Advertisers disappointed with Facebook's CTR

BizReport : Social Marketing : July 16, 2007

More reports are circulating of disappointing click-through rates for advertising placed on Facebook. Should marketers persevere or concede that social networking sites aren’t yet the place for ads?

by Helen Leggatt

Earlier this year the Valleywag blog reported that media buyers saw Facebook as a “truly terrible target”. At that time they were experiencing click-through rates of just 0.04 percent. Around the same time, GigaOM’s Robert Young commented that, “Word on the street, Madison Avenue that is, is that advertisers who have experimented and bought ads on Facebook are universally disappointed with the results.”

It would appear that not much has changed in the intervening months. A recent entry on the Reach Students blog expresses disappointment at their recent Facebook flyer campaign for which, coincidently, they also only managed to achieve click-through rates of around 0.04 percent.

Lots of reasons have been put forward as to why the click-through rates are so low. Some believe that a high number of tech-savvy students on Facebook are using ad-blockers and some that the younger generation are good at ignoring commercial messages.

However, while Myspace and other community networks are all about content, Facebook is more of a communication tool, like IM or a closed forum for friends. On MySpace users spend time browsing through content on various webpages whereas Facebook users spend their time absorbed in dialogue. The difference in user behaviour could well account for the disparate click-through rates, as Myspace has a click-through rate of around 0.1 percent, according to Valleywag.

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The “Secondary Liability” Theory on YouTube/iPhone

Augustine: this is why I have put Flickr on PictureSandbox on hold for now

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

CNET found someone to complain that the copyright on their content is being infringed by YouTube, and speculates that Apple may have liability too because they are showing YouTube videos on the iPhone.

While copyrighted material can certainly be found on YouTube, winning a case against them for copyright infringement is much harder than it looks. YouTube is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which, among other things, protects sites like YouTube from the actions of its users. Copyright holders are left with filing a notice with YouTube to pull their content down (which they will do), or trying to prove that YouTube moved outside of the safe harbor under the Act.

Viacom and other are trying to do exactly that, and are playing a $1 billion game of poker with Google, YouTube's parent company. But to add Apple to the mix, who simply show YouTube content but do not host it on their servers, adds a whole additional layer of legal complexity to the case. And it drags another war-ready litigation team to your front door. My guess is all of these hurdles will protect Apple, and we won't be seeing any litigation over their integration of YouTube into the iPhone any time soon.

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The Latest Harry Potter Book Hits BitTorrent

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, the latest and last of the wildly popular Harry Potter books that is due to go on sale this weekend, has hit BitTorrent. Various torrents of the novel consist of photographed pages (as above) with reading quality that isn’t perfect, but for desperate fans readable enough. Whilst the validity of the hype surrounding Harry Potter may be subject to debate, what the leaking of the book does demonstrate is that the days of the mainstream media and publishers strictly controlling the dissemination of information has well and truly past; simply where there is a fan with a will, there is a way.

For educational purposes only, the Harry Potter book can be found by searching The Pirate Bay.

(via Torrent Freak)

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iLike’s Wonderful Facebook Problem

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

I had a chance to visit music social network iLike's Seattle offices yesterday to meet with co-founder Hadi Partovi. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the office was a flat panel display showing key real time stats for the company - see image to the right. I took a picture as Partovi looked on nervously. These stats haven't previously been publicly disclosed, but he agreed that I could publish them.

iLike launched last October. In the nine months since they've gathered 3.5 million users (the orange stats in the picture), up from half a million in February. Not bad. But what's really impressive is the fact that in less than two months nearly 5 million more people have signed up for the service on Facebook, where it is the third most popular third party application.

The difference will only become greater - 2,800 Facebook users are joining every hour, whereas the main site only gets 652 new users/hour.

Much of the popularity of the iLike Facebook application is driven by something called the iLike Music Challenge, where users try to guess songs or artist names based on listening to a 30 second snippet from a song. Users get points for correct answers (and more points for fast answers), and compete with their friends. It's highly addictive and viral - Partovi says the average user session last a whopping 80 songs. Since points are public, I can see that a lot of my Facebook friends are totally addicted to this. See the screen shot below, and click for a larger view.

Two Sets Of Users

But iLike has a bit of a problem, because it has two distinct sets of users using two different products. There isn't much overlap between the two groups, he says, because the Facebook application isn't promoted on the iLike website.

The company is currently dedicating resources to merge the user groups and make the functionality between the products identical (or at least more similar). They'll start by comparing cookies to find cross-users. If cookies from both products are on a user's browser, they'll ask if they have accounts at both and optionally merge them.

While they're in the process of doing that, they continue to support the two products separately. All new beta features are released on both platforms, so its just the legacy stuff that needs to move. The most important features are the data gathered from the iTunes plugin - users want to show playlists and the music they are listening to on Facebook. All of that is coming soon, the company says.

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Introducing Earth2Tech, our latest blog

from GigaOM by Om Malik

Apparently like everyone else, we are going green!

We are launching our latest blog - Earth2Tech, a site devoted to the business of clean technologies, its innovations and everything else. While there are many sites that help consumers live “greener,” we are focusing our energies on the business of clean and green.

One part clean tech startup coverage – (a quick look at clean tech venture numbers shows the growing ranks of startups in hot areas like solar and biofuels); One part reviews of tech giant’s eco-initiatives (is Google’s carbon neutral initiative more marketing or responsible plan?); One part a resource page for entrepreneurs and Valley types looking for green tech [tools, rules, tips] – LBS meets ethanol?

This new blog has been a team effort. Katie came up with the concept, Liz with the name and rest of us well contributed in some way or the other. The site is being edited by Katie Fehrenbacher and working with her is Adena DeMonte, who starts today as a staff writer. She comes from Red Herring and is the newest member of GigaTeam.

The site has been designed by Rare Edge Design dynamic duo, Eric Willis and Nicole Wopperer. Incidentally, I met Nicole on iminlikewithyou and rest that say is green! Hopefully you will visit the new site, and send us your feedback. You can add it to your RSS reader by clicking here.

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