Archive for February, 2012

Facebook prepares advertising programme

Posted by admin in SF Advertising on February 29, 2012

Facebook’s status used to be measured in the meteoric number of users who flocked to the world’s most popular online hangout. Now Wall Street is wielding a very different yardstick. It’s focused on how many ads Facebook can sell.

The market value of the social networking giant could top $100 billion (Dh367 billion) in the biggest ever initial public offering for an internet company. To earn that valuation, Facebook, which made nearly all of its $3.7 billion in revenue last year from advertising, is going to have to turn big brands into paying customers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Twitter unveils self-service advertising system Twitter unveils self-service advertising system

Posted by admin in SF Advertising on February 22, 2012

Buying ads on Twitter is about to get easier for small businesses as the online messaging service adds a key piece to its moneymaking model.
Twitter is unveiling a long-awaited automated system that will enable advertisers to manage their marketing campaigns and budgets without having to deal with sales representatives.

Before Twitter opens the system to all comers later this year, the self-service approach announced Thursday will only be available to advertisers who accept or use American Express cards. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jeff Goodby Sends a Note Regarding Staff Cuts

Posted by admin in SF Advertising on February 17, 2012

Last week, sweeping layoffs at GS+P left, by some estimates, hundreds jobless. As one commenter noted  last week,”Great. This just made the freelance market in SF about a billion times tougher.” No, it probably wasn’t most sensitive of statements, but it undoubtedly carries a good amount of truth with it. When that many people are let go in a market the size of San Francisco, it’s an uphill battle.

But, resolute recent Goodby ex-employees are attempting to turn lemons into lemonade. JD Beebe, an NYC-based copywriter/strategist/producer/consultant and GS+P alum created “Grab Some Goodby,” a site dedicated to finding his fallen comrades new jobs. To get the word out, Beebe’s enlisted the help of NYC’S Goodby alumni group on Facebook.

So, how about it, agency recruiters? If you want to find some recently jobless San Franciscans with experience working at one of the country’s most well-known creative shops, look no further.

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Tapjoy Named To The Fast Company Top 50 Most Innovative Companies List

Posted by admin in SF Advertising on February 15, 2012

Tapjoy, a mobile advertising and publishing platform, has been recognized in Fast Company’s annual Most Innovative Companies issue as the#27 most innovative company in the world.  Tapjoy was specifically recognized for helping shift the mobile gaming industry from pay-to-play to a freemium model by allowing consumers to earn in-app virtual currency in exchange for trying other apps or interacting with ads. Fast Company’s editorial teams evaluated information on thousands of businesses across the globe to create the World’s Most Innovative Companies issue. Read the rest of this entry »

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HP looking for creative agency for PC division

Posted by poboutin in SF Advertising on February 9, 2012

Hewlett-Packard Co. is searching for a creative agency to handle its personal systems group, according to Advertising Age, a sibling publication of BtoB. HP considered splitting off its personal systems group, which manufactures PCs and mobile devices, but decided to keep the business and is now looking for an agency to handle work for the $41 billion unit. Its previous agency was Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco. Twofifteen, San Francisco, which handles regional work for HP, and BBDO, New York, which handles corporate work, are said to be included in the review.

From: http://www.btobonline.com/article/20120203/AGENCIES04/302039996/hp-looking-for-creative-agency-for-pc-division#seenit

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Investors seek things to like on Facebook

Posted by poboutin in SF Advertising on February 8, 2012

A solid online advertising business – though not quite the juggernaut that some had hoped – and with key questions still hanging over the value of “social” and mobile advertising to the world’s big consumer brands.
That has been the verdict from analysts and investors in the wake of Facebook’s IPO filing. The paperwork, which gave the first in-depth look at the company’s finances, has paved the way for a debut on Wall Street expected in May.
The filing also revealed a business that, though highly profitable, faces sharply rising costs from expanding its workforce and building a network of datacentres, as it races to consolidate its lead and become the world’s dominant social networking platform.
For anyone hoping that the new forms of social advertising pioneered by Facebook would produce the sort of stellar early results once seen from Google’s search advertising, the filing is a reality check.
With $3.2bn in advertising last year, Facebook has quickly emerged as one of the dominant online businesses, though the numbers were below what many had anticipated.
Also, while up 69 per cent from a year before, advertising growth slowed sharply from the growth of 145 per cent the year before. For a company whose shares will trade on expectations of continued sky-high growth, any further signs of deceleration will be scrutinised closely in coming quarters.
The answer will rest heavily on whether Facebook succeeds in tying advertising to the highly effective social mechanisms that keep users coming back to its site to “share” information with people in their networks.
Up to now, it makes relatively little money this way. Starting in late 2010, the company began flooding its users’ pages with low-value “display” advertising, cramming six or even seven messages into the right hand columns at one point. Though probably accounting for 60 per cent of its overall advertising revenue, this has resulted in “drecky” messages that its users have found irrelevant, says Debra Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer.
Facebook changed course in late 2011, its filing shows, introducing higher minimum bids on the auctions that underpin this form of advertising in an effort to raise quality – and prices. The move reflects steps Google has taken in the past.
The question is whether Facebook can succeed in adding a stronger social dimension to the way users interact with newer forms of advertising. An 18 per cent increase in the average prices of its adverts last year was one early sign that big consumer brands are starting to respond. However, Ms Williamson said Facebook had yet to persuade many brand-owners, which get free promotion from users visiting their pages that they should also pay for advertising.
Meanwhile, the company’s filing left another big question: around half of its 845m users access Facebook on mobile devices, a number that is expected to increase, yet it still carries no mobile advertising. That could eventually eat into its business as more users switch to mobile, and is one of the “risk factors” listed in the filing. It has added to expectations that Facebook will soon announce a new mobile advertising platform, perhaps even before its IPO.
With the advertising business yet to turn into the sort of goldmine seen in Google’s early days, attention has shifted to other ways it could make money.
“To get comfortable with the valuations people are talking about, you have to be assuming they will develop other revenue streams,” said Ryan Jacob, a US internet fund manager.
So far, Facebook has levied a tax on the games played on its site, taking 30 per cent cut of the money users spend. That has already grown to 15 per cent of its revenues, with Zynga alone supplying 12 per cent – a sign of the great potential from levying these sorts of transaction fees.
Facebook’s profit margin slipped slightly last year as it ramped up spending – a reverse of the “operating leverage” normally seen when young companies with high fixed costs see a sharp increase in revenues. Employee numbers jumped 50 per cent last year, to 3,200 and it opened its first company-owned datacentre.
“It’s a modest surprise that there isn’t more leverage,” said Mr Jacob. “They’ve been investing aggressively.”
Despite that Facebook still has profit margins that would be the envy of most young businesses, particularly ones in the early stages of rapid growth that require massive investments. Its operating profit margin last year, of 47 per cent, was still roughly equivalent to the 50 per cent that Google reported in 2005, when its net revenues were at a similar level.

A solid online advertising business – though not quite the juggernaut that some had hoped – and with key questions still hanging over the value of “social” and mobile advertising to the world’s big consumer brands.

That has been the verdict from analysts and investors in the wake of Facebook’s IPO filing. The paperwork, which gave the first in-depth look at the company’s finances, has paved the way for a debut on Wall Street expected in May.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Super Bowl Ad Scorecard

Posted by poboutin in SF Advertising on February 6, 2012

Check out some of the most notable commercials from a Super Sunday in which some spots featuring old favorites became old favorites themselves before the big game.

Click here to view

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Twitter Global Expansion Increases Sales, Censorship Challenges

Posted by poboutin in SF Advertising on February 1, 2012

Twitter Inc.’s international expansion may help fuel a threefold gain in revenue, even as it raises censorship challenges for the microblogging service.

Ad revenue at Twitter is set to rise to $540 million in 2014 from $139.5 million in 2011, according to New York-based research firm EMarketer Inc. Increasing popularity overseas will decrease the site’s reliance on U.S. advertisers. The percentage of dollars coming from the U.S. will fall to 83 percent in 2014 from about 90 percent this year, EMarketer said.

Read the rest of this entry »

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