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

View the original article here

Facbeook Highlighting More Early Results for Social News Apps

Facebook posted early results from new integrations with news outlets launched during f8, showing a significant increase in traffic to news stories posted via social news applications.

Facebook yesterday highlighted set of partner news organizations including Yahoo! News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily and The Huffington Post. Each outlet is exploring different social news application possibilities; some are integrating apps on their own sites, while others are integrating directly into Facebook or using Facebook Connect. Applications use Open Graph to share what people are reading on the various networks on the Timeline – stories which, as The Wall Street Journal notes, often date back to the 1990s.

Our AppData traffic tracking service shows most of the applications have at least doubled readership in the last month. The Independent has increased its DAU by 130,000 in the last seven days. Its MAU has increased by 1.1 million this month, now reaching 1.5 million. The Guardian grew its MAU from 1.4 million to 3.4 million this month. According to Facebook, Yahoo! News has seen a 600% increase in traffic. The Daily is the only partner not specifically mentioned in Facebook’s blog post, likely due to its decrease in MAU from 6,000 to 4,000.

The Washington Posts Social Reader app now has over 3.5 million monthly active users, 83% of which are younger than 35 years old according to Facebook. By automatically posting who is reading what to the Timeline — a sign to users that friends are indeed actively reading the news — Facebook encourages friend-endorsed consumption without any extra clicks or user interface.

We generally expect to see more news organizations building similar social news apps in the coming months to take advantage of the opportunities to integrate with the Timeline and Ticker.

View the original article here

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.

View the original article here