How is Facebook reinforcing its position in local? What are the business opportunities still left to come in the Local on-Demand Economy (LODE)? And what were the best things we saw at ad:tech? These are a few topics we tackled over the last week, aggregated into the Local Media Watch newsletter.

____________

Click below for the latest issue and subscribe (free) to get it in your inbox during its regular Thursday circulation.

The post LMW Issue 23: Facebook Cements its Place in Local appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

All eyes are on Facebook when it comes to localized marketing. This was pronounced in the company’s recent revelation that 40 million SMBs now have active Pages (2 million advertise). And BIA/Kelsey’s own survey data indicate that social is the most prevalent marketing channel.

The biggest drivers for this according to Czaja are reach and targeting. More than 1 billion people use Facebook daily, the vast majority via mobile.  As for targeting, it’s more accurate on Facebook than most other digital media he asserted. This involves lots of granular audience profiling.

“We’re talking about real people and not cookies,” he said, adding that businesses can enhance targeting by “bringing their own data onto Facebook” for retargeting. FB can also target look-alike audiences with similar characteristics to a brand’s existing customers or target audience.

The full session video is below.

The post Conference Video: Facebook Cements its Place in Local appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Facebook is felt by some to have the potential to dominate SMB online advertising because of its incredibly high organic usage. But the challenge to drive even more SMB advertisers remains. The company currently reports that it has 40 million SMBs with Facebook pages around the world. Two million SMBs are paid advertisers, or five percent of its SMB page holders.

Today, Facebook unveiled several new small business support programs that it hopes will boost its SMB conversion rates. These include a series of local SMB events, the launch of self serve tools and chat and email support.

We got a hint of what was to come during the March 25 keynote by Facebook Director of Small Business Jon Czaja at BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL in Dallas. During his keynote, Czaja emphasized that Facebook can lift sales results for SMBs by a high percentage if it is added to traditional media ad campaigns.

He also asserted that Facebook does well on its own. He noted that Facebook’s accuracy for narrowly targeted online campaigns is 89 percent, or more than twice as high as the industry’s 38 percent average. Advertising on Facebook provides $8 back for every dollar invested, and a 12x boost in conversion, Czaja suggested.

While Facebook heavily emphasizes self serve for SMBs because they demand it, it is also eager to partner with agencies and others, adds Czaja. “Facebook can’t build everything itself. If there are other partners out there to build on our platform and encourage better performance, then advertisers will be able to choose to go to Facebook or an agency. It’s an ‘All-of-the-Above’ strategy.”

The post Facebook Focuses Hard(er) on Small Business appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

According to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor, Wave 18?, 72.2% of the SMBs (small- to medium-sized businesses) surveyed* use Social Media to promote their business. Of the different social media used for advertising and promotion that BIA/Kelsey tracks in the LCM survey, Facebook Page ranked the highest, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter. Facebook ads were close behind in fourth place. Instagram and Pinterest, which didn’t make the chart below, are achieving traction — each has close to a 10% reach.

Social media can provide SMBs with an immediate and interactive connection with their customers. So how do SMBs perceive the return on their investment for time spent in advertising or promoting themselves on social media? In our survey we asked several questions on the satisfaction of the various advertising and marketing choices made. It should be noted that only SMBs who reported using a particular media were asked for their ROI assessment of that media.

While only 15.2% of SMBs surveyed reported using Facebook ads to advertise and promote their business, they gave it the highest combined ROI of Excellent (10-19x spend) and Extraordinary (more than 20x spend) of the social media in the survey, at 37.3%. Instagram and Other Social, which 8.1% and 5.4% of SMBs surveyed, respectively, reported using for advertising and promotion, tied for the next highest combined ROI at 30.6%, followed closely by Twitter ads at 30.5%. Instagram and Twitter ads both had more respondents rating them Extraordinary than Other Social. LinkedIn, which was second among SMB users, was ranked lowest of the social media, with combined perceived ROI (Excellent and Extraordinary) of 18.6%.

SMBs in our survey on average spent 21.4%, or $7,638, of their annual advertising and promotion budget on Social Media players, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Local Commerce Monitor? (LCM) is BIA/Kelsey’s ongoing survey of the advertising behaviors of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). To learn more about our LCM survey, click here.

*From the Full Sample.

The post Nearly 3/4 of U.S. SMBs Use Social Media to Promote Their Business appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Jon Czaja, Director, Small Business (North America), Facebook, talks with Abid Chaudhry, Senior Director of Strategy at BIA/Kelsey. This is a paraphrased report, quotes indicate verbatim comments.

Beginning with a walkthrough of what Facebook is doing to help brands connect with local consumers. Facebook has evolved dramatically. Gone are the days of focus on things like page likes and we’ve made a transition to providing a robust marketing platform.

30 million businesses have active pages on Facebook; 2 million are actively advertising on Facebook. There is a huge diversity in these businesses, from small to large and across all verticals that find value on this platform. The obvious reason is reach. More than 1 billion use Facebook every day, the vast majority on their mobile phone. Facebook Mobile users spend an average of 41 minutes a day consuming content on their phone.

Targeting is more accurate than the average online platform: 38 percent of targets are accurate on average, while Facebook is 89 percent accurate. “We’re talking about real people and not cookies.”

Example business: Divas SnowGear. They use Facebook to market cold weather gear to women.

Businesses can also enhance their targeting by “bringing their own data onto Facebook” to narrow and retarget messaging on Facebook. Additionally, Facebook can show “lookalike” customers who have similar characteristics to your existing customers.

Local Awareness is a product for multi-site businesses. The platform allows targeting of people near your stores, based on their use of Facebook (which can monitor location all the time if the user has approved). Shows Jasper’s Market as example: The company went from brand awareness to actual customer conversion through Facebook. Warby Parker have reached 5.2 million people with 31.7 million impressions for its 10 retail locations. It will be “very easy to create local campaigns for small business in many markets.”

He can’t share what Facebook is planning, but Conversion Lift is an current example of a tool to see the efficacy of Facebook ads, using a A/B model to analyze the impact of Facebook on offline transactions. “Not a new feature in the market, but new to Facebook.”

FacebookMarketingPartners.com is the destination for marketers to identify partners on Facebook that they can use to increase their reach and targeting accuracy.

Now to Q&A:

Abid asks: Are we seeing a pivot toward direct-response and conversion products at Facebook. What was the decision-making process for that move — have you left the brand advertiser in the lurch?

Jon: We believe Facebook can be relevant for both merchants and brand advertisers. We realized we have the ability to drive consumers to local business locations. That said, Facebook is still a powerful branding platform. Page likes were the branding solution on FB, but today we are concentrating on video. Advertisers can bid on impressions and position on pages as a result.

Abid: How to you keep this easy to use for the small advertiser while serving the large advertisers? Will everyone use the same UI?

Jon: We want it to be self-serve, all the way down to the smallest advertiser. Large brands use additional tools, such as “Power Manager” to control large campaigns with the same [backend system]. It is a different user interface and we’re seeing large advertisers partnering with agencies and others to address national brands.

Facebook is listening to advertisers and trying to speak their language. We’ve grown up and learned to think in terms and metrics that brands use.

Question from Audience: Are people feeling the new ads are effective or are they annoyed by them?

Jon: It’s about protecting the user’s experience. Customers have said they feel there are too many irrelevant ads, so we have reduced and changed the way we place ads. It makes sense that we keep the environment personally engaging and relevant, including the ads.

Abid: What is the view on native advertising’s impact on the user experience? How much does Facebook get involved in keeping ads relevant?

Jon: It’s a challenge. How do you convince a small business to take a good picture or shoot a good video. So, we share best practices and encourage business to look at competitors to understand what works well. We’ve also started sharing a “relevance score” that shows how the algorithm that handles newsfeed placement works, so that business can make adjustments. We also encourage people to test ads, to see what images work. You can experiment on Facebook to quickly modify your approach.

Audience: Can a business use Power Editor to run these ads? What do SMBs do now, while we wait?

Jon: Anyone can use Power Editor. But I recommend you don’t use it unless you are placing hundreds of thousands of ad impressions. In the interim, there are third-parties that can help business get effective performance.

Abid: As Facebook becomes more advertising centric, how is the Partner Program going to integrate the partners’ needs?

Jon: Facebook can’t build everything itself. If there are other partners out there to build on our platform and encourage better performance, then advertisers will be able to choose to go to Facebook or an agency. It’s an “All-of-the=Above” strategy.

Abid: Facebook is becoming a better competitor with Google, but do you think of Google as the target?

Jon: We’re sort of in our own world. We are in a race to close the loop on the offline transaction, but I can’t share much information now.

Abid: How is the inclusion of friend-to-friend payments related to the future of advertising and transactions? What’s the strategy for working with large agencies?

Jon: The message to both is the same. We have a billion users a day. The way you talk to advertisers changes based on their size and scale. We work to help big campaigns elevate effectively, and measurements for large partners to help understand the impact of a Facebook ad investment. With smaller businesses, we’re working to build out what I hope will be best-in-class customer service to help them advertise on Facebook.

Abid: Is there a strategy for working with services industries?

Jon: We are vertically focused within the sales teams and think there are best practices among large businesses. We’re going to bring those vertical insights all the way down to the small business.

We’ve seen success with Local Awareness, which was designed for small business. But we think it has uses for multi-site national brands. The ability to target people near your store will be a benefit to business of every size.

Audience: Your partner program has restraints on small agencies, with less than 1,000 clients. Will that change?

Jon: Not that I know, but if you have not checked our recent updates, you may find it has already changed.

The post At BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL: Racing to Close the Loop on the Offline Transaction appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Leading up to the BIA/Kelsey NOW Conference, which will debut in San Francisco this June, we’re kicking off a regular series of blog postings on the Local On-Demand Economy (see our white paper). Twice per week, we’ll wrap notable news, fundings and executive moves in the LODE world.

(Click below for full stories)

Does Elon Musk’s Future Include a Place for Uber?
Uber may be the “greatest job creator” in the world right now, adding 50,000 drivers a month since the beginning of the year. But consider Tesla Founder & CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a world without drivers. In an interview at an NVIDIA conference this week, Musk said: “”In the distant future, I think people may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.” He predicts driving will eventually be illegal.

Bus rides, by contrast, may not be good LODE targets
Leap Transit launched its high-end bus service in San Francisco this week. A roughly 15-minute ride costs $6 and includes coffee, wi-fi and techie luxuries including an onboard concierge of sorts, according to this entertaining article from The Atlantic’s CityLab. This very unLODE model requires a steep capital investment in buses that appear to include reclaimed wood walls and Starbucks-like seating.

FundBox tackles the accounts receivable space
Accounts receivables delays cost small business significant lost opportunity the longer they drag on. If they can get paid faster, the revenue can be redeployed for growth, marketing and other purposes. FundBox, a San Francisco startup announced a $17.5 million round of financing from Khosla Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel and other individual investors, to address this painful business problem.

Meanwhile, is syndication working magic for BuzzFeed?
At South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas, this week BuzzFeed founder Johan Peretti explained that he has effectively outsourced his site hosting to social networks where his company’s content is shared by users. While BuzzFeed.com attracts approximately 200 million users each month, its syndication network, which includes Facebook and Twitter, generates 18.5 billion impressions a month.

FULL STORIES

Does Elon Musk’s Future Include a Place for Uber?

Uber may be the “greatest job creator” in the world right now, adding 50,000 drivers a month since the beginning of the year. But consider Tesla Founder & CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a world without drivers. In an interview at an NVIDIA conference this week, Musk said: “”In the distant future, I think people may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.” He predicts driving will eventually be illegal.

That would be a problem for Uber, which depends on its growing legion of drivers to volunteer their cars for service. In fact, if the drivers weren’t willing to share their cars, in addition to shouldering the cost of buying and maintaining the vehicles, Uber’s model would collapse. The company doesn’t carry a fleet cost, which has made it possible to share 80 percent of revenue with drivers, who appear to be flocking to the opportunity to make some extra cash. Operating as a market maker in exchange for a 20-percent share of revenue is a diabolically good business model.

Should Musk’s vision come to pass — it strikes us as a challenge to his own company’s driver-centric marketing and just a very bad attitude about what a person should do with a two-ton death machine — would Uber vanish?

It’s a compelling thought problem in Local On-Demand Economics, because the answer may not be a simple “No.” Rather, in the autonomous vehicle era it is possible that a car owner could literally send their car to work for them while they stay home, or just ride along to collect the fees and talk with riders. We don’t predict this will come to pass any time in the foreseeable future, but it does suggest that companies that facilitate demand-aggregation may be immune to some forms of obsolescence. Whether individuals volunteered their cars or another firm stepped up to provide the fleet while Uber continued to provide riders, there is a clearly defensible position for demand aggregators in local markets.

Bus rides, by contrast, may not be good LODE targets

Leap Transit launched its high-end bus service in San Francisco this week. A roughly 15-minute ride costs $6 and includes coffee, wi-fi and techie luxuries including an onboard concierge of sorts, according to this entertaining article from The Atlantic’s CityLab.

This very unLODE model requires a steep capital investment in buses that appear to include reclaimed wood walls and Starbucks-like seating. The Leap bus runs a relatively fixed route rather than responding to demand where it is occurs. Moreover, Leap seems to have added human labor costs to the bus-riding equation, since each bus requires a driver and a staffer who helps people find their seats, connect with the wi-fi network and serve or sell coffee and juice on the 15-minute ride.

What do you think? Is bus service susceptible to demand aggregation? We’ll be polling the audience at BIA/Kelsey’s NOW Conference on the topic. Add your thoughts in comments.

FundBox tackles the accounts receivable space

Accounts receivables delays cost small business significant lost opportunity the longer they drag on. If they can get paid faster, the revenue can be redeployed for growth, marketing and other purposes. FundBox, a San Francisco startup announced a $17.5 million round of financing from Khosla Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel and other individual investors, to address this painful business problem.

FundBox’s business is a familiar one, to which the company has added some “big data” analysis. Many traditional lenders finance AR balances and new competitors will certainly emerge. The company analyzes SMB creditworthiness by examining census and business data before deciding to provide financing. This reduces FundBox’s risk and increases the likelihood it will collect most or all of the debts acquired. Example fees on FundBox’s site range from five percent to seven percent, roughly 2.5- to four-times credit card fees — Fundbox fees are inclusive of bank transfer fees to the SMB’s account, but do not offset credit card or other fees the merchant may have paid at the time the AR balance was generated by a transaction.

As noted above, taking a 20 percent carry on demand aggregation is a great business. FundBox’s approach bears a stronger resemblance to the short-term consumer loan industry.

BIA/Kelsey believes accounts receivable financing will ultimately become a thing of the past as the “logistical last-mile” is built out over the next decade. Instead of existing as separate services from the transaction processing system supporting an SMB, AR will be optimized out of demand-side businesses with improved processes. In the short-term, however, FundBox will do big business and have the opportunity to build business relationships that allow its financing engine to be integrated into new local, regional and national services.

Meanwhile, is syndication working magic for BuzzFeed?

At South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas, this week BuzzFeed founder Johan Peretti explained that he has effectively outsourced his site hosting to social networks where his company’s content is shared by users. While BuzzFeed.com attracts approximately 200 million users each month, its syndication network, which includes Facebook and Twitter, generates 18.5 billion impressions a month. However, Peretti said, none of that additional traffic is currently monetized. Instead, it provides new traffic to BuzzFeed, where ad impressions yield his company’s revenue.

“Our goal is to be indifferent to how people find our content and where they find it,” Peretti said in a session called “Lessons from BuzzFeed.”

For those of you counting, the traffic converting to BuzzFeed.com from its syndication reach is approximately 1.08 percent of the total impressions the company’s content generates.

The next step, Peretti said, is to incorporate “native advertising” in the content feeds, taking payment for placement in the syndication stream BuzzFeed produces. Reach is critical to spreading messages, which is critical for marketers to understand, but segmentation and engagement at that scale will be controlled by the social networks.

“Native ads” could be screened by social networks in the future, allowing only editorially vetted articles through to users. BuzzFeed’s business model will be judged in the crucible of its business development efforts, in which it has far less leverage than its syndicators. Better filters and personalization tools for consumers may obsolete the reach-at-all-costs model.

The post Will Tesla's Elon Musk Kill Uber? Thinking Demand-side Economics This Week appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Leading up to the BIA/Kelsey NOW Conference, which will debut in San Francisco this June, we’re kicking off a regular series of blog postings on the Local On-Demand Economy (see our white paper). Twice per week, we’ll wrap notable news, fundings and executive moves in the LODE world.

(Click below for full stories)

Does Elon Musk’s Future Include a Place for Uber?
Uber may be the “greatest job creator” in the world right now, adding 50,000 drivers a month since the beginning of the year. But consider Tesla Founder & CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a world without drivers. In an interview at an NVIDIA conference this week, Musk said: “”In the distant future, I think people may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.” He predicts driving will eventually be illegal.

Bus rides, by contrast, may not be good LODE targets
Leap Transit launched its high-end bus service in San Francisco this week. A roughly 15-minute ride costs $6 and includes coffee, wi-fi and techie luxuries including an onboard concierge of sorts, according to this entertaining article from The Atlantic’s CityLab. This very unLODE model requires a steep capital investment in buses that appear to include reclaimed wood walls and Starbucks-like seating.

FundBox tackles the accounts receivable space
Accounts receivables delays cost small business significant lost opportunity the longer they drag on. If they can get paid faster, the revenue can be redeployed for growth, marketing and other purposes. FundBox, a San Francisco startup announced a $17.5 million round of financing from Khosla Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel and other individual investors, to address this painful business problem.

Meanwhile, is syndication working magic for BuzzFeed?
At South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas, this week BuzzFeed founder Johan Peretti explained that he has effectively outsourced his site hosting to social networks where his company’s content is shared by users. While BuzzFeed.com attracts approximately 200 million users each month, its syndication network, which includes Facebook and Twitter, generates 18.5 billion impressions a month.

FULL STORIES

Does Elon Musk’s Future Include a Place for Uber?

Uber may be the “greatest job creator” in the world right now, adding 50,000 drivers a month since the beginning of the year. But consider Tesla Founder & CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a world without drivers. In an interview at an NVIDIA conference this week, Musk said: “”In the distant future, I think people may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.” He predicts driving will eventually be illegal.

That would be a problem for Uber, which depends on its growing legion of drivers to volunteer their cars for service. In fact, if the drivers weren’t willing to share their cars, in addition to shouldering the cost of buying and maintaining the vehicles, Uber’s model would collapse. The company doesn’t carry a fleet cost, which has made it possible to share 80 percent of revenue with drivers, who appear to be flocking to the opportunity to make some extra cash. Operating as a market maker in exchange for a 20-percent share of revenue is a diabolically good business model.

Should Musk’s vision come to pass — it strikes us as a challenge to his own company’s driver-centric marketing and just a very bad attitude about what a person should do with a two-ton death machine — would Uber vanish?

It’s a compelling thought problem in Local On-Demand Economics, because the answer may not be a simple “No.” Rather, in the autonomous vehicle era it is possible that a car owner could literally send their car to work for them while they stay home, or just ride along to collect the fees and talk with riders. We don’t predict this will come to pass any time in the foreseeable future, but it does suggest that companies that facilitate demand-aggregation may be immune to some forms of obsolescence. Whether individuals volunteered their cars or another firm stepped up to provide the fleet while Uber continued to provide riders, there is a clearly defensible position for demand aggregators in local markets.

Bus rides, by contrast, may not be good LODE targets

Leap Transit launched its high-end bus service in San Francisco this week. A roughly 15-minute ride costs $6 and includes coffee, wi-fi and techie luxuries including an onboard concierge of sorts, according to this entertaining article from The Atlantic’s CityLab.

This very unLODE model requires a steep capital investment in buses that appear to include reclaimed wood walls and Starbucks-like seating. The Leap bus runs a relatively fixed route rather than responding to demand where it is occurs. Moreover, Leap seems to have added human labor costs to the bus-riding equation, since each bus requires a driver and a staffer who helps people find their seats, connect with the wi-fi network and serve or sell coffee and juice on the 15-minute ride.

What do you think? Is bus service susceptible to demand aggregation? We’ll be polling the audience at BIA/Kelsey’s NOW Conference on the topic. Add your thoughts in comments.

FundBox tackles the accounts receivable space

Accounts receivables delays cost small business significant lost opportunity the longer they drag on. If they can get paid faster, the revenue can be redeployed for growth, marketing and other purposes. FundBox, a San Francisco startup announced a $17.5 million round of financing from Khosla Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel and other individual investors, to address this painful business problem.

FundBox’s business is a familiar one, to which the company has added some “big data” analysis. Many traditional lenders finance AR balances and new competitors will certainly emerge. The company analyzes SMB creditworthiness by examining census and business data before deciding to provide financing. This reduces FundBox’s risk and increases the likelihood it will collect most or all of the debts acquired. Example fees on FundBox’s site range from five percent to seven percent, roughly 2.5- to four-times credit card fees — Fundbox fees are inclusive of bank transfer fees to the SMB’s account, but do not offset credit card or other fees the merchant may have paid at the time the AR balance was generated by a transaction.

As noted above, taking a 20 percent carry on demand aggregation is a great business. FundBox’s approach bears a stronger resemblance to the short-term consumer loan industry.

BIA/Kelsey believes accounts receivable financing will ultimately become a thing of the past as the “logistical last-mile” is built out over the next decade. Instead of existing as separate services from the transaction processing system supporting an SMB, AR will be optimized out of demand-side businesses with improved processes. In the short-term, however, FundBox will do big business and have the opportunity to build business relationships that allow its financing engine to be integrated into new local, regional and national services.

Meanwhile, is syndication working magic for BuzzFeed?

At South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas, this week BuzzFeed founder Johan Peretti explained that he has effectively outsourced his site hosting to social networks where his company’s content is shared by users. While BuzzFeed.com attracts approximately 200 million users each month, its syndication network, which includes Facebook and Twitter, generates 18.5 billion impressions a month. However, Peretti said, none of that additional traffic is currently monetized. Instead, it provides new traffic to BuzzFeed, where ad impressions yield his company’s revenue.

“Our goal is to be indifferent to how people find our content and where they find it,” Peretti said in a session called “Lessons from BuzzFeed.”

For those of you counting, the traffic converting to BuzzFeed.com from its syndication reach is approximately 1.08 percent of the total impressions the company’s content generates.

The next step, Peretti said, is to incorporate “native advertising” in the content feeds, taking payment for placement in the syndication stream BuzzFeed produces. Reach is critical to spreading messages, which is critical for marketers to understand, but segmentation and engagement at that scale will be controlled by the social networks.

“Native ads” could be screened by social networks in the future, allowing only editorially vetted articles through to users. BuzzFeed’s business model will be judged in the crucible of its business development efforts, in which it has far less leverage than its syndicators. Better filters and personalization tools for consumers may obsolete the reach-at-all-costs model.

The post Will Tesla’s Elon Musk Kill Uber? Thinking Demand-side Economics This Week appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Facebook isn’t often thought of in terms of “commerce,” a la retailers such as Amazon or financial institutions such as American Express, but it makes a strong case for itself as a company that “unlocks” commerce. Speaking at The CardLinx Association’s Mobile conference in San Mateo on Feb. 24, Facebook Head of Payments and Commerce PJ Linarducci joked that his “day job” is “collecting (payments) from two million advertisers a month to help them connect with their audience.” These involve payments in 55 currencies, with 800+ payment methods. One million transactions take place daily.

Is there is a clear link to commerce from Facebook’s base in advertising? Linarducci thinks it is fairly obvious. “Commerce is about information,” he said.

With placement on 95 of the world’s cellphones, and detailed profile and usage information on its users, commerce also extends the company’s broader social mission. “Payments are just a point in social; helping people get what they want,” Linarducci said. He suggested that many marketers might post offers instead of ads, if given the opportunity.

While Facebook does not appear to have moved forward with several tests involving virtual gift cards, prepaid deals and virtual credits, the company is actively exploring all its commerce options. For instance, it is currently highlighting buy buttons attached to ads, and classifieds for groups.

“The big picture is to look at Facebook in terms of its access to audiences, its payments infrastructure and as providing world class tools,” said Linarducci. And commerce is happening on the site whether Facebook is directly involved or not. “People hack around the system to make commerce on Facebook — despite us not doing anything to help them,” he said.

Facebook’s PJ Linarducci

The post CardLinx Summit: Facebook Eyes Role in ?Unlocking Commerce? appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Facebook isn’t often thought of in terms of “commerce,” a la retailers such as Amazon or financial institutions such as American Express, but it makes a strong case for itself as a company that “unlocks” commerce. Speaking at The CardLinx Association’s Mobile conference in San Mateo on Feb. 24, Facebook Head of Payments and Commerce PJ Linarducci joked that his “day job” is “collecting (payments) from two million advertisers a month to help them connect with their audience.” These involve payments in 55 currencies, with 800+ payment methods. One million transactions take place daily.

Is there is a clear link to commerce from Facebook’s base in advertising? Linarducci thinks it is fairly obvious. “Commerce is about information,” he said.

With placement on 95 of the world’s cellphones, and detailed profile and usage information on its users, commerce also extends the company’s broader social mission. “Payments are just a point in social; helping people get what they want,” Linarducci said. He suggested that many marketers might post offers instead of ads, if given the opportunity.

While Facebook does not appear to have moved forward with several tests involving virtual gift cards, prepaid deals and virtual credits, the company is actively exploring all its commerce options. For instance, it is currently highlighting buy buttons attached to ads, and classifieds for groups.

“The big picture is to look at Facebook in terms of its access to audiences, its payments infrastructure and as providing world class tools,” said Linarducci. And commerce is happening on the site whether Facebook is directly involved or not. “People hack around the system to make commerce on Facebook — despite us not doing anything to help them,” he said.

Facebook’s PJ Linarducci

The post CardLinx Summit: Facebook Eyes Role in ‘Unlocking Commerce’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Craigslist has outlasted its challengers, and remains the platform to beat for classifieds, or “things to sell” marketplaces. eBay, similarly, remains a leader for the sale of goods – although most are not geographically oriented. Amazon is also active in that space.

Can Facebook, with its huge volume and trust networks, cut into their business? It is going to try via a new “For Sale” offering that allow users of its groups to post items for sale. Items are listed with prices, photos, descriptions, pick-up location and prices. They can also be listed as “available” or “sold” to let buyers know what’s still on the market/

The listings are currently free — and probably won’t go into the paid areas that provide the bulk of Craigslist’s revenue: apartments, cars, jobs and “personal services.” But if Facebook decides to provide a greater emphasis on classifieds, it could conceivably move into transactions (and commissions). It could also open the service up beyond its groups to have more of a geo-orientation.

It isn’t the first time that Facebook has been used for classifieds. Oodle, a large classifieds platform that launched in 2005, took over a nascent Facebook classifieds service in 2008 and focused on Facebook’s huge scale to offer items for sale to friends and groups within the service. Oodle was sold to QVC several years ago.

It also isn’t the first time that online groups have been used for classifieds. In their heydays, Yahoo Groups and Big Tent — each with hundreds of thousands of users — had active lists of classifieds. Many associations and groups currently host classifieds on their websites and pages.

The classifieds project is the latest transaction-oriented effort from Facebook, which may want to diversify its revenue beyond advertising. Facebook has been experimenting with various transaction models for several years, including tests with virtual gift cards, deals and virtual currencies. Facebook has also developed an Amazon-like capability to enable transactions on other sites by collecting credit card information on its profiles.

The post Facebook Goes Up Against Craigslist and eBay (Sort of) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.