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USA Today Tells Facebook Its Services Are No Longer Needed For Super Bowl (FB)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/usa-today-tells-facebook-its-services-are-no-longer-needed-for-super-bowl-2012-12

Last year, USA Today partnered with Facebook to create its Super Bowl Ad Meter, which for better or worse has become the most prominent measure of a Super Bowl ad’s success.

The partnership was innovative because it asked all Facebook members to vote on ads, instead of just a panel of a handful of people selected by USA Today. And it brought the power of social media to an inherently social event on behalf of a stolidly traditional media property.

But no more.

This year the newspaper is going it alone — again. It’s told Facebook its services are no longer needed. Publisher Larry Kramer told Ad Age:

“We want to do this ourselves because we’re going to do a lot of these,” he said. “We need to build the apparatus ourselves do we’d own it.” 

“Look, Facebook is great and we like working with them, but if you look at this organization today top to bottom vs. a year ago, we’re a lot more digital … And we need to build that internally.”

The Ad Meter’s qualifications for being the nation’s top rater of Super Bowl ads have previously been called into question. It doesn’t measure halftime ads, even though those ads — such as Clint Eastwood’s “Halftime in America” spot for Chrysler — are some of the most talked-about commercials.

And it consists of a voting panel of just 300 people in two separate locations — even though dozens of social media analytics companies can measure chatter about the Super Bowl online from millions of people.

USA Today will replace Facebook with a “a password-protected microsite” that users will have to sign up for in order to vote.

If you can’t be bothered to do that, don’t worry: Business Insider will bring you our “Super Bowl For Quants” roundup of social media analyses of the ads the day after the game.

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Manny Anekal, the global director of brand advertising at Zynga, is leaving the company to become COO of Kiip, a firm that operates a network that places branded rewards inside mobile games for advertisers, according to two sources.

Anekal’s Linkedin page currently states he has been on extended medical leave from Zynga. He is expected at Kiip next week.

Kiip has 20 employees, is based in San Francisco, and its clients include Best Buy, Disney and Sony. The company inserts branded rewards inside mobile games for advertisers. When players reach a new level, for instance, Kiip can reward them with free merchandise from advertisers.

Anekal leaves Zynga after its sales and marketing budget rose to $234 million, according to its Q4 2011 results.

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See Also:

• Zynga Sees Limits To Growth: Sales Flatten As Marketing Costs Double
• 5 Reasons To Stay Skeptical About Groupon
• NUMBERS: Will Ferrell’s Old Milwaukee Super Bowl Spot Kicked Budweiser’s Butt

Think headliner Madonna was the highlight of Sunday night’s Super Bowl halftime show performance?

Think again.

According to ClearSpring, the most tweeted about/Facebooked/e-mailed/printed/overall social-media’s most clicked upon celeb of the night was none other than Cee Lo Green.

Cee Lo beat out not only Madonna as the most talked about on the internet during the big game, but also Kelly Clarkson, M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj.

After taking the stage dressed as a band leader and dueting with Madonna on “Express Yourself” and the grand finale, “Like a Prayer,” Cee Lo fans freaked, causing his online presence to surge to over 2,000 percent above normal—and nearly double any other Super Bowl act.

Cee Lo couldn’t be reached for comment but we have a feeling we know what he would say to his competition and haters: “Forget You.”

Check out the chart below that proves Cee Lo’s online popularity:

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See Also:

• The Super Bowl Is More Important Than Just About Anything To Some Americans
• Here’s The Will Ferrell Super Bowl Ad For Old Milwaukee That You Missed
• Gisele Ripped The Patriots Receivers For Dropping Passes Last Night

Ever thought you would have to read 21 books to get to the bottom of what caused the financial crisis?

Andrew Lo, an economist at MIT, has some bad news: it’s going to take at least 22.

Lo, a leading expert on hedge funds and financial engineering, has written a paper (h/t NPR) for the Journal of Economic Literature describing his experience reading 21 books on the crisis — nine by journalists, 11 by academics and one by a former Treasury Secretary.

His conclusion: In a field that prides itself on its scientific rigor (however dismal), the books reveal that alarmingly few facts about the crisis have been agreed upon. Was there too little or too much regulation? How much of a factor were low interest rates? No one’s been able to say conclusively.

“After each book, I felt like I knew less,” Lo told NPR’s Planet Money.

Economics, he says, has fallen well short of that standard when it comes to understanding the crisis:

“Many of us like to think of financial economics as a science, but complex events like the financial crisis suggest that this conceit may be more wishful thinking than reality.”

Read Andrew Lo’s Reading About the Financial Crisis: A 21-Book Review >

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See Also:

• Goldman In Talks To Hire Former Geithner Aide To Lead Communication Effort
• Lloyd Blankfein Just Fired His Fall Guy, But Goldman’s Problems Aren’t Going Away
• Here’s The Will Ferrell Super Bowl Ad For Old Milwaukee That You Missed

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