Disqus - Latest Comments for Katie_Smillie

Re: One Night In Bangkok and the World's Your Oyster

Katie Smillie — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 13:40:38 -0000

Yeah! I would have done that if I still had my own place. It's harder with roommates now, but my rent is cheaper :)

Re: Facebook Crushes the Competition With Mobile App Install Ads

Katie Smillie — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:11:02 -0000

Thanks for reading. Optimized for installs did not work for me as this option didn't deliver any impressions when I chose it, I kept raising the price higher and higher and only a couple of ads would get served. I was seeing way better value optimizing for clicks and even impressions. I wrote more in another post here: http://katiesmillie.com/201... that compares CPC and CPM campaigns that I ran. Hope that helps.

Re: Happy Birthday Nikolay!

Katie Smillie — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:38:40 -0000

my pub crawl buddy,
we met over shots. tachos.
let's do it again!

(happy birthday!)

Re: Angie's Code — Prep: Practicing Problems

Katie Smillie — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:39:33 -0000

Haha, I totally relate to those feelings especially the elation when you final figure out a problem! I would love to learn more about the recommended reading they gave you. Can you share any of it?

Re: Interesting Results from Facebook's New Mobile Ad Features

Katie Smillie — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:25:59 -0000

Andi, thanks for reading the post. You are right that Facebook would count a new user signup as an "install action" if that user organically installed the app (I think within 7 days, but it may be a shorter window). This accounts for a user who might have seen the ad and then searched for it via the app store. Even if a friend told the user about the app, they still would have seen the ad and this might have made them more likely to install it or reminded them that they wanted to install it. There really is no way to fully know someone's intention (even they might be subconsciously remembering your ad). I think you can be pretty safe assuming that if the user saw your ad and then downloaded it soon after that your ad had a positive affect on their conversion, and so marketers measure that. Hope that helps!

Re: Interesting Results from Facebook's New Mobile Ad Features

Katie Smillie — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:21:56 -0000

Hi Michael, thanks for reading. We were only targeting US, because our app is only available for download in the US right now. But the great thing about Facebook ads is that it's really easy to set up a bunch of different experiments and change a single variable, like country, and compare results across ads. Then use the results from your experiment to decide the parameters for your campaign. Good luck!

Re: Interesting Results from Facebook's New Mobile Ad Features

Katie Smillie — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:20:19 -0000

Hi Victor, thanks for reading! I would love to connect with you on how you are tracking your cohorts for different ad groups. I was thinking I might do this with mixpanel but I haven't set anything up yet. I've been considering a few other tools out there as well. What are you using? Comment back or email katiesmillie[at]gmail?

Thanks,
Katie

Re: Jawbone UP vs Nike Fuel Band

Katie Smillie — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 14:31:29 -0000

I think I'm definitely going to try the Fitbit Flex wrist band it sounds awesome and is such a good price. The website says spring, so hopefully it will be available soon!

As far as the Basis I'll probably just decide on that whenever I find out they are available. As of now, I have no idea how long that wait will be.

Re: Facebook Crushes the Competition With Mobile App Install Ads

Katie Smillie — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:21:15 -0000

Thanks for reading. I published some results on the newer ad units here: http://katiesmillie.com/201...

Re: Facebook Crushes the Competition With Mobile App Install Ads

Katie Smillie — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:33:19 -0000

Hi Gili, I was under the impression that all iOS ads on Facebook took the same creative/image. Facebook scales it for you depending on the platform, iPhone or iPad. Have you checked to make sure your bids are within the suggested amount? You might try raising them to see if that helps. Also make sure your target audience isn't too small. If you tried to target too aggressively it may limit the pool of people eligible to receive your ad. I'm not sure what your goals on but you should try to have an eligible audience of at least a couple hundred thousand, maybe more. Hope this helps!

Re: Facebook Crushes the Competition With Mobile App Install Ads

Katie Smillie — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:05:37 -0000

I think you can only promote an app or a page right now with Facebook's mobile ads. You must be an admin for that page or app in order to advertise it. If you wanted to advertise something other than a page or an app you would probably need to do it on FB web.

If you are advertising a mobile app, you can target iOS and/or Android user and I know for iOS you can even choose the type of device and model e.g. you could target just iPhone 5 users. There are a lot of other targeting options like age, gender, relationship status, interest, workplace, etc. It's very powerful.

Re: Facebook Crushes the Competition With Mobile App Install Ads

Katie Smillie — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:01:34 -0000

There is a way to pay per action, and you can designate the action to be an install. However, when I tried this, even as high as $3 per install it was only serving enough ads to get maybe 2-3 installs per day. When paying CPC I was able to get hundreds of installs per day with the average cost being $1.73. So it was a no brainer to go with CPC model.

Re: Facebook Crushes the Competition With Mobile App Install Ads

Katie Smillie — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:08:26 -0000

Hi Ouriel. Thanks for the comment. We are not currently tracking which users came from which ads, though I think this could be done in Mixpanel which we use. If we were going to spend money on a larger buy this would be a smart thing to do.

I am tracking the retention cohorts over time from the groups that we acquired through Facebooks ads. Right now it's too soon to tell, but if I have meaningful data in a few more weeks, I'll update this post.

I'm also planning to share more data from the FB campaigns I'm currently running with the new creative options, as the results have come out a bit different -- but still positive!

Re: Facebook Crushes the Competition With Mobile App Install Ads

Katie Smillie — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:58:47 -0000

Hi Ray. Great question. You must have the Facebook SDK installed. It will track every time a user launches the app -- which is better than paying for a download, since not all users open apps they download. Then they match up data about that device with users who have seen the ad on Facebook from the same device.

Other ad networks also offer SDKs that do the same thing, or in some cases you may just add a snippet of code in the applicationDidBecomeActive method in your App Delegate which pings a server of the ad vendor with a unique device ID. I'm not sure what data Facebook uses exactly to make the match, in some cases I've seen the UDIDs used, but since Apple has been cracking down on apps that access UDIDs, there is also a new unique identifier in iOS 6 called the advertising identifier. Some also use the ODIN (open device identification number) which is the MAC address for the iPhone -- or a combination of all the above for better accuracy.

Hope this helps!

Re: When Bad Design Happens To Good Companies: StubHub Edition

Katie Smillie — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:51:40 -0000

While I enjoyed the stunning photo of Randy Johnson, I was anticipating that you had linked to the video of the unfortunate seagull incident.

Re: Gary Vaynerchuk - Facebook fan pages are new and what do they mean...

Katie Smillie — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:38:13 -0000

I agree with a lot of posts here, great discussion. For me it boils down to this:

Twitter represents a new generation of information exchange - immediate, customized to individuals, and all in one place. This is not what FB fans pages do. FB fan pages only target a portion of Twitter users, mainly from 2 groups:

- Well-known individuals/groups/organization who would have a fan page on Facebook.
- Twitter users who use Twitter to follow these individuals/groups.

I don't belong to either of those groups. I do follow well-known individuals like Gary, but the main ways I get value from Twitter are:

1) As a collaboration tool and business networking tool - with both internal colleagues and external clients

2) As a search tool (e.g. yesterday I used Twitter to find out why my bus was so late, there was a bomb threat on van ness. Thanks to first post by @katetheshark who had it before any news sources - http://twitter.com/katethes...

3) Learning cool things about topics that interest me (like wine, technology, photography, cooking, snowboarding, etc) from a VARIETY of sources.

Twitter is a buffet table I can sample from at anytime. I don't want to have to add a ton FB Fan pages and navigate to them separately. Twitter is lightweight (easy to access/participate) and combines ALL my personal and professional interests in one place that I can customize to my heart's desire. And I can interact as little or as much as I want with a ton of people, and reveal as little or as much about myself that I want to. Facebook is far from this.

At the end of the day I use FB and Twitter for different things. For the most part, I like Facebook the way it is and I like Twitter the way it is. Why can't they just be friends?

Re: Gary Vaynerchuk - Getting fame or money or more eyeballs doesn’t...

Katie Smillie — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:50:34 -0000

I'm still searching for a career that will allow me to harness the power of my multiple passions, so I envy you for that!

You are doing a great job of revealing and evolving your brand from its core truth of who you are, as opposed to over extending or pushing at the edges of it as others may suggest. Your brand is becoming an awesome mashup of your multiple niche passions, and as a result is even more unique and, dare I say, more profitable!?

So maybe a mosaic or mashup of niches is the next generation of marketing??? Or maybe not? Who cares. Either way you're doing something different and innovative and that's awesome. I LOVE your fresh content, keep it coming please.

@katiesmillie