The 10 companies shortlisted for Media Player of the Year in Marketing’s Nov. 14 issue were at the top of their game in 2011. We’ll be featuring each one online as a lead-up to our January 2012 issue, where you’ll find out which media company will reign supreme.
The company can smell a billion users and it’s inviting marketers into the sandbox. But it’s the masterful response to user needs and seamless brand integration that has the social network harnessing resources most advertisers don’t even know exist yet
What isn’t Facebook getting for Christmas? The social behemoth already has nova-like growth, breathtaking relevancy and scale, 800 million members, oceans of data, a massive IPO on the horizon, ubiquity—and is its own verb. Plus Facebook is flat-out the No. 1 web activity in Canada.
So how did the company capitalize on these advantages in 2011? Simple: they innovated.
Locked in a battle royal with Google, Facebook’s Studio and “People Talking About” (PTA) are two well-crafted launches making waves. Studio targets advertising agencies, opening up their in-house work process, then socializes that work to optimize its impact. There are also peer accolades via Studio’s Spotlight venue.
“Agencies and brands spend a great deal of time on the site browsing work in the Gallery,” notes Facebook Canada managing director Jordan Banks. “We want agencies and brands to use Studio to discover what’s creatively possible on Facebook, celebrate great work, and learn about new product features, all in one place.” Dozens of heavyweight shops have already signed on, incentivized to bask in Facebook Spotlight’s glow—baited by the possibility of being recognized as the best submitted agency campaign. The honour will be awarded in February.
One submitting agency, Toronto’s AdParlor, builds technologies atop Facebook Ads’ API to manage large-scale Facebook campaigns generating 15 billion-plus ad impressions every month for the likes of Ubisoft, Sega, Playfirst, Digitas and Groupon. “There’s lots of Facebook marketing innovation,” says AdParlor’s CEO Hussein Fazal. “Yet many marketers are confused about what to do. Facebook Studio addresses that with a great platform for brands and agencies to share what’s working—and to spread the knowledge.”
Launched in October, PTA feeds data-hungry marketers consumer intelligence with a half-dozen measures that peer down a user’s network at friends’ interactions with a brand conversation (see “Something to Talk About” on the flipside of the poster in this issue). Eyeing a trend-spotting bonanza, Sony Playstation, Electronic Arts, Gatorade and Virgin Atlantic have API builds underway to channel PTA’s ad personalization data.
“Agencies have always been trying to measure what people are talking about,” notes Fazal. “But PTA gives them a much more concrete way to do so, [allowing] agencies to focus more heavily on the quality of their brand fans—how engaging they are—in addition to ad price.” Fazal thinks that eventually measuring “cost per People Talking About” will rule ad buys.
There’s more! Check out the Nov. 14 issue of Marketing for the full profile, and subscribe to find out who will be named the Media Player of the Year for 2011
