Van Dyck, who worked at Apple and Wieden+Kennedy before Levi’s, will bring important branding experience to Facebook. An initial public offering this year will put more pressure on the company to improve its image. Although it has in eight years become one of the most well-known brands in the world, it ranks among the lowest in consumer satisfaction. With Google heavily promoting an alternative social network, Facebook will need to be strategic in coming years.

Facebook significantly increased its marketing and advertising efforts in 2011. It spent $28 million in advertising last year — up from $8 million in 2010, according to IPO documents. The social network runs Google AdWords and Facebook ad campaigns. (We have reached out to Facebook to clarify how its house ads are billed.) The company has recently formed a number of partnerships with media companies like NBC, the New York Times, USA Today and Politico to build its brand.

Facebook mentioned in its IPO filing that unfavorable press coverage could negatively affect its business. This is true for any company, but it is notable that Facebook included it in the risk factors section of its prospectus. Google and LinkedIn did not.

Google ran a number of television commercials last year promoting its social network and other products. Facebook could follow suit, but since CEO Mark Zuckerberg is known to be skeptical of traditional advertising, the company could be looking to try other types of campaigns.

Van Dyck was recently involved in Levi’s “Go Forth” initiative, in which the company donated more than $1 million to renovate a community center and aid an urban farming program in Braddock, Pa. Facebook was likely most interested in Van Dyck’s experience with Apple where she worked for seven years and helped with launches of the iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTunes.

Image credit: Rebecca Van Dyck’s LinkedIn profile

Facebook, USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter - Involver is powering Facebook and USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter on Facebook.com/sports and other pages. The app allows users to see, rate and share Super Bowl ads before, during and after the game via web or mobile.

Most users get big social return from Facebook – A study from the Pew Research Internet Project found that most users receive more social feedback than they put into the platform. This is due to the fact that there’s a small percentage of power users that is extremely active in liking, commenting and providing other social feedback on the site.

Bday Gift Finder uses data to find gifts – Bday’s Bday Gift Finder is an app that allows users to find the right gifts for friends by utilizing user data to settle on the most appropriate gift card. The app analyzes Likes and the sentiment attached to those Likes. Bday recently received $2 million in Series A funding.

Facebook, USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter - Involver is powering Facebook and USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter on Facebook.com/sports and other pages. The app allows users to see, rate and share Super Bowl ads before, during and after the game via web or mobile.

Most users get big social return from Facebook – A study from the Pew Research Internet Project found that most users receive more social feedback than they put into the platform. This is due to the fact that there’s a small percentage of power users that is extremely active in liking, commenting and providing other social feedback on the site.

Bday Gift Finder uses data to find gifts – Bday’s Bday Gift Finder is an app that allows users to find the right gifts for friends by utilizing user data to settle on the most appropriate gift card. The app analyzes Likes and the sentiment attached to those Likes. Bday recently received $2 million in Series A funding.

More than 425 million users accessed Facebook from mobile devices in December 2011 — up 21 percent since September 2011, and 70 percent since March 2011. In its filing for an initial public offering, the company acknowledged business will suffer if it cannot monetize this space. The global mobile advertising market was $1.5 billion in 2010 and is expected to grow to $17.6 billion in 2015, according to the filing.

Here we break down the social network’s options for mobile advertising.

Sponsored Stories – Most Likely
Sponsored Stories promote users’ interactions with pages, whether it’s liking a page, liking a particular post, checking into a place or using an app. This is the most probable way Facebook will bring advertising to the mobile experience, and the company even mentioned it in its filing for an initial public offering. Because Sponsored Stories require a person’s friend to validate a piece of content by interacting with it in some way before it is shown as an ad, Facebook is not giving companies a direct ticket into the News Feed. The social network has already added Sponsored Stories to Ticker and is in the early stages of testing them in News Feed. The lack of negative feedback from users could lead Facebook to bring Sponsored Stories to mobile without backlash sometime this year. We detailed what mobile Sponsored Stories might mean for advertisers here.

Mobile Ad Network – Likely
Facebook could eventually develop something similar to Google AdSense and AdMob, which allows websites and mobile apps to display ads that are targeted based on information Google has collected. This would be the most ambitious approach both technically and in terms of how it could expand Facebook’s business. This could be years away, but seems like an obvious direction for the company to achieve its full revenue potential.

Page Post Ads - Less Likely
Currently page owners can use Marketplace to promote their posts as an ad unit on the right hand side of the site. Facebook could introduce sponsored page posts into the mobile News Feed, but it might not want to allow companies to pay their way directly into people’s streams. Twitter does this, however, and it does not seem to have a significant negative effect.

Check-in Deals – Possible But Not Likely
Since being released in November 2010, check-in deals have been a free, self-serve option for businesses to offer deals to customers who indicate to their friends that they visited a place. While it is possible for Facebook to charge to feature deals, it is unlikely the company would implement a fee for something that was formerly free. Check-in deals have not been a runaway success, so it would be difficult to convince businesses to pay for something they didn’t take advantage of at no cost.

Location-Based Push Advertising – Unlikely 
Advertisers would be more interested in a location-based solution that pushed messages out to users, particularly since Facebook’s demographic and interest data would provide a new layer of targeting beyond location. Location-based push advertising is typically opt-in, and it would be very controversial for Facebook not to do the same. Perhaps by liking a page and opting in to location-based push notifications, users could receive messages and deals on their phones based on where they were. Users, however, might be wary of letting Facebook track their location at all times.

Mobile Banner Ads – Very Unlikely
Facebook has never given ads much real estate on the site. Even now with up to seven ads on the right hand side of the page, sponsored content gets a small percentage of screen space. We do not envision Facebook giving up room to banner-style ads in its mobile experience. If the company did, these ads would likely have a strict format with text and perhaps a small thumbnail, as Facebook requires for its online display ads.

Interstitial Ads - Very Unlikely
Interstitial ads pop up between actions and typically require users to wait a certain amount of time before moving onto what they had been doing within an app. While popular in many free apps, it would be highly out of character for Facebook to compromise user experience in this way. This is by far the most unlikely, if not unimaginable, option for Facebook to employ.

In its S-1 filing earlier today, Facebook revealed that it took steps to increase the reserve price in its advertising auction system, which increased the minimum bid for some advertisers.

[...] in the fourth quarter of 2011, we increased the reserve price (i.e., the minimum price threshold) in our advertising auction system in order to reduce the frequency with which low quality ads are displayed to users. This change caused a reduction in the overall number of ads shown and increased the average price per ad as a result of factors including the removal of ads with bids that were below the reserve price and some advertisers raising their bids in response to this change.

Gradual increases to the reserve price could be the primary means by which Facebook increases revenue as demand for Facebook ads grows in upcoming years. When the reserve price increases, advertisers with the lowest bids are priced out of their ads being displayed and react by increasing their bids. This subsequently pushes the competition to raise bids. In effect, bid prices cascade upwards as advertisers with the lowest bids force higher bids from advertisers above them.

The new format takes advantage of horizontal space so that photos can be presented larger and the information and conversation are still visible, instead of forcing users to scroll down to see comments as they do currently. The team at Facebook also appears to be talking to professional photographers for feedback, according to public status updates and comments from employees.

We’ve seen screenshots of two versions of the new display. Both are lightbox style, meaning the image is shown in an overlay rather than a new page, which Facebook first implemented in September 2010. One version uses buttons similar to the design used on Timeline and the activity log. It puts the “Tag Photo” and “Edit” options above the image.

Another version makes some calls to action more prominent by putting them on top of the image when users hover over the photo. A user with the new photo viewer says the display adjusts to the size of the browser, but we have not been able to test the responsiveness ourselves.

On one screenshot we’ve seen, two ads were very prominent. The other screenshots we received were of photos that had several more comments, pushing advertisements down or away completely. Currently most ads are not visible in the photo lightbox unless a user scrolls down.

Both designs offer a cleaner interface than Facebook’s existing photos product, which includes more than a dozen buttons, some with repeating functions (see image below). The new format seems to put all of these options under a single drop-down menu. Some users might not realize all the actions they can take, but this way the focus is mostly on the photo and the conversation around it.

According to Facebook, more than 250 million photos are uploaded to the social network each day.

Thanks to Zoltán Faludi, Ivan Brezak Brkan and Rehman Abdur for the tip and screenshots.

Adding more ads to the same page could reduce clickthrough rates because it increases competition and pushes ads down to parts of the page that users might not see, but it could increase revenue for the social network. Advertisers might be concerned that as Facebook increases the amount of information it includes on fan pages, fewer ads can be seen without scrolling. When some fan pages are viewed in smaller browser windows, none of Facebook’s display ads are visible at all.

Timeline pages typically have fewer ads. We’ve seen one to two ads at a time on the new profile, which might be why the company is testing more ads on other pages. [Update 1/27/12 1:26 p.m.: Some users tell us they have seen up to four ads on Timeline.] Facebook is also testing the orientation of ads on Timeline. Ads have alternated between horizontal and vertical formats in the past week. The size of a user’s browser can affect the way ads are shown.

The social network earns the majority of its revenue from advertising so optimizing the frequency and positioning of ads is important. Facebook clearly has enough inventory to increase the number of ads it shows on each page, but it must balance that with maintaining quality user experience and a level of performance that will keep advertisers coming back to the platform.

Facebook began displaying six ads at once in November. At that time the Help Center said up to five ads would show on a given page. The Help Center has since been updated to say up to six ads may be shown, but we have seen instances of seven ads at a time.

Scoring a deal with Vevo would be a huge win for Facebook over Google. The social network drives a lot of traffic for videos around the web, but is not a video destination itself. Vevo is an industry-backed website for music videos that are also syndicated on YouTube. According to CNET, the discussions are very preliminary — Vevo’s contract with Google is not up for another year yet – but could result in an ad revenue sharing model similar to what Google and Vevo have now. In November 2011, the NY Post reported that Vevo was looking to renegotiate its deal with Google, which since 2009 has given the company 35 percent of its revenue from the ads played before Vevo’s videos on YouTube.

According to ComScore, Google was the top online video content property in December with 157.2 million unique viewers, mostly on YouTube.com. Vevo ranked second with 53.7 million, and Facebook was fifth overall with 42 million. Vevo, though, is YouTube’s top channel overall, with over 53 billion views generating major revenue for both companies.

What Google could lose, Facebook stands to gain and possibly improve upon. Although YouTube is far and away the most popular video site in terms of unique viewers and time spent per viewer, it has not capitalized on its opportunity as a social network. There is little incentive for users to log in to YouTube and the site is filled with spam and hate from anonymous commenters. Google is likely looking for ways to incorporate Google+ to address these issues, but it’s interesting to see how Vevo is already using Facebook on its standalone site.

Vevo has Open Graph integration, which means that when users watch videos on Vevo.com, the activity shows in Ticker, Timeline and News Feed. When people watch the same videos on Vevo’s YouTube channel, the activity is not shared on Facebook. Vevo.com also uses the Facebook comments plugin, which surfaces comments from a user’s friends first and helps demote spam. Vevo.com similarly includes Like buttons that YouTube does not.

The social network currently offers video ads as a premium unit on the homepage, but because the units are small and opt-in, they are not ideal for advertisers who can get guaranteed views on other sites that run pre-roll ads. Facebook wants to preserve the user experience by keeping ads minimal, but billions of Vevo views suggest many users will accept these ads. A partnership with Facebook could allow Vevo ads to play directly in News Feed and Timeline. Currently Vevo.com links do not embed video on Facebook. Videos from Vevo’s YouTube channel do play directly within Facebook, but do not include pre-roll ads.

What is unclear, though, is how deeply the social network would incorporate music videos into its core product. For instance, Facebook could make Vevo videos discoverable from search as opposed to requiring users to visit a canvas app. The company positions itself as a platform for others to build upon, not a media site like MySpace, but to compete with Google, Facebook has to offer Vevo a bigger or at least more profitable audience.

Small business owners in the U.S. that manage pages on the social network can enter the contest through an app on the Facebook Marketing Solutions page. Entrants with 50 Likes on their page when they sign up for the contest will receive a $50 ad credit for the site. Pages that gain 100 new Likes during the contest period will earn another $100 ad credit. The ten pages with the most new fans will win $10,000 in Facebook ads. In September, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced the company would give $50 advertising credits to up to 200,000 small businesses but did not explain how. This appears to be part of that program, but we have not gotten a response yet from Facebook.

Although the contest materials encourage page owners to increase their Likes, they do not offer practical tips about how to do so. This oversight could lead small business owners to try to grow their pages in ways that devalue the Like — for instance, getting distant friends to Like a business they do not frequent. Contest rules prohibit page owners from obtaining Likes by setting up fake accounts and incentivizing users to Like the page in ways that violate Facebook page terms. However, these guidelines are written as legal documents that might be confusing for many page owners.

The company is hosting events, also called Small Business Boost, around the country to provide tips about how to use the social network to increase business. These events are put on in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business.

The contest, oddly, has not been mentioned in a post on the Facebook Marketing Solutions page, though the app to enter is there. Some page owners, however, have received emails directing them to the site.

CEO and co-founder Sheldon Owen said Unified takes an enterprise approach to social advertising to give companies one system to manage campaigns from creative and planning stages to reporting and analytics. As businesses try campaigns on a number of new platforms, they can find themselves struggling to put things in perspective and understand how social media makes an impact. Unified’s Social Operating Platform calculates earned media and ROI by automating what many advertisers do manually through spreadsheets.

For example, a companies might use the Social Operating Platform to run Facebook ads to bring new fans to a page. In addition to setting a cost per action goal for the campaign, advertisers can assign values to other relevant metrics that are not otherwise included in an ad report. An advertiser paying $1 per fan might believe wall posts and comments are engagements with viral reach worth $0.20 each. The Social Operating Platform uses the Facebook API to display all of an advertiser’s performance indicators in one dashboard and calculate earned media value.

One problem might be that advertisers might not know what sort of value to place on a YouTube share or Twitter @ reply, for instance. Besides offering some strategy consulting, Unified aims to help advertisers through its Unified University training program. The web-based program provides information about a number of social advertising platforms and allows people to get certified on its system.

The Social Operating Platform is available for an undisclosed per user license fee, and the company offers other services and ways to integrate additional data that are negotiated on a case by case basis.