Working at Wildfire, previously worked as a government relations intern with Del Monte Foods.Scott Hagedorn, Senior Account Executive – Now at Wildfire, last worked as a business development director at Meltwater Group.

Vitrue

Christian Rauh, Product Manager - Now at Vitrue, most recently a manager of international projects and client services at Channel Intelligence.Mikael Kessler, Strategic Services Analyst - At Vitrue, formerly a creative developer at twiredjobs.com.Wesley Barnes, Strategic Services Manager - Now at Vitrue, also CTO/co-founder of aitendant and formerly in program management/software development at Hewlett-Packard.Sarah Vabulas, Strategic Services Analyst – Now working at Vitrue, formerly the social media and public relations coordinator at The Maximus Group.

Work4 Labs

Armando Gallegos, Key Account Executive - Now at Work4 Labs, formerly a key account executive at Yahoo HotJobs and Monster.Kurt Angier, Key Account Executive – previously a key account executive at Yahoo HotJobs.Simon Bouchez, Project Manager Jobs For Me – formerly credit analyst intern at Société Générale (France).

Votigo

James Berry, Director of Product Management – formerly at Yahoo.Jeff Rozic, Director of Marketing – previously worked at Brand Affinity Technologies and Google.Stephanie Pullen, Director of Project Management & Client Services – Now at Votigo, formerly at Isobar and AKQA.Katie White, Account Director - Now with Votigo, frmerly at Martha Stewart/Omnimedia and A&E.Brad Moore, Account Representative – previously worked as retail account manager at Westword Newspaper.

Nanigans

Karen Harris, Consultant - Now at Nanigans, formerly a controller at Incipient, Inc.

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