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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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RockYou may be well known for its photo-sharing apps that have become rather popular on social networks like Facebook. But this company, which grew in fame thanks to its use of the widget prior to the days of integrated applications on networks’ platforms, has also been growing its own network approach, specifically in terms of advertising.

Today RockYou is announcing two new options for its ad network, including cross-platform video distribution, application integration and improved targeting of application ads within a given social network.
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As part of our work at GeniusRocket, a D.C. startup that crowdsources creative content, we researched some of the trends in viral video (as of July 2008) that confirmed certain assumptions and challenged several widely held beliefs.

After looking at the 1) Top 50 Viral Videos of the Year, 2) Top 50 YouTube Videos in a Typical Day, and 3) Top 50 Viral Ads of the Year, we can share some insights that are useful whether you are a Brand Manager or have ambitions to be the next Tay Zonday.

Top 50 Viral Videos of the Year: 5 Lessons
#1: The most viral content is usually corporate content.
#2: The most viral content is posted on hundreds of blogs.
#3: The most viral content is usually OVER 1 minute in length.
#4: The most viral content occurs in the following categories (by frequency): 1. Music 2. Ads 3. Politics 4. Comedy 5. Animals 6. Sexy 7. Tech 8. Strange
#5: The thumbnails of the most viral videos nearly always depict humans (particularly faces), not objects.
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Earlier this week Triana Global, a social platform ad network, contacted me to let me know about a new offer they are providing: a $0.15 CPM or $0.08 CPC guaranteed payout for all social network application publishers. It’s an offering that Lookery has offered developers since early on. Personally I haven’t heard of Triana Global but they are based in Sydney, Australia which may be one reason I haven’t heard of them.

What’s unique about Triana Global? Based on their website there isn’t really anything that unique. Just like numerous other ad networks they are promoting that they are one of the first ad networks on social platforms. The company currently provides advertisers with geo-targeting, application targeting, and demographic targeting. Oh and they also provide one other thing: consulting and development services.

What?!? Apparently Triana Global hasn’t heard the term “conflict of interest”. While it’s not a clear conflict of interest, offering to develop applications which build inventory for your network detracts from the time their staff could be focused on selling the available inventory. As such we have seen partnerships like the one recently announced by Social Media and Buddy Media in which Buddy Media builds the applications and Social Media helps promote them.

Hey Triana Global, you might want to focus on advertising not on development! Who is currently in Triana Global’s portfolio? We have no idea! Also, why would you go with Triana Global’s guarantee when a company like Lookery, which has been around for over a year, already offers the exact same deal? Again, we have no idea. Let us know if you can find the answer to any of these questions!

“I don’t use VideoEgg anymore.” Just hours into the Graphing Social Patterns East conference, I have heard multiple developers tell me how they no longer use VideoEgg to fill their inventory. The problem? Same as it was 12 months ago. VideoEgg doesn’t have enough inventory to fill the massive demand for it. It also happens to be the same problem I wrote about this morning: the demand is practically limitless.

Initially VideoEgg was known for their great CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) but even that has begun to dwindle toward the $1.00 mark. To add fuel to the fire, VideoEgg has around 100 employees which helps them burn through their $27 million in funding. As it should be, most of their employee base works on the sales team. So where is their sales team located? Not in New York, London or L.A. where the advertisers are. They are working out of their office in San Francisco.

The company surely doesn’t need an extremely large sales team to go pitch the San Francisco Giants. I shouldn’t be completely down on the company though. They have an amazing ad system and some of the dynamic ads that they display have incredible quality. Take a look at the VideoEgg website to see examples.

VideoEgg has a short amount of time to get their team under control though. The company has hired a team of people which aren’t able to produce as far as I can tell. Every developer I’ve spoken with has dropped the company due to their inability to fill inventory. In a world where the ad companies must satisfy developers, VideoEgg is failing and despite their substantial funding they have already damaged their reputation. Do you think the company can be saved?