Microsoft plans to release details soon on the Bing Fund for start-ups and entrepreneurs, an initiative to foster a community based on search and social services. Recent announcements, such as the integration of social into Bing, along with the appointment of Rahul Sood as general manager of Bing Fund from the Xbox entertainment business group, suggest a combined focus. Sood joined Microsoft after selling VoodooPC to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. As general manager, Sood will create and nurture the new program in Bing. While Bing declined to comment, clues tweeted from the Twitter handle @BingFund, such as "pitch decks should be small / don't jam too much text per page / videos are nice," suggest that the company continues to dig deep into the project. Microsoft has built software and cloud computing businesses on developer communities. Now it will try to do the same for Bing and Xbox. Creating a community has been a daunting task for technology vendors," according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. He said it's difficult for engineers to wrap their minds around what it takes to create and nurture a community of search. Building a community around search sounds interesting, Enderle said. "People don't typically get together and chat about what they search about, but we do share a lot of the stuff we find," he said. "That points to the core of Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter." Enderle said Facebook doesn't realize what it created. A gaming community gravitates around games, which becomes a group naturally. Building, maintaining and nurturing a community does not come easily to engineers and developers, he said. "Apple is really the only company that has done it successfully for a long time," he said. Games drive the Xbox community. With the release of Kinect for Windows earlier this year, Microsoft released the Kinect Accelerator, a three-month incubator program and joint venture with start-up incubator TechStars to support companies wanting to build the platform into applications. Companies would get a chance to work with a mentor from Microsoft Research, Microsoft Studios, Kinect for Windows and the Xbox team. They also receive advice from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The program chose 11 finalists out of nearly 500 applicants.
Search agency PM Digital has acquired the digital services assets of Zeta Interactive to support a suite of multichannel marketing services, such as mobile, social, Web development, analytics, email, and search engine marketing. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. PM Digital CEO and Founder Chris Paradysz began several years ago to further develop the company's creative Web services and team. He also pointed to Zeta's search capabilities to help accelerate efforts. The deal, which opened and closed within three weeks, brings together two common business cultures and adds 53 "talented people" to PM Digital's payroll, Paradysz said Monday. It also brings the Paradysz digital business -- focused on retail, publishing and nonprofits -- a series of new clients like Hewlett-Packard, Sony, and Intuit. Union Bank remains the only client that both companies support. PM Digital’s acquisition of these assets comes at a time of significant momentum for the agency. The agency has opened new offices to attract talent in multiple locations like Scottsdale, Arizona. PM Digital has also strengthened its offerings with new technology and methods, including paid-search attribution, geotargeting, and reporting apps that give clients access to campaign performance and results on their iPhone or Android devices. Caivis Acquisition acquired Zeta Interactive’s email platform, which supports mobile and related services. A shared group of email clients, both companies have agreed to service arrangements that will provide a unified approach to continue services.
According to NMIncites, social networks and blogs In the U.S reach nearly 80% of active U.S. Internet users and represent the majority of Americans’ time online. The value of the time consumers spend online and on social networks and blogs continues to grow. 60% of people who use three or more digital means of research for product purchases learned about a specific brand or retailer from a social networking site. 48% of these consumers responded to a retailer’s offer posted on Facebook or Twitter. As the influence of social media, and those using social media, continues to grow, it’s crucial for traditional media, retailers, brands and advertisers to understand how different consumer segments use and share content, says the report. Nielsen’s State of the Media: The Social Media Report presents a snapshot of the current social media landscape and audiences in the U.S. and other major markets. Year Over Year Mobile Internet Audience Growth to Social Networking SitesDemographic% of Growth Y-O-YAge Group 13-17 16% 18-34 61 35-54 68 55+ 109 Race/Ethnicity Mixed racial 37% Black/African American 41 Native American/Alaskan native 44 Hispanic origin 45 White 67 Asian/Pacific islander 76 Other 70 Source: Neilsen, 2011 Key findings from the study, says Nielsen:
My good friend Jason Falls posted on LinkedIn last week, in response to recently released Facebook Ads engagement data: “More statistics emerging on Facebook advertising statistics. I still am baffled that marketers are so lathered up about them. POINT-ZERO-SEVEN percent CTRs?” Though I was away on vacation (and if you were to ask my wife, disconnected from all things Web-related -- don’t rat me out), I took some time to think this one over. Jason is extremely well regarded in the social marketing space, and his opinion is one I value. I wanted to better understand his perspective, primarily because Facebook serves ~25% of the world’s display ad impressions month-over-month and because I’m personally very bullish on Facebook Ads. My initial reaction to that same body of data was, “Who cares? CTR tells us nothing about the impact of those ads. It depends on program objectives.” Plus, just as I’ve observed in paid search, there’s a lot of “stupid money” flying around while people figure it out. I decided to write Jason. To: Jason FallsSubject: Facebook AdsCan be hugely valuable. I managed a program last year that generated a 14% conversion rate. It's all about defining appropriate KPIs and managing multi-channel touches too. Saw your mention earlier about it. ;-) It didn’t take him long to respond… To: Ryan DeShazerSubject: RE: Facebook AdsDon’t doubt there are some instances. But when the CTRs are on average that low, I can’t fathom why a medium or small business would even try. Touché. He was right. I think I’m right too, though. There may not be much benefit afforded the lay SMB advertiser if time and money are both extremely tight. Facebook Ads can be a time-consuming endeavor, and if Facebook is one of only a handful of advertising channels selected, the clickthrough rate (and, more important, number of conversions) may not justify the effort. But our exchange also reminded me of similar conversations I’ve had about all forms of digital advertising. If business objectives aren’t clearly understood at the onset, and then made tangible through identifying program key performance indicators (KPIs), then who’s to say whether the advertising is effective or not? In the case of Facebook Ads, a 0.07% CTR could signal a hugely successful brand awareness program. It could be the result of poor audience targeting selections. It might be producing double-digit conversion rates after the click. It could be 0.07% CTR against a billion impressions in a week’s time (700,000 clicks)! That CTR statistic alone lacks context. And generally speaking, CTR is no longer a viable measure of success across any medium. I can recall my early days in SEM advertising, when the CTR was the first number I checked within the AdWords interface. It provided me with at-a-glance data about which ads connected best to user queries. As I painfully discovered, however, programs managed in this way would often deliver little more than high volumes of tire kickers, when the goals were really centered on conversion. Had my objectives been focused on traffic generation alone, then CTR might have been an appropriate measure. One of my earliest lessons in best-practice PPC management came from my first SEM mentor, David Szetela. Circa 2004, he taught me to set AdWords ad rotations to “even” rather than “optimize.” We did this to better understand which ads delivered our most important visitors. The focus was on quality over quantity. That advice is still sound today, across search, display, and even Facebook Ads. Can any advertiser meet its marketing objectives with a .07% CTR? Well, it depends. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Are you a Performance Insider?We're looking for columns that provide insights into performance marketing/lead generation, or generally focus on how to improve one's customer-generating performance. Please send ideas or possible columns (650 words or less, avoiding self-promotion) to pfine@mediapost.com. Thank you!