Last week’s Brooklyn Blogfest made headlines when it was uncovered that event sponsor Absolut Vodka gave gifts and promotional exposure in exchange for editorial coverage from bloggers who neglected to disclose ties to Absolut.  The ad campaign, created by New York’s Ketchum agency, promotes a special edition Absolut Brooklyn beverage endorsed by Spike Lee, who was also a guest speaker at Blogfest.  The ensuing backlash has invigorated discussion on ethics in the relatively nascent medium of branded blogging.

Last year the FTC published new guidelines for bloggers stating that “’material connections’ (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed.”  The commission investigated Ann Taylor earlier this year for a LOFT campaign that offered bloggers gift certificates in exchange for proof of editorial coverage.  While no fines were issued, the case is largely viewed as a warning to companies to take the lead in ensuring that participating bloggers disclose the nature of branded campaign.

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There is a new school of advertising creativity that paints with data and sculpts with APIs. Storytellers are learning to apply dynamic personalized data to enhance the narrative itself, not just provide adjacent functionality. API stands for application programming interface. Essentially APIs allow data streams to be shared with external entities. Data is bundled in a way so that that a developer can design a new application that incorporates that information and functionality.

The trick with building an application that relies on someone else’s API is that if the other guy changes the way their API works it can break your application. Facebook app builders have long struggled to stay aligned with how Facebook shares data. For API-enabled digital ads, companies are emerging that can add the layer of functionality and monitor for any changes to the underlying APIs. Examples of ad networks that offer this type of “rich media” are SpongeCell, ClickTurn, and SocialMedia.com.

In an ever more fragmented media world, it is getting harder and harder to deploy a relevant piece of creative to niche audiences. Data feeds are one way to produce a personalized experience without having to actually construct a vast portfolio of creative. Read More »

After five years at the top of the social networking pyramid, MySpace spent the last two years becoming the new Friendster. It’s a tag the company wore happily when it outdid Friendster in 2003, but in 2010 it’s nothing short of a scarlet letter. This week Rupert Murdoch folded Slingshot Labs, MySpace’s technology development arm, in what is the closest News Corp. has come to an admission of social networking “Game Over.”

In all likelihood MySpace will continue to loom in the social networking galaxy for years to come come, shimmering in the distance as a dying white dwarf star that grabs what financial dust it can from the ether. Music lovers might still use the site on occasion to check out new artists, but for the most part any self-respecting teenager will tell you that MySpace is “so 2006.”

So what went wrong?

Here are the three biggest MySpace missteps that newer sites like Facebook and Twitter can avoid: Read More »

Facebook recently unveiled a variety of new features. Among the changes was a subtle but important shift in the way Facebook lets users express their affinity for a brand. Prior to the update, users clicked the “Become a Fan” button in order to connect their Facebook profile to a brand’s page. That button has now been replaced by a “Like” button. Here’s what Facebook says about the change on their consumer-facing information page: “We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.”

If the change from “Fan” to “Like” is intended to make things easier for users, what does the shift mean to brands? Is this an opportunity for deeper or wider engagement? Or is it a harmful modification to the existing system?

Why this matters

Facebook assumes that consumers feel much more comfortable liking a brand than they are declaring themselves brand fanatics. In some ways this goes to the heart of the brand/consumer relationship, which is frequently a tumultuous and uneven affair. Brands hope for long-term consumer commitment. On the other hand, consumers are fickle – “brand loyalty” is more often “brand that I’m loyal to, so long as I’m not swayed toward a competitor’s offering for any one of an almost nearly infinite list of reasons.” Read More »

A lot went down in the Twitter universe last week. Let’s begin this week with a look back at the week that ‘twas.

Promoted Tweets

Few companies are more conspicuous in their lack of major revenue streams than Twitter. The company took a new step toward rectifying this position by unveiling its new advertising platform that relies on Promoted Tweets. Launched as a pilot program with a few select advertisers, the platform will eventually insert paid Tweets in the stream of Twitter search results. Promoted Tweets will be graded based on a “resonance” score. Resonance will help determine how long any of these sponsored Tweets stay active in the ecosystem. During a week in which Ning announced that it was moving away from free to paid service, it’s encouraging to see that Twitter is finding tools that build toward fiscal security. Unfortunately, they’re going to need a few more solutions in order to truly solve the revenue questions. Read More »

After nearly three years managing the social media and healthcare practices at the Lab, Raquel Krouse recently joined the Initiative Media team as SVP, Director for Prophesee social solutions, the agency’s social media unit. We sat down to talk about her new role, and how Prophesee aims to give brands better ways to listen and engage consumers online.

Q: You’ve done exciting work in social media over the past few years; how does Prophesee fit into the social media narrative?

A: When talking about developing a social media strategy, I’ve always stressed listening as an essential first step.  But it’s really about active listening. Prophesee not only provides solutions to monitor online chatter, but also provides the services to help brands understand and effectively act upon online buzz.

Q: What’s different about Prophesee, and why now? Read More »

Google built an empire with a simple approach– make innovations to existing ideas and offer the best user-friendly product on the market.  The formula worked with online search as it did with Google’s email service Gmail.  Follow-up launches of Gchat and Gchat video were logical progressions that integrated seamlessly with the Gmail platform and quickly became a part of our day to day interactions.  Google’s latest launch of Google Buzz pushes one step further by trying to enter the social networking space.  And if Google’s Buzz Press Conference is any indication, the company has been quietly planning to enter that space via Gmail all along.

Despite some problems out the starting gate, Google Buzz may be an attempt to jump on the microblogging bandwagon. But GoogleBuzz features several innovations that improve the Twitter platform it appropriates. Users can create custom groups with updates viewable only to family, coworkers, or relevant friends. “Recommended Buzz,” is a smart tool that magically sorts your friends updates by relevance.  The mobile version of Buzz even allows you to post your location based on GPS. Read More »

From our 2009 best-of the IPG Lab blog series:

Social media has infiltrated the hemispheres of today’s society by embedding itself into the framework of business interactions, personal relationships, mobile distractions, television and other elements that shape our culture. While some situations and technologies adapt quickly to the transparency and hyper-connectedness of social media, other avenues take time to get used to the idea. One such avenue is books.

The publishing industry in general is threatened by the disruptive advancements that social media generates because it changes the structure of writing from a speech to a discussion. But, this doesn’t have to be a negative attribute – this could be what actually saves the publishing industry from a meager future on the new media sidelines. Read more.

From our 2009 best-of the IPG Lab blog series:

Recently, I began to notice that Facebook’s friend suggestions were increasingly accurate, and increasingly far-fetched.

At first, it seemed innocent enough. My husband’s aunt appeared on my “Suggestions/Add as a Friend” sidebar. While I like Patty and was happy to friend her, I thought it was strange given 1) I’ve never uploaded my email list to Facebook, or given it permission to do so, 2) I’m not connected to any of my husband’s family or friends on any social network, and my husband has refused to join any social network except for one, and there he uses a fake identity and is not connected to anyone remotely connected to his aunt 3) My privacy settings are tight and in theory, I can’t be found if you’re not my friend.

At first I thought, well, we do share the same last name, so I figured perhaps Facebook was suggesting her for that reason. Over the next few days though, I began to mull this logic. Facebook had never suggested a friend based on last name before, and how would Facebook know which person with that last name to suggest? And what about people with the last name “Smith” – that wouldn’t be very effective.

Then, it happened again. This time, Facebook suggested my mother’s former boss. Read more. 

Retailers and sellers looking for innovative ways to reach their customers this holiday season are looking towards social media as an emerging marketing and business tool.  According to a study by Shop.org, almost half of retailers surveyed said they would increase their use of social media this holiday season. So it’s no surprise that to kick off the season, retailers from Best Buy to Barney’s used social networking sites on Black Friday to tell eager shoppers about bargains, discuss purchases, and help solve customer service issues.

Retailers continue to use contests and sweepstakes to help drum up holiday shopping excitement. Sears held a Facebook sweepstakes for lucky customers to win gift cards and buy items at Black Friday prices early. Read More »