Geek's thoughts…. Purely Online Media

Shopit is a free Social Commerce Network that gives users the ability to buy, sell or trade products and services across popular destination properties like MySpace, FaceBook, Bebo, Friendster, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga and many more through customizable storefronts, then mass syndicate their catalog to any website, blog and social network using the store widgets or applications. The company claims to reach well over 350Mil users across the internet and mainly on social communities. The company feels its edge over the market players is its ability to offer varied marketing solutions such as Peer to Peer, CPAand CPM (Branding), allowing marketers to chose which channel best suits their needs.

The social networking e-commerce concept seemed very interesting to me, so I approached Rhett to understand more about them, and he was happy to answer my questions.

Below is my email interview with Rhett:

1. Please provide a brief backdrop of what your product has to offer clients.

Shopit Media has created a 3-tiered advertising solution:

Branding: If a client wants to flood their brand to a large audience, the advertisers can pay on a CPM basis. I.e. McDonalds wants to target users across apps in multiple social networks for brand recognition and awareness.

CPA: Companies that wish to sell products or offers, we provide CPA pricing. I.e. An affiliate network is advertising a new diet pill for sale.

P2P: Allows Shopit and related app users who want to gain visibility of their products beyond their own network to advertise across multiple social networks; targeting other community members that might be interested in their items. I.e. A small time jewelry designer is selling her goods on MySpace but only has 100 friends and needs more visibility of her products; he/she would use the P2P Ad platform. Rhett says the biggest advantage what they have is the ability to not only deliver ads within Shopit alone, but across multiple social platforms. Also, traditionally the peer-to-peer e commerce market has been bound by fees, either when listing a product, selling a product, or maybe both. What we are doing is separating ourselves from that model. Shopit does not charge any fees, whether listing, transaction, or otherwise.

A sample Shopit Facebook application click here

All three advertising methods get optimized to generate the highest eCPM for our publishers. We share revenue with all our publishers.

2. Can you tell us more about your ad serving/targeting capabilities?

As touched on in the previous questions, our ad serving optimizes the highest eCPM’s, and then reject campaigns that do not generate any impressions. We currently offer advertisers the ability to target:

- App Vertical 
- Country 
- Age 
- Gender

In addition, we are rolling out other features soon such as, hobbies, marital status, user interest and level of education.

3. A recent study says ads on social network do not work? What is your take on this?

In the past, traditional advertisements have failed in the social landscape. However, if the data is utilized to its fullest and paired with a strong mix of legitimate/relevant advertising than you will see the ads convert. In the grand scheme this is still a fairly new space and it takes large brands a while to adopt just as it takes technology time to perfect itself.

Initially, the eCPM’s were very low, but targeting was also not available. Now that targeting capabilities are on par and maybe better than outside of the social networks, the eCPMs are increasing and both publishers and advertisers are happier. That is why you see companies like P&G being highlighted in a recent AdAge article stating that they are putting an advertising focus on applications within social networks rather than the social network themselves.

4. Does your network support Opt in ads or any new innovative ads for better user engagement?

We believe that with the level of targeting we offer, utilizing data the social networks are providing, we have the ability to serve more relevant ads to users, therefore creating higher user engagement.

Example- a girl is playing a dress up game inside a fashion app on a social network, but she also has interest in Mountain Biking and Snowboarding. We can serve her ads that would be relevant to woman, fashion, adventure travel, sports, etc… vs. just woman and fashion.

Our largest innovation is to allow micro advertisers the ability to syndicate their products/services/ads across multiple platforms in one streamlined process, increasing the visibility by targeting their closed network of ‘friends’ or connections. The complete functionality will launch when the entire Shopit network is re-launched in the coming months.