Snap Notes: On Advertising in the Social App/Network Space

1) Text ads/banner ads might not be the best fit for this space. Need to get creative here about integrating advertising experience into the content experience more seamlessly. Examples include integrating a product or brand into the content itself to lower the intrusion level.

2) People generally aren’t looking for products on social networks. They’re too busy looking for other people. If users are clicking ads and navigate outside of the social platform, it could mean they are not engaging enough on the platform. In other words, more clicks on ads, less engagement on social networking, and vice versa.

3) More ads aren’t always going to be the answer. If you show users 50 ads over an hour, they will ignore them. If you show users only 4 ads over that time, they’re more likely to pay attention.

4) Along with this, you need to define “successful” advertising for yourself. If you value coverage, then velocity is an appropriate metric. If you value the amount of brain time a user spends on an ad, measure CTR x session time.

5) Give users a choice. For example, an online poker site allows users to purchase chips or get free chips if they agree to look at the advertising. Or give a user a quiz that he wants to take, and then offer ads at the ejavascript:void(0)
Save Nownd that directly cater to that quiz and the user’s interest at the time.

6) Monetize your most valuable users (not just as many people as possible). If you have a million users who each spend $100 on your site and a billion users who only spend $0.10 each, focus on those top million. Know what they are doing because to advertisers, they have a higher quality of attention. In general, the better you know what your users are doing, the better you can monetize it.

Snap Notes: On User Engagement

1) How invested is the user? How much pain does he feel if he leaves the site? Maybe take some points from game design – use points, leaderboards, prizes, virtual currencies, reward incentives. This works better in the short term.

2) Also along gaming lines, give people missions and goals. Example: Scrabulous is extremely popular on Facebook. The game itself is not new; it’s the competition that draws people’s attention.

3) The most successful apps are ones that users use constantly. “Productive” apps tend not to be ones that users will use every day.

4) CTR doesn’t seem to be the right metric for this environment. Numerous panel members cited “daily active users” as a necessary (but not sufficient) stat to keep an eye on. Other proposed metrics include: how deep do users go, how long does it take for user to get tired of the feature(s), session time, bounce rate, and number of uninstalls.

5) Any successful app needs to understand its user base. (This panel posited that the future lies in segmentation – general purpose networks may have more issues to contend with.)

6) Make it really easy to use an app – a max of 2 clicks, if possible. Design for lazy people.

7) All viral channels decay. All users inevitably get bored. Need to keep adding new features (duh). - Rapid product cycle: show your momentum, growth is not enough (i.e. TIVO).

8) Social distribution – Application must have social angle – credibility matters.

9) Launch winning apps is half arts, half science. It is an interaction of psychology and web analytics.

10) The general order of priorities for these apps has been: growth à depth (keeping users) à revenue.

11) There’s less room for error on mobile because a phone is much more personal to a user and they will not tolerate anything spam-like on it. It’s a very pristine channel.

Snap Notes: Social Interface Design – Some Suggested Guidelines

1) The personal value of a service precedes its network/social value. Is your service valuable even if a user’s friends don’t use it?

2) Tie behavior to identity (Examples: Amazon user reviews, Ebay seller feedback).

3) Give recognition (Example: Top Diggers). It’s better when the recognition is given by the group itself, and when the recognition isn’t permanent or cumulative, so new users/contributors aren’t disadvantaged.

4) Show causation – Let the user know what his/her action is doing (Example: Providing Netflix with ratings helps them make better recommendations for the user). Even experts want to be reminded of the “rules”.

5) Leverage reciprocity. People contribute/post comments not because they are purely altruistic, even if they say they are. In the end, they want their comments to be read - it’s all about “ME.” Be cognizant of that “give and take”. (Example: Yelp users later said they wanted to see how many people were reading their review/profile.)

Notes from SNAP summit

Some notes from the recent SNAP summit, notes were prepared by few colleagues of mine (Thanks James, Elsa and Tracy. These are on building social applications, I am breaking it into 3 posts...

SNAP is a summit that focussed on the business and design of social applications: how to attract users and keep them engaged, how to monetize and advertise, and what to watch out for in the future.

http://www.snapsummit.com/