“We’re focused on improving marketers’ ability to measure how well their ads perform and believe this acquisition will allow marketers greater ability to measure the ROI of their ads for all their digital media spend,” a spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Ultimately, Atlas’s powerful platform, combined with Facebook partners Nielsen and Datalogix, will help advertisers compare their Facebook campaigns to the rest of their ad spend across the web on desktop and mobile.”

“Today’s marketing environment is much more complex than it was just a few short years ago,” says Brian Boland, Facebook’s Director of Product Marketing. “Marketers and agencies struggle to understand how their efforts across different channels complement and strengthen each other. Consequently, they are forced to adopt siloed marketing strategies for each channel, leading to poor and inconsistent end-user experiences.”

“This challenge also provides an opportunity,” he adds. “If marketers and agencies can get a holistic view of campaign performance, they will be able to do a much better job of making sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time. Atlas has built capabilities that allow for this kind of measurement, and enhancing these systems will give marketers a deeper understanding of effectiveness and lead to better digital advertising experiences for consumers.”

As Boland points out, a lot of marketers that advertise on Facebook are already using Atlas, so it’s familiar territory. It’s been an approved partner for measurement since June.

Atlas clients won’t see any change in service, according to Facebook, who say it will continue to invest in the platform. The company says it does intend to scale its back-end measurement systems and enhance its current suite of tools on desktop and mobile, and plans to make improvements to the user interface and functionality.

Microsoft senior director of communications, Microsoft Advertising, Tom Phillips, says, “Our reasons for wanting to sell Atlas are really pretty simple: the time was right; the agreement allows us to focus more aggressively on the evolving vision we have our digital advertising business; it was mutually beneficial to both parties; and we feel that Facebook will afford the Atlas business and employees the greatest opportunity for continued growth. Moreover, in no way does this announcement change or diminish our commitment to online advertising, in either display or search.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Reporter Jason Del Rey cites multiple people familiar with the matter, and says the price is unknown, but expected to be under $100 million.

“Facebook is methodically laying the groundwork for an off-Facebook ad network powered by social data, but that’s not the only reason it wants Atlas,” Del Rey writes. “Facebook is very focused on proving the worth of the data it sits on as well as the effectiveness of its ads. Owning an ad server would allow big advertisers and agencies to connect directly to Facebook to better measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Now, most advertisers use one of the many Facebook ads API partners, third parties that connect to Facebook’s display tools and exchange.”

If this deal goes through, it would be just the latest in a string of major announcements in the online advertising industry. Google announced a major upgrade (though not everyone sees it as such) to AdWords, and Yahoo announced a new deal with Google on contextual ads.

Facebook itself also just launched the Lookalike Audiences targeting feature for advertisers.

Sources of these stories appear to all be from outside of either company.

Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider reports:

Microsoft has been trying to sell Atlas for years, and one of our sources is close to a company that was interested in buying it. In recent days, Microsoft ended negotiations with this company, and said it was moving forward on a deal with Facebook.

Since then, Facebook and Microsoft employees have reached out to other ad tech companies to do research for the deal. A source at one of these companies briefed us on the details of those conversations.

Kara Swisher at All Things D is hearing a similar story, reporting:

Sources said the social networking giant has been conducting due diligence on the media measurement platform, part of its efforts to create its own advertising network to compete with Google’s DoubleClick offering

Facebook recently announced proposed changes to its Data Use Policy, which made it more clear that Facebook can easily take advantage of user data to serve ads outside of Facebook.

As Carlson notes, Facebook’ s partnership with Datalogix, which has seen Facebook measuring the effectiveness of ad campaigns, would also fit nicely into the puzzle.

“You can traffic up to 1mm keywords within 24 hours by simply exporting your keywords from the search engines, and then dragging and dropping the file into the tool,” says Microsoft’s Lori Goode. “Click redirects are created at the click of a button and ready to upload back into the search engine. No really, it’s that simple!”

“OK, so the ASDT will keep traffic time to the barest minimum,” she continues. “But when you’re using the ASDT, you also benefit from deeper connections between search engine data and Atlas data. You’ll be able to pull search engine dimensional and fact data side-by-side with Atlas data in MyReports, giving you the ability to assess campaign, ad group, ad, keyword, and landing page performance.”

Reports, including Keyword Path Analysis and Search And Display Synergy have been updated to be compatible with new, simplified click redirects.

Microsoft also released a new API that will support the launch of a new Search Engine Management channel in the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance.

The online database will allows users to access information on 22,000 works of art from the Louvre, and provide high-resolution images along with their locations in the museum.

Before today, the Atlas database was only available in French and could be accessed via the Louvre’s website, which receives more than 10 million visits a year.

The launch of the English version of Atlas was started by and funded with a $380,000 grant from the American Friends of the Louvre, a group that was founded in 2002 to strengthen ties between the museum and the American public.  The new version of the database will offer English-speaking visitors in depth information on the Louvre’s large collection.

Atlas was launched in 2003 and offer access to a database of 26,000 of the 35,0000 works on permanent display at the Louvre. Currently 5,500 artists in a variety of media are on the site. Atlas also offers online visitors a virtual album, which allows them to customize their own personal tour of the Louvre.
 

Moderator:

• Joe Laratro

Speakers:

• Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz.
• Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services, Inc.
• Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service.
• Cameron Olthius, CEO, Factive Media.

With social media, booming at a staggering rate, everyone wants a piece of the pie. Knowing this, the experts came to give us their two-bits on how to further businesses. First to speak was Rand Fishkin, who kicks off the second day by showing two presentations.

• Social Media 101
• 60 websites worth watching (more advanced)

Social Media 101. Listed below are websites in a random order:

• 23hq.com
• adultswim.com – message board
• babblz.com
• ballhype.com – Digg-based sports portal
• bloggoggle
• blogs4god.com – Religious portal
• buzzflash.net
• care2.com
• chipin.com
• comagz.com
• couchsurfing – Leave your links there
• deviantart.com – Drop your opinion, has live links
• dfinitive.com – social bookmarking site
• dnhour.com – add a link to your profile
• fanpop.com – profiles come with links
• flickr.com
• hugg.com – eco-friendly community
• memeorlame.com
• mixx.com
• photographyvoter.com – as the name goes
• pixelgroovy.com
• plugim.com
• qoolsqool
• scoreguru.com
• showhype.com
• sk-rt.com – profile’s come with links
• smallbusinessbrief.com
• sphinn – live links
• tweako – social bookmarking site
• videosift.com

Some of Sites

1. adobe showcase
2. askmen.com
3. digg.com
4. picks.yahoo.com

 

Next is Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service who says that two important things to remember before starting on these are sites are:

You have to think long-term, so act and perform accordingly.

The story you publish should be about how relevant it is to the site. Examples are:

1. digg.com: How to paint the social bookmarking site’s logo on your wall
2. hugg: how to pick an eco-friendly paint
3. lifehacker: This is where you learn how to paint your living room in a weekend
4. propeller.com: Find out what the color you use reflects about your personality

Important Pointers:

• Back to school
• Spring time
• Tax time
• Use calendar and current events
• Fall: save money on heating bill
• Winter: last minute tax saving

Rands puts up a presentation about a new website which received over 120,000 visits within a span of two months. Next, he shows a graph about blog subscribers, which shows an upward movement. Apparently, social media is about owning a crowd/audience that isn’t search engine-dependent. Also, your site must have regular link growth (refer to Google patent). The stories you have should be connected to other parts of the site. Create brand awareness, repetition is key here. So, it will take about 7-8 times before your audience remembers it. The audience you create should know how to use social media as if they like your stuff they will finally do the work for you. Join a community and be part of it regularly, don’t do a half-hearted job. Don’t be shy about linking to other blogs.

Rand’s 10 Tips for Social Media-

Titles must be eye-catching

Site should be and have images

Content should be short, simple, witty, easy to scan content

Don’t make the page deadends

Share links

Stay topical and keep an eye on trends

Find a solution to someone’s problems

Incorporate buttons and widgets to encourage voting

Use less ads and target links

Everyone loves top 10 lists – break some rules and make yours go to 11

Next up is Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services, Inc, who discusses the ‘Dark side of social Media.’

1. Pay for votes – Apparently, it has worked for Neil, whenever he used pay sites
2. Social media rings -

   Have a long e-mail list and make your friends vote.

   The bigger the ring, the better

   Be a part of multiple rings

   Don’t vote right away

   Don’t vote on just about everything

   Never abuse the ring

   Use hxxp instead of http – helps block the referral

3. Social media apps.

   Add friends

   Vote on stories you like

   Ask a developer to build you an app

4. Forced Actions-

   Use iframes to vote/add a friend/subscribe to something

5. The dark side. Think of the best stuff. Don’t think it loud. Think dark and shady and it will come out sooner or later. (Audience loves it)
6. Light reading. 10e20.com Brentcsutoras.com Seomoz.org/blog

Next up is Cameron Olthuis, CEO, Factive Media, who talks about linkbait. Cameron suggests using ‘remakeable content,’ that will compel people to link to you from their site.

Methods:

Be informational

Be controversial: Jason Calicanis

Add humor

News: Try to be the first one to break a story

Tools: Include tools like widgets, calculators etc.

Benefits of Linkbait:

Links

Link profile

Traffic

Branding

Bookmarks

Media publicity

Cameron next brings out a Case Study: Sobercircle.com

1. Research. Go though social media sites and find out what people like. Use Digg and Del.icio.us to know what different audiences like. With Del.icio.us, you get associated tags that is beneficial in giving you more ideas. Also, you learn what is popular.
2. Brainstorm. Try to find as many ideas and suggestions as you can. The more the merrier, in a while you can lessen it down after a while.
3. Create the content. SImplicity is key. Moreover, most of the readers are channel surfing.

   Format lists. Easy to scan, add images and videos.

   *Cameron shows the audience an example*. The site is about a drug. His slide shows 1001 Diggs, page has a video, image, and a good amount of content.

4. After content, comes seed.

   - Submit the site and select the topics and tags.

   - Use a Power Account

   - Use Witty titles & descriptions – Titles can make or break you

   - Categorise and tag properly. Don’t go with what is popluar, go with where it belongs

   - Target sites
   
   

   

   Results:

1000 diggs

150 comments

800 links

Wikipedia link

read/write web found the page and gave it more exposure

Takeaways

Research your target audience

Content should have appeal

Must have aPower account

Test test test

Use good titles and descriptions

Keep your server up!!!!!

After this came a Q & A round, where some of the best questions were:

How much traffic can you expect? What type of servers?

Cameron: 5-25k vistors from reddit. Digg can do 100k+.

Graywolf: Call your hosting provider before hand

Rand Fishkin: for images use flickr and other sources. If your page uses a DB, make the page static and it will help you. The Database could really hurt you so just make it static.

Neil Patel: CPU somewhat matters, its the memory. Have 4GB of memory and use Memcache.

How do you get access to power users?

Rand Fishkin: the power users are for sale. Find the users and befriend them.

GrayWolf: Vote on their stories early so they see you. Really pay attention to stories they are interested in.

What are some other measures of success?

Rand Fishkin: Hard core tracking. Track your brand name in the results. Blog Search in Google reports accurate links, or use Yahoo Link. Watch your referring stats, where did it come from? watch your repeat visitors.

Neil Patel: Track your PR. Watch magazines, web sites, and other press contacts. Rand suggests using Google/Yahoo news to see how often your brand was mentioned.

How many man hours goes into an idea?

Neil: as little as possible (gets laughs) The hardest part is the idea

Rand: As little as a day, as long as 60 days (it took Jane 60 days to put together the Web 2.0 awards and get the votes)

GrayWolf: 2 Sides: Maintaining the Power Account and then creating the content/idea.

Cameron: No cookie cutter approach.

In the end, the best cam from Cameron Olthius who said, "No cookie cutter approach."

Comments

Tag:

Moderator:

• Rand Fishkin

Speakers:

Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land, Entrepreneur in Residence, Ignition Partners.

Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service.

Alexander Barbara, CEO, ReidBrown Enterprises, Inc.

Laura Fitton, Principal, Pistachio Consulting.

Rand who is moderating this time, says it is important to monetize our social media endeavours sometimes.

First up is Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land, Entrepreneur in Residence, Ignition Partners. Vanessa says page Views have no worth unless you maintain and operate a CPM ad model. Many a times, people focus so much on page views singularly that we lose sight of the other significant stuff. Vanessa pulls out the page views for her sites. Apparently on the 6th of September, her page views went over the room. This apparently was the day, the Vanessa Hudgens scandal broke out. Apparently viewers wanted to see nude images of Hudgens, not Fox. Heh heh.

Hook ‘em and keep ‘em, says Vanessa. She stresses on the significance of maintaining traffic by making viral material while also having other content to keep people interested. The content you have should be of prime interest to the people who visit your site. They should want to stay.

Vanessa on converting visitors into customers:

• Foremost, your viral marketing must be relevant for your site.
• Make it easy for your visitors to see what your site has on offer.
• Provide multiple links to other pages on your site.
• Think about your goals are and funnel your site’s users into a conversion path.

Lastly, Fox says that Search Traffic has more value in comparison to Social Media Traffic as Search Traffic is equivalent to determined views while Social Media traffic equals to web browsers who have no exclusive target interest.

Next up is Graywolf aka Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service. Michael opened by saying social media fshould be used for sales and conversions. This is an advanced tactic Apparently, sales should only be part of your vision and not the enitire project.

What types of products work?

• Products (physical and virtual). These fare better than services.
• Consumer goods. Almost always better than B2B)
• Impulse purchases
• Low or "door buster" prices. People are always sensitive to prices.
• Technology related items generally do better.

Examples:

• Thisnext.com: The site has products for which they have a specific gift guide.
• Techiediva.com: Shows what people purchase during holidays. For eg: They targeted Cybowe Monday.
• Style Dash.com: Shows how to dress like celebs for less. Also featured are pages of affiliated links.

Pitfalls:

• The offer you have must be clear, especially restrictions or quantities.
• Always anticipate demand and have the right amount of stock.
• The worst thing you could do is failure to deliver products.
• Monitor and keep a check on what people are saying about you. If needed, do some damgae control.
• Incorporate video and podcasts. Experiment but know the space you are getting into before you jump the gun.

Apparently, SMM is the most effective way to generate sales for products & gadgets, and not really for services. If used well, Digg can also bring in sales.

Manage expectations for long terms of success:

• Make up your mind on whether a hybrid or dedicated delivery channel is best. Finalise on what is right for your audience.
• Give people the option of receiving content which ever way they want: email, RSS, SMS, whatever.
• Use trends and current events in terms of offerings.

Alternative Content: Video

• Will it blend? iPhone
• eBook – some guy used a video of a sexy woman and sold many books
• Diet.com – When people see others lose weight, they’d be more compelled to buy.

Alternative content: podcasts

• Drop links in your podcasts.
• Ricky’s Picks (Disney podcast)

Alternative content: Twitter

• CarnivalCruise
• JetBlue
• SouthwestAir

Third speaker of the day is Alexander Barbara, CEO, ReidBrown Enterprises, Inc, with a case study.

Alexander put up a site on Digg about a health and wellness post which was aimed towards women. Alexander and the writer worked on list-type articles and gave their best. The article was submitted in Digg twice.

Wednesday afternoon (3PM): The post received 38 Diggs. Within 5 days, the post received over 28,000 visits.

Monday morning (11AM): The same post received 57 Diggs and reached the home page. Within 5 days, the post received over 19,000 visits.

Point being, whether your site can handle the incoming traffic or not. When you are on the Digg homepage, it is common to receive 60-100 hits per second. If yours is a shared host, webmasters will shut down your site thinking it’s an attack- DDOS attack. If you are uncertain on whether your server can handle the traffic, redirect it to some other sites. Use mod_rewrite or a temporary 302 redirect to a static page. Another option is Google cache or use the free Coral cache.

On the question of quality of traffic, Alexander pulls out a CTR of the number of ads. He recommends avoiding advertisements for the first two days or so and then put them back on the 3rd day. This shows a better conversion rate. Another common phenomenon that takes place is the increased number of RSS subscribers. Usually, the same people will unsubscribe some time later.

About monetizing traffic, there are two ways to do it.

Direct monetizing: CPM based model beats others like AdSense, targeted ads etc.

Indirect monetizing: This is a better way of receiving links, subscribers, links etc.

What we learned:

Know your audience. Understand both your site and Digg audience.

Choose your monetization approach well.

Be prepared for traffic.

Last speaker from the panel is Laura Fitton, Principal, Pistachio Consulting. Fitton will talk about how to create long-lasting values through social media. Apparently, Laura was a stay-at-home mom wth two kids who started blogging and connecting via social networks in March. Now, she consults people.

Apparently, ads are ailing. Many people make money through via helping others sell. However, there is more money to make in making others buy. Social media works because it helps you understand how you can help others buy stuff. Most important thing for people to do is listen. Markets are conversations. Conversations suck if you don’t listen. If yours is a big brand (she take s the example of Dell), people are talking about you. Set up Google alerts to keep track of what is being said about you and engage everyone.

Social media drives traffic. If you become part of a social network, you bring in people who are interested in buying. Laura personally uses Twitter for business (Fitton has 800 followers). She suggests twittering about sales, and specials. Social media makes money but on a long term, it builds value and helps in business. Your company should have lasting value. What value does your business have and how can social media improve it? If you use a gimmick to bring people in, it’wll work but only temporarily. It’s about teaching a man to fish and create lasting value.

Fitton says social media is nothing new and that it is all about knowledge. NO tricks, tips or shortcuts will do. Gaming won’t do because in social media, it’s your customers who write the rules. If they are unhappy with you, they’ll leave.

Fitton takes the example of Facebook Beacon. Once the poster child of social media who screwed up bad. This is a warning. Beacon informed your friends about your purchases. It pissed off Charlene Li, channel partners, bloggers, pundits, Move On, mainstream media, etc. Careful not to violate your own terms and conditions. Overstock is getting sued for this.

Focus only on that which matters and lasts. Help. Listen. Make yourself useful. Build love around your values and this will last.

IMAGE SOURCE: Andy Beal

Comments

It’s also another step in sticking a competitive knife in hated rival Google, which now faces federal scrutiny over its proposed $3.1 billion DoubleClick acquisition.

An IAC executive said in a statement the Atlas deal serves IAC two-fold. Rich Stalzer, President of IAC Advertising Solutions, said Atlas allows IAC to consolidate its web properties onto one media ad serving platform.

Also, IAC believes it can offer its advertising clients better opportunities for ad targeting with Atlas as the foundation for ad delivery.

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan humorously suggested at HipMojo that a successful stint with Atlas would create the possibility of IAC selling Ask.com to Microsoft and getting out of the search side of the business.

“You do know Barry Diller

TomTom May Provide “Navigation 2.0″

The company plans to acquire Europe-based Tele Atlas, a digital mapmaker that utilizes user-generated content to update auto-travel information – closed roads, construction, cool new restaurant on a particular street – all submitted by users, providing more information than traditional GPS services offer.

But don’t get too excited yet. The deal’s not complete yet and it is not yet known if "Navigation 2.0" will be implemented in the US.

Many are touting the possibility as a wisdom-of-crowds triumph, and are wondering what other uses the user-generated model could be put to in the mobile sector.

Seems to me it’s only a matter of time before it’s put to nefarious purposes: the night security guard here takes naps between 2 and 4 a.m.; the woman at this house doesn’t close her blinds; vehicle enforcement cops spotted on this stretch of highway.

Well, that last one doesn’t sound so bad.

The Google CPG blog cited a study by aQuantive’s Atlas Institute about the value of overlapping ads. By running ads in multiple points of contact – publishers, portals, and ad networks – Atlas found 67 percent of people who took action did so after encountering multiple ad placements.

Google’s Emma McKeithen noted how they do this for Google’s CPG clients, and gave an example of how a given person might navigate the Internet on a typical day:

During the course of a day, a user might visit a sports site, a social network, a photo-sharing site, check Gmail (perhaps repeatedly) in addition to going elsewhere online. The goal of overlapping campaigns is to maximize these touchpoints without increasing frequency to the point where an ad placement no longer delivers returns for the marketer.

Atlas did caution that overlap’s impact on conversions will “differ greatly from advertiser to advertiser as there is no consistent correlation between reach and conversion overlap.”

By Atlas’ notes, overlap seems to work best for branding, and requires a targeted reach to be most effective. A danger exists for overexposure of the brand through such overlap, which means advertisers will want to watch for opportunities to swap overlap for superior demographic reach.