Meebo, the chat widget tool, had already launched its own ad network some time ago. Now the company is launching ads on its own partner network, with Toyota being the first marketer to advertise. With 85 publishers signed up for its partner network, Meebo is enabling brands to run ads on a larger scale directly through Meebo’s company, with the same results they’ve grown accustomed to on Meebo.com.

What’s this really mean? In Meebo’s long-standing effort to expand its own network, web presence and visibility, the integrated communication tool has launched several tools and gained several partners, many of which have teamed up with the company for marketing purposes. This is in part due to the fact that Meebo’s integrated communication tools enable brands to connect directly with consumers through multimedia brand messages, chat, and advertisements. On the consumer end, these communication tools provide great channels for product and brand discussion as well as valuable feedback that marketers can use in their larger data pools.
(more…)

Virtual goods has become one way in which to monetize social media applications, and entire marketplace has cropped up around this. Services such as Offerpal have established monetization solutions for such socially inegrated virtual economies, from games to mobile applications.

Months after raising $15 million in funding, a new update from Offerpal extends more customization capabilities for clients. In what appears to be an enhanced dashboard option, Offerpal is launching a virtual currency analytics package for social applications and destination sites. Participants can track activity as well as monetization performance for their specific campaigns.
(more…)

Whenever a platform becomes a standard, there are usually other companies that create platforms atop this initial one in order to help facilitate the available actions between third party developers and that platform. Such is the case with AdWhirl, which has announced a $1 million round of funding led by Foundation Capital.
(more…)

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently released its guidelines for social media ad metrics as well as best practices, reports B to B. The documents aim to set definitions, common metrics and industry best practices that are specific to the growing field of social media advertising.
(more…)

Offerpal Media has teamed up with virtual social network IMVU to offer another monetization option within the virtual goods realm. With the partnership, Offerpal will extend another way for IMVU users to earn credits, which are used as currency for the virtual world. As Offerpal Media has created a platform specifically for social networks, applications, games and virtual worlds with offer-based options extended to users, the partnership between these two companies seems as though it will be mutually beneficial to both parties. The partnership comes weeks after Offerpal Media received $15 million in funding to grow its social ads model.

IMVU already has a large user base, with virtual goods being at the center of its social network. With a reported 35 million registered users and a catalog of virtual items to be purchased and exchanged, IMVU is well established i its own virtual economy. At this point, we’re finding that virtual-based networks and other social networks are seeking deeper integration with other forms of revenue-generation to expand the earning potential of their virtual economy. To that end, incorporating ads into virtual economies has been a growing trend for virtual world networks and various types of social media applications, even if they’re not based on virtual worlds.
(more…)

After acquiring AddThis last year, Clearspring set out to grow its own web presence and make its media-sharing tools as accessible as possible to social media users across the globe. We’ve received an update from Clearspring, following up on its acquisition. So far, the follow-up looks good, and provides an encouraging look at Clearpring’s swift integration of the AddThis distribution platform for sharing web content.

Clearspring cites the April comScore report showing a great deal of growth, reaching over half a billion people. That’s up from the 200 million web users Clearspring reached prior to the acquisition of AddThis, more than doubling its web presence.
(more…)

Super Rewards is expanding it’s turnkey CPA solution for publishers to offer them more custom features and control over their integrated marketing campaigns. As a CPA company, Super Rewards works by providing incentive-based offers to end users, which in turn become virtual currency for them within the publishers’ programs for which they’re being used. In order to give more control to the publishers using Super Rewards’ platform, the company is a more advanced suite of features for determining the way in which these incentive-based offers are extended to users.

“There seems to be a dial that moves between making as much money as fast as possible, and creating a quality user experience,” says Super Rewards CEO and co-founder Jason Bailey in an interview last week. “Putting the power in the hand of the publishers for where they want the dial to sit,” Bailey continues, is the main objective for Super Rewards’ latest update, moving the company forward.
(more…)

Ad networks pride themselves in offering targeting options for optimal ad placement, and Resonate Networks is one such ad company that provides options for niche advertising as well. As an ad network specific for public affairs, political and corporate campaigns, Resonate Networks launches as a differentiated solution for a unique set of industries.
(more…)

Offerpal Media, one of the advertising platforms that works on social applications, communities, games and more, has announced the close of a $15 million Series B round of funding led by D.E. Shaw Ventures. Participation also comes from existing investors InterWest Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. The funding will go towards the development of its monetization platform, along with the creation of new tools for web publishers to earn revenue online.

The last we heard from Offerpal, it had created an “onboarding” feature for MySpace applications, meaning developers leveraging the MySpace platform could more readily implement Offerpal’s advertising services. At the time of launch, it was too soon for us to know whether or not Offerpal’s claims to experience nearly equal activity on MySpace as it is on Facebook means anything for engagement and end-benefits for advertisers and developers using Offerpal’s CPA model.
(more…)

Online brand advertising measurement system Vizu has teamed up with three other ad companies that deal specifically with brand advertisement within social networks. AdNectar, Buddy Media and Lotame are all using Vizu’s Ad Catalyst brand ad measurement system to extend the feature set of their own products. Given the social media directives of these other ad companies, there’s a reason they’ve all chosen Vizu’s Ad Catalyst system.

The ads used in social networks are decidedly different from those found on other sites, and as ads continue to evolve within the social media realm, the way in which a brand marketing success is measured must change with time as well. That’s where Vizu comes in.
(more…)