U.S. Social Media Ad Revenues To Double By 2016

BIA/Kelsey, a leading media analysis and consultancy firm, forecasts that social media advertising revenue in the U.S. will grow from $4.6 billion to $9.2 billion in the next four years – that equates to a compound annual growth rate of 19.2%.

“The continued development of native ads, such as Facebook’s Sponsored Stories and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, and the acceleration of mobile monetization will be the primary drivers of social advertising growth through 2016”, said Jed Williams of BIA/Kelsey, adding that 2012 was the year of social advertising’s “coming of age”.

According to Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, ‘native advertising’ is “a form of media that’s built into the actual visual design and where the ads are part of the content.” The revenue from ‘native advertising’ is predicted to grow from $1.5 billion to $3.9 billion by 2016.

There will also be an increase in the revenue from other forms of social media advertising: the revenue from social display advertising, such as the banners on YouTube, will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 15.2% from $3 billion to $5.4 billion.

Mobile advertising is expected to increase 300% over the next four years, from $500 million to 1.5 billion. Jed Williams admits that they are “clearly placing a bet that mobile ads will perform. Obviously, mobile ad economies are not very good, but as demand goes up, hopefully the prices will go up.”

Are you surprised by BIA/Kelsey’s findings?

Twitter’s New API Rules Kill Windows 8 App

What happens when third-party Twitter developers hit the API limit for user tokens? The results aren’t pretty.

When Twitter announced its big API changes back in August, one of the most controversial changes was the decision to cap applications that “replicate the core Twitter experience” to 100,000 user tokens (Twitter accounts that can access the app).

Twitter clients that had built up large user bases before the API changes went into effect — such as Twitterrific and Osfoora — were allowed to double in size before Twitter said it would pull the plug.
The same cannot be said for Twitter clients that saw sizable audiences after the new rules were implemented. Enter Tweetro, a Twitter client for Windows 8 that wanted to offer users the best Twitter experience that follows along with the Windows 8 design guidelines.


Tweetro was a free app and quickly became one of the most popular downloads in the Windows Store. Until Twitter brings its official Windows 8 app to the market, Tweetro was one of the best alternatives for Windows 8 users looking for their Twitter fix.

Unfortunately for Tweetro, the app was a victim of its own popularity — skyrocketing past 100,000 user tokens in the days after Windows 8′s release. At a certain point, Twitter pulled the plug on offering access to the app and users were unable to login via OAuth.

As a result, Lazyworm Applications was forced to pull Tweetro from the Windows Store because the company was unable to service its users. Developers were holding onto hope that they would be able to work something out with Twitter and applied for a token exemption.
Today, Tweetro heard back from Twitter. The news isn’t good. As Windows Observer reports, Twitter’s not budging. Tweetro will not get an increase in user tokens.
The statement Twitter sent to Lazyworm Applications said in part:

“Unfortunately, It does not appear that your service addresses an area that our current or future products do not already serve. As such, it does not qualify for an exemption.”

In other words, because Twitter has a Windows 8 client in the works, it doesn’t see the need to allow a third party to continue to use its API.
As a result, Lazyworm says its going to do what Tapbots has done with Tweetbot for Mac — charge for the app in an effort to reduce the number of user tokens. In Tapbots’s case, the company is charging $20 for Tweetbot for Mac in order to sustain the cost of development (and likely depress what would otherwise surely be sales that would quickly exceed the company’s token limits).

We’re Just Getting Started

The situation that Tweetro faces is particularly disconcerting because Twitter doesn’t have an official client on the market at this time. The alternative is for users to use less popular apps or the Twitter website. The Twitter website, as it exists today, doesn’t work particularly well with Windows 8 or Windows RT on a touch screen, making a good client app more necessary.

While Tweetro is the first app to hit Twitter’s token limits, it won’t be the last. If Twitter continues to stick to its guns on this issue (and we think the company will), it’s only a matter of time before apps that have built up audiences and users over longer periods of time hit the limit too.
To be fair, Twitter stopped encouraging developers to build Twitter clients back in March 2011, so they can’t pretend to be totally caught off guard.

Still, the move to limiting API tokens is a big shift for a company that owes much of its early success to third-party developers (and Twitter client developers at that).
Twitter’s position is that it needs to control the way tweets are displayed — as well as how promoted tweets, promoted trends and other sponsored tweets are integrated across platforms. It’s difficult to do this with third-party apps.

For now, its a nascent set of users and developers that feel the rub. It will be more telling to see what the Twitter community does when — not if — a larger third-party client succumbs to the new API rules.

Science Inc. Launch Analytics Tool to Measure Marketing Success on Pinterest

Tech incubator, Science Inc. have funded a start-up service which can be used to measure the success of marketing campaigns on Pinterest.
‘HelloInsights’ is an analytics platform which will target the brands who wish to run a marketing campaign on the social media site as well as maintaining the core essence of Pinterest.
The analytics tool was originally started as a means to interpret their own portfolio, but eventually expanded, providing the service to other companies.


HelloInsights allows users to review their overall influence managing campaigns on Pinterest with the use of their measurement and monitoring tools.
A streamlined and lightweight version has been released out to companies at no cost to assist them in thinking more strategically when it comes to their marketing methods on Pinterest.
As there is currently no obvious way to measure any data on the social network site, the analytics tool is being targeted by retailers and other businesses as a way to optimize and measure their campaign’s success.



HelloInsights shows its users comparison charts, Twitter streams, information of the biggest pinner, a seamless integration with Google Analytics as well as other data.
Up till now, only a few companies have taken advantage of the analytics and since February the company has tracked over 1 million user acquisitions, 8 million page views, and tons of revenue for companies.
Although there are plans to charge for the service soon through deeper campaign integration consulting, it is currently free for everyone to use and gives users the chance to schedule pins to their account whilst also reviewing customised charts. These can then be compared to competitors by combining the analytics.
250 companies are currently using the service ranging from small, individually-owned companies up to Fortune 500 organisations.

HelloInsights say that they are opening up their service to start getting people involved, little bits at a time.

What do you make of this new analytic tool? Will you be taking advantage of it?

TweetDeck Update Adds Keyboard Shortcuts and More

TweetDeck for web, Chrome and PC was updated Wednesday to version 2.1, bringing with it a number of new features.

Feature additions in the updated TweetDeck include support for expanded tweets, the introduction of keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to edit your search columns.
Lists can now be quickly opened by typing the name of the list into the search box. If you want to check out a list you’re not subscribed to that belongs to another user, you can do that by typing in @username/listname into the search box. Both actions will bring the list you’re looking for into the list window, allowing you to view recent tweets as well as add a new column.

Search columns can now be edited as you add new columns, eliminating the need to continue to add new search columns as you refine your search. A single search column can be edited as much as you’d like and your changes are instantly reflected in the results.

TweetDeck also now offers full support for expanded tweets, allowing you to view photo and player cards in the tweet details view for more than 2,000 websites.

Keyboard shortcuts are also introduced in the release. Now you can press “n” to open a window to compose a tweet, “Ctrl+Enter” to send the tweet, and “Esc” to close the compose window as well as any other pop-up windows. More keyboard shortcuts are reportedly on the way.

Will the changes be useful to you? Let us know what you think about the updated TweetDeck in the comments.

Instagram Introduces New Web Profile

Instagram is to launch a web profile to co-exist with its iPhone app, two years after its original launch.
The photo sharing program are launching their web profiles as a simple way to share your photos with more people and to make finding new followers easier.

The website is gradually being made accessible to users with a notably striking resemblance to the Facebook Timeline. Where a cover photo would be on your Facebook Profile, this space is covered with a mosaic of constantly rotating photos. A small profile photo, bio and follower stats are situated just beneath.



Your photos will appear in thumbnails further down the page in reverse chronological order. Once clicked on, they will become full sized alongside their likes and comments.
The obvious resemblance to Facebook doesn’t come as such a surprise however as Instagram was acquired by Facebook in September for a mere $715 million.

Facebook insist that Instagram will keep running as a separate service however with the pages not linking to Facebook and users not being asked to log in via their Facebook account. The likeness however does suggest a more meaningful link in the future between the two social media platforms.
Users will not be able to upload photos from the web at the current time, possibly due to a similarity to Pinterest, but the inevitable step into having a presence on the web seems the best form of expansion for the program.

The new profiles will become available to all users in the next week or so with most users being able to see theirs in the next few days.
To see if your profile is accessible yet, navigate to instagram.com/[username]. In order to find Nike’s profile, @nike, you would type in instagram.com/nike.

Do you think this is a smart move for Instagram?
What do you think of its likeness to Facebook?

Mobile Advertising Boosts Facebook’s Revenue

Facebook’s third-quarter earnings, which were released last Wednesday, show a marked increase in advertising revenue, especially on mobile devices.



Despite concerns over Facebook’s advertising model, their third-quarter earnings have increased 36% from last year to $1.08 billion, $139 million of which was raised by mobile advertising.
“Our opportunity on mobile is the most misunderstood aspect of Facebook today,” creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “most people underestimate how fundamentally good the trend toward mobile can be for Facebook.”
The first mobile Facebook adverts were made available six months ago, and in June advertisers on Facebook were able to buy specific adverts.
There are currently four variants of advertising on Facebook mobile:

• Sponsored Stories, which recommend brand pages based on a friend’s activity
• Promoted Posts, which highlight pages that friends have liked in the News Feed
• Mobile Ads For Apps, which promote applications
• Offers, which display promotions in the News Feed.

Companies can also decide where their adverts are displayed on Facebook: over all of Facebook, just in the News Feeds on desktop devices, just on desktop devices, on both mobile and desktop News Feeds or just in the News Feeds on mobile devices.


In a recent study, Nanigans, a company which buys advertising space on Facebook, worked out that Sponsored Stories on mobile are 45% cheaper than on desktop. Lower prices means a higher ROI, which is somewhat thanks to the novelty of mobile advertising.
Other studies have already shown that mobile advertising is the most efficient variant of social media marketing, with Facebook mobile adverts displaying the highest CTR of 1.037%, and the second highest CVR of 65.76%.

With 604 million of the billion or so Facebook users already mobile, Facebook, and other internet giants such as Google, are looking to take advantage of a lucrative and growing market. Many believe that Google will soon be making $8 billion per year in mobile revenue.



So why is mobile advertising so effective? Mobile advertising has quickly improved so that now there is little difference in quality between a mobile advert and a desktop advert.
A positive difference for advertisers is the amount of space mobile adverts take up on the smaller screens, making them more visible and increasing the CTR.

Currently, mobile Facebook users have a limited exposure to adverts, whereas on desktop the amount of advertising is steadily increasing. However, advertisers are expected to spend $6.4 billion on mobile advertising this year, an increase of 62%.

As well as an increase in advertising, an expected increase in the number of mobile devices capable of accessing Facebook ensures mobile advertising will be a success.

What do you think of mobile advertising?