Facebook video ad units could come with TV price tags – Facebook is reportedly prepping to sell its new video ads with an “upfront”-type marketplace and TV-like prices. According to AdAge, Facebook will have four daily summer slots — women over 30, women under 30, men over 30 and men over 30 — with an asking price close to $1 million. The exact ad format hasn’t been locked down, but it is believed that the videos will be 15-seconds long and users will see no more than three per day at launch. It is unclear whether the ads will autoplay in the feed or not.

More Messenger for Android users get free calling - Facebook this week released an update for its Messenger app on Android, bringing free VoiP calling to users in the U.S. and 23 other countries. Previously, this was in testing with Android users in Canada and iOS users in several countries. From Messenger, users can tap the “i” button inside a conversation and then select “Free Call.”
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Facebook today announced a deal with Rovi Corporation to use Rovi Video, a database of information about movies, TV shows and celebrities that can be used to improve search and discovery across its platform.

Rovi’s data helps power experiences like on-screen TV guides, iTunes, Flixter, BestBuy.com and many others. Facebook has been building out its “entity graph,” which are all the people, places and things that are represented with pages. Users primarily connect to these objects by Liking them, but now Facebook is making a push for users to do so through actions like “watch/want to watch,” “read/want to read” or “listen/want to listen.” Improving the metadata associated with these objects could give Facebook new opportunities when it comes to search, News Feed relevance, recommendations and offering new features for developers

Before the Rovi deal, Facebook used Wikipedia and Freebase to populate information about movies, TV shows and other entities, for example for the module on the “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” page below. However, those sources are community-curated and not necessarily as reliable as what Rovi provides for many of the largest companies in the world.

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As the new Timeline and News Feed rolls out to more users, Facebook is providing more ways for users to share stories about the books, movies, TV shows and music in their lives. This week we found ways for users to add movies to their “watched” or “want to watch” lists directly from News Feed. Users can also do the same for other content they find on friends’ profiles.

For example, when users see stories in News Feed about items friends have added to their Timeline, they can click a plus button in the corner of the item and select a list to add it to and who to share it with. This became available for music stories last week, and this week we saw it become part of movie-related stories, such as the one below.

These features encourage users to connect with more pages, which ultimately improves the social network’s ad targeting, search results, News Feed relevance and recommendations.

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Without even having to build any of its own devices, Facebook was everywhere at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. As more products are designed to connect to the Internet, developers are integrating Facebook into everything from televisions to cameras to cars. Users are spending more and more time on the social network, but it is unclear how much of a draw Facebook integration will be for consumers who might start to grow tired of seeing the service in so many products.

TV

All the top television manufacturers and a number of startups are working on “smart” TVs that run apps including Facebook. If consumers follow the plans developers have for them, sharing what shows people are watching will be a big trend in 2012. Several companies showed off products that let people post their viewing habits to Facebook and sort through TV listings based on friends’ activity. DirecTV, for instance, will display what users’ Facebook friends are watching and allow people to view the same shows or record them for later.

Boxee is a streaming device that integrates Open Graph’s “frictionless sharing” capabilities. After two minutes of streaming video through Boxee, a story will be published to users’ Timelines and their friends’ Tickers. Then, similar to what Spotify does, the story could end up in News Feed as its own item or as part of an aggregate story about friends’ similar activity.

Zeebox, which is not a streaming service but an app that turns your mobile device into a new kind of remote, has a similar Timeline integration. Zeebox smartly includes a private viewing mode that lets users continue to see what their friends are watching and chat with people without posting what they are watching to Facebook. Giving users easy-to-use privacy controls is crucial for people to feel comfortable using social TV apps at all.

Yahoo-owned IntoNow is a mobile app that recognizes what show you’re watching by analyzing a sample of the audio, similar to how Shazam can identify songs. People can then choose to make a Facebook post about the show they’re watching. Users can also see synchronized news headlines, sports stats or tweets from people in the show.

In a note on the Facebook + Media page, Facebook also identified Snapstick, Trident and U-verse as partners who are bringing social data to the television experience.

Auto

Mercedes-Benz is bringing Facebook to the car. The company’s upcoming 2013 models will integrate Facebook with the car’s navigation system so drivers can post about where they are going along with an estimated time of arrival based on the current traffic patterns — almost like an advance check-in. Drivers can also discover which of their friends are nearby or whether there are any restaurants in the area that friends have liked or checked into.

The app gives people the option to browse their News Feed when the car is not in motion, but since most people have access to Facebook on their phones and other personal devices, this feature seems superfluous.

Phone

VoIP company Ooma introduced a home phone with photo caller-ID that displays images pulled from the owner’s Facebook, Google and Yahoo friends. Calls between people who are friends on social networking sites are probably more likely to happen on personal mobile devices than home phones, so the integration comes across as gimmicky. Another issue is that users often change their Facebook profile photos, which could confuse someone glancing at the caller-ID, as opposed to on phones where people can choose their own images to associate with a contact.

Photo

Photo sharing from mobile phones is outpacing use of digital point-and-shoots, but camera manufacturers have been fighting the trend by making new cameras that can instantly upload to social sites like Facebook. Kodak introduced two new WiFi-enabled cameras and Samsung announced four of its own. These will be exciting to people who do not have smartphones but otherwise the products seem behind the times.

Kodak also announced two new apps for people to get physical copies their Facebook photos, but neither is innovative. One app lets people design photo books that will be printed and delivered to them. The other makes photo collages people can print at home.

For more about Facebook product integrations at CES, see Facebook Live’s coverage of the conference here.

Recent and older films made up a big chunk of our list of the fastest growing Pages by the number of Facebook Likes this week. There were TV shows, networks and personalities on the list, musicians, a few book-related Pages, a Jesus Page, Facebook’s Page, the Angry Birds Page, YouTube’s and more. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	To Kill a Mockingbird	981,496	+818	+590,786
2.	Luciano Huck	3,039,021	+110,149	+579,173
3.	Fast & Furious	10,387,982	+20,981	+557,508
4.	Adele	7,074,380	+75,733	+447,762
5.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
6.	The Chronicles of Narnia	466,372	+958	+407,834
7.	LMFAO	6,706,010	+63,343	+372,575
8.	Titanic	8,579,954	+52,395	+360,367
9.	Facebook	54,192,261	+46,375	+354,165
10.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
11.	Jesus Daily	9,210,413	+52,597	+328,993
12.	Angry Birds	8,781,264	+46,286	+325,850
13.	YouTube	46,205,001	+41,141	+320,495
14.	The Walking Dead	3,098,095	+86,686	+320,390
15.	Chicago	329,857	+685	+318,962
16.	Pitbull	11,792,725	+45,672	+292,915
17.	Canal Fox	1,245,921	+25,605	+288,246
18.	EDEBİYAT	645,327	+220,503	+284,928
19.	V Energy Drink Australia	309,324	+292	+275,212
20.	Harry Potter	35,797,314	+39,445	+272,174

Movies on our list this week came as the result of popularity, as well as Page consolidations. “To Kill a Mockingbird” grew 590,800 Likes to 981,500 in what appeared to be a consolidation. “Fast & Furious” grew seemingly as the result of the promotion of its most recent home release, by 557,500 Likes to 10.3 million. “Titanic” the Community Page grew by 409,500 Likes to 13.4 million and “Titanic” the Page grew by 360,400 Likes to 8.5 million by promoting a forthcoming 3D version of the film. “Chicago” grew by 319,000 Likes to 329,900, apparently a consolidation. “Harry Potter” grew by 272,200 Likes to 35.7 million, promoting a related sweepstakes.

TV-related Pages include Brazilian TV personality Luciano Huck with 579,200 Likes to pass 3 million fans. The show “The Walking Dead” with 320,400 Likes to grow to 3.1 million with the recent premiere of the show’s season. Finally, Canal Fox is promoting programming in Spanish, including popular TV shows like “The Walking Dead.”

Music on the list included singer Adele whose Page grew by 447,800 Likes to pass 7 million, LMFAO which is promoting its music appearances and grew by 372,600 to reach 6.7 million and finally Pitbull’s Page grew by 292,900 to reach 11.7 million by promoting his media appearances and other activities. Books, meanwhile, made the list, too. “The Chronicles of Narnia” grew by 407,800 to 466,400 Likes while the Turkish literature Page EDEBİYAT grew by 284,900 to 645,300 Likes.

The rest of the list included Facebook with 354,200 Likes to each 54.1 million and facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! with 333,000 Likes to 445,400. Jesus Daily grew by 329,000 Likes to 9.2 million; the Page publishes daily religious posts. The Angry Birds Page grew by 325,900 Likes to 8.7 million. YouTube’s Page grew by 320,500 Likes to 46.2 million. Finally,  V Energy Drink Australia grew seeming in a consolidation by 275,200 to 309,300 Likes.

Facebook is accepting applications from engineers to join a new desktop software team at its Seattle office. The responsibilities of the “Software Engineer, Desktop Software” position we noticed last week include creating Mac and/or Windows desktops apps and building server-side APIs.

Based on several trends and the company’s principles we believe the new team could be working to develop software that reports media usage, such as music listening or video watching habits, so that users could easily share this info with friends. It could also be working on a photo uploader, or less probably, a Facebook internet browser.

Turning Media Consumption Into Facebook Content

The social network is becoming an increasingly important part of entertainment consumption. There are reports that Facebook is working on a deep integration with music streaming service Spotify that could allow users to share music with friends, and even listen to the same song at the same time. Meanwhile, some third-party developers are experimenting with offering film rentals in exchange for Facebook Credits.

With a nearly half of the most popular Facebook Pages belonging to musicians and television shows, the service is already a key source of entertainment news. Since the entertainment people consume is a way they define their identity, desktop software that helps users publish this information could populate Facebook with compelling content without burdening users. The software could turn users into authors of entertainment content, allowing them to easily post what DVDs or video files they watch, or what songs and artists they’re listening to most.

It could function similarly to Last.fm’s scrobbler which reports listening habits from iTunes, iPods, Spotify, Winamp, VLC media player and many web music services. Desktop software could prompt users to Like the Pages of the content they consume, or persistently display there latest consumption habits on their profile. These types of posts or information could also help a user’s friends discover entertainment Pages to Like, which might help draw support for Facebook desktop software from content creators.

Other Potential Desktop Software Projects

The desktop software team could also build a photo uploader that could reduce drop off in the upload process, or allow users to automatically upload photos when they import them from their cameras.

Some third-parties have attempted to build Facebook-centric internet browsers such as Rockmelt and Wowd, but neither have managed to attain significant traction, which may indicate users aren’t in dire need of this type of solution. A browser project could require a lot of engineering resources, and with Facebook’s focus on HTML5, we don’t see this as a probable direction for the desktop software team.

Media usage scrobbling desktop software would align well with Facebook Pages for content creators, and turn entertainment into more of a two-way conversation. With users learning about music, TV, film and other content verticals from both official outlets and their friends, desktop software could make media consumption more social, and make Facebook an even more attractive place for media advertisers.

Cable television’s USA Network recently launched an app called Chatter that allows a specific TV show’s viewers to converse with fellow fans and engage with a streams of official content aggregated from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Flickr, live chat and forums.

Chatter’s synced web and Facebook apps provides a destination for real-time conversation and auxiliary content consumption around TV shows that can increase participation and live viewership.

USA Digital first launched the HTML5 web version of Chatter in October for its shows Burn Notice and Psych. Chatter features three streams: a feed of “All” user and official content; a “Curated” feed of just content from official accounts, writers, actors, and producers; and a “Live” feed which displays uStream question and answer sessions with talent from the shows when available. Chatter posts from users may also be shown on a ticker during the broadcast of TV shows, adding an extra incentive to participate.

It launched the iframe Facebook Page tab app version at the beginning of May for the pro wrestling show Tough Enough and it inspired a 10% increase in user wall posts to the show’s Page. Users can invite their friends using an invite button (which actually produces a share dialog).  As the web and Facebook versions of the app are synced versions of the app are hosted on the show’s site and Facebook Page, there are multiple access points for the aggregated content.

Without Chatter, fans would have to bounce between bounce between all of a show’s different branded content channels. This friction leads to drop-off, and prevents cross-channel conversation where users might read a tweet or a view a YouTube video but could reply through Facebook. It also limits the reach of content posted to any one channel.

Jesse Redniss, vice president of digital for USA Network, tells us that giving added exposure to user generated content through Chatter “makes the fan environment more inviting because it’s not a blackhole.” Early response to the Chatter has been positive. It has reached a peak of 25,000 concurrent users and 250,000 unique users to date, with an average of 20% of users actively submitting content.

Redniss explained that it was essential for the app to live on Facebook and pull in data from the social network because Facebook is more conversational, whereas it wasn’t seeing as high a rate of replies to its Twitter accounts. On Twitter there is “less of an overall community response. On Facebook a piece of content might get 600 Likes. That has a large impact that we haven’t seen from Twitter.”

In June, Chatter will be rolled out on Pages for all of USA’s shows. The development team hopes to add private fan-to-fan chat, and it is working with Facebook to offer exclusive content to those that invite their friends in a manner that doesn’t violate policy. The team should also consider allowing users to opt to cross-post what they write in Chatter to Facebook and Twitter to increase virality.

Chatter centralizes conversations and auxiliary official content to create a real-time secondary form of entertainment that encourages users to post show-related content to their networks by giving it additional visibility to other serious fans.

The conversation also incentivizes users to experience live television broadcasts. This should make the Chatter concept appeal to all TV studios and networks as they see their audiences drift towards piracy, watching through a DVR where they can skip commercials, or through an online streaming service which generate fewer ad dollars and cross-promotion opportunities.

At the TV of Tomorrow conference today in San Francisco, Facebook’s Director of Media Partnerships Justin Osofsky revealed that 275 million users have Liked a TV show on Facebook. Those that have Like an average of six shows, which means there’s been roughly 1.65 billion Likes of TV shows. 17 of the 100 most Liked Pages represent TV shows.

These statistics indicate that TV studios should consider increasing their marketing efforts on Facebook to take advantage of the organic interest in Liking Pages of TV shows. Through Pages, they can strengthen fan loyalty, increase viewership, and sell merchandise.

With DVD sales slipping and more viewers moving towards online streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu that earn less for content producers and studios, the TV industry needs to keep fan loyalty high. Liking a TV show has become a common practice — not one reserved for just a show’s biggest fans, causing Facebook Pages to emerge as a powerful medium for increasing this loyalty.

Pages for shows such as Family Guy (30.2 million Likes), South Park (26.7 million), Two and a Half Men (18.8 million), and Glee (13.7 million) have converted their strong brands into huge followings without relying on advertising. This is because years of great content have led users to actually feel the shows help define their identity, so they’re happy to share their affinity with friends.

These Pages use their updates to announce air-times of episodes, offer video clips, direct user to studio websites where they can stream shows, and encourage fans to buy t-shirts and DVDs. Some shows post exclusive content, such as interviews with actors and directors, so Liking their Pages becomes essential to getting the full experience.

Pages for characters from shows offer additional opportunities for communication. For instance Sheldon Cooper, a character played by Jim Parsons on the show The Big Bang Theory has 4.9 million fans, and posts in character to deepen the connection between fans and the program.

Some shows with popular Pages aren’t utilizing their enormous fan bases, though. For example, the Page for character Dr. House of the Fox show House has 19.9 million Likes and is growing at nearly a million Likes a month, but hasn’t posted any content since April 2010

Similar to music which claims 44 of the top 100 Pages as of May, the potential ROI for Facebook marketing of television is high because Liking Pages for shows feel natural, dissimilar to Liking Pages of brands. By creating Pages for their shows and characters, and updating them frequently with relevant news and exclusive content, TV studios can capitalize on the inherent interest of users.

We saw the return of the Omar ibn al-Khattab, a key leader in early Islam, at the top of our list of the 20 fastest growing Facebook Pages this week. Additionally there were some tech companies, lots of musicians, the Converse shoe company, more sports and some entertainment-related Pages. The Pages on our list grew from between 330,400 and 727,700 Likes, we measure the growth of Pages with our PageData tool.

Top Gainers This Week

Name Likes Gain Gain,% 1. عمر ابن الخطاب 727,702 +727,702 +0.0% 2. Facebook 40,333,199 +473,997 +1% 3. Shakira 29,012,149 +448,334 +2% 4. Disney 22,856,949 +445,125 +2% 5. Harry Potter 23,221,309 +435,504 +2% 6. Rihanna 32,633,191 +433,660 +1% 7. Texas Hold’em Poker 42,631,144 +416,427 +0.99% 8. Eminem 35,875,795 +416,084 +1% 9. MTV 21,434,720 +385,417 +2% 10. YouTube 33,232,646 +371,453 +1% 11. Vin Diesel 23,464,376 +370,363 +2% 12. Cristiano Ronaldo 25,778,171 +367,262 +1% 13. Bob Marley 24,324,471 +366,354 +2% 14. Will Smith 17,827,214 +361,399 +2% 15. Manchester United 13,637,254 +356,622 +3% 16. Lady Gaga 34,007,858 +347,162 +1% 17. The Simpsons 26,193,383 +345,593 +1% 18. BeÅŸiktaÅŸ 341,384 +341,384 +0.0% 19. Converse 16,373,766 +338,393 +2% 20. AKON 22,192,621 +330,396 +2%

The Omar ibn al-Khattab Page topped our list this week with 727,700 new Likes, another sign of Facebook’s ongoing growth in Muslim countries; the landing Page asks users to Like the Page and other Islam-related Pages. There were no other religion-oriented Pages on our list this week, but there were a pair of tech companies. Facebook’s Page followed with a drastically smaller 474,000 Likes and its total tops 40 million and YouTube with 371,500 with a total of 33 million.

Musicians came next. Shakira’s Page with a total of 29 million is currently promoting her tour with video blogs, and added 448,300 Likes this week. Rihanna’s Page, with a BandPage by RootMusic landing tab, is promoting her new album and singles, as well as releasing album art, fan promotions and videos on her Facebook Wall. The total on her Page is 32.6 million, she added 433,700 Likes this week. Eminem’s 416,100 new Likes to his 35.8 million total came without any Page updates, although his Page’s landing tab is now a Vevo music video tab.

Bob Marley’s Page added 366,400 Likes to his 24.3 million total; the Page has evolved considerably since it sprang up last year and now includes a landing tab that details the singer’s life. The Wall features related information, videos and photos. Lady Gaga was on the list with 347,200 new Likes to pass 34 million; she also has a Vevo music landing tab, and has been promoting her new single. Rounding out the musicians this week was singer Akon, who added 330,400 Likes to his 22.1 million total fans. His Page is promoting his latest single with a RootMusic landing tab that also promotes his tour.

Entertainment-related Pages made up a big chunk of the rest of the list.

There’s “Harry Potter” with 435,500 new Likes and a 23.2 million total; the Page has been promoting its stars and press coverage. Disney, with 22.8 million total Likes and 445,100 new Likes this week, promotes its related Pages on a landing tab and has been publishing photos related to its films. Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker added 416,400 Likes to its 42.6 million total. MTV added 385,400 Likes to its 21.4 million by promoting its content and programming. Celebrities Vin Diesel (370,400 new Likes and 23.4 million total) and Will Smith (361,400 new Likes and 17.8 million total) were on the list and seem to just spontaneously grow their fan bases. Then there was “The Simpsons” with 345,600 new Likes to its 26.1 million fan base.

Sports Pages were on the list, too. Cristiano Ronaldo’s 25.7 million fans grew by 367,300 Likes this week; he mostly just shares basic comments about his game playing. Then Manchester United’s Page grew by 356,600 Likes to grow to 13.6 million; the Page has a landing tab urging users to invite their friends. Then the Beşiktaş1903 Page, a Turkish football (soccer) club, added 341,400 Likes. The last Page on the list, Converse, grew by 338,400 Likes to reach 16.3 million, in part by offering 15 free iTunes downloads for users and promoting sales specials on the Page.

Our featured Facebook campaigns this week employed a variety of tactics to draw Likes, customers and generate news feed items. Expedia created a detailed vacation contest application to draw in users, IKEA in the United Kingdom uses a battle of the sexes voting system in its new campaign, The Weather Channel is offering a vacation in exchange for photo submissions, and Jennifer Lopez is asking for Likes to release her songs on iTunes ahead of schedule.

We’ve excerpted two of the campaigns below. You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of dozens of other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Expedia’s FriendTrips

Goal: Engagement, Product Purchase, Network Exposure, Page Growth

Core Mechanic: An interactive application allowing users to enter to win one of 13 paid vacations around the world.

Game: The game consists of users selecting from thirteen “FriendTrips” once they’ve Liked the Expedia Page. Users have to enter their contact information and then may invite 5 friends to join them on the trip. The app publishes feed stories to each friend invited, and also publishes a story when you finish inviting your friends on the trip.

Method: The app encourages virality by incentivizing people to invite Facebook friends or get their friends to participate in the app, as well as by giving out 4 $250 cash prizes a day for users who interact with the app, either by rating/adding photos or stories.

Impact: Since up to six feed stories are generated per user, and the promotion is Like-gated, the Expedia Page has grown significantly in recent days. A New York Times story from March 31 showed the Page’s Likes at just under 130,000; today that number was at 153,300 and growing.

IKEA UK’s Peace, Love and Storage

Goal: Product Purchase, Engagement, Page Growth, Network Exposure

Core Mechanic: Through a Facebook-centric campaign, IKEA in the UK is trying to get consumers to talk about whether men or women are “messier,” and then suggest which of their products can help these consumers remedy that problem.

Method: A Facebook application asks users to vote whether men or women are messier. After giving permission, the app publishes the vote to the user’s wall, shows an interactive media interface displaying what other Facebook users are saying about who is messier, and a gallery of IKEA products to help alleviate that messiness. According to a company press release, the campaign allows users to join a debate on Facebook or Mumsnet, and the TV ad for IKEA points back to the Facebook application.

Impact: The IKEA UK Page currently has just under 1,000 Likes, so there’s potential for lots of growth. Because the “battle of the sexes” topic is an engaging theme that people are likely to talk about anyway — especially when it comes to domestic cleanliness — the campaign effectively draws engagement.

How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of dozens of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.