Google To Sell Facebook Ads

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For the longest time, Google and Facebook have battled against one another with apps and other services. However, it looks like they might have buried the hatchet, for now at least.

Google and Facebook announced Friday that Google will sell ad inventory on the social website. The ads will be sold through the DoubleClick Bid Manager, a bidding system that produces results in real-time. Marketers will be able to buy ads on Facebook’s own Ad Exchange as a result. It’s a testament to how well Facebook’s ads have been doing in the sixteen months since their launch.

“Partnership has been key to Google’s success as a rising tide lifts all boats. So we’re excited to announce a new way to help our clients succeed by working with Facebook to participate in FBX, their real-time bidding exchange,” Payam Shodjai, Senior Product Manager at Google, explained in a post.

We’ll see how this business deal progresses in the months ahead.

Source: Mashable

 

Digital Ad Costs Rising

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The effective price paid by advertisers for every thousand online impressions – or eCPMs for short – appear to be picking up a bit, according to a new report from Turn.

The Global Digital Audience Report states that both display and social-based ads are on the rise, particularly with Facebook and Facebook Exchange ads, which grew 15.4 percent to 45 cents over the July-September period. Display eCPMs also picked up an additional six cents, while mobile ones were slightly increased to .9 percent. Video ads are far and away the most expensive, with an eCPM of nearly $11.

Inventory is picking up across various mobile apps, with advertising standardizing across various high traffic formats.

A lot of businesses as of late also prefer going with a “cross-channel brand,” advertising in multiple formats and channels. A staggering 137 percent increase in cross-channel brands was noted in the report, with an even bigger 500 percent pick-up in brands across all four categories – display, mobile, social and video. Doing so has nearly tripled the amount of investment for these businesses, according to Turn.

Source: TechCrunch

 

YouTube Mobile Audience Surges

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YouTube’s transition to mobile apps hasn’t always been the smoothest, but the process has paid off anyway, as the company has announced a large percentage of its traffic is now coming from mobile devices.

Hunter Walk posted on his Twitter account that YouTube, starting its mobile team back in 2007 back before the “big boom” of smartphone and tablets, has paid off on that particular gamble with 40 percent of its audience coming from those devices.

With mobile usage on the rise, it’s only a matter of time before the company attempts to get its app on additional devices – namely the Windows Phone and Windows 8 models. It still has an uphill climb with Microsoft in that department, but considering that its prior attempts – and failures – to integrate YouTube on its own part didn’t work, it’s probably only a matter of time before a deal is reached.

Source: TechCrunch

 

A Bump For Solar Energy

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Researchers from the Imperial College in London and other collaborators from China, Belgium and Japan have found that creating a solar panel that closely resembles the connecting face of a Lego block can absorb energy more efficiently.

The small aluminum studs are invisible to the human eye but close up, the design of the panel takes on a familiar shape. The technology works by bending and scattering the light, causing the light to traverse more surface area before finally being absorbed.

Solar energy is still much more costly than using fossil fuels, but the recent findings may be of some relief. Scientists had previously tried using gold and silver studs but found that these metals were not as effective as aluminum, a much cheaper and abundant metal.

Source: Nature.com

 

September Game Sales Soar

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Game sales rose an amazing 52 percent in September, driven by the record-setting pace of Grand Theft Auto V sales, the latest NPD report shows. It’s certainly a bright spot, but that’s primarily something that TakeTwo can celebrate. For most of the industry, sales at retail stores in September were not great, although digital sales neared $1 billion. The overall category (hardware, software and accessories) rose only 27 percent despite GTA V, showing just how strongly hardware sales are declining in the face of new consoles coming next month.

All categories combined, September 2013 at retail in the USA showed $1.079 billion in sales compared to $848 million in September 2012. Hardware sales sank from $211 million to $183.2 million, while software sales rose from $497.5 million to $754.3 million. Accessories went up from $139.5 million to $142.3 million.

“Grand Theft Auto V represented over 50 percent of dollar sales in September, and had the highest first month sales than any other previous launch in the Grand Theft Auto franchise,” said NPD’s Liam Callahan. “New software launches from the month of September combined to represent 63 percent of unit sales for the month. This was a big jump from what new software launches experienced last September, and caused average prices to rise by 18 percent for software as a greater percentage of sales stemmed from full-priced items.”

There was also good news for Nintendo in the September sales numbers. “Wii U hardware sales benefitted from a price drop in September,” said Callahan, “Along with the new hardware bundle which included The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, sales were up over 100 percent on an average per-week basis from August 2013.” The 3DS also did well, securing the top hardware spot for the fifth consecutive month. Prospects look good for the 3DS line in October with the launch of the Nintendo 2DS, and Pokémon X & Y.

Meanwhile, Microsoft finally lost the title of #1 selling game console in the USA to the PS3. Sony’s win was due to the amazing popularity of Grand Theft Auto V, according to NPD. “PS3 was the top selling console this month, breaking the 32-month streak of the Xbox 360 leading console hardware sales from January 2011 to August 2013,” said Callahan. “The PS3’s success this month was largely driven by sales of the ‘PS3 Super Slim 500GB GTA V Bundle,’ demonstrating how Grand Theft Auto V can shake things up on in hardware as well as software.”

Overall, though, game console sales continued their decline by dropping 13 percent from last September despite the boost that GTA V provided. Video game accessories rose a meager 2 percent over last September, “due to an astounding growth in Interactive Gaming Toys, which saw an increase of over 180 percent as sales from the second month of Disney Infinity items combined with Skylanders items to generate impressive results,” said Callahan.

Top sellers for the month of September (after GTA V) were Madden NFL, NBA 2K14, Diablo III and FIFA 14,and there are no real surprises there. Nintendo is still having a hard time with both the Wii U and the 3DS, as demonstrated by the fact that Disney Infinity at #7 was the only Nintendo Wii U or 3DS title to make it into the top ten list. Interestingly, Saints Row IV made it on at #10, probably because of GTA V… but it’s not clear exactly why that should be the case.

Rank Title
#1      Grand Theft Auto V (360, PS3)**
#2      Madden NFL 25 (360, PS3)
#3      NBA 2K14 (360, PS3, PC)
#4      Diablo III (360, PS3, PC)**
#5      FIFA 14 (360, PS3, Vita)
#6      Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX (PS3)
#7      Disney Infinity (360, WII, PS3, NWU, 3DS)
#8      NHL 14 (360, PS3)
#9      Minecraft (360)
#10   Saints Row IV (360, PS3, PC)**
** Includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware

Top Games Buzzing On Social Media

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Editor’s Note: [a]list daily is happy to introduce a new regular feature from social media trends tracker Starcount, looking at top games by month based on online buzz.  For information on their methodology, refer to the description and link at the end of the article.

By Starcount

September was a golden month for games. The latest Grand Theft Auto dropped to universal acclaim, with some suggesting that Rockstar’s latest release in their open-world crime series may just be the best game of all time.

The issue of best football games also continued to rage on with the release of the latest edition of both the FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer series. EA’s FIFA was received better by the critics, as the popular trend for realism in video games seemingly winning out when it comes to the beautiful game.

But how did the games perform on social media Well, as ever, the web has been a buzz of gaming activity, with trailers for new games hitting YouTube, Instagram videos of shenanigans on some of the month’s top releases and helpful gamers giving out walkthroughs and tips on Twitter. Starcount rounded up the top 10 most popular games using their unique social media stats, and we’ve given them to you in a handy countdown chart.

10. NEED FOR SPEED 

Need For Speed had 200,000 YouTube views and was talked about nearly 50,000 times this month. Screenshots of upcoming Need For Speed: Rivals got fans of racing games everywhere excited about the November release which sees the franchise make it’s debut on the Xbox One.

 

9. HITMAN

Hitman has gained 130,000 new Facebook fans and more and 45,000 YouTube views in September as rumours continued to surface surrounding the next instalment of the series, Hitman 6.

 

8. RESIDENT EVIL

Cap com’s acclaimed survival horror franchise, Resident Evil, is the eighth most popular game in the world this month after more than 300,000 people were talking about the series on Facebook.

 

7. MINECRAFT

September saw the immensely popular building block game, Minecraft, gain 200,000 fans on Facebook after the Ordnance Survey created an accurate map of the United Kingdom into the game! One spokesperson said “we think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data.”

 

6. ASSASSIN’S CREED

The gaming community is gearing up for another scintillating instalment in the Assassin’s Creed series — this time with a pirate theme. This month the franchise has gained 50,000 new fans on Facebook and had it’s new Multiplayer Gameplay Trailer viewed more than 80,000 times.

 

5. BATTLEFIELD 

Just as FIFA has competition, so does Call of Duty. Battlefield provides a more realistic, gritty experience, and is clearly very popular with you guys — you watched Battlefield videos more than 7 million times!

 

4. PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER

While FIFA may still be the most popular, Pro Evo is hot on its heels. The game’s YouTube channel was viewed over 2.4 million times in September, and should provide very real competition for FIFA 14 over the next few weeks.

 

3. FIFA

The world’s no.1 football game is in at 3. The series is talked about almost constantly on Facebook, with over 270,000 engaging with the game, from screenshots of victories to punishments for losses, FIFA is still your favourite when it comes to the beautiful game.

 

2. CALL OF DUTY

The Call of Duty franchise continues to be incredibly popular, and with next addition “Ghosts” recently unveiled and set to be released in November, the series is your second most popular game this month, with over 11.5 million views on YouTube.

 

1. GRAND THEFT AUTO V

Controversial series GTA is the most popular game across social media at the moment, with over a million of you talking about it on Facebook. The fifth instalment in the series was released last month to rave reviews with the game achieving a rating of 9.9 on IMDB.

 

How will things look next month Will Grand Theft Auto be able to hold onto its crown as the most socially popular video game in the world, or will it be replaced by the winner of the latest shoot-em-up shoot-out as Call of Duty: Ghosts goes up against Battlefield 4 in the battle of the autumn FPS releases.

Or will the landscape change entirely as the latest generation of consoles are unleashed, with both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 expected out in November? We’ll check back in next month with the results.

For methodology, Starcount uses 12 global networks including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Chinese networks Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, analyzing the behavior of 1.5 billion users. The firm has a unique algorithm that creates a “Starscore” for each game, which it then uses to rank the most popular games on social media in a given period of time. 

For more information, check out how Starcount tallies their “Starscore.” 

Adding Drama To Your Phone Call

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Sprint wants to celebrate your phone calls as important, no matter how trivial they might seem to other people. So for this ad, they brought in James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell to give an epic feel to a mundane conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Lewis.

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