• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 8, 2011

Funny or Die's head of branded entertainment, Chris Bruss, and vice president of advertising sales, Ed Wise, took the stage to continue the discussion of branded video. Talking about the key role social media has played in the site's growth, Bruss noted FoD has focused on not just creating but "activating" its online community by inviting them to participate in the site rather than just tweet out new content.

By the numbers, FoD has 2.2 million (up 50% y/y) followers on Twitter, more than 3 million  Facebook fans (along with co-founder Will Ferrell; up 1200%), and 40K followers on Tumblr. The site is also getting 2,000 "Likes" per day and overall reaches an audience of 32 million via social media channels. That also includes 1,000 blogs and 500,000 subscribers to the FoD newsletter.

Bruss pointed to its daily caption contest is a simple but effective way it encourages regular interaction from viewers. "What we're doing is putting up a picture each day and we get a ton of engagement off that every single day," he said.