IAB Document on Best Practices in Social Advertising (pdf document) free file download at fliiby.com

"Social Advertising Best Practices Released May 2009 IAB Social Advertising Best Practices The IAB User-Generated Content & Social Media Committee has developed these Best Practices. About the IAB’s User-Generated Content & Social Media Committee: The User-Generated Content & Social Media Committee of the IAB is comprised of over 150 member companies dedicated to helping develop and expand the user-generated content space as a viable advertising platform. The committee works to educate marketers and agencies on the strength of user-generated content and social media as a marketing vehicle. A full list of Committee member companies can be found at: http://www.iab.net/member_center/councils_committees_working_groups/committees/user_ generated_content_social_media_committee This document can be found on the IAB website at: http://www.iab.net/socialads IAB Contact Information: Gina Kim Director of Industry Services, IAB 212-380-4728 Gina.Kim@iab.net © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -1- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Table of Contents Executive Summary Social Ad Definitions & Examples Definitions & Key Terms Examples Consumer Policies Opt-in Recommendations Opt-out Recommendations Examples Privacy Guidelines Data Capture Data Disclosure Data Usage Examples 3-5 6-12 6-8 9-12 13-15 13 14 14-15 16-18 16-17 17 17 18 © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -2- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Executive Summary Social media is big and getting bigger, providing marketers with a!combination of reach, relationships, and relevance: ! Reach: Social media has overtaken email as the most popular consumer activity, according to a recent Nielsen study. Importantly, consumer growth is coming from an older demographic than social media's historical base; for example, Facebook's strongest growth is coming from 35-49 year-olds, adding twice as many 50-64-yearolds as opposed to those under 18. (Nielsen “Global Faces and Networked Places,” March 9, 2009; MediaPost Blogs Research Brief, “Social Networking Is No Respecter of Age,” March 18, 2009.) Relationships: Social media's strength is in the personal connections it enables, the peer-to-peer contact, providing reasons for consumers to visit regularly and for extended periods of time. Relevance: Consumers are extremely engaged with the content and connections that their friends are creating because of its personal relevance. ! ! !!!! Marketers are looking to maximize the effectiveness of this new medium and are developing social advertising that heightens relevance and engagement through the use of profile data within the ad units themselves, as well as the use of social graph data to target ads. These Best Practices are intended to help protect consumer privacy, ensure transparency for what and how data is being used, and to define consumer permissions. The purpose of this document is to provide best practices that illustrate, inform, and facilitate greater adoption of the medium by defining creative components, data usage, consumer control, and privacy guidelines and by providing social advertising examples. This document outlines recommendations for these key social advertising topics and is intended for social networks, publishers, ad agencies, marketers, and service providers delivering social advertising. These best practices were developed via a thorough examination of the critical consumer, media and advertiser issues to help social media further realize!its advertising potential. © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -3- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Definition of a Social Ad:! An online ad that incorporates user interactions that the consumer has agreed to display and be shared. The resulting ad displays these interactions along with the user’s persona (picture and/or name) within the ad content. 1. Data Used for Social Ads: Social ads can use 1) profile data, such as name, likeness, groups and installed applications, etc. 2) social data, such as the explicit connections between individuals and 3) interaction data, such data that is captured about the interactions between online connections (friends). 2. Ingredients of a Social Ad: a. Ad Content: Social ads can use profile data or social data in the ad unit itself or in the immediate context of the ad unit to customize the message or allow interaction. b. Targeting: Social ads can use profile data and social graph data to target ads. In addition to targeting via standard ad targeting technologies, this social targeting may include the ability for individuals to select ads and deliver them to their social connections (pass-alongs). c. Functionality: Social ads can allow some kind of social interaction (sharing with a friend, commenting, collaborative filtering, etc.) within the ad unit itself or in a landing page or interstitial experience. 3. Context for Delivering a Social Ad: Social ads can be delivered within the context of a social network or social web site where a consumer has established explicit connections with other consumers, or can also be delivered outside of social networks or sites when the following special care is taken with respect to consumer notice:! ! Clear information about the ad's context and presentation ! Clear information about what their social connections will see ! Explicit control over how profile data and social data is used and with whom it is shared ! Explicit opt-in to the data that is to be shared 4. Consumer Control: Since it is essential for social ads to be trusted in order to achieve broad adoption, it is important for consumers to have visibility and control of what can be shared with their social connections. The following special care is to be taken with respect to consumer choice: ! Opt-In: A social ad should show consumers what would be shared with their friends prior to consumers choosing to share their information, with explicit approval of the message to friends prior to usage. Consumers can waive future notices by opting-in to "auto-sharing," wherein their consent to share information via social ads is explicit. ! Opt-Out: Once they have explicitly opted-in, consumers should also be able to see and control how their information is used within a social ad directly from the ad. For example, they should be able to navigate from the ad to a page © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -4- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices that tells them who is serving the ad, how their information is used to deliver the ad, and have the ability to opt-out of their information being used in the delivery of that ad. 5. Privacy Guidelines: Overall privacy guidelines should abide by the general privacy principles established by the IAB: http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/508676/508813/1464 The data available for socializing ads is typically not covered within the scope of general online advertising privacy policies, so specific guidelines are called out within this document. For instance, social data and data disclosed by consumers should only be used for social ads within the social domain for which they have disclosed that data and after they have opted in to share this data. Consumer profile data should also only be able to be accessed for social ads once consumers have consented to data access, and consumers should be notified of all data that has been accessed, collected, how this data is used, and who owns this data. © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -5- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Social Ad Definitions & Examples Definitions & Key Terms With the Internet becoming more interconnected and social every day, it is important to carefully define terms. A Social Ad is defined as: An online ad that incorporates user interactions that the consumer has agreed to display and be shared. The resulting ad displays these interactions along with the user’s persona (picture and/or name) within the ad content. Consumers of social media actively provide information to the social domain they are visiting in order to get the most benefit and value from their online experience as they connect and interact with friends. Some of the information provided to the site is personal, while some is social or interpersonal. Examples of profile data relevant to social ads include (but are not limited to): age, gender, location, interests, and photos. Social data consists of the explicit connections between friends, whether those are real-world or online connections, and ongoing interactions between those individuals. This type of social data is sometimes referred to as the “social graph,” as in a map or record of all the explicit connections between individuals. Interpersonal or interaction information is the data recorded about the interactions between online connections (friends). Whereas behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual’s web browsing behavior (http://www.iab.net/wiki/index.php/Behavioral_Targeting), social ads utilize a person’s declared profile, social connection, and interaction data within the ad unit itself. Behavioral targeting is about the information used to deliver ads; social advertising is about sharing information and allowing messaging between consumers. The best practices presented in this document are unique to social advertising. However, social advertising and behavioral targeting are not mutually exclusive, because a marketer can use behavioral targeting to deliver social ads. Behaviorally Targeted Ads and Social Ads: Behaviorally Targeted Ad A behaviorally targeted ad typically tracks the domain(s) where a user has visited via a cookie, groups this online behavior within a defined segment and then retargets that consumer based upon their defined behavioral segment as that user visits sites across the Web. Social Ad A Social Ad requires the consumer to interact with content that the user opted-in to be shared with friends in their social graph. This opted-in interaction is then communicated to the user’s online friends via a Social Ad that communicates the user’s interaction along with their persona (picture & name). © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -6- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Behaviorally targeted ads are about targeting users based upon their online behavior. Socials ads are about incorporating user interactions and the user’s persona into the ad content so this content can be delivered to friends within their social graph. The social data provided by consumers can be utilized by marketers and social media publishers to create a highly relevant and engaging social ad experience for individuals visiting social sites. First, social sites can use profile data and social graph data to target highly relevant ads to specific individuals. Knowing that an individual lives in Evanston, Illinois, is a 24-year-old graduate of Northwestern University, and has explicitly expressed an interest in running allows a social site and a local running store to deliver very relevant advertising to that consumer. Secondly, if this individual has friends on the social site who share her interests or who may even have recommended or connected with the local running store, the ad experience can become even more relevant by virtue of a consumer endorsement in the ad itself. A friend’s photo and explicit endorsement or explicitly shared information about how the friend has interacted with the local store can be displayed in the ad, making the ad personally relevant to an unprecedented degree. The ad experience can take on a third social component by virtue of the way an individual responds to the ad. Instead of simply clicking through to a landing page, social websites can provide social response mechanisms in the ads themselves. The “target” can become the “arrow” by passing such an ad along to other select friends, linking themselves to the advertisers explicitly (by friending or fanning), or even commenting on or in the ad and having those comments passed along in viral channels provided by the social site and ad vehicle. It is important to note that social advertising is paid media, and is different from earned media, which refers to favorable publicity gained through promotional efforts or implied or expressed endorsement from user generated content. Advertisers who purchase a social ad will not necessarily generate social conversations. Social ads also introduce new variables into the measurement of ad effectiveness. In addition to standard ad metrics like impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and conversion rate, social ads can allow advertisers to quantify the social interaction generated by ads. How many individuals explicitly shared the ad with how many friends? How many “relevant actions taken” did the ads create? Refer to the IAB’s Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions: http://www.iab.net/socialmetrics © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -7- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices The combination of improved targeting of ads with social ad content and social response mechanisms is potentially transformative for online advertising. However, a high degree of transparency and control needs to be given to individuals on social sites given that this entire capability rests on the data they have explicitly provided to the social site. One component of transparency is the venue for the social interactions and ads. Social ads are typically delivered within the context of a social network or social website where a consumer has explicitly established connections with other consumers, has provided profile data, and is accustomed to the data being used to deliver a customized and more personally relevant experience. It is also possible for social ads to be delivered outside of social networks or websites using advanced ad targeting and distribution techniques. In these cases, special consideration to the context and presentation of the ads is absolutely mandatory. Individuals must be given clear information about what they are seeing and explicit control over how profile data and social data are used and with whom it is shared. Glossary ! ! ! ! Social Ad: An online ad that incorporates user interactions that the consumer has agreed to display and be shared. The resulting ad displays these interactions along with the user’s persona (picture and/or name) within the ad content. Social Graph (Social Data): A map or record of all the explicit connections between individuals Interaction Data (Interpersonal Information): Data that is captured about the interactions between online connections (friends) Profile Data: Name, image, demographic information such as age and gender, location, interests, groups, and installed applications © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -8- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Examples Facebook Engagement Ad This social ad prompts a consumer to take a poll. After responding and opting-in, the resulting ad featuring the consumer’s interaction is then communicated to their friends within the Facebook newsfeed. Uses… Profile data? Social graph? Interaction data? Yes Name & photo is used in newsfeed ad Yes Newsfeed ads are sent to known friends Yes Uses interaction from poll as communication to friends in newsfeed ad MySpace Interaction Ad This social ad communicates a consumer’s interaction from an opt-in ad to that consumer’s friends after explicit opt-in from the consumer. The resulting ad includes the opt-in consumer’s photo, first name, and description of his interaction in the ad that is delivered to friends. Uses… Profile data? Social graph? Interaction data? Yes Name and photo used in confirmation and ad that friends see Yes Ads are displayed to known friends Yes Interactions from initial ad are communicated to friends -9- © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Buddy Media Application Ad . Consumers can insert their profile photos within celebrity hairstyles and share this interaction with friends by having their style posted to friend’s newsfeeds. Uses… Profile data? Social graph? Interaction data? Yes Photos are accessed and used with the application content Yes Friends are displayed within the application, and notifications are sent to friends Yes Interactions from actions the consumer takes in the application are shared with friends © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -10- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Brickfish Social Media Ad Consumers share their branded user-generated content amongst their peers and on their social networks. Brand interactions are tracked across the web and globally. Uses… Profile data? Social graph? Interaction data? Yes Yes Yes Age/Location/Social network participation Content is disseminated amongst their peers Interactions from actions the consumer takes in participation with the brand are shared with friends Socialmedia.com Word of Mouth Ad After a consumer has interacted with an opt-in ad, then the resulting word-of-mouth ad featuring the consumer’s persona is shared with the consumer’s friends. Uses… Profile data? Social graph? Interaction data? Yes Yes Yes Photo and first name are inserted into ads Consumer’s friends see their interactions from ads Interactions the consumer has within an ad are shared with their friends © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -11- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Other Ad Formats The examples above utilize all three criteria for a social ad: profile data, social graph, and interaction data. There are other ad formats targeted to social content which leverage one or two of the attributes of social ads. One example is Conversation Ad Targeting™ where consumers with similar interests are connected to each other by following content posted by credible authors—specifically blogs engaged in conversations with each other through trusted references in the form of links. These ads also have the potential to integrate additional social features such as polling, votes, share, and engagement with the ad itself. Uses… Profile data? Social graph? Interaction data? No Yes Yes While social network profile data is not used, blogger / author content is used within the ad itself Uses blogger link or social graph to target ad Engagement features where consumers can actually view connected content and vote on it © 2009 Interactive Advertising Bureau -12- IAB Social Advertising Best Practices Consumer Policies The following section outlines recommendations around opt-in and opt-out policies when creating and delivering social ads. Opt-in Recommendations Profile Creation: From initial profile creation to ongoing usage of this data, it is important for consumers to have a complete understanding of what, how, when, and to whom their data or likeness will be used for delivering social ads. Upon initial creation of a profile within a social media site, consumers should be given the option to share their information for social ads within the actual domain they are joining and potentially outside of that social network as well. Beyond this general opt-in for social ads, consumers should also have the ability to opt-in to sharing information with friends and different networks of friends they are connected with. Ad Preview: When incorporating consumer profile data into social ads, advertisers will need to show consumers exactly how their likeness or information will be used within a preview of the ad itself. This preview should be available to the consumer prior to the ad’s actual distribution within the social media site. Additionally, consumers should be able to select what groups of friends will see the ad or opt-in to having the ad served to their entire network. There must be an explicit approval of the ad by the consumer prior to its distribution. Optionally, a consumer may waive future notices with an auto opt-in function, where consent to share informa..."

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