New Facebook Gifting Ad Unit - Saw VI's Facebook Campaign

Facebook has been rapidly innovating with their ad platform and rolling out new ad formats. We have seen:- Fan Page ad units - Polling and rich video units - Direct response / Sampling units

It looks as though a new ad unit has been rolled out: Gifting. The flow is simple:

1. A user sees the ad and is able to select a friend to give the 'gift' to (the gift is the notification and the unique icon):

2. As you give the gift, you are able to select friends (with the auto-fill tool) and add a personalized note:

3. Once you give the gift, it shows up with below the ad in the Google Chat-like format:

4. That gift is then posted directly to the recipient's wall and a notification is sent:

For Saw VI, this is a follow up to their other Facebook Ad Campaigns (they previously ran a fan and Event RSVP campaign). This latest 'gift' campaign seems to be more focused on continuing the viral loop and reinforcing the movie's branding. It is an interesting format - but I am not sure you would want to launch a Facebook campaign specifically with it... perhaps if, like the Rockstar direct response ads, it were tied to also becoming a fan (and it very well could be - I happen to already be a Saw VI fan!).

JibJab's Monster Mash is an October Hit; Great Example of Facebook Connect & Growth

Congratulations to JibJab who is the 8th gainer this week on InsideFacebook's Top Facebook App Gainers. JibJab's new Monster Mash Sendable has become a Haloween hit. Yesterday, they announced 5,000,000 views - it was announced on October 6th on Facebook. JibJab does a terrific job of using Facebook Connect to help publish stories and, most excitingly, to pull photos from your friends that can be inserted directly into the JibJab cards. Once you create your card, you can then publish it back out to those same friends using Facebook Connect. It's a terrific integration that makes the user experience more efficient and social - and the sharing experience more effective (both for the creators, recipients and JibJab).

Note: You can become a fan of JibJab on Facebook here.

JibJab Enters InsideFacebook's Top Facebook Apps

A screenshot of publishing my Monster Mash card through Facebook Connect and into the Facebook Feed:

My JibJab Monster Mash video - using a collection of sports stars. Can you name them?

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Apple: Now Use In App Purchase in Free Apps to Sell Content, Subscriptions, Digital Services

Major announcement from Apple today that has made application developers (like the one below) very excited: free applications can now be directly monetized through "In App Purchasing" - which is a key component to what is driving the success in the booming online-gaming space. Now developers have choices beyond the current options: premium applications and/or in-app advertising (standard units, sponsorship, interstitials):

"In App Purchase is being rapidly adopted by developers in their paid apps. Now you can use In App Purchase in your free apps to sell content, subscriptions, and digital services. You can also simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses In App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app. Using In App Purchase in your app can also help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases."

Powermat Takes Over Gizmodo with Terrific Expansive Ad Campaign

By now, you may have heard about Powermat - the innovative tool that charges your equipment without the cords and tangles. It's a smart product that solves a common need - and has we continue to collect gadgets that play important roles in our daily lives, charging becomes more important and more of a hassle.

Powermat has begun advertising heavily on radio, television and internet. The below ad unit currently running on Gizmodo is outstanding. I have written before about expansive ad units (examples here and here) and integrated, full-page units (like this).

The Powermat ad units do both. Here on Gizmodo:

- there is a great expansive header where the cords retract into the traditional ad unit (Gizmodo content can be seen beneath). Not only is it visually terrific - it captures the Powermat concept perfectly and is fully integrated into the Gizmodo site - there is a matching vertical banner on the left panel - a Powermat sponsorship logo near the search box - and a large, integrated horizontal unit halfway down the page

And the Powermat ad units are integrated throughout the entire Gizmodo site. Below is a screenshot of the ad sitting between blog posts and headlines:

EA Acquiring Playfish for $250m (Rumor)

As rumors circulate that Electronic Arts is acquiring the hot mobile and online game maker Playfish for $250m (here and here), the Wall Street Journal has a timely and fun headline. The article does not mention Playfish or any other gaming companies / targets, but the timing is certainly funny:

EA’s Schappert Foresees Social Gaming Consolidation ... Schappert deflected a question about whether EA, which has plenty of cash, might be in the market for a social-networking gaming company. While social networks such as Facebook have practically become the new Internet portals, he asked of social gaming, “Is it sustainable or is it a bubble?”

He used mobile gaming as an analogy, where EA bought one of the largest mobile game publishers, Jamdat Mobile Inc., because of its expertise in deploying games on a variety of mobile devices and networks. The acquisition enabled Jamdat to capitalize on EA’s portfolio of games. Since then, mobile gaming has become dominated by established games and established brands, Schappert said. He expects social gaming to follow a similar path and said he’s confident EA has the ability to pursue the market with internal developers while remaining open to an acquisition.

'Facebook News' - It's Already Being Delivered on & through Facebook

Facebook has become my newsreader. It is a merging of:

- social news (both of and from my friends) - major news sources (a fan of Washington Post, New York Times, etc) - industry news (your network tends to share circles around particular topics, from tech to sports to pop culture) - breaking news (whether on Twitter or Facebook, news moves quickly and often through the real time web. Today alone, dozens of posts about the Dow breaking 10,000, the rumored Playfish / EA acquisition, and so forth)

Now that Facebook has moved beyond social sharing and continues to grow ahead of Twitter, tools need to open up both on *and* off Facebook.com to allow for better management, commentary and finding of articles and news.

I once spent several hours setting up my Google RSS reader... and haven't logged in to check it for months.... because the content all exists in some format within Facebook. The Google Reader toolset however, doesn't and the sharing / commentary functionality would help news-hubs on Facebook that are relevant to my network, their activity (sharing, reading, commenting, etc) and across Facebook's much-larger network. The "Facebook Notes" feature is partially there, but imagine Facebook News (news.facebook.com) that merges content and commentary across friends, fan pages (like the New York Times) and public content. And while people spend time 'grouping' their friends, it is done on a person or geographical basis - more important though would be on a content basis: social, applications, news, sports, etc.

Meanwhile, news sources like HuffingtonPost should continue to do the reverse by innovating atop of Facebook Connect. And by adding a social layer to their content, HuffingtonPost itself becomes stickier and they see an increase in traffic from the integration.

There are also mobile implications here since the Facebook App should at least allow for improved sharing (such as email a note / URL - perhaps blog it, share it directly, etc). I am regularly within the feed - either on my iPhone or computer - and find myself wanting to share that content and open a private discussion around it. On mobile, the only current option is to comment and like:

When Amazon Destroys iTunes in Pricing... What Do You Do?

Consumers used to go to Apple's iTunes because it was easier, cheaper and more effecient. Now compared to Amazon, it is is neither cheaper nor easier... Now I buy my music directly through Amazon (as a cd no less!). The top selling album on iTunes is Michael Buble's latest. It costs 14.99 on iTunes as compared to 9.99 on amazon. That's a dramatic difference and there are dozens of other examples for popular and smaller titles alike. When iTunes falls behind on pricing, is it still worth the experience? It certainly satisfies the immediacy (even if amazon will arrive in 24-48 hours). But it loses on all else: the price is 50% greater, the finding experience is worse and the reviews are generally better on amazon. On the mobile front (where these screenshots are from), the experience is even more differentiated between the two.

When pricing is the same, iTunes wins on immediacy - but amazon has shown time and time again the ability to compete on pricing and find value downstream for the users / purchases. And unless iTunes adds some big value-add and compelling reason why I need to buy there (like Facebook connect), pricing remains critical.... And if you read the reviews, users agree (they are giving buble's album a poor rating because of the iTunes price).

Top 20 Grossing iPhone Apps: Dominated by Brands and Games

Apple recenly added a new sort / finding path for iPhone apps: Top Grossing Apps. It is far from perfect and not at all based on your habits or your friends' (it should be Facebook Connect enabled)... But it sure is revealing. Take a look at the top twenty grossig apps and we learn a few key things:

1. 12 of the top 20 apps are games. And most of the games are well known branded games like scrabble, UNO, madden football, etc. People want to game on their devices and are used to paying bigger dollars on other devices or formats.

2. Per the above bullet, brands dominate the top 20. 16 of the apps are prominent brands... users are more likely to pay for familiar names - as though it includes reliabilty among a crowded space with a failed rating system.

3. Pricing is not the much talked about 0.99. While there are a few sub dollar apps, only 8/20 are under 4.99 (which is the most common price point in the top twenty).

4. Other than games, content (family guy videos, Espn radio and CNN news) and applications (like tweetie) make up the remainder

Google AdSense Optimizes Ad Units for "High-End Phones" (aka Android & iPhone)

Billed as "AdSense High-End", Google is now letting advertisers create ads specifically for "high-end" phones like the iPhone and Android-capable devices. While that is a natural evolution of the AdSense platform, Google's explanation as to why is quite interesting:

With the growth in popularity of high-end mobile phones with full (HTML) Internet browsers, like the iPhone and phones running Android, advertisers are increasingly extending their campaigns to mobile devices. Because these devices offer a rich content experience similar to desktop, advertising on them is a natural extension for many advertisers.

... In other words, the mobile web is really the traditional web. Experiences and applications are becoming richer - and will continue to do so as devices and HTML / HTML5 allows for it. And therefore, the advertising experience will also become richer and more effective.