Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is busy pitching Wall Street and Madison Avenue on FB advertising, calling it "incredibly effective" in her first post-IPO interviews. She's not the only Facebook exec defending the efficacy of ad campaigns using the social graph, even as the FTC raises privacy concerns about FB's new partnership with Datalogix for ad metrics, and social ad skeptic GM challenged the site's analytics.

With its stock down 43% since its May IPO, new initiatives to increase revenue including mobile ads and now the Datalogix union are attempts by the social behemoth to wean marketers off clicks, which is the key metric pitched by Google. Instead, Facebook is focusing not on the click-through rate (CTR) but on the number of times a user sees an ad (and whether the campaign has reached its target audience) as more effective metrics to track in marketing.

Indeed, Facebook reports that fewer than 1% of in-store sales tied to brand campaigns come from people who clicked on an ad.Continue reading...

As Microsoft released its new version of the Bing search engine today, it was another browser move that caused a flap. While potentially a win for Microsoft's brand, its consumer-first decision to embed 'Do Not Track' functionality in version 10 of its Internet Explorer browser in Windows 8 — with a default setting in the 'on' position — is "strongly" opposed by the Association of National Advertisers.Continue reading...

They say size doesn’t matter, but the Internet Advertising Bureau disagrees. New research from the UK-based IAB (there's a US body too) shows that consumers pay a lot more attention to brands that don’t stick to the basics of online advertising.

The IAB UK just released a global study indicating that larger formats are “twice as effective at raising brand awareness” than the forms of advertising that have long ruled the Internet: banners, skyscrapers, and mid-page units.

The group checked out how well three larger formats – billboard, wallpaper, and half pagers – did compared to the old paradigm. Five key metrics were measured: ad awareness, brand awareness, brand favorability, message awareness, and purchase intent. Guess who won the fight?Continue reading...

America's online video portals — AOL, Google and YouTube, Hulu, Microsoft Advertising including MSN, and Yahoo! — are once again locking arms to muscle in on the U.S. TV upfront marketplace by touting their web video programming in a collaborative series of presentations orchestrated by Digitas.

The brands are taking turns in a roundrobin pitch to ad agencies, media buyers and brand marketers during the fourth annual Digital Content NewFronts, taking place in New York over two weeks, from April 19th to May 2nd.

The objective: woo a bigger slice of marketing dollars from TV to their respective online video and digital content hubs.Continue reading...

• P&G and Old Spice agency W+K reveal the secrets of Old Spice Man Isaiah Mustafa's smooth moves in brand's Scent Vacation spot.

• After the jump: FedEx finds its Old Spice man, HTC's ChaCha(Cha) dance, from Etsy to Regretsy, and more.

From the Dept. of It's All in the Headline: "Japanese scientists develop human-shaped phone that feels like real skin" Continue reading...

The Interactive Advertising Bureau just announced the "rising stars" of new ad units, including AOL's Project Devil format and YouTube's new billboard format, demonstrated in the video above.

But how to determine if they're effective? There is no consistent method for measuring the effects of digital media, even as it increasingly becomes the currency driving the industry.

That's why, just as apparel-makers are seeking to create a common set of metrics around sustainability, the three kings of marketing and advertising in the US (including the IAB) are joining forces to come up with a unified set of standards and metrics to measure the ROI of digital marketing.Continue reading...

Android is booming thanks to Asia.

Boeing boosts jet prices, drops short-range carrier.
 
Boston Scientific abandons sale of pain-management unit.  

Brett Favre sits out Vikings vs. Giants game, ends streak at 297 NFL games. 

Comcast tests combo web/TV service.

Costco rebuffed by U.S. Supreme Court in challenge against Swatch's Omega watch brand.Continue reading...

This just in from the IAB’s MIXX event in New York City today, where Seth Godin gave the keynote and fired up the crowd with this comment: “There is too much clutter … because we’ve branded ourselves to death.”

Godin's beef: Savvy consumers are over-saturated with the glut of brand advertising and “no longer want to be spammed with information about a product, service, or experience; they want to feel a connection to it,” as Emily Molitor reports.

The key takeaway: “People need a reason to purchase, to be part of something bigger, to join a tribe.” Godin has been banging the "brands must have tribes" drum for a while; see the 2009 video above. His latest examples?Continue reading...