Twitter Lets Brands Infiltrate TV Conversations Without Buying TV Ads

Twitter launched TV conversation targeting on Thursday, a feature that lets brands and networks promote tweets to users who engage in specific shows, even if the brand isn’t running a TV ad during the program.

As the company wrote in its advertising blog: “Now advertisers can easily reach Twitter users exposed to integrations, sponsorships, and other innovative TV tie-ins for an additional touch point or message expansion.”

TV conversation targeting is launching in the United States and the UK and is coming soon to Brazil, Canada, France and Spain. The offering is distinct from TV ad targeting, a feature Twitter launched in July that lets advertisers augment their TV buys with Twitter campaigns.

Image: Getty/Scott Eells

Twitter Now Running Pre-Roll Ads

Twitter’s post-IPO monetization quest continues with a new unit that runs ads from American Express before video snippets from Fox programming.

The brand will run such ads before videos from Fox shows including Glee, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and So You Think You Can Dance, among other shows, Jean Rossi, EVP of sales for Fox Broadcasting, told Variety. The first such ads launched last week.

Twitter began running Fox clips as part of Amplify, a program that brought sponsored clips to users’ news feeds in May. As Gawker points out, that means that the AmEx ads are, in effect, ads on top of ads.

Though Twitter’s IPO was considered successful, the company is not expected to post a profit until 2015 at the earliest. Since the company’s main source of revenues comes from advertising, Twitter has to walk a fine line between pleasing advertisers without compromising the user experience.

Twitter’s recent expansion of photos in timelines was one recent test of this middle path as Promoted Tweets suddenly got more real estate in the feed. Twitter isn’t alone in testing the boundaries for users’ tolerance for advertising; Instagram also recently introduced ads and Google has been testing banner ads for brand searches.

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Image: Getty/ David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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Is Facebook a Truly Mobile-First Company Yet?

Has Facebook finally succeeded in becoming a mobile-first company? That’s the big question heading into the social network’s third quarter earnings results Wednesday.

Facebook has impressed analysts and investors in each quarter so far this year by reporting strong growth in mobile ad revenue. The company revealed that mobile ads accounted for 41% of total ad revenue in the second quarter this year, up from 30% in the first quarter and essentially nothing a year earlier. If that growth continues, Facebook could approach or even surpass the 50% mark this quarter.

Facebook has taken steps in recent weeks to make mobile ads more effective, including testing autoplay video ads in the news feed and introducing more calls to action on mobile app install ads to entice users to click, though it’s doubtful either had much impact on the previous quarter results.

Beyond the mobile ad stats, analysts will likely be looking for any updates or hints about the company’s new and as yet unannounced ad products. Instagram is expected to introduce ads this week, perhaps finally justifying the amount Facebook paid for the company. On the other hand, Facebook has repeatedly delayed introducing video ads on the homepage raising questions about when and how the company will choose to go this route.

Overall, Facebook is expected to report earnings per share of $0.19 on revenue of $1.91 billion for the quarter, up from earnings of $0.12 a share on revenue of $1.26 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Facebook stock has been on a tear this year, rising to as high as $54.83 earlier this month, roughly three times the low of $17.55 a share it hit a year earlier. The stock was hovering just below $50 a share in early trading Wednesday, an increase of 1% on the day.

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty

Is Facebook a Truly Mobile-First Company Yet?

Has Facebook finally succeeded in becoming a mobile-first company? That’s the big question heading into the social network’s third quarter earnings results Wednesday.

Facebook has impressed analysts and investors in each quarter so far this year by reporting strong growth in mobile ad revenue. The company revealed that mobile ads accounted for 41% of total ad revenue in the second quarter this year, up from 30% in the first quarter and essentially nothing a year earlier. If that growth continues, Facebook could approach or even surpass the 50% mark this quarter.

Facebook has taken steps in recent weeks to make mobile ads more effective, including testing autoplay video ads in the news feed and introducing more calls to action on mobile app install ads to entice users to click, though it’s doubtful either had much impact on the previous quarter results.

Beyond the mobile ad stats, analysts will likely be looking for any updates or hints about the company’s new and as yet unannounced ad products. Instagram is expected to introduce ads this week, perhaps finally justifying the amount Facebook paid for the company. On the other hand, Facebook has repeatedly delayed introducing video ads on the homepage raising questions about when and how the company will choose to go this route.

Overall, Facebook is expected to report earnings per share of $0.19 on revenue of $1.91 billion for the quarter, up from earnings of $0.12 a share on revenue of $1.26 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Facebook stock has been on a tear this year, rising to as high as $54.83 earlier this month, roughly three times the low of $17.55 a share it hit a year earlier. The stock was hovering just below $50 a share in early trading Wednesday, an increase of 1% on the day.

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty

Are Facebook Ads Working? The Clicks Say Yes

Days before Facebook unveils its Q3 earnings figures, multiple ad partners for the social network found that Facebook ads improved in nearly every metric in year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter comparisons.

The reports come from Adobe and Kenshoo Social, which are both part of Facebook’s Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer program, meaning they drive “outstanding positive impact in [Facebook’s] marketing developer ecosystem.”

The first annual Social Media Intelligence report released Monday by Adobe found that Facebook’s ad clicks, ad impressions and advertisers’ return on investment were all higher in 2013 than in 2012. According to the study, which took into account more than 131 billion Facebook ad impressions and 4.3 billion social engagements, Facebook ads were clicked 29% more often in 2013, and the return to investors was 58% higher than last year.

Other advertising metrics like cost-per-click were lower (by 40%), meaning advertising on Facebook is becoming cheaper and more effective, according to Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst of Adobe’s Digital Index. In some cases, Gaffney said, Facebook and other social platforms like Twitter and Pinterest are being undervalued by marketers using the last click model.

The last click model means that users may see an ad for an item they like on Facebook, then buy it online at a later date without going through Facebook to the retailer’s website. The purchase is still driven by the Facebook ad, but Facebook doesn’t always get the credit.

A separate study by Kenshoo Social found many of the same ad metric improvements for the company’s Q3 over Q2. According to Kenshoo’s data, which incorporates info from 85 million Facebook ads, ad clicks were up 14%, cost-per-click was down 9% and advertisers’ returns were 3 times higher than the same figures last quarter.

These improvements were similar to Kenshoo’s findings for Facebook ads last quarter. It appears that marketers can expect similar improvements moving ahead into the future.

“Part of the reason Facebook seems to accelerate each quarter is because of adoption,” said Aaron Goldman, Kenshoo CMO. “As more and more advertisers use it, they get more and more signals about how they can improve their ad delivery.”

In other words, the ads are growing more effective over time, according to Goldman.

Facebook is not alone in its social ad success. Adobe’s report found that both Twitter and Pinterest made significant ground on Facebook in terms of referral traffic to retail sites. Facebook still holds the top spot, but Twitter’s share of referral traffic grew more than 250% last year.

“I had thought that Facebook was running away with the game,” Gaffney said. “What’s coming out of our data set is that Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr are all making inroads themselves in a marketplace that I thought was already [dominated].”

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Image: Facebook(Let), Flickr

Do Teens Really Think Twitter Is ‘More Important’ Than Facebook?

Teens are abandoning Facebook in droves for Twitter.

For many, that was the takeaway from an Oct. 10 Piper Jaffray study of 8,650 teens. That conclusion was false. The study had a much narrower focus than has been reported and only referred to purchasing activity on the platforms.

This key paragraph in the press release explaining the study caused the confusion (emphasis ours):

Teens have cited “friends” as the strongest influence over their purchase decisions for the duration of our survey history, but “Internet” is quickly rising in profile. More than half of teens indicate that social media impacts their purchases with Twitter being the most important, eclipsing Facebook, followed closely by Instagram. But the popularity of Facebook is waning among teens with 23% citing it as the most important, down from 33% six months ago and 42% a year ago.

There’s no doubt the report shows bad news for Facebook. However, the data refers to importance for purchases. The ambiguous wording of the presser — including remarks about the “popularity” of the social networks — didn’t help. After all, it was possible to read the last sentence as its own entity in which “most important” referred to most important overall.

That may be the case, but that’s not what Piper Jaffray was asking about. A rep for the financial advisor says the study was looking specifically at buying behavior and wasn’t trying to determine whether teens prefer Twitter to Facebook overall.

This sounds like great news for Twitter. Yet it’s unclear how much of teens’ purchasing activity is actually spurred by the social network. A study last year by IBM found that it had exactly zero effect on Black Friday sales. Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube didn’t fare much better, generating only 0.34% of online sales on Black Friday.

It’s also true that Twitter is gaining popularity with teens: A Pew Research study in May showed that the number of teens on Twitter doubled from 2011 to 26%. Yet 94% of teens reported being on Facebook. The “teens are tired of Facebook” narrative also picked up over the summer when Mashable ran an op-ed by 13 year-old Ruby Karp explaining that neither she nor her friends were on Facebook.

Nevertheless, researcher The Futures Company, which looks closely at teens’ behavior, has found that while Facebook use has plateaued (which tends to happen when you hit 94%), teens still aren’t leaving the social network en masse.

All of which is to say that there may be something to the persistent narrative that teens are getting sick of Facebook. The Piper Jaffray report doesn’t make that case.

Source: Mashable

Twitter Dethrones Facebook as Teens’ Favorite Social Network for Shopping

Twitter beat out Facebook in the battle for teenagers’ preferred social networks for online shopping. In a recent survey of teens’ retail behavior, participants were asked about their favorite networks, and 26% responded that it was Twitter.

Facebook and Instagram each captured the hearts of 23% of survey respondents. Clearly, Instagram’s rising popularity among teens took a toll on both Twitter and Facebook’s popularity; Facebook saw a 10% decrease in the survey since six months ago and Twitter saw a 4% decrease.

“The data point is likely unsurprising as the trend in our survey has been moving toward Twitter over the past couple of years,” said analysts Gene Munster and Douglas Clinton in a note to clients.

Statista’s chart, which uses data from Piper Jaffray, shows the changes in teens’ favorite social networks for shopping among fall 2012, spring 2013 and fall 2013.

Image: Image: Sean MacEntee

Study: 30% of Americans Get Their News on Facebook

A new study reveals that 30% of Americans get their news on Facebook, and suggests that the social network drives people to media sites who may not have otherwise done so. Of that 30%, more than half — 78% — said they click on news links to media sites after initially logging on for unrelated reasons, such as checking out friends’ pictures or updating their statuses. In fact, only 16% of Facebook users say that getting news is the primary reason they log on.

The study, published by the Pew Research Center on Thursday, found that almost half of American users click on news in their Facebook feeds. Since 64% of adults in the United States use Facebook, that means one in three Americans consumes news on Facebook.

However, only 22% of the 30% who get their news on Facebook think the site is a useful source for information about the world, and only 4% of those think Facebook is “the most important way” to get their news.

“People go to Facebook to share personal moments — and they discover the news almost incidentally,” Amy Mitchell, Pew Research Center’s director of journalism research, said in a statement. “The serendipitous nature of news on Facebook may actually increase its importance as a source of news and information, especially among those who do not follow the news closely.”

The study quotes one respondent, who said he believes “Facebook is a good way to find out news without actually looking for it.”

The importance of the social network also depends on how much of a news junkie the user is.

Among those who click on news links in their Facebook news feeds, just 38% of heavy news followers think the social network is “an important way to get the news,” but among those who follow news “less often,” 47% consider Facebook as an important source.

On Monday, Facebook announced that it was driving 170% more traffic to media sites this year than in 2012.

This is the first of a series of studies on social media and news published by Pew in collaboration with the Knight Foundation. For this study, Pew surveyed 5,173 Americans ages 18 and older. You can read the full report here (.PDF).

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Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images