Disqus - Latest Comments for bbennett712

Re: Preseason Fantasy Football Product Roundup 2009

jacobsloan — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:09:19 -0000

You're welcome, Bryan, and thanks for the info. I might just have to check that out, but I'm pretty overloaded with the leagues I have committed to already this season.

Re: Preseason Fantasy Football Product Roundup 2009

bbennett712 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:47:06 -0000

Jacob, thanks for writing about the FanSection fantasy football game. We also recently launched a salary cap game on Facebook that's paying out real cash...or at least it will once the season starts. That game has a sports blogger charity league that is awarding a $200 donation to the charity of your choice. If you're interested, let me know and I'll send you the link. If you want to check out the game, you can do that here: http://apps.facebook.com/footballchallenge/sala...

Bryan Bennett
GM Fantasy Sports
Watercooler

Re: How the NBA is Using Social Media

Bryan Bennett — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:15:15 -0000

Good article Gail. Some teams and even some leagues get it better than others. From my perspective, the NHL is probably at the forefront of embracing social media and really demonstrated their commitment with local tweetups as the playoffs got started. We've worked extensively with the Canadiens and Canucks and both teams have made a concerted effort to make social media a core piece of their marketing strategy. Aside from generating fan engagement, social media offers teams the ability to drive ticket sales and promotions. Consumers are quick to declare themselves fans of their favorite team, and social media provides a new marketing channel for those teams to connect, and therefore monetize, those fans. We're seeting more and more teams try social marketing campaigns, but I think it's happening much too slowly.

Re: Ticket Sales and Social Media (White Sox Delema)

bbennett712 — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:59:54 -0000

This is definitely an interesting problem. Unfortunately, the MLBAM has completely handcuffed MLB teams in terms of what they can and cannot do online...most of it on the "cannot" side. At Watercooler, we have over 25 million registered users of our Facebook sports apps and have had great success working with NHL and NBA teams. Unfortunately we're unable to work with many MLB teams because of the aforementioned rules. But Tyler, I'm completely open to exploring options with you and the White Sox. We have over 115K users of our White Sox app on Facebook (http://apps.facebook.com/chicagowhitesox). Here's a post from the Partnership Activation blog on our ticket sales efforts with NBA teams: http://www.partnershipactivation.com/headlines/....

Bryan Bennett
Sr. Director of Marketing
Watercooler

Re: Hulu to replace video ads with questions?

bbennett712 — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:33:56 -0000

I think this is a great move by Hulu. The key to driving brand engagement is serving up ads in the form of content. If done right, the user won't even know it's an ad and instead will treat it as just another piece of Hulu content. At Watercooler we've had a lot of success with those kinds of campaigns. We use sponsored trivia to serve up relevant trivia questions to users (i.e. Scrubs DVD questions in our Scrubs community on Facebook). We've never had any complaints, and the numbers suggest that user enjoy the change of pace within our trivia games. More details here : http://tinyurl.com/a2p2pg. Happy to answer any other questions or provide more info.

Bryan Bennett
Director of Marketing
Watercooler

Re: CBS Reports Huge Online Traffic for March Madness Video

Bryan Bennett — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:49:59 -0000

We had a constant stream of games on Thur and Fri in the office and it worked almost flawlessly. The screen never froze and we only received the "buffering" message a half dozen times during the almost 8 hours of streaming both days. The video was top notch.

Re: USA/Mexico sets record on ESPN2.

bbennett712 — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:56:25 -0000

Any idea how many users watched on ESPN360? Those of us on the West Coast had no other choice since the game was on during working hours. Speaking of which, the stream on ESPN360 was flawless during the game which has not always been the case for other events. I wrote a blog post about it here: http://blog.fansection.com/2009/02/espn360-deli...

Re: The “secret” behind Hulu in a Super Bowl ad?

bbennett712 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:41:35 -0000

So I assume Hulu is getting the mother of all deals on the spot since it's running on their parent company. I've heard NBC has had issues selling all of their spots, so maybe this is one way to get some good use out of it. Whatever the case, I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

Re: IMVU raises $10 million for its virtual rooms business

bbennett712 — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:12:57 -0000

The IMVU team is definitely focusing on the right business model with virtual rooms and virtual goods. Having worked in the teen social media space at Piczo, I know first hand how difficult it can be targeting this very finicky demographic. We had a hell of a time trying to monetize via advertising, so virtual goods is the right way to go. The big question in my mind is how the underbelly of virtual worlds can be managed. I played with IMVU several months ago and found and received some interesting "offers" for conversation almost immediately. I'm assuming their segmenting the under-18s or at least the under-16s from the rest of the population, but there's still risk inherent with their target demographic. Just ask the social networks how many hoops they have to jump through...especially in the UK.

Re: Boxee now lets you get “Lost” in ABC content

bbennett712 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 03:51:00 -0000

At Watercooler, we also have a relationship with ABC for our TVLoop Facebook applications. As is the case with Mefeedia, all videos are served via a popup rather than as an embed a la Hulu. It's my understanding that's the only method by which ABC will provide feeds for their content. I'm not sure if that's a technical limitation of their Move player or a business decision to drive home the ABC brand. I haven't seen the Boxee implementation, but I would be shocked if they weren't using the popup as well.

Re: 2009/01/12/tvcom/

Bryan Bennett — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:40:52 -0000

TV.com is off to a
good start but they
definitely have
their work cut out
for them if they're
going to try to
catch Hulu. Going
the more social
route is their best
option by far given
the lead that Hulu
has. It helps that
they have content
from the CBS mother
ship but it has to
be full episodes or
it loses a little
bit of its luster.
At Watercooler,
we've had good
success with
creating a social
community around TV
with our TVLoop apps
on Facebook as well
as TVLoop.com. But
it has to be an
integral part of the
user experience or
it's going to feel
forced. Should be
interesting to see
how they progress.

Bryan Bennett
Director of
Marketing
Watercooler

Re: MySpace wants to friend your television, but do you?

bbennett712 — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:28:38 -0000

I tend to agree with Eric on this one. Why would I want MySpace on my TV when it's a lot easier to just pull it up on my laptop while i'm watching TV. Also, CBS has learned with their interactive viewing rooms that TV tends to be an asynchronous event meaning that not too many people want to interact while they're watching the show. Instead they want to talk about it when it's over. Sports could be a little different as evidence by some of the ESPN forums during games, but not sure if MySpace can really make headway there.

Re: No Comment

Bryan Bennett — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:59:19 -0000

I started two blogs in October for Watercooler and I can tell you from experience that it's a slow burn rather than a flash fire. I'm trying not to get discouraged though because I completely believe in the concept that we've implemented and am confident that readership will come with some work. So we'll keep chugging along. I'm happy to know that others are in the same boat.

Re: The plight of branded ads and the future of social marketing

bbennett712 — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 01:24:44 -0000

Fantastic post Keith. Thanks for getting the discussion started.

While I agree that branded apps can be a tough sell, I do think there is room for the right kinds of apps. Look at Parking Wars from A&E which has over 300k monthly active users and is generally pointed to as being very successful. I think the key is that the app has to be able to stand on it's own and can't rely solely on the brand to drive users. Parking Wars does that through a fun and engaging game.

Also, while branded apps are generally more engaging than display ads, they're not the only way to drive user engagement. At Watercooler, we've had success driving user engagement by integrating advertisers into key pieces of the product such as trivia. This includes custom questions as well as helpful features like lifelines and hints. By making the brand relevant to users within the normal application experience, we're able to achieve a much higher level of engagement than with standard display ads. We have some case studies on our blogs if anyone is interested.

Bryan Bennett
Sr. Director of Marketing
Watercooler

Re: MySpace announces Top 8 of 2008 awards, vampires win

bbennett712 — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:41:16 -0000

Twilight is going nuts across the web. At Watercooler we make TV and sports apps for Facebook, MySpace and other social networks (in addition to our new website http://www.tvloop.com), and our Twilight app has been the big winner the last few months. It's up to almost 300K users and has grown almost 70% over the last month. I'm not the target market for the movie, but the social networking demo can't seem to get enough of it.

Re: How Can Facebook Crack its Advertising Problem?

Bryan Bennett — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:12:49 -0000

I'm the head of marketing at Watercooler and we're the #12 developer of Facebook apps. We make the TVLoop "Addicted to..." apps as well as the FanSection sports fan apps. When working with advertisers, we advise them of 6 key factors to keep in mind when undertaking a social media campaign:
1. Be relevant
2. Be authentic
3. Be part of the product
4. Use the social graph
5. Donâ€™t get in the way
6. Analyze the right metrics

More detail can be found on the TVLoop blog. http://blog.tvloop.com/2008/12/social-media-adv.... Would be interested in hearing thoughts on the validity of this approach.

Re: TVLoop.com - Future of Social TV Experience Online

bbennett712 — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 15:21:33 -0000

Nice post...thanks for covering the TVLoop.com launch news. If you ever want to check in to see how we're doing or grab some cool TV/social media insight and stats, check out our blog at http://blog.tvloop.com. And if you have any questions for me about the launch or strategy, i'm happy to answer them. Thanks,

Bryan Bennett
Director of Marketing
Watercooler - parent company of TVLoop

Re: Social Media Hot Topics for 2009

jacobmorgan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:03:56 -0000

hey bryan, ya there are a lot of topics and issues out there. wow, it's great that you guys are still rocking out over at water cooler. 2009 will be an interesting year for the social media space, who knows what will happen!

on that note if you guys ever want to collaborate on social media or seo stuff, let me know :)

Re: Social Media Hot Topics for 2009

bbennett712 — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:21:57 -0000

Lots to chew on here. Where social media goes from an advertising standpoint is one of my biggest things to watch. There are lots of folks out there screaming that social media advertising is in trouble and I tend to be a little more optimistic than that. At Watercooler, we're still getting as many RFPs as we were many months ago. Whatever the case, i'm hoping 2009 is the year when advertisers finally realize there's more to life than reach and frequency. We're doing our best to educate them and they're slowly coming around.

Re: 10 Mistakes In Promoting New Blogs | Social Media Explorer

JasonFalls — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:31:27 -0000

Thanks for the thoughts, Bryan. Points agreed. Appreciate the participation.

Re: 10 Mistakes In Promoting New Blogs | Social Media Explorer

bbennett712 — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:11:45 -0000

Good post Jason. As a relatively new blogger, I'm happy to see that I'm at least going about things in the right way. For a #10, I think someone mentioned this already but just wanted to reiterate that making your blog is a slow burn and not a flash fire. At Watercooler we get a little frustrated at times that we may be the only ones reading our blog. But we're going to keep plugging away confident that if the content is good, they will come.

Re: Why MySpace is Monetizing So Quickly: They’re Dying Fast

bbennett712 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:55:12 -0000

MySpace has ~130MM users worldwide so I hardly think they're going anywhere anytime soon. Not to mention the fact that they're already monetizing much better than Facebook or any other social media site. The sites have different uses and different targets and i think there will always be plenty of room in the social networking space for both. That said, MySpace seriously needs to get off their ass and get their developer platform in order. It's not even on the same field as Facebook or even hi5 and Friendster.

Re: Jameson Does Pandora Right

Bryan Bennett — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:31:55 -0000

Nice post Chris. This is a fantastic example of a brand injecting themselves into the user experience by enhancing it. At that point it becomes content and is no longer just advertising. Nice job Jameson, but equal kudos to Pandora for embracing new stuff as a publisher. This is what we need to see more of throughout social media advertising, and exactly the type of campaigns we at Watercooler are proposing to advertisers on a regular basis.

Re: 2008/11/23/15-facebook-apps-from-big-media/

Bryan — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:22:32 -0000

Oh, and we recently launched the TVLoop blog to foster conversations exactly like this one. In fact, I wrote a post last week about getting big media to start thinking about monetizing videos in a different way. Would love to see comments on that post as well as others that we should be writing. Thanks in advance.

http://blog.tvloop.com/2008/11/guilty-pleasure-...

Re: 2008/11/23/15-facebook-apps-from-big-media/

Bryan — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:20:32 -0000

Nice post Paul. We need more conversation like this to get big media rolling. While it's not remotely close to nirvana, we've made some headway at Watercooler. Users of our TVLoop "Addicted to..." applications on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, and hi5 can watch full episodes of their favorite shows from ABC, Fox and NBC within the applications themselves. We have agreements with ABC and Hulu to make that possible. So Facebook users can effectively get full episodes and clips of shows like Lost, Heroes, The Simpsons, etc...they just need to do it through Watercooler's TVLoop applications.