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Facebook Partners With Eventbrite Rather Than Competing

-Guest List Icon-Last July we began wondering if Facebook would start competing with Eventbrite with the integration of Credits and the company’s Events product. Today it appears that the company has decided to partner with Eventbrite. Given that Facebook is “larger than Evite”, this partnership could prove to be extremely lucrative.

While Facebook decided to use Eventbrite to sell tickets to their upcoming f8 conference, a screenshot of the event registration page, which was accidentally published early, showed a new integration which required attendees to use Facebook Connect in order to purchase a ticket. This integration could be part of a broader integration in which Eventbrite uses Facebook as the sole identity provider for all attendees.

While Eventbrite previously implemented Facebook Connect in order to let attendees publish events they have RSVPed to on the site, this is a much more significant integration. The details of the new integration have not been published, but the screenshot below, initially published on Techcrunch, makes the partnership pretty obvious.

My guess is that the partnership announcement will coincide with the launch of f8 ticket sales. Regardless of what the two companies announce, it’s clear that this will be a big announcement given the size of Facebook Events.

Facebook Eventbrite Screenshot


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    • Facebook Ads: “Keywords” Will Change to “Likes and Interests” This Week

    Facebook-Ads-IconFacebook is making a small but profound change to Facebook Ads: “Keywords” will now be known as “Likes and Interests.” The change will be visible in the Facebook Ads interface starting the week of March 8th.  While the change is purely semantic, it gives us a key insight into how Facebook plans to revolutionize online advertising.

    Facebook Ads announced the change at SMX West, a leading search engine marketing conference. Brian Boland, Facebook’s Manager of Direct Response Solutions, told AllFacebook that he announced the change early at SMX because of the importance of the paid search community to Facebook. Invented in 2003, paid search is now a 10.7 billion dollar market in the US – representing about half the US online advertising industry (note: “Paid Search” is also known as “PPC” and “CPC” advertising). Search Marketing Expo Logo - SMX West

    Brian’s goal is to differentiate Facebook’s value proposition from paid search advertising on Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Brian says Facebook is encountering “confusion in the market” from advertisers new to Facebook who hear about “keywords” and “CPC pricing”, and assume that advertising on Facebook is just like advertising on Google.

    Comparing Facebook and Google Advertising

    (As you read this, remember that Google made 35 times as much revenue as Facebook in 2009)

    Facebook is changing “Keywords” to “Likes and Interests” to show the fundamental difference between Facebook Ads and Google PPC.

    Facebook Ads’ Value

    Facebook provides new ways for marketers to target real people in the context of their social graph and social activities.

    Google PPC’s Value

    Google enables marketers reach people exhibiting specific searching behavior at the exact point in time they voice their “intent” through search terms and query strings.

    How Is Facebook Ads Different from Google?

    Facebook believes that the Facebook Ads platform enables a more holistic approach to understanding an advertiser’s audience than paid search advertising.

    All Facebook users are registered users who provide relatively truthful information about themselves in order to enhance their Facebook experience. Facebook uses this profile data to help marketers “hypertarget” very specific audiences.

    With Google, only a small percentage of people who click on PPC ads are registered with the search engine. As a result, Google and its advertisers must rely on observable behavior, in the form of keywords, in order to target users.

    Keywords, so central to Google’s business, are just one facet of the targeting abilities of Facebook Ads interface:

    Facebook Ads Manager Interface - Keywords

    What Are Keywords on Facebook?

    Facebook Ads uses an algorithm to generate keywords that describe Facebook users and that can be used to group users into audience segments. Think of these keywords like a “tag cloud” of terms Facebook generates as a tool to help advertisers understand and reach Facebook users. This contrast with a “search query string” in Goolge PPC campaigns, words that you are hoping users will type into a search box.

    These two concepts are not mutually exclusive, as 1) Facebook allows you to use any keywords, not just the ones their platform generates for you and 2) Google allows you to do “broad matches”, where they serve ads on query strings that do not exactly match the terms you place bids on.

    To be clear, the “Keywords” described above will be known as “Likes and Interests” in the future.

    CPC Campaigns Are Performing on Facebook

    SEM pros are cleaning up on Facebook right now. SEM professionals are achieving significant results on the Facebook platform by applying the keyword bidding expertise they learned on Google, Bing and Yahoo!

    I heard stories about performance marketing campaigns that buy Facebook keywords at 1/3 the price paid for the same keywords on other search marketing platforms.

    Facebook Ads Case Study – Avenue100 CPC Campaign

    Addie Conner, VP of Advertising at Avenue100 Media Solutions, wowed the audience when she spoke on Brian’s panel at SMX.

    Addie ran Facebook Ads campaigns in January that served ads to 57,609,536 unique users an average of approx 56 times for a total impression volume of 3,223,537,980 impressions. For a specific product/ ad group within her campaign, Addie achieved up to120% difference in unique CTR , a 101% difference in conversion rate and a 456% difference in margin - compared to similar campaigns she runs with search engines.

    Addie believes that advertising on Facebook is fundamentally different from Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Addie said her success results from embracing the unique targeting capabilities of Facebook Ads, not from simply extending the paid search discipline onto theFacebook platform.

    Are Search Marketers Drinking the Facebook Kool-Aid?

    Most top search marketers I talked to rolled their eyes when I asked them about Facebook Ads changing “Keywords” to “Likes and Interests”. SEM pros are experts at achieving results at scale, profitably spending millions of dollars across millions of search term keywords every month. Its clear that the unique value proposition of Facebook is not yet causing a major rethink of methods in the the 20+ billion dollar search industry.

    Facebook Working with the Paid Search Industry

    Facebook’s speakers at SMX West, Brian Boland and Jon Fougner, were clear that Facebook is looking to search marketers for guidance on how to best develop the Facebook Ads platform.

    Brian is a new addition to the Facebook Ads team, and looks like a great choice to help sophisticated search marketers use Facebook Ads in tandem with Bing PPC to achieve results on Facebook.  Brian handles the Direct Response Channel for Facebook, and DR advertisers rely heavily on PPC campaigns to achieve their ROI goals.  Also, Brian’s last job was managing Microsoft’s SEM product, AdCenter.  Microsoft’s search platform, Bing, handles searches and PPC advertising within the “web results” returned for searches on Facebook.

    When we talked, Brian expressed a deep appreciation for the sophisticated analytics SEM professional use to hone campaign performance at scale. Brian said he is working closely with the paid search industry, and that the Facebook Ads product is evolving positively as a result.

    Will Facebook be the Next Google for the Ad Industry?

    Facebook hopes that a holistic approach to social graph targeting will redefine online advertising.

    Facebook and Google reinvented the businesses they dominate. It follows that Facebook should have a similar chance as Google did to revolutionize online advertising.

    Only time will tell if Facebook and social ads will have a comparable impact and revenue footprint to Google and paid search.

    In the meantime, we wish you success when running Keyword based – wait, I mean “Likes and Interests based” campaigns on Facebook!


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    • Facebook Neighbors Reunite Dog with Owner

    The following is part of our "Your Stories" series on different ways Facebook is used across the world. If you have a story you'd like to share with us, please submit it here.


    David Slade's fiancée Kelly was the first to find the lost little dog. Standing in the driveway on her way to shop for wedding dresses in January, Kelly was surprised when the disoriented animal cheerfully run up to her. Kelly brought the pup, which she nicknamed "Mouse", inside from the incoming rainstorm to play with their own dogs. She left David to begin searching for the owner of the lost pet alone.

    Neither Kelly nor David could have guessed that Facebook would play an integral role in the effort to reunite Mouse with his family.

    The dog was wearing a collar, but no tags, leaving David unsure where to begin his search for the owner. Initially, he pursued traditional methods by calling the neighborhood vet and the Humane Society, leaving a phone number and a description of Mouse in case anyone had called to inquire. Once the storm clouds parted, he even went door-to-door in the area surrounding his home, but was frustrated when he realized that many neighbors owned similar small white dogs and all of them seemed to be accounted for.

    The following day, David knew it was time to take a different approach. Fortunately, his neighborhood of Hillcrest, a small, older area within Little Rock, Ark., has an active Facebook Page with nearly 2,500 fans. David posted a photo of Mouse, along with the following short message to the Page's Wall.



    Amazingly, within only a few hours, a woman named Lin Chan commented: "That's our TYSON! Thank you!"

    Lin had been alerted to David's post by a phone call from a friend who had seen the post. "I quickly logged onto Facebook and was relieved and in disbelief when I saw Tyson's photo posted by David," Chan said. "My son, who is 4, actually cried when he saw the photo because he 'wanted Tyson home now'."

    David and Kelly quickly contacted Lin after they saw her comment, and their Mouse, who was actually Tyson, was returned to the arms of Lin and her two sons in no time. During the search, David remembered a cell phone commercial he'd seen, where a picture of a lost dog is sent around town by text message and lead to his owner.

    "I remember thinking 'if only it were that easy,'" David said. "Turns out it is."


    Sara, an intern on Facebook's communications team, wishes she and her roommate could adopt a lost puppy.
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    • Connecting with… Jonah Seiger: Online Politico

    At Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people — from experts and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook blog in our "Connecting with..." series. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jonah Seiger, a pioneering Internet campaign strategist and the founder of Connections Media, where he develops online campaigns for U.S. issue groups, political candidates and companies. Most recently, he worked on the 2009 reelection campaign for New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg.


    Given that you have been working in Internet policy and online advocacy since 1993, what do you think, looking back, has been the biggest change that the Internet has brought to politics?


    Transparency, and I think we still have a long way to go. But the ability of citizens, voters, to have access to source information, to engage with each other outside of the filter of the media, establishment and traditional media, has changed the whole dialog, and I think brought mostly good things to the politics of America.


    Can you think a seminal moment where this was made clear to you?


    The Starr Report (in 1998). I think it was like within the first 24 hours, it was downloaded 25 million times...People now have access directly to the same information that the reporter gets, and they can parse it themselves...

    There were things that followed very quickly after that. John McCain's victory in the New Hampshire primary in 2000. I guess you would have to rewind and say Jesse Ventura's election as governor of Minnesota (in 1998). John McCain's fund raising success in the aftermath of his victory in the New Hampshire primary. Howard Dean's success in 2004. And then it just kind of cascades. People give Obama credit for inventing all this, (but) it actually starts a lot earlier than that.

    The one change we have seen in recent years is the rise of various types of social media. How has that in your mind changed what the Internet can do in politics?


    It gives more power to the true grassroots. It makes it in many ways a lot easier to organize, but more challenging for the top-down type of organizing. And it changes the calculus of a campaign's communications operation, because it's much more difficult to have tight control over every aspect of the message. And the tighter the control attempts to be, the less successful you will be in social media. You have got to give people the ability to add their own flavor and their own voice to your message, and that could be really scary.

    The Internet is all about decentralization; it always has been. Social media extends that to another level. The ease of sharing (which) Facebook and Twitter and other platforms provide accelerates that. And I think it's great for politics, but it also makes it challenging for people who practice (politics), especially people who come from a more traditional approach to political communications.


    Who do you think is further ahead: The everyday voter who is using social media or the campaigns themselves? Where is the balance right now?


    What we continue to see—and this is not a hard-and-fast rule—is the challenger has an advantage because they have more degrees of freedom. The incumbent has more to protect, and so it's a little bit more difficult to embrace fully the openness and decentralization that the Internet and social media, in particular, provides.

    So those opportunities are more available to the insurgent challenger candidate, that Jesse Ventura example, the John McCain in 2000 example, Obama.

    It's why the success of Mayor Bloomberg in New York City is an interesting example, because he was the incumbent. He was one of the only incumbents to win since the 2008 cycle. (Gov.) Corzine had lost in New Jersey (and) the party in power lost in Virginia in that same election. So there are examples to the contrary, but I think it gives, generally speaking, more opportunity to the challenger...


    Looking more recently, like in the past year, has there been any specific examples of either where social media played a really big role in the election or in the public discourse about an issue that surprised you in some way?


    I don't know about surprised me, but I think the example that's most salient right now is the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts (as a Republican U.S. senator). There was a combination of Martha Coakley's campaign running a very traditional establishment (approach) against a very energetic challenger, who successfully nationalized the race using social media. And that (nationalization) channeled money, it channeled support, people talking about the campaign, generated press coverage, and just helped to propel them forward.

    Now at the end of day, the election happened in Massachusetts, people voted only in Massachusetts. So nationalizing a race only gives you so much, but I think that story is an important example of some of what's happening with politics and social media.


    What if you are not a Barack Obama or you are not a Mayor Bloomberg or you are not looking to even nationalize a campaign, but you are a local candidate or you are a political advocacy group. Are there certain things you can learn from what some of these big campaigns have done?


    I think what social media provides is a new way of doing old things. Organizing has always been about talking to as many people as you can, to find those people who support you and get them engaged. Social media is one more avenue for that. It provides new ways of quantifying the return on every dollar or hour or new person that you are going after.

    So I think that the same old tried-and-true tactics of organizing still absolutely apply, but the platforms that social media provide give you more efficiency, more reach, and may create opportunities for news coverage and an interest in your campaign that otherwise wouldn't be available.


    So you have seen all these changes in the last decade-and-a-half of Internet advocacy, what do you think is the biggest change to come that we are yet to see?


    I hate that question, because...technology alone is not the story. Technology enables things, but successful campaigns are about connecting with people, and persuading (people) that you have the better solution to a problem that's commonly understood... What I have seen is that the Internet has enabled more people to participate than might otherwise have. (It) provides a way of channeling latent public interest and attention in ways that can be measured and directed, and no matter what the next technology is that will still happen.

    I do worry (that) as much as social media is powering greater participation in politics, it also has the effect of fragmenting and distilling (issues) to a slogan, almost. And I think it is becoming more difficult for us to have national conversations about complicated issues... I see it in the discussions about climate change, for example, and healthcare reform and creating jobs in this economy. We have lots of new opportunities to kind of shout at each other, and it's a little harder to build consensus around complicated matters...

    Four years ago we were talking about podcasts. I don't know, is anybody still doing them? Blogs have found their natural place in the panoply of media. They are definitely having a major impact in challenging the establishment of media, but they have their role and we understand it now. Social media will settle into its own place.

    So what's the next platform? Somewhere in (Silicon) Valley here someone is figuring that out. I don't know the technology, but the communications dimension, I think, is going to continue to be driven by people sharing information, and that's very cool and very positive.


    Matt, a manager on Facebook's communications team, is connecting with his local candidates for San Francisco supervisor.
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    • Facebook Developers See Dramatic Drop In Traffic Following Removal Of Notifications

    Notifications Greater Than CountersJust over 24 hours after Facebook turned off application notifications, developers are reporting a dramatic decrease in traffic. Speaking to a number of developers, we’ve heard traffic has decreased in the range of 10 to 50 percent, depending on the application, most hovering between an 18 to 27 percent decrease. While our poll sample was small, Facebook developers are now entering the “post-notifications era”. So what does this mean?

    There are a number of theories about why Facebook would kill off notifications but ultimately there were two primary routes for Facebook to take:

    • Facebook fights spam - One option for Facebook to take was to increase spam filters which block out aggressive notifications. The benefit here is that the platform remains more open, however it requires Facebook investing resources in an area that doesn’t directly drive revenue to the company.
    • Facebook makes things more controlled - The alternative is for Facebook to reduce viral channels slightly, in exchange for a better user experience. This will reduce traffic to “junk apps” and reduce total page views on the platform in the short-term, but it will enable Facebook to have greater control over distribution channels. It will also lead to more revenue through two channels: credits and ads.

    Facebook’s Revenue Channels Drive Changes

    Given that Facebook’s largest chunk of revenue comes from performance advertising, this is clearly going to be a major focus for Facebook. With an estimated $350 million in revenue last year from performance advertising, Facebook is heavily focused on this space. However, virtual goods are also an area which Facebook is hoping to experience a large amount of growth.

    While it’s not known whether or not Facebook will force developers to use their Credits platform, there’s a very good chance Facebook will become the primary payment provider of all virtual goods on their site. This means Credits could very well become a business worth over $300 million a year if the platform is expected to generate over $1 billion in revenue each year.

    These two revenue channels will become increasingly integrated into the overall Facebook experience moving forward, and that means any platform changes will most likely take into consideration ads and credit performance.

    Facebook Is Now Pay To Play

    While virality is possible within applications, it is no longer a given. There are two parties now who are “paying to play”: developers, who will now purchase more ads to drive traffic to their applications, and users, who will increasingly pay for virtual goods in games. While it appears that application requests and other channels still drive traffic, developers have become one of the largest buyers of Facebook ads.

    Whether intended or not, this has pulled Facebook closer to many of the game developers and it has also given Facebook much greater control over platform developers.

    The Life Of A Developer

    Unfortunately as platforms of the past, the Facebook platform is not completely open. As Mitch Kapor, the developer behind the original Lotus notes, told a group of Facebook developers back in October of 2007 “innovations in the application space tend to migrate into the core platform”. In other words, developers serve as the R&D for Facebook.

    In contrast to platforms of the past which often started from a more closed position and eventually opened, Facebook has moved in the opposite direction: slowly limiting the viral channels to developers and increasing their control over each channel. For the developers, these changes create ongoing tension with the platform providers (in this case: Facebook).

    As I wrote in the “Social Web Economy: Developers“, platforms are the primary source of tension for all developers.

    While developers have tension resulting from numerous sources (bugs in their applications, tight deadlines, etc), in the social web economy, the primary source of developer tension is the platforms. When a platform decides to revamp their entire system, or make sudden changes resulting from user feedback or malevolent actions by another developer, the rest of developers are impacted. On the Facebook platform the result was developers waking up at 3 am to fix their no longer functioning applications. Occasionally teams of developers worked around the clock in response to complaints from Facebook about terms of service violations.

    Clearly Facebook needs to generate a relatively healthy environment for developers. Otherwise, developers will run off to other platforms, such as the Apple iPhone. As such, Facebook has launched a roadmap, a migration tool, and other features to increase transparency. That transparency continued as Facebook has made the shift away from notifications. Unfortunately for Facebook, despite transparency, there will continue to be some resentment from developers who prefer a completely open platform.

    Where Is The Middle Ground?

    Ultimately, one could hold the view that Facebook is an “evil participant” in the ecosystem, only looking to make more money as they move toward an IPO. By killing off notifications, Facebook forces developers to spend more money on ads and increasingly takes a cut of app developer revenue with Facebook Credits.

    At the other end, Facebook is simply making adjustments that improve the overall user experience, making the ecosystem a more valuable environment overall. The company is improving the system and figuring out the most effective balance which takes into consideration the needs of platform developers as well as the company’s business objectives.

    My guess is that Facebook is balancing the needs of both parties but ultimately they will always have the ability to make adjustments that benefit themselves more than the developers. That’s just what developers have to deal with. There is rarely an instance in which the owners of a platform will but the developers’ objectives ahead of their own business objectives.

    The only case in which the developers get to make the final decision is open platforms like Linux, where developers can contribute to improving the overall platform. The business model for the licensed platform providers in such an ecosystem is a service-based one and Facebook has made it pretty clear that they don’t want to get into the services business.

    For now, developers will have to deal with the short-term implications of the removal of notifications and figure out ways to regain traction, as they always do. The entire time it’s important for developers operating on the Facebook Platform realize: this is Facebook’s world. If you don’t want to put up with the challenges of the platform, you can just set up your application off the site.

    Oh, and when you build that “off-platform” application, don’t forget to use Facebook Connect: it will increase your application’s engagement!


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