From AdAge: Why Most Digital Ads Still Fail to Work

I was presenting to one of our major clients yesterday, and one of the learnings we pointed out was that Flash ads do not necessarily outperform static image ads, even if they're "flashy". The article below may provide some insights on how to make your digital ads translate better to response. Remember, online advertising is NOT meant to deliver all your marketing copy points. They're meant to drive you to click and bring you TO the place where you deliver your marketing message.

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Creative Efforts Often Don't Suit Digital, Neglect Research

Posted by Philip W. Sawyer on 01.27.10 @ 12:33 PM

Philip W. Sawyer

In 2005, CNET undertook a series of landmark online-advertising-effectiveness studies with Starch Communications to identify the best approaches to online advertising. CNET made the research public, offering presentations throughout the country and on its website.

How effective is digital advertising today? As lead analyst for those studies, I'll be blunt: Many digital advertisers make the same mistakes that the least effective advertisers made five years ago. The medium isn't to blame. The problems are due to creative efforts that do not suit the medium and the refusal to employ research tools that can identify creative problems and how to fix them.

Here are seven mistakes that, research tells us, afflict so many digital ads today.

1. They are too complex.
To digital advertisers: Most people aren't as interested in your products and services as you are; avoid the details. To interest them, attract their eye with uncluttered visual displays and concise, to-the-point headlines and body copy. In short: Keep it simple.

2. They take too long to get to the point.
Yes, the viewer is watching a screen. But they're not at the movies -- they're not waiting for the credits to roll and the good stuff to start. Effective internet advertisers register their brands, post their messages quickly and avoid the long build-up with teaser words and images, which irritate and, worse, alienate the audience.

3. They are ambiguous.
Americans don't go to advertising to raise questions. They want answers. When internet ads generate thoughts that begin, "I wonder what..." or "Why are they..." or "What the hell...," they've missed their opportunity. Some digital advertisers believe that ambiguity arouses curiosity and product interest, but the research indicates that advertising effectiveness and uncertainty are usually mutually exclusive.

4. They are visually bland -- or, worse, ugly.
The research demonstrates that the eye is drawn to sharp, clear, colorful pictures; yet many digital advertisers offer muted, abstract photography or a visual cacophony of verbiage and images. With photographs, present one clear focal-point to entice the eye; employ strong, primary colors; and, if possible, heighten contrast by using black for the background.

5. They use Flash for the sake of Flash -- not for a clear purpose.
Static ads often perform better than flash ads. Why? The online world is divided into two kinds of advertisers: the quick and the dead. Effective static ads don't have the luxury to distract the visitor with Flash; rather, they're forced to rely on simple images to attract the eye and on simply-stated messages for the mind, exactly what most online travelers are looking for.

6. They are often difficult, if not impossible, to read.
Some digital advertisers unwisely borrow from some of the most egregious print ads, which were created by people who are not aware that uniformity of font size and style, not VaRIabIlitY, is the key to legibility. The most effective digital ads use one font style, in one size, well spaced and in lower case. (All-caps copy demands too much effort.)

7. They are bereft of benefit statements.
The vast majority of advertisers in all media are more comfortable listing features not benefits. The importance of this point cannot be overstated: There is one primary question that drives purchase interest in any product in any medium, and it is, "What's in it for me?" Clearly and concisely answer that question, and you'll win their hearts and minds.

One last point: The internet traveler usually has a clear purpose: to read e-mail, to get medical information, to book a flight to Bermuda ... Time moves quickly for people on a mission. Distract them without a quick payoff, and you're likely to irritate them -- rarely a goal of any advertising campaign.

Digital advertising isn't working very well, but don't blame the medium. The fault lies in the creative. Exploit the research possibilities available to you -- especially web analytics -- and you can create powerful advertising that can turn your business around.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip W. Sawyer is an advertising effectiveness consultant for Conversion Associates, a digital analytics company located in Allston, Mass. The company's goal is to lead in the innovation, development and production of software applications to make digital analytics easier and have more of an impact on business decision-making.

From AdAge: 'Friendsourcing': Search Gone Social

Why Marketers Should Care About Your Friends' Interests

Posted by Eric Swayne on 01.26.10 @ 03:32 PM

Eric Swayne

If "Wisdom of Crowds" has been the dish of the last decade, Google has been its greatest chef. After all, who else could serve up a culinary delight of perfectly algorithmic search results? It's mathematically ideal: the entire internet is cached, indexed, scored and "interrogated" to find who says which sites are most relevant for a given search term. Search engine optimization and marketing has also become a crucial element of the Marketer's toolbox, as we game this math to keep our clients' sites a part of Google's master recipe.

And while this has served us well so far, it also has its flaws. In its purest state, Google's page pank algorithm serves up the ideal result for everyone, but it's the same ideal result for everyone. My wife and I are having our second child soon (a girl!), so when I search for "family hauler," Google will always display the Edmunds article first, and all other sites will move no higher until the ranking factors realign. But how do you know that Edmunds article is the right result for me? Here's a treasure trove of information: If you knew five of my friends have tweeted or posted on Facebook rave reviews about their Toyota Sienna, wouldn't you push that listing higher? Sure you would, but it's impossible to ask me questions about every topic I'm searching for. If every search result came with a questionnaire, we'd lose the entire essence of Google: simplicity, accuracy and speed. Of course, there is a better way to get to the same result, and it takes us back to the "Wisdom of Crowds" -- in this case, my crowd.

If it were possible to ask all my friends what they thought of "family hauler" you'd probably rank the Sienna or a number of other specific vehicles higher. And not just because I seek out a more "minivan" kind of crowd -- my friends and I happen to share similar geography and circumstances for the most part, which causes some amazing similarities. Moreover, I am much more likely to trust my friends' opinions than those of strangers. Anyone that's recently been on the search for a good doctor or dentist or accountant knows intimately how important it is to get recommendations from those you trust. Instead of crowdsourcing, this is "friendsourcing" -- the concept that people I know give better and more reliable answers for me than the world can as a whole.

All of this was nice and theoretical until we saw a flurry of action from the major search engines late last year. Bing announced deals with Facebook and Twitter, then Google got in the mix with a full unveil of its social search product. Google has also started integrating real-time, public conversations with hot, trending keyword searches. (Go take a look at what they show for "red cross Haiti donations" or "stroke" and you'll see what I mean.) If you want to start using friendsourcing right now, check out this video from Google's search-quality spokesperson, Matt Cutts , to see how social search works, and how to get started.

To say this means we're on the edge of something big is a catastrophic understatement, but marketers have only started to scratch the surface of what this means for them and their clients. At very least, we've got three fundamental paradigm shifts to deal with:

What brands say and do in social media has an increasingly direct effect on how they will appear in search engines, both in search results position and in description.

The more friends in my social circle (aka my "social graph") talk about your brand, the more likely I am to see your brand, click on your brand's listing and become another voice talking about your brand.

Many brands have recognized that their impact in social media is both powerful and tangible, but now that impact will easily spill over into other channels. "Social" isn't just a silo in your channel mix anymore, and the lines will be increasingly blurred with mass media, CRM, SEO/SEM or other channels.

The good news is that it's never too late to stake a new claim in social media for your brand, and that dramatic change can happen very quickly. Another news story that got a bit buried at the end of last year was DARPA's Red Balloon Challenge -- an experiment in how fast social networking can align and mobilize people world-wide. Ten large, red weather balloons were anchored and raised aloft in separate locations across the continental U.S. on Dec. 5, 2009. The winning team to find all 10 would win $40,000 -- and a group from M.I.T. did just that, in under nine hours. So to get your team or your clients started, here's some quick first steps:

Listen, record, observe and compare. There are a million tools on the market for searching or filtering social media conversations, and many of them are free -- Chris Brogan has anexcellent list of the ones he uses here. Most organizations are doing this already, but it's usually in a vacuum from other marketing efforts. Instead of just looking through your "ego feeds" (conversations about your company), start checking on the conversations around your search engine marketing portfolio of keywords, or use Google's keyword tool to analyze your site and start your own list. It's often interesting to see the gap between what people say about you and what they say about your product or service -- this can lead to ideas for new content on your site or places for your social media team to try to change conversations. For extra credit, start comparing the trends on these terms to your offline media: are my mass communications moving this needle? Did my latest direct-mail piece with the killer offer spark some new conversation?

Start holding everyone responsible, but make someone accountable. Your organization's social "footprint" can't be managed as a hobby. Large or small, it's time to take this seriously, because the impact will be felt from cyberspace to the cash register. Almost all marketing units are affected by (and will probably have an opinion on) social media, so it's often good to start with some kind of a "task force" comprised of representatives from each. However, the business needs to make a decision of exactly which person will own its social presence. This person doesn't need to be the one running it day-to-day, but they need to be able to speak to it fluently and have the power to make a difference.

Create a social media "lodestone" within each of your marketing efforts. Even with a cross-functional team or steering committee, it's hard to keep the social media conversation from gravitating to just a couple of marketing functions. To be truly effective, each discipline needs to know how they intersect with social media, and needs to define that in a way that attracts and excites new projects. PR, for example, can own reaching out to specific voices and generating influential conversations. CRM, however, has the opportunity to focus on longer dialogues with individual customers.

Ultimately, friendsourcing will give us a better internet experience -- one that knows us better and gives us what we're looking for, because it will be based in the human experience. The catch for marketers, then, is to get as good at playing to the right crowd as we are at gaming the right algorithm.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Swayne is senior digital strategy manager for Rapp. An award-winning web designer, developer and writer, he has worked with clients across verticals, including SuperValu, Best Buy, Bank of America, American Airlines and Texas Instruments.

From AdAge Digital: Facebook Launches Fan Box, Its First Official Widget

Facebook Launches Fan Box, Its First Official Widget

Here's What it Means for Marketers

Posted by Ian Schafer on 07.09.09 @ 10:39 AM

Ian Schafer

Yesterday Facebook launched the Fan Box, yet another way to extend what you're doing on Facebook to elsewhere on the web.

Think of the Fan Box as a widget (four simple lines of code) that Facebook-page administrators can implement on other sites to enhance connectivity to their Facebook pages. In a nutshell:

• Brands can use the Fan Box to recruit new fans in a more engaging way than just posting a link to "visit the brand on Facebook."
• Any content a brand wants to feature in the Fan Box can be customized by the Facebook-page administrator.
• While only the page administrator can generate the code and customize the content, anyone can grab the code to embed the Fan Box on another site.

One potential nice side effect of this is that the more places the Fan Box is displayed, the more potentially positive effect it could have on the Facebook fan page's search ranking -- in other words, more pages will be linking to it (which helps add relevancy to search-engine results).

The Fan Box is available right now, if you're a Facebook-page administrator. Right below your page's profile picture is a button that launches the Fan Box-creation wizard.

Ironically, just a day after Slide announced it is going full-bore into the branded-app business, Facebook launched a widget. This is yet another example of the "everything is connected to everything else" (or at least Facebook) mentality changing the way we communicate with people and the ways they communicate each other.

The recommendation here: Experiment with the Fan Box and see how/if it impacts your page performance. Why not? It's free.

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Ian Schafer is CEO of Deep Focus. Follow his musings at Ianschafer.com or Twitter.

Google Wave: A Wave of Mixed Reactions

Here's a list of links I've put together as reference to those who want to know more about Google Wave and how the websphere is reacting. 

I'm not shocked at the mixed reviews, as everyone is entitled to his own opinion. But I'm apalled at the wait-and-see attitude of a lot of people. This is not Microsoft or Apple saying, "Hey, I have a new product that I will sell to the world!" But rather, it's Google saying, "Hey, I have a great idea that will change the world, AND I WANT YOU TO HELP ME MAKE IT HAPPEN."

I still have doubts that Google's intentions are purely altruistic, but I believe this is the future and it's about to begin.

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Links from Google

• Google Wave preview
• Google Blog: Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.
• Google Wave API

Explanations & Reactions

• AdAge Digital: Google Tries to Rewrite E-mail; It Won't Happen Soon
• ComputerWorld: Google Wave: The fix for social network over-sharing?
• ComputerWorld: Is Google Wave the spork of the Internet?
• TechCrunch: Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.
• PC Mag: Google Wave: Five Things You Must Know
• Gizmodo: Google Wave Is a Frothy Collaborative Mix of Chat, IM, Twitter and Google Docs in Real-Time
• Mashable: Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?
• Engadget: Google Wave unveiled, new live chat medium for browsers, iPhone and Android
• Inside Facebook: What Google Wave Means for Facebook
• ReadWriteWeb: Google Wave: Google Tries to Reinvent Email
• Financial Times: Google Wave: a secret weapon for enterprise?
• CMSWatch: Google Wave: Tsunami or Wipe Out?

5 New viral videos make it to the Top 10 charts (by Visible Measures))

Visible Measures releases a new Top 10 YouTube viral video list. The following list of 5 are new to the Top 10 and are worth noting:

1. Nike Basketball: Most Valuable Puppets campaign by Wielden & Kennedy at #2 with 810K views for current week.  
2. Frito-Lay: Woman's World campaign by OMD/Mindshare/Juniper Group/Jam Media at #2 with 714K views for current week.  
3. T-mobile: new Singalong in Trafalgar Square campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi / MediaCom at #5 with 387K views for current week. 
4. Coca-cola: Open Happiness campaign by Mother, London at #7 with 302K views for current week.  
5. Bontrust: Make Your Money Multiply With Us campaign by Grabarz & Partner at #8 with 288K views for current week.  

Samsung's YouTube HD Camera Trick Challenge (revealed) by The Viral Factory is back on the charts at #6 with 371K views for current week.  

Still topping the charts at #1 is Vodafone's Make the Most of Now campaign.  

T-mobile's T-mobile Dance, Cadbury's Eyebrow Dance, and Samsung's Extreme Sheep LED Art drop to #4, #9 and #10, respectively, but still make it on the Top 10 charts.

Original AdAge article here.

YouTube Current Top 10 Viral Video campaigns (by AdAge Digital)

We at the agency are really pleased with how our new Camella TVC "Sikip" -- more popularly known now as "Bulilit" because of our super-cute, star-in-the-making little girl, Cha-Cha -- is enjoying word-of mouth, not only offline but more so online. 

Although we knew it was a great TV ad that will resonate with our audience, we didn't expect this much hype about it. That's the thing about viral. You never know if it will fly until it happens. All we can do is push the boundaries, even past what is considered acceptable on national TV and release it online.

So it's always amazing to watch videos that have made it to YouTube's Top 10 viral campaign. This list was just published by AdAge Digital. Some of it we've probably seen, as shared on Facebook, Twitter or email. Some I was seeing for the first time. Did these advertisers intend these to be viral? Or were they just going for great traditional TV advertising? We can only guess. But definitely it was the public that have made them viral. Enjoy!

	Last Week	Brand	Campaign	Agency	Current Week Views*	% Change in Views**	Watch the Spot
1	1	T-Mobile	T-Mobile Dance	Saatchi & Saatchi, MediaCom	598,827	-2%
2	New	Trident	Beyonce 100 Single Ladies Flash-Dance	Pretty Green, Initials Marketing	373,706	New to Chart
3	3	Cadbury	Eyebrow Dance	Fallon	363,467	-11%
4	2	Samsung	Extreme Sheep LED Art	The Viral Factory	352,699	-23%
5	5	Philips	Carousel	Tribal DDB	338,672	+4%
6	6	Durex	Get It On	Fitzgerald & Co., SuperFad	263,629	+10%
7	7	Burger King	SpongeBob	Crispin Porter & Bogusky	252,952	+10%
8	8	Geico	It's the Gecko/ Numa Numa	The Martin Agency, Horizon Media	201,152	-8%
9	New	Boston Bruins	Never Date Within Your Division	Mullen	187,675	New to chart
10	New	Marshall's	Kelly: The Prequel	Mr Youth	177,746	New to chart
Source: Visible Measures *The Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video Ad Campaigns Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online-video-sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach™ basis, which includes viewership of both brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations. Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures' paid-placement (i.e., overlays, pre-/mid-/post-roll) performance data or video views on private sites. This chart does not include movie trailers, video-game campaigns or public service announcements. View-count results are incremental by week. **Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before. To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming video ad campaign, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign's overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.

Media Planning for Web Video: using GRPs? (From AdAge Digital)

Here's an attempt by Mindshare to create a comparable online metric to TV metrics: GRPs for Web video. It's not as easy as it seems, primarily because vs. TV, internet activity is user-driven, timing of which is not depended on placement schedules. Another difficulty is that at any time, the user can stop viewing of the video and shift to another webpage. 

Another problem is that such metrics are measurable only after campaign implementation. Not like TV that you can predict with a limited degree of error your GRPs when planning your campaign. Online, it's a matter of how engaging and how viral your material is. It's not about where you place your ad, but on how good your material is.

Case in point: the latest Camella Homes TV ad, "Sikip", (ad agency: Leo Burnett Manila) is enjoying some virality online. The best part was the first known post on YouTube was audience-generated, not by the agency nor the marketing team. It was never intended to be an online material, nor did Client spend a dime to put it online.

I appreciate the intent to try to find a common ground for advertisers to evaluate online efforts vs. traditional media but I doubt this direction will prove to be an accepted methodology for media planning and budget allocation. It will still require a certain amount of Client's faith in the material, and willingness to experiment and risk a portion of his marketing budget for digital efforts to flourish.

Below is the original post in AgAge Digital.

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Media Agency Looks to Spread TV Advertising Wealth to Online

by Michael Learmonth 

Published: April 06, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Good news for online video: Mindshare, a unit of WPP's giant media buying operation GroupM, is embracing a new metric that could speed the migration of TV advertising dollars to the web.

Since YuMe specializes in placing video ads in premium video, including TV shows on the web, a GRP metric will allow an advertiser to buy both TV and online for the same campaign on the same standard.

The agency is throwing its weight behind a translation of TV's gross ratings point to online video developed with video ad network YuMe, meaning Mindshare clients such as Unilever and Ford will start buying online video on a gross-ratings-point basis, the same way they buy TV.

Agencies have for some time looked for a way to measure online video in terms of gross ratings points (GRPs), or the sum of the reach of a campaign times the frequency that the target audience was exposed to an ad.

Major TV marketers have bought TV campaigns on a GRP basis for decades as they buy vast swaths of the country in certain demographics, and have years of experience in using that data to evaluate what the return on a TV campaign will be, say, on the sale of tubes of toothpaste in stores.

Would seem simple enough 
On the face of it, converting online metrics such as "views" and "unique visitors" to a GRP, a measure of the reach and frequency of a campaign among U.S. households, would seem to be a fairly simple proposition.

But converting to a web audience, which is smaller and more splintered than TV, is difficult. A TV campaign, for example, would achieve a rating in one TV broadcast; online, the equivalent reach and frequency may be achieved over weeks or months.

Having an online equivalent -- an iGRP, if you will -- allows marketers to compare the effectiveness of TV and broadband on an apples-to-apples basis, and theoretically spread TV dollars online for the same campaign. Then, the buy becomes video wherever it happens to be, rather than just "online" or "TV."

YuMe isn't the only video ad network attempting to dip its toe into the $70 billion TV market by using TV metrics. In February, Tremor Media started reporting their own GRP equivalent for online video campaigns using ComScore demographic data, and BBE is working on its own GRP translation with Publicis Groupe unit Starcom Mediavest.

In embracing the new standard, Mindshare advertisers will have the option of buying web video on the same metric, and it's likely that Mindshare's sibling agencies within Group M, Mediaedge:cia, MediaCom and Maxus, will follow suit.

"As viewing online viewing continues to grow, we need to have a clear understanding with the partners we work with on how to evaluate frequency models on broadband vs. TV," said Cary Tilds, senior VP-digital strategy at Mindshare.

Since YuMe specializes in placing video ads in premium video, including TV shows on the web, a GRP metric will allow an advertiser to buy both TV and online for the same campaign on the same standard. An episode of "Heroes" on Monday night on NBC, for example, might have 7 million people watching and reach a certain percentage of viewers aged 18-49. An equivalent GRP could be achieved online but it might take buying audiences across many shows over time.

"We can now start to say, that the same million dollars you spent for the TV buy, you can have to run it for a month on these sites and you will get the equivalent," said YuMe President Jayant Kadambi.

Similar Images: Search Beyond Keywords (From AdAge Digital)

What if you could use Google search to find a crime suspect by using a composite drawing created from witness accounts? What if you can find using Google the artist or photographer of a beautiful picture you got from somewhere? What if you can easily check online on Google if your copywrited photo or logo is being used elsewhere on the Web? 

Today, you can't quite yet. But maybe soon. Google is starting to go beyond keywords to do search. The article below describes Similar Images, a developmental feature of Google search that uses image-recognition technology to refine searches. It doesn't elminate yet the need for the right keywords but it's a good start. Imagine when you didnt need to have a good handle on language (and keywords) to find what you were looking for online. How will search optimization be done when that happens?

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How to Search Without Words

Google's Newest Tool Shows Search Still Evolving

Posted by Hashem Bajwa on 04.22.09 @ 02:46 PM

Hashem Bajwa

Google Labs this week launched a new product called Similar Images, which allows users to search for images using others images instead of words. Until now searching for images with Google meant using text entered into a search bar to describe things, the results of which are only as descriptive as the words entered into the query and the words found on the page where the image is indexed by Google.

Google Similar Images changes that. With this feature, after entering in what one is looking for, the results all have a link below them that will find other images like that one. It uses image recognition technology to read the image and match it to others.

Another example of this is TinEye, a search engine that lets you upload your own image and then it matches it to other images on the web including ones that have been highly distorted or edited.

An important thing about both examples is that search is still evolving and even with Google's dominance there are new innovations to come. It also shows image recognition can be used accurately on a large scale when combined with search.

Here's an example of Google Similar Images at work:

When searching for "paris" one will get results for everything from the Eiffel Tower to Paris Hilton. After clicking the "Similar Images" link underneath one of those image results it will refine the results to just images that match that one specifically. Google Images also has a feature that will then display those photos according to whatever color is chosen.

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Hashem Bajwa is digital strategy director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. He also writes the Brain Sells Blog.

From Inside Facebook: A True First with Facebook Connect and YouTube!!

YouTube seems to be making headway. First, with flexibility of their branded pages, as can also be seen with the Symphony example I just shared in my previous post. Then, this development with Facebook Connect as Inside Facebook article I'm posting below. YouTube is going beyond their purpose of being just the premier video sharing site, not by pretending to be another separate social network, but by acknowledging the position of Facebook as THE social network.

The two most interesting things about this example:

1. The mashup happens in the YouTube environment, not in Facebook.

2. The evolvement of the YouTube environment into a microsite/blog-like interface.

But, unless I'm humbly mistaken, this was made possible with a direct contract with YouTube. Imagine if YouTube provided blog-like design flexibility to users. Imagine the possibilities. 

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Facebook Connect Comes to YouTube with Green Eyed World by Coke Europe

 

April 15th, 2009

In what is the first Facebook Connect integration we’ve seen on YouTube (or any other Google-owned property for that matter), Coca-Cola Europe just recently launched a new “social interactive music show” called Green Eyed World. Interestingly, YouTube has significantly demoted the placement of the the standard comments module and replaced it with a very prominent Facebook Connect integration.

The show is about a 23 year old singer from London who is selected to go to New York City to pursue her dreams of becoming a music star. Once users log in through Facebook Connect, they can leave comments and votes to influence her decisions, and see a stream of their friends’ comments and votes as well.

“This interaction between YouTube and Facebook is the first of its kind,” Google’s Benjamin Faes, Head of YouTube & Display for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said in a release. “We are creating a new technology implementation with these platforms. At any time during Green Eyed World, viewers can comment or vote, creating a live dialogue between themselves, their friends and the hero. The video pauses, and a small window pops up where the interaction can take place quickly and easily”

As we’ve documented before, content producers are finding that Facebook Connect can increase the authenticity of user comments and community. Users logging in with their real identities are less likely to leave lower quality comments as commonly happens on YouTube, which is especially valuable in the case of branded content.

In addition, Facebook Connect’s ability to share content back into users’ profiles and their friends’ news feeds can be a powerful driver of traffic. Facebook sent more traffic to Perez Hilton than Google did in January, and video sites are currently some of the most popular Facebook Connect integrations.

Despite the fact that Google founded the OpenSocial movement and is building its own competing product in Google Friend Connect, YouTube opened up and partnered with Facebook for the Coke integration. While the companies still have some unresolved questions about the way Google Friend Connect itself works with Facebook, the presence of Facebook Connect on YouTube is part of a bigger initiative on YouTube’s part to be more flexible with content partners and brands, and is a good sign for Facebook Connect.

As Liz Gannes over at NewTeeVee writes, “YouTube is showing increasing flexibility about what partners and sponsors can do on its pages, allowing CBS and ESPN to embed their video players of choice on its pages. Enabling Facebook Connect more broadly could be a very effective and appealing next step.”

Green Eyed World is directed by Tony Valenzuela, who previously worked on “America’s Next Top Model,” “CSI: Miami,” and “The Closer.” It is being produced by Austria-based FFP.