In its weekly platform update, Facebook announced that it is changing how its API reports public app usage metrics. For the longest time, the reported metrics was just a number showing how many monthly active users any particular app had. There was no way to actually rank apps without looking through all the metrics available, or using a third party service like AppData. That’s all changing next week.

Starting January 16, Facebook will move to reporting app usage by overall rank and active user thresholds. For example, the social network says that an app with 1.1 million MAU will now be reported as having more than 1 million users as well as being the #300 largest app. Facebook says the new metrics reporting will “provide a more consistent view of the ecosystem and highlight successful apps earlier in the lifecycle.”

Developers need not worry about the change as the new metrics are for general reporting use only. It won’t impact the actual number of users any particular app has, and developers can still see the exact number of users their apps have in App Insights. With that being said, developers should be aware that Facebook will be adding “daily_active_users_rank” and “monthly_active_users_rank” to the application object via the Graph API and FQL to provide access to the new ranking API.

As usual, the weekly announcements are closed out with a bug report. In the past week, Facebook received 202 bug reports with 111 bugs being accepted for further review. The social network also fixed 51 bugs. You can see the full list by hitting up the blog post.

These numbers make sense when you consider that almost every handset manufacturer, including Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and others, are releasing multiple Android phones onto the market. Digitimes, in fact, attributes part of the rise to the increasing number of Android handset available in China.

Of course, the open-source nature of the Android platform allows manufacturers to slap a version of Android on any old touch-based device and call it a smartphone. There are plenty of inexpensive (or free), feature-poor Android phones on the market, which are most likely padding Android’s numbers. Plenty of these Android users still pine for a “cool” Apple device, and many might switch if they can gather the funds.

Another finding of the Digitimes research that will surprise no one is that BlackBerry and Symbian devices will continue to see shipment declines this year. Specifically, BlackBerry device shipments are predicted to decline 40% and Symbians will decline 65%. In encouraging news for Microsoft, though, Windows Phone shipments are slated to increase 108%, meaning Nokia’s support of the platform might be starting to pay off.

The first update this week is the addition of four more metrics to Insights. The four metrics are post_impressions_fan, post_impressions_fan_unique, post_impressions_fan_paid, and post_impressions_fan_paid_unique. For more information on these metrics and Insights as a whole, check out Facebook’s documentation on the matter.

Facebook also announced the breaking changes that will take place on November 7. The first is that Facebook will stop sending payments reporting emails to users on that day. If you want to continue receiving payments reporting, you’re going to have to implement the just announced payments reporting API.

Other November breaking changes include the actor names always matching the access token, notification tables will no longer return pid or aid for photos or albums, and there will be a new permission required to read page mailboxes. For more on these breaking changes, check out Facebook’s post on the matter.

The final change this week isn’t so much a development issue, but rather a policy issue. Facebook has updated their policy to say that nobody can export user data to a competing social network without their permission. They say that they provided the Download Your Information for regular users only. They don’t want developers using the tool for their own ends.

Announced today on the Yelp blog, the new “User Views” graph displays the traffic that your unique Yelp page is generating. The new metric also allows business owners to track traffic over a period of 30 days, 12 months and 24 months. Even better, the service also shows businesses how many times they showed up in Yelp search results over the past 30 days.

The new metrics also track how users are interacting with your business. Under a new section called “User Actions,” it tracks how many mobile check-ins and calls were made to your business. On top of that, it tracks how many clicks were made to your Web site from Yelp as well as how many people called your business through the Yelp app. Other tracking features include the number of user uploaded photos, how many times users got directions and the number of Yelp bookmarks.

If you want to take advantage of these new features, you can sign up for a Yelp business listing. This allows your business to have a special page on Yelp that helps drive traffic to your Web site and hopefully your business itself.

He told us that many ads are likable, but for an ad to be effective, it has to connect with consumers on an emotional level. In other words, consumers need to remember the brand, the product, and the goal of the ad.

Which ads did you consider “effective” this year? Please let us know in the comments.

As Zach Walton wrote earlier this week, the top 5 ads this year all included humor. Here’s the complete top 10 list from Ace Metrix:

In a post-game interview with Daboll, he explained that Ace Metrix bases its analysis on a balanced set of geodemographic consumers viewing the ads. It then scores them on a 9-point scale model that rates the ads on the most important attributes that drive effectiveness. From there, it determines its Ace Score on a 0-950 scoring basis.

“It’s not just a poll like American Idol voting contests with the thumbs up or thumbs down,” he said.

Through this model, Ace Metrix can find out how effective ads were in connecting with consumers and spurring a behavior change. The firm analyzes ads all throughout the year in order to compare and contrast its data.

Speaking about the winning ads of the Super Bowl, Daboll told us that it was obvious the brands had conducted adequate testing. Incidentally, when we spoke to him last week, he predicted that M&M’s, Doritos, and Coca-Cola would be in the top spots, and he was right. According to him, the marketers behind these ads are some of the best in the world.

Because humor connects with broad audience, such as the Super Bowl, Daboll was not surprised it was used in the top commercials. He did point out that, humor isn’t the only element that works. The 6th most effective ad was the “It’s Halftime America” from Chrysler and was not humorous at all.

Although the ad has sparked some controversy, Daboll said it really connected with consumers since it had the highest overall relevance score out of all the ads.

Chrysler’s ad also topped the “Most Effective Automotive Super Bowl Ads” list but was followed by the humorous driven ad from Honda, “Matthew’s Day Off.”

Here’s the complete list of automotive winners:

The least effective ads this year were a bit surprising, since Budweiser had 3 of its 5 ads in the bottom 5. The others that didn’t connect well were Hulu’s “Hulubratory” and H&M’s “David Beckham’s Bodywear Collection.”

Daboll told us that the H&M ad was long, boring, and way over the top, saying that the only group that liked it was women over 50. He also called Hulu’s ad “incomprehensible” since it wasn’t able to communicate its message.

Although Budweiser normally does well, the company’s Bud Light Platinum spots did not resonate with consumers at all. In fact, many consumers were just puzzled by them. The company took a risk with advertising a new product at the Super Bowl, and it didn’t prove to turn out in their favor.

“When you’re launching a new product on such a large venue, you still have to communicate some information about it… or people are confused,” said Daboll.

“It’s very hard to do a great Super Bowl ad – that’s why you can’t give enough credit to the guys that seem to do it year after year,” he added.

Daboll went on to say that the brands that consistently do well are likely already starting on next year’s Super Bowl ads. The key to success is not being funny, he continued, but it’s having the right message and testing until it’s perfect.

We put out a list of our top five best Super Bowl ads and the comments make it abundantly clear – the average consumer has vastly different notions of what makes these ads good. Taking a look at the Super Bowl admeter on USA Today provides a good measure of what consumers thought were the best ads. This is important to advertisers as the average consumer is there number one target. This should helps them refine their ads for the next year’s game.

What makes a good super bowl ad? What do you look for when you’re rating your personal favorites? Let us know in the comments.

Looking at the admeter, the top five ads all have a common theme – humor. People love to laugh. Ace Metrix seems to agree rating the top 10 most effective ads with the most effective being the ones based around humor.

The two ads that scored the highest tying for first place with a 671 Ace score was the M&M’s “Just My Shell” ad and Doritos “Sling Baby” ad. Filling the rest of the top five are humor-based ads that appeal to consumer’s base instinct to laugh.

The CEO of Ace Metrix, Peter Daboll, confirms this by saying to Forbes that humor was the most effective advertising strategy at this year’s Super Bowl which is confirmed by so many ads trying to be funny.

Daboll says that animals go hand in hand with humor as Coca Cola’s polar bear ads both ranked in the top 10. Doritos and Skechers both used dogs in their Super Bowl ads that catapulted both companies into the top 10 ads as well.

Not all ads are created equal though, and not all ads are intended effect to make people laugh. Serious ads that get the attention of viewers on something that they can relate to, such as the current financial landscape, can get people interested in products. Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime America” ad scored well at sixth place with an Ace score of 633. GE’s “Building Something Big in Louisville” got tenth place with an Ace score of 600.

Daboll calls it the “Made in America” ad that connects especially well with men. These kind of ads really “connect with the American people” in a way that the humor-filled ads cant. He goes on to say that these ads can “deliver a serious, emotive message and connect with viewers during the Super Bowl.”

He also points to the success of longer than usual ads that he calls “storytelling” ads. The Chrysler and Volkswagen ads both nailed this effectively by lasting more than the usual 30 seconds without losing interest of viewers.

Looking at the reaction to the ads across social media platforms reveals totally different results. While the H&M David Beckham underwear ad performed poorly with an Ace score of 450, the ad was the number one on social media platforms garnering a whopping 108,914 comments across all major social media platforms according to Bluefin Labs. Bluefin gathered their data in a 45-minute window after each ad aired to provide a fair estimate of how they do since the ads will most likely get more exposure over the coming days.

Compared to the Ace Metrix score, the Bluefin scores may be less effective as they just measure the comments. Comments can be negative and negativity usually outperforms anything else when it comes to online comments. Still, bad press is better than no press so H&M can take that as a sign that at least people were talking about their ad even if they didn’t like it. Unruly research shows brand recommendation as being an effective tool and social media provided that during the Super Bowl.

There is a third metric to consider when rating these ads’ effectiveness. After last year’s Volkswagen ad that premiered before the game garnered more than 90 million views over the past year, other advertisers wanted to cash in on that exposure. Honda’s Ferris Bueller ad has gotten over 18 million views on YouTube since its release with Volkswagen’s new Star Wars ad getting over 17 million views. Both ads used a teaser that led up to the actual ad that boosted their effectiveness.

AutoTrader and Edmunds.com both showed an even newer form of ad effectiveness as well through search and Web traffic. They rated auto ads by how much search and Web traffic they received during the game confirming that ads don’t necessarily have to be crowd pleasers to be big winners. While AutoTrader’s graph shows that search for vehicle models boomed during their respective advertisements; Edmunds.com’s research shows Web traffic to a specific model increased dramatically once its ad aired.

AutoTrader and Edmunds clash with the Ace Metrix numbers as well. Ace is showing that Fiat, while getting the most Web traffic according to Edmunds.com, was seventh in overall auto ad effectiveness.

Once again, as evidenced by our own picks, Super Bowl ads are different for everybody. It’s becoming harder and harder for businesses to pinpoint exactly what ads were effective or not. There are so many metrics and scores that advertisers can go off of that it makes it hard to tell where a company went wrong. While the Ace score can be a good indicator, other ad watch groups show that social media can go in the completely opposite direction.

It doesn’t seem like there’s any one way to really tell whether or not an ad was effective at this year’s Super Bowl. The best bet is to use the USA Today admeter as it’s directly from consumers voting on the ads they liked and combine that with the results from ad firms like Ace Metrix and Bluefin.

With so many different metrics to choose from, should advertisers look to all of them or stick to traditional metrics like Ace? Let us know in the comments.

As a final piece of wisdom, almost all studies confirmed that sexy just doesn’t really work unless you’re David Beckham. Sorry, GoDaddy, maybe you should try something else next year.

Take a look at our picks below and compare them to the researched best picks. There is a massive difference in opinion here, but it serves to show that Super Bowl ads are completely subjective and tastes change. While humor remains a strong contender, what people find funny is going to change year after year. There may even be a year where viewers want more “storytelling” ads with a serious topic.

Our picks confirm what this research has shown us – one man’s, or ad firm’s, picks do not exclusively determine what the best ads are anymore.

Here’s our picks for the top five best Super Bowl ads in no particular order:

Pepsi’s ad seemed to please scoring a 628 Ace score. The ad nails all the important parts of a good ad – great celebrity casting, a fun premise and good music. Check it out to see if you agree.

Volkswagen made a lot of nerds happy last year with their Darth Vader kid ad. While this year’s ad may or may not match up to that, the ending featuring classic Star Wars characters comparing the ad to last year’s ad makes up for it. It received a 590 Ace score.

Audi made us laugh this year with their Vampire Camp ad that’s sure to strike fear into the hearts of night creatures everywhere. It received a 536 Ace score.

The ad for the The Voice makes a great first impression by being action packed and featuring one of the best Betty White cameos ever.

Rounding out the best, we have Doritos. Ever since they started to let their fans make the ads, they have consistently turned out fantastic Super Bowl ads. This year is no different. It received a 645 Ace score.

What were your favorite ads of the Super Bowl? Let us know in the comments.

Are you content with your ability to measure social media effectiveness? Let us know.

ShareThis, which reaches 400 million people a month through social media share buttons across content all over the web, has released some new metrics for measuring social media effectiveness.

One of the metrics is its Audience Index, which lets publishers understand and compare their social audiences against 850,000 other sites (and soon against categories), find out what types of influencers your site attracts, and find out how well you connect with influencers, listeners, and engaged customers.

The other metric might be even more useful. That would be "Social Reach".

"We recently surveyed publishers (ours and others) and found that over 60% wanted (and were missing) social referral analytics," ShareThis explains on the company blog. "Social Reach measures the true value of shared media across the web by looking at outbound sharing and inbound social traffic and, in the process, gives proper credit to the listener/responder of a share as much as the original influencer/sharer. Publishers can now get a more accurate measurement of how a piece of content circulates around the Web after it’s been shared across any service, rather than just the simple number of shares counted by a single service like Facebook."

"Social Reach is built in to all of ShareThis’ new share buttons that we introduced a couple of weeks ago, and the Social Reach score of each piece of content can be displayed on any page where our buttons are installed," the company says.

ShareThis shared some interesting stats regarding Social Reach with TechCrunch. For example, according to the company, Facebook accounts for 45 percent of all shared content across its network, followed by email with 34 percent, and Twitter with 12 percent.

While Facebook may get more shares from ShareThis, email appears to be more effective, as people are more likely to click on an emailed link (31 percent out of the 34 percent, compared with 36 percent out of FB’s 44 percent).

Either way, the metrics could prove to be very useful for publishers looking at optimizing their social media marketing strategies.

What tools do you use to measure social media effectiveness? Share with other WebProNews readers.

The BBC has produced an attractive visual display on the rise and fall of social networks using metrics from market researcher Nielsen in June as its source.

As the chart here on the top five social networks by country shows, Facebook dominates in six of the seven countries the BBC highlights – USA, Australia, Germany, UK, Spain and Italy. The difference in Brazil, where Orkut is the leader with Facebook a distant second.

Yet even as Facebook is king, and not even well liked in some countries, look at the other social networks. In Germany, for instance, 8.5 million people are members of VZNet Netzwerke which includes StudiVZ, the big network for young people. In Spain, 6.6 million are with Tuenti. Brazil, too, where 5.9 million are in iG Comunidades. And let’s not forget MySpace (which recently underwent a facelift) – it’s in second place in the USA, UK, Australia and Italy and third in Spain.

My point is simply a reminder that, from a business perspective in particular – notably, if you’re planning any kind of outreach or engagement activity in these countries – recognize that the dominant social network isn’t necessarily the only place where your engagees spend their time and exercise their influence – sizeable niche communities are elsewhere too.

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Joking aside, it looks like a peanut butter/chocolate moment for the world of online audience measurement. The partnership will see comScore combine the data it gets from a 2 million person global panel with Omniture’s–raise pinky to side of mouth–1 trillion quarterly web site transactions. According to the announcement:

This strategic partner relationship blends these two methodologies in a highly automated way to create a unified approach for audience measurement designed to enable publishers to represent themselves in a more comprehensive manner to advertisers, and for advertisers to better optimize their media planning with the benefit of more extensive media reach data.

That’s a fancy way of saying the data is going to be a lot more accurate from here on out. As Josh James, Omniture CEO and co-founder puts it, "With this relationship, Omniture and comScore will enable publishers who have rich, highly targeted audience segments to reliably demonstrate their value to advertisers and also help advertisers find these attractive consumer segments. The combined offering will provide advertisers and publishers with a common currency to measure the value of online audiences across an ever-increasing number of digital channels."

So what does this mean for publishers and advertisers? I like how Scott McDonald, SVP Research, Conde Nast Publications explains how it will help (in theory):

"For more than a decade, we have fretted about – and sometimes quarreled about — the discrepancies between the audience estimates derived from third-party panels like comScore’s and those derived from web site analytics systems like Omniture’s. This collaboration represents the most significant effort to date to harmonize the two approaches and give the industry, at last, a common and convergent set of numbers."

It’s a real kumbaya moment for the measurement world. Now we just need to see if the two ingredients can combine to make something as tasty as a Reese’s cup!

What do you think of this partnership?

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The study shows that only 20% of visitors to sites from social media and PR are the result of a direct click. The remaining 80% are from "view-through," which measures traffic from Internet users who come to a site after viewing a piece of social media or online PR content that either didn’t contain a direct link to the site, or didn’t acquire the user as a result of a direct click from the content.

"This study shows why marketers who are serious about measuring the ROI of social media need to use view-through measurement in addition to existing click-though measurement," says Erik Bratt, CEO of Engage Social Media, a social media and PR agency focused on monitoring and measurement.

Tealium breaks social media and online PR traffic down into 3 scenarios:

- The social media outlet provides a direct link to a site and the visitor clicks the link – this is what is currently measured by existing analytics tools

- The social media outlet provides a direct link to a site, which is not clicked on, but the outlet still generates the interest for a future visit

- The social media outlet does not provide a direct link to the site and all traffic generated will be indirect and occurs as a view-through.

This brings to mind things like the DiggBar, Facebook’s similar bar, and things of this nature that provide users with third-party content while framed within the social network’s own format.

Tealium uses the study to push it’s own product that measures view-through, but if the data is accurate, this is certainly something that should be taken into consideration when measuring social media ROI. The Interactive Advertising Bureau actually released a document of social media advertising metric definitions that could help as well.