Microsoft and Facebook Adjust Their Partnership

Microsoft and Facebook have "enhanced" their partnership with each other. The two companies will soon be providing Facebook users with what Microsoft refers to as a "more complete search experience". They will be providing full access to Bing features in Facebook. In addition, the Bing and Facebook connection will be extended globally.

Facebook will be taking over full responsibility for selling its own display ads, although Microsoft will continue to provide search ads. "Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy," says Bing General Manager Jon Tinter.

"Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook," he adds. "This change will also enable Microsoft to continue its focus on driving strong performing campaigns across our own social media and communications tools, including Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, and via rich content environments across MSN and Xbox Live."

"Going deeper in web search experiences with Facebook, in addition to the collaboration we announced last October about bringing public data from Facebook's API into the search experience, will enable us to do great things together for our customers," he says.

The product of this enhanced relationship between the two companies will start being felt among users in the coming weeks and months. It will be interesting to see if Yahoo advertising gets involved if the Microsoft-Yahoo deal ever sees the light of day.


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AdTweets Seek to Promote Retweeting of Ads

Businesses and ad networks are increasingly finding new ways to integrate social media and advertising. This is evident with AdKnowledge's recent acquisition of SocialMedia.com's ad network, and it is also evident with TweetMeme's new AdTweets. AdTweets is a product, which TweetMeme says is designed to reward advertisers for using engaging advertisements.

"The Adtweets are a way of putting pressure on advertisers to improve the standard of adverts, and give the audience a chance to decide, and essentially vote, on what they like," says TweetMeme's Nick Halstead. "Produce a good advert that your audience likes, and you can easily tap into the viral nature of Twitter and the ‘retweet effect’, which will then dramatically increase your reach."

The TweetMeme retweet button can be integrated into any standard IAB ad size, as the company points out. Still, advertisers can choose between a compact button or the standard button. AdTweets can also utilize TweetMeme's analytics to monitor the success of a campaign.

TweetMeme has also re-launched "Featured Tweets," which help promote specific stories and encourage the sharing of content to other Twitter users.

"The potential value of the featured tweets was apparent in the first version, but there were some essential elements missing," says Halstead. "After taking on board invaluable feedback from both users and customers, the service was suspended. It was back to the drawing board, and what has emerged is a new Featured Tweet system that sponsors can use to bring relevant news and stories quickly to the attention of the TweetMeme Community, who then have the opportunity to retweet the story to their Twitter Followers and so on."

According to TweetMeme, the purpose of Featured Tweets is to give stories that have a good chance of going viral, a "helping hand." They are supposedly better targeted now, include analytics, and there are a reduced number of sponsored stories per page.


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Google Taking Another Look Video Ads

It looks like video advertisements may become a more standard part of the Google search experience.  Television and movie-related clips can already be found, and a report indicates that Google's thinking about running tests with product demonstration clips, too.

Google first started experimenting with video ads about 18 months ago.  Videos represent a pretty obvious win from the perspective of advertisers and the search giant; even people who have long since become used to ignoring text ads are apt to notice and watch them.  So marketers would have a fresh way to reach consumers, and Google could reel in more revenue.

According to Brian Womack, Nick Fox, a director of business product management at Google, also claimed, "It's clear that this is something that users want.  It ties back to trying to understand what a user is doing on Google, what an advertiser is trying to sell -- and matching those up."

And indeed, it makes sense that someone searching for info related to the movie "Extract" would want to see the trailer.

These experiments may well be deemed a success and turn into something more permanent, then.  But given the 18-month think-it-over period that's already passed, no one should hold his breath.

AdWords-Related Schoemaker Suit Settled

Not too long ago, quite a mess came into being as Jeremy Schoemaker sued Keyen Farrell for his (alleged) misuse of Google AdWords.  Farrell countersued, claiming defamation.  Now, Farrell's withdrawn his lawsuits and reached a settlement with Schoemaker, but things might actually escalate rather than go back to normal. 

The truly odd thing about this situation was that Farrell worked as a Google AdWords account specialist.  So if, as Schoemaker accused, Farrell was posting advertisements that infringed on the ShoeMoney trademark, his behavior is rather hard to excuse.

Moreover, it's difficult not to think about what sort of responsibility for the problem Google itself should or shouldn't bear.  And that's where a juicy-if-true bit of gossip enters the equation.  Barry Schwartz writes, "[T]here is a rumor that Farrells agreed to legally testify against Google, if Schoemaker decides to take Google to court."

Also, Schwartz heard that the settlement involves Farrell paying $150,000 to the ShoeMoney Media Group.  So it seems reasonable to believe that any lawsuit Schoemarker brings against Google would name an equal or greater amount.

This will bear watching.  We'll be sure to report any updates.

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