Facebook recently released a new version of Photos. One interesting thing is there is only on ad per page (versus four). This could be good for advertisers as there as less ads to compete with. The only problem I see is that ads have gone from the right hand column to the right hand corner (at the bottom) of the page.
Looks like Facebook recently made the ads interface wider, kind of useful I guess. When you upgrade there is a two-step on-boarding process…
What is really cool is the featured stories opening up for everyone. Essentially homepage exposure bought via self-serve. This will make advertisers want to promote their pages/apps even more than their off-site landing pages. More info at IF - http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/02/08/sponsored-stories-self-serve/
Disclaimer: I ran acquisition at Zoosk and later consulted for SpeedDate
Over a year ago SpeedDate ripped the Zoosk payment page and later took it down after getting a nasty letter from the CEO. Now it appears Zoosk has taken some major inspiration from SpeedDate’s latest design.
I was on Facebook the other day and noticed an update from one of Zoosk’s engineers about a recent design. To my surprise it looked really familiar… then it hit me, it was a rip of SpeedDate’s profile layout.
I haven’t heard many good things about the company lately.
I’ve had off-the-record conversations with a few VCs that were pitched by Zoosk to raise up to another 50M in funding without positive feedback. Word on the street is that while revenue grew in 2010, many of Zoosk’s marketing efforts were not profitable for most of the year.
Obviously I don’t have access to the day-to-day numbers anymore but from what I’ve heard it all seems to add up. Zoosk is no longer the leader in the Facebook application space, does very little direct marketing and I haven’t seen Zoosk launch a landing page test since I left the company in 2009.
I love international dating. A great new offer in the space is over at Ads4Dough called “Are You Interested” and they have a killer offer in Brazil.
The thing about dating ads on Facebook is that one of the requirements includes using the name of the dating service in the ad. Now if I’m targeting users who speak Portuguese it makes sense to translate the name of the Facebook application (Are You Interested) into the native language “Você está Interessado”
Surprise, surprise. Facebook doesn’t like that and banned dozens of ads. A few did slip through and I saw great initial results (0.4%+ CTR without any testing/optimization/targeting). Over the past year Facebook has slowly rolled out a system for automatic approval/disapproval based off a set of heuristics (most likely including checking the app name and seeing it it appears in the ad copy) and while sometimes it makes for speedy approval other times it means getting banned ads without any logical reason why.
Did Facebook approve those previously-disapproved ads as soon as “Are You Interested?” was written in English? You’ll have to post some of your own ads and see for yourself!
We’ve all run some shady ads through MyAds and Fox Interactive… but I think this takes the cake for a Marquee ad on MySpace Homepage
One of the most popular affiliate offers to run is dating. Everyone is running dating offers on Facebook and its only getting more and more difficult to keep ads alive unlike the past when Facebook Ads was the Wild West.
With singles on Facebook literally getting spammed by dating ads many have decided to remove their “single” setting to avoid the bombardment of ads. This only makes it more difficult for affiliates to promote the same offers… what can you do to make your ad stand out from the crowd?
One of the underutilized features of Facebook self-serve is keyword targeting. Keywords in Facebook are not like Google and Yahoo. Creating a keyword-driven campaign on Google would mean collecting a list of terms such as “dating” and “dating site”… In Facebook it is different: keywords are a combination of groups a user is part in, applications that the user might use, or words that are contained with the user’s profile. What kind of keywords would you use for targeting singles on Facebook?
A popular dating application is Zoosk. By utilizing keyword targeting and having “zoosk” as a keyword, your ad can be shown exclusively to users who have added the Zoosk dating application or a member of its fan page. This is extremely useful as you know the Facebook user is already a member of one dating site, meaning it is likely that they will join another site. What are other keywords to use? Here’s only a short list: areyouinterested, datepad, datehookup, hot or not, zoosk
Above you can see a screenshot taken from an actual Facebook account using dozens of Facebook applications, groups and pages of which users are engaged in online dating. Think of the creativity you can use in your ad headline when you know what application a user has already added to their profile, such as the ad below:
These ads are gaining huge ROI. Depending on the offer you decide to run, I’ve seen conversion rates of up to 30% and with the high CTR calling out whether a user is an online dating you’re only paying pennies a click if you decide to use CPM bidding.
Update – I guess people decided to copy this and it ended up getting noticed by Zoosk
… Actually this number is higher, but I can’t say how much exactly.
Has anyone gotten anything cool from Facebook? I have a few shirts and other pieces of swag from my visits to their offices over the past few years…
Seen these lately? Facebook is now letting weight-loss rebills to appear on their homepage.
I’ve spoken to one of the directors at Facebook and apparently rebills/weight-loss has never officially been banned. Facebook has just banned flogs and rebills where its not clear to the user that they will be billed ridiculous amounts of money (below the fold disclaimers, 6pt font text, etc.)
If you ask me, Facebook is just trying to boost revenues since its the end of the quarter…
Zoosk was recently featured in TechCrunch. A few weeks ago we hit acquired our 40 millionth user and reached a 30M/yr run-rate for revenue.
Okay… so I just found out that I was not supposed to talk about a private beta that I am involved in. I thought I was allowed to talk about it but found out I couldn’t.
Sorry about that.
