Internet Marketing Observations

This job posting below was available on Facebook today.

Nothing earth shattering here. Well, except for this if you are an app developer:

•Work with the Sales team to close advertising deals that require product integration and/or other non-standard business terms

It would be great if they identified what “product integration” meant in this context

Business Development Manager, Business Development - Monetization

Facebook is seeking a Manager of Business Development who is obsessed with technology, social media and business strategy. The ideal candidate will have 5-7 years of business development experience in the consumer Internet space with a heavy emphasis on partner negotiations, strategic analysis and channel management. This role will involve creating market channel development, sourcing partners, developing a strong understanding of partner strategy, negotiating agreements to completion, managing internal process, and maintaining ongoing relationships between Facebook and key partners. Business Development at Facebook is responsible for negotiating partnerships that generate new revenue streams, drive distribution of the Facebook brand online and offline, generate new users for the company, or otherwise add value to the Facebook user experience. The position is full-time and based in our main office in downtown Palo Alto, CA. This position will report to the Director of Business Development.

Responsibilities:
•Negotiate channel development deals with large media and technology companies to grow Facebook’s advertiser network worldwide
•Work with the Sales team to close advertising deals that require product integration and/or other non-standard business terms
•Evaluate and explore strategic opportunities
•Represent Facebook in meetings with senior executives from other companies

Requirements:
•Comfort with a fast-paced, always-on, highly ambiguous start-up environment
•Extensive knowledge of online business models and Internet/consumer technology
•Proven track record with high standards of professionalism
•Exceptional interpersonal skills and ability to develop strong working relationships inside and outside Facebook
•Creative, resourceful, detail-oriented, highly organized
•Excellent verbal and written communication skills
•Ability to meet multiple objectives in an entrepreneurial environment with little supervision
•Extensive negotiation experience, including comfort with legal aspects of negotiations
•Prior experience working in a high-growth or startup technology company preferred

Location: Palo Alto, CA

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

A great piece by Zachary Rodgers of the Clickz Network and kudos to Jeff Lanctot, SVP of global media at Avenue A/Razorfish. http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628531

It is…well…refreshing to hear a leader at a major agency recite specific pricing data to reflect a conclusion.

The reflection? Avenue A associating best value with small publishers down the tail. You could also draw a small corrolary to Yahoo’s January 29th Yahoo’s fiscal 2007 numbers. See here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/29/AR2008012902282.html

What can be gleamed from this? Well in short it took a whole lot more “cost” to generate the a slight increase in revenue (read: headcount).

Some other interesting tidbits from Rodgers article:

- Citing a dynamic logic survey, brand awareness has dropped for 3 consecutive years

- A quote from Lanctot suggesting web layout changes would enhance ad response.

 A point on the latter here, while Lanctot is probably correct in spirit, a fresh display will improve awareness, the negative here is that a fresh layout will also confuse and more importantly frustrate the web consumers who are used to on-demand media consumption.

A potential alternative? Widget companies. By providing “dynamic context” around a brand — in essense creating a mini experience — the freshness that someone in Lanctot’s position demands can essentially be achieved without a higher production cost to the publisher.

Just a thought…..

Though this blog is new, we’ve gotten feedback that our “observations” would carry more weight if we showed the screenshots.

So we’re going to do that…

And feel free to submit your screenshots as well and opine on them, we’ll post them

Most hoops fan know the site RealGM. It’s often first with NBA trade rumors and news.

While I’m impressed with the ability to complile a display ad that has a geographic hook, I’m not sure that the implementation doesn’t sour the experience or the CTR for that matter.

So somehow, by IP or other, I am targetting with a car insurance ad…..that says, “Paying too much for your auto insurance….in Dublin, CA.”

While not an out and out “error” — as in a mistake that will clearly lead to lower ROI — this is a poor implementation of potentially valuable targetting ability.

I’m wondering why Let’sTalk banners continually have sales ends at midnight.

Let’s see I saw one at 11pm on December 21st and then I saw one at 1am on December 22nd.

….but the sale didn’t end.

Oh, I also received those banners on December 23rd, December 24th…..so on.

I’m wondering if the high priced PR efforts for Mint.com have worked. Sure, they got a little pop from each little pretty picture of Aaron Patzer popping up in business rags, but what I would love to know is how many of those “readers” and/or “browsers” are avidly using the site.

Hmm…the average number of visits on Mint.com is about 1.7; how much you want to bet that those visits sit on the top end of the bell curve, concentrated on about 2,000 users.

Just wondering….

I’m wondering if the Hearst company has figured out yet that the little “social shopping” site they bought gets half of its users from…..well not really MySpace, though Comscore says that, but free myspace templates that are then distributed on MySpace.

I’m wondering whether a template has a credit card or fits a DMA demographic.

Today I am wondering whether any of the purchases of Right Media traffic understand that by optimizing for CPC on some of the major networks on Right Media, they are merely buying users who “hit” Continue on an incentivized ad placement in Facebook.

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!