We first reported on Eyealike a year ago when they launched their "dating service based on looks only" application. The idea was simple: upload a photo of a hottie and Eyealike will find other hotties on the dating service that match the "features" of the hottie you uploaded.

Today Eyealike is announcing the launch of Eyealike VisualAd which aims to help social networks and other content sites generate more revenue based on matching images on the page to ads that will result in better results than standard display ads. The company claims that using VisualAd you could see up to 15 times higher earnings.

If we think about Google AdWords which uses contextual matching to provide ads that match the text on the page, VisualAd wants to do the same thing using the images on the page. With text there’s no worry about error in processing, we will need to see just how close Eyealike can match ads to images that are processed by a machine.

Eyealike VisualAd is a plug-in technology and pricing varies based on size and selected features. I could see Keibi offering a similar product in the future.

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Yesterday I received a survey from one of the services that provides paid content. I thought it would be interesting to share the questions and my responses. I would love to hear your thoughts as well. My general take has not changed - I am all in favor of advertorials but not in favor of paid reviews. Advertorials would be full "posts" that a company purchases similar to full page ads in newspapers. Labeled correctly, advertorials could be a huge winner for blogs. As I do with all advertising on any of my sites, the ads would need to meet my standards before accepting. The comments below only relate to advertorials not paid/sponsored reviews.

Intro from email sender: I am trying to best understand what is most important to bloggers like you. I would greatly appreciate it if you could take the time to answer a few questions.

1. At what price point is making a sponsored post interesting to you? $100/post? $500/post? $2000/post? More?

Allen: In general terms, the price for an advertorial should depend on the site’s real audience (not the fake rss numbers, etc.), the site’s reach and what media the advertorial includes (i.e. video/audio). The other consideration to look at is how long the advertorial will run. Pricing should also be in line with the monthly sponsorship pricing. Each advertorial should be priced accordingly.

2. If you have no interest in including sponsored content on your blog at any price why?

As I stated above, advertorials would be ok in moderation. For a large blog, running one or two a week would be acceptable. I wouldn’t run sponsored reviews for any price.

3. If you were to include sponsored content on your blog would you rather write a review yourself or simply place an advertorial?

Answered above. Sponsored reviews are not healthy for the overall market. There will always be the question lingering as to why the review was positive. We are starting to see some interesting business going on with video bloggers and decisions they are making around sponsorship and what amounts to paid reviews. This type of business needs to be corraled before it gets out of control and puts a hurt on the overall blossoming video industry.

4. In addition to full in-post disclosure what other conditions would you have for accepting a sponsored content?

To properly handle advertorials, naturally in-post disclosure is required. In addition, I’d like to see an "advertorial standard" created - similar to the IAB ad format standards. This will allow search engines and other aggregators to properly handle this type of sponsored content. Whether it’s some type of microformat or a specific "rel" tag or some other technical means to handle, it’s critical that this is setup correctly from the beginning. If it’s not handled correctly from the beginning, it will not work over the long-term.

With that said, there are a variety of other concepts and ideas I have for ways to monetize blogs. I will begin to share them over the next couple of weeks. It’s time for the CPM ad to rest in peace.

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Sean and I today got to chatting about the limits enacted by Pownce and Twitter recently that limits the number of folks you can follow on the system to around 2,000 or so. As I tried to explore when I reported the news a couple of days ago, Sean and I attempted to drill down and try to come up with some legitimate reasons to need the ability to follow more than 2,000 folks and came up pretty blank.

What we did discuss were some new updates we’d received regarding those that operate the Twitter auto-follow bots on the network, and based on their testing, even after the supposed follow limits have been implemented, it appears that the bot is still able to game the system and follow folks in numbers that far exceed 2,000.

It caused us to wonder exactly to what benefit the limitations are actually intended, or if these accounts were simply being grandfathered in.  To catch the whole discussion (and an interview with “Party Charlie“), watch the video via the embed below, or download the MP4 here.

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—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Twitter Launches People SearchTwitter + Video = TwiddeoLoic Lemeur’s “Video Twitter” to Announce Funding [Video]Twitter Mobile InterfaceOutTwit Your Friends from Microsoft OutlookQuick Fix For Twitter TroublesDon’t Send Bac’n: Use TwitterSearch

Source:Mashable!

Talk about opportunistic. Less than 24 hours after Twitter announced that it was no longer sending outbound SMS to users outside the US, Canada, and India, a newly launched service called tweetSMS is planning to offer a comparable solution for “a small fee.” While tweetSMS isn’t live yet, it promises to restore the functionality that has been lost – the ability for users in the UK (and other countries eventually) where outbound SMS is cost prohibitive (according to Twitter) to receive text updates on their mobile.

The company behind the project is Stasis Media, and they were interviewed earlier today by the blog ArabCrunch. Apparently, Stasis Media had a feeling that Twitter would yank outbound SMS internationally, and has been hurrying to piece together a service to fill the void. While no launch date has been set, tweetSMS is currently asking users to submit their email, phone number, and country to be notified when the service goes live.

Of course, there are plenty of alternatives for Twitter users abroad looking to keep up on their mobile, as Twitter outlined in their blog post about the issue. But tweetSMS will be an interesting experiment to watch to see if people are willing to pay for some of the functionality that Twitter once offered for free. It will at least give fodder to those of us that like to debate what exactly Twitter’s business model might be

Source:Mashable!

It wasn’t so long ago that social advertising networks were scarce and select. While they arguably still retain their selectness when placed adjacent to the world of general advertising on the Web, their number has grown considerably in the last several seasons and the industry is now very much a bustling marketplace.

Though larger economic woes afflicting the globe may put a bit of a damper on growth in the short term, the social sphere is altogether rising, and thus the advertising field that functions in tandem in all its various colors is growing more and more active.

In recognition of industrial expansion in the social realm, particularly at this moment steadily converging networking and media efforts, altogether forming very potent monetary opportunities, we’ve decided to take a sort of snapshot of some of the actors in the marketing business, if only to see how it has evolved to become the burgeoning moneypot it is today. We don’t mean to offer an overview here of what each offers individually. Rather, this is more a collective observation of what has occurred and, with a healthy bit of educated guesswork, envision what is to come.

There are the big name actors which tend to make the largest of headlines. Google involves itself in the social networking and social media spaces both, to various degrees. Its services have been adopted by a segment of Facebook application developers, for instance. It maintains some presence on MySpace, too. Also, Facebook itself has operated an ad network of its own for some time, though it primarily addresses the desires of marketers to target niche audiences and buy bulk placement in one sweep. There’s nothing small or selective that any of these names are attempting to do with in-house resources.

Independent outfits, meanwhile, are more open to a variety of commitments, and can go quite far in bringing special attention on the quality of service behind the distribution push. Names like SocialMedia, Lookery, iLike, AdBrite, VideoEgg, Adknowledge/Cubics, BuddyMedia, and Userplane come to mind. (Disclosure: Userplane is an advertiser on Mashable.)

There are other, perhaps lesser known parties working the social sphere also, such as FlyerExchange, AdParlor, Offerpal Media, GoFresh, PopularMedia, ContextOptional, SocialCash, and AdRoll. Some involve themselves partially in the space (AdRoll), while some spend virtually all efforts in proving themselves viable and valuable to customers aiming at audiences on the social Web (SocialMedia). All, nonetheless, are very much geared to balance strong output with especial attentiveness on the long tail of the advert jungle.

It is certainly the case that the market seems often to be oversaturated with players, with competitors showing fewer and fewer “uniquities,” as it were. But that in my view is typical of the entrepreneurial scramble that comes in advance of the journey northward by the contestants deemed the best, brightest or most popular. Whichever deciding factor(s) decide a strong success, really. (Solid financing and ample luck, no doubt.)

Indeed, many want in, but most won’t survive the mad dash to the top. That’s classic sport, is it not? Economics 101. Whittle down, the industry will. We’re already seeing names become more and more pronounced with time, so it probably won’t be long before a number of doors open more widely and others face closure or decide to focus elsewhere on the Web for their livelihood.

That said, the present field fighting for the biggest slices of the pie is in an interesting place. While the growth of the first set of Web giants was relatively docile where mainstream consumerism applies, the Web 2.0 space, with all its social and entertainment-rich componentry, is something intriguing to watch. Many if not most of the advertisement networks mentioned here are netting a potpourri of clients whose credentials as new-media producers and cloudware developers and so forth may well become eight-, nine- or ten-figure properties in a few years’ time. An exciting prospect to consider, no? It surely is.

The ever-richer experiences promised by advances made in interactive Web applications, back to front, are coming along so quickly now that what once was a later-rather-than-sooner analytical approach to online development and growth is now the opposite once more. Optimism is again vibrant and palpable, and the consumer complex driving it is showing few signs of stopping. That’s undoubtedly good news for Web developers and media producers - those investing in the social sector especially.

This naturally makes the future for advertisers and their chosen delivery mechanisms and mediators appear equally bullish. Suffice it to say that the names we’ve tossed to you in the paragraphs above will be getting quite a bit more attention in short order. Some more than most. But collectively, the winners will display far more prominence than they’ve exhibited in the past 12 months or so.

(Image credit: eMarketer)

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Back in April, AdBrite launched their Open Targeting Exchange. Today AdBrite is announcing the launch of a behavioral targeting product within their ad network. They note that their behavioral network is five times larger than any of their competitors. From the announcement, "Leveraging technology from AdBrite’s Open Targeting Exchange (OTEx), AdBrite’s new Behavioral Targeting service allows advertisers to show ads to users with interest and/or purchase intent in 14 major categories and over 3,000 sub-categories."

Pricing is set via a real-time auction. The new behavioral product is only available to a select group of advertisers on an invitation-only basis. Computers and Internet are not initial launch categories. Instead they have (smartly) selected more monetizable categories including: Automotive, Business & Finance, Careers, Consumer Electronics, Dating & Singles, Health, Music, and Travel.

It’s good to see AdBrite testing out new advertising options. By pushing forward, it can help them draw in additional advertisers to the AdBrite system as a whole.

My issue with AdBrite since their initial launch was the lack of advertisers. Having a million publishers is great but if there are no advertisers to fill the ads, it means nothing. AdBrite noted that they have 70,000 active publishers, up from 50,000 at the beginning of 2008. I’d prefer to see fill rate and total number of advertisers (not including ebaumsworld).

Veoh launched their behavioral targeted ad network last week. And ValueClick is expected to announce their behavioral ad product today as well. Here’s a very short video from eMarketer on behavioral targeting:

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Virtual events provider ON24 announced this morning that they have raised over $8 million in equity and expansion capital financing, bringing their total to $46 million venture capital raised to-date. U.S. Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, and Rho Ventures led the equity round; while Gold Hill Capital led the expansion capital financing. The company notes that the funding will be used to "accelerate ON24’s global expansion of the sales, marketing and client services organizations; and product development initiatives, including ON24 Virtual Show and the company’s flagship webcasting platform."

ON24 reports sales growth of 40% year-over-year. ON24 offers a "Virtual Show" product (see screenshot below). I get the idea of virtual (i.e remote) conferences and the associated cost benefits. But does it need to look like a virtual world too? I’d prefer a simple Web page with the different rooms and events rather than this silly, goofy mall-like atmosphere. What’s the cost to build these virtual worlds? I am guessing there are some standard setups but I am sure that most exhibitors want something custom. Just because something is x in real-life, doesn’t mean that online we need to recreate x.

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PubMatic is out with their monthly AdPrice Index report for June 2008 and their analysis shows that prices remain stagnant and show little movement from the previous month. Web sites with less than 1 million pageviews dropped 32 cents/cpm while medium and large sites (those over 1 million views) saw a small increase leading to the overall flat movement.

PubMatic also reported that the news category was basically cut by 50% in cpm ad rates. What I am seeing on my Web sites is that CPMs are down 20% month over month on remnant (default) networks. Here are the key metrics direct from the AdPrice Index:

• On average, Web site monetization decreased by less than one percent from $0.37 in May to $.036 in June. *(Pricing data reflects net publisher monetization via ad networks and excludes ad networks’ share of ad spends as well as inventory sold directly by publishers to ad agencies or advertisers).
• By size, small size Web sites had the largest drop to $0.81 in June, down from $1.13 in May.
• By vertical, News and Gaming had significant drops, sliding $0.62 and $0.20, respectively.
• Entertainment showed the only increase jumping $0.11 from $0.29 in May to $0.40 in June.

If the trend continues that rates for smaller publishers continues to drop significantly, will these smaller publishers be forced out of business?

As always, note that the AdPrice Index only measures data from publishers using PubMatic for ad serving.

Last October we asked Facebook to widen the application pages to allow for better usability and monetization. Today Hussein Fazal, AdParlor CEO, has put together an his thoughts on how advertising on Facebook applications might change with this new redesign.

There are two components to speak of when discussing how the new Facebook profile will affect advertising. First, let’s look at the ads put out by facebook themselves throughout the site. Secondly, we’ll look at what effect the facebook profile redesign will have on platform applications and the ads which may appear on these apps.

Let’s talk about the facebook ads themselves first - These ads will now be appearing in the right hand column but starting higher on the page. In the current version, the ads appear in the left column but underneath the applications. This is a better placement for facebook ads as it seems to be more prominent. Have a look at the screenshot below. The blank white space on the right is where the ads will go. Although this is not confirmed, this is the feeling I got while speaking to Rebecca Sawyer of Facebook’s Monetization Team at the Facebook developer garage in Toronto. Note also that the left hand column for ads is 150px wide in the current design and it seems that the right hand column in the new design has room for an extra 15px of width - this could give the standard 120×600 banner a little more white space to stand out.

Now on to custom facebook applications and ads that may appear on the new application canvas pages. The canvas page will now be 760px instead of 646px - meaning that social networking ad networks should probably be offering a new ad size!

More importantly however than the width change, is how user engagement with applications will change as a result of the redesign. Applications can now have their own tab in the new tabbed profile design - as seen above. Unfortunately however, many apps will end up losing overall user engagement as they are automatically being moved from the main profile page to the new ‘boxes’ tab.

User engagement is what will affect advertising on these applications the most. It seems as if developers who take advantage of the tabs and who have an engaging application will benefit - while those apps that are not that exciting and are not updated will lose daily active users - a key metric in determining how many advertising dollars app developers can attract.

The new facebook profile is still buggy and incomplete but you can try it out by going to http://www.new.facebook.com. It should be launched to the public next week!

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NY-based KickApps is announcing a new distribution partnership with widget network Clearspring today. Clearspring will begin to promote the KickApps Widget Studio and KickApps will push its members to use the suite of widget tools that Clearspring provides.

KickApps reports over 24,000 publishers on their network using widgets and comScore reports 47.5 million unique widget viewers in April 2008 on the Clearspring network. This deal benefits KickApps by extending distribution to the large member base on the Clearspring network.

Widgets are finally starting to take shape as a real online marketing vehicle. Over half of the sessions at Graphing Social Patterns this week are focused around widgets. Check out KickApps CEO Alex Blum’s article on the value of widgets.

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Over the past few weeks, Regis’ sidekick Kelly Ripa has appeared in a variety of television commercials for products including Tide laundry detergent and Electrolux appliances. What does Kelly Ripa know about a dishwasher or an oven? Do you believe her when she says it’s a better appliance? Would she endorse Whirlpool or GE if they paid her more? I’d suggest the answer is yes. This is just one example of celebrities endorsing products for big dollars when their endorsement really means nothing as to the quality, features or durability of the product.

Last night, we wrote about Meebo and their new marketing program. Part of the marketing program is to push users to share and spread links from companies and their brands. The idea of people on a social network sharing advertising that appeals to them is an idea that I can see growing very quickly if implemented correctly.

We all know what happened with Facebook’s Beacon program last year. I think Beacon was on the right track but unfortunately they went about it incorrectly. Here’s what I’d like to see: a friend endorsement system and the creation of a new advertising category named, "social advertising". Here are the basics on how the program would work. You enter the products you’d be willing to endorse to your friends into the system. Your friends do the same. When you are ready to purchase an item, you check the friend endorsement system and review your friend’s product endorsements in the category you are interested in purchasing within. To combat any fraud with the reviews, I’d suggest using a model similar to Reevoo where only products actually purchased can be reviewed and endorsed. While this might sound very much like a typical reviews site, the idea is that a new social layer will be applied on top of the reviews and, in addition, the ability to endorse a product is new as well.

The system would be tied into Facebook, MySpace, etc. and could be expanded to allow friends to swap and/or buy/sell from each other in a private network. The system would absolutely be more robust in its feature set, I am just simplifying it for the sake of discussion.

The bottom line is that, outside of the teenage market, I can see friend endorsements taking the lead over celebrity endorsements. Wouldn’t you rather have your best friend tell you why the Electrolux appliances are right for you than Kelly Ripa?

For reference, here’s Kelly Ripa shilling the suite of Electrolux appliances:

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