This is a recap of a presentation by Michael Lazerow of Buddy Media from the Web 2.0 Expo.


Social Networks are clearly here to stay with almost 50% of the population is using these sites (70% of teens).
Social Network have all opened up their platforms which means that brands have cost effective access to more than 500M engaged users (250M of them on just Facebook and MySpace alone!)
This is a massive distribution channel for any brand but still <1% of digital ad budgets are going toward Social Networks .... why?
Because Social Network ad impressions are worthless .... the old model of buying impressions is like shouting at consumers .... you buy ads to "get in front of them" and "give them a message" .... but that's not going to work in a "social " world by definition!
The new ad model will be about creating social brand loyalty by creating Social Branded Applications that allow users to interact with your brand attributes. That's when we make the pivot from finding a target audience and moving messages to them .... to creating Social Branded Applications that give away the message and letting the audience tailor it to the social graph.
Here are some examples of brands benefiting from Social Branded Applications –
FedEx
Created a Social Branded Application called - "Launch the Package" which is very in line with the FedEx brand. It is simple, fast, easy to use etc.
Has had the most activity of any application on Facebook with 72,000 packages delivered per day, 100,000 installs in 72 hours more than 300,000 active users in 6 days with less than 10% uninstall rate.
New Balance
Created a Social Branded Application to get in front of key customer and influencers. It's a game called the New Balance Run-devouz where you earn points and redeem for shoes, kinda like a Chuckie Cheese but for Facebook.
So far they have 250,000 active users, with 86% returning at least once, 57% of which came back 9 times or more! And so far $1,000,000 in virtual dollars have been earned by customers which can be redeemed for actual shoes.
BudLight
Created a Social Branded Application that utilizes Facebook's "age gating" so only certain age groups can use this application. So they created the Dude Campaign which connects to the BudLight ad Dude ad campaign but allows the user to determine through a series of questions what kind of dude they really are: Examples Game On dude, Red Neck dude, Gangsta dude etc.
So far they have 200,000 installs in 5 weeks, 14% average daily growth, 6000+ daily users, 19% of users visited every day during the campaign.
InStyle
Created a Social Branded Application for hair makeovers where you can grab celebrity hair and add it to your Facebook picture once you find the new hair style you like you can then save it and add the InStyle banner and upload it back to your Facebook profile for your friends to vote on.
So far they have 185,000 installs in 6 weeks, 78% of the user base is InStyle's target demographic, average time spent is 7 min, with over 50% of total users returning to the application more than 25 times and an average user did 3 hair styles.