Introducing Kinetic Conversations

September 3, 2013September 11, 2013 Don Mathis1 Comment

Introducing Kinetic Conversations. This link is to the introduction I wrote for my company Kinetic Social‘s new blog, “Kinetic Conversations.” The blog is pretty cool (I’m biased of course). I cover off very briefly on who we are, from our launch to our recent Series A, and then talk a bit about what we hope to achieve with this blog.

Here is a snippet from my introduction:

The purpose of our Kinetic Conversations

We operate in an industry that has – to put it diplomatically – a high opinion of itself. Silicon Valley overall and the ad:tech sector in particular has been accused of cloaking capital accumulation with the fig leaf of “changing the world”. There appears to be no shortage of self-absorbed entrepreneurs more interested in promoting themselves than building real companies, as well as founders who run their companies like feudal lords surrounded by serfs with Stanford degrees. With so much bombastic boasting, it can often be challenging to tell the wheat from the chaff to get to what’s really going on in our industry.

At Kinetic, we’ve worked hard to build a different culture, one focused on providing outstanding client service and striving for excellence in our products, our technologies, and our processes. Sounds pretty basic, right? But you’d be surprised how rarely these “real business” concepts are practiced in our space.

So the purpose of Kinetic Conversations is to talk about the things that actually matter in building what we believe is a real company in this sector: the people we are, the stuff we’re working on, the things brands want in order to build better engagement with their customers in social media.

We’ll also discuss new products and major technology releases – indeed, we’ve got a big one coming soon (so stay tuned)! We’ll have ‘how it works’ explanations, opinions on industry trends, best practices and tips, and we’ll try to do as much of this as possible without the buzz words that annoyingly characterize our space … or, when we cannot avoid it, provide definitions of tricky industry-speak.

Most of all, this blog will be a showcase for the talent that makes up Kinetic. More than any other company I know, our team is a dedicated group with a real passion for the business. Those can be throw-away lines at many companies. But at Kinetic, it is the real deal, and it is why we are who we are.

So, thank you for checking us out and hopefully you’ll find enough reason to come back again! And please give us feedback along the way.

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Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a company launched in 2011 with a core mission of making sense of the world’s ‘social signal’ on behalf of large brand advertisers. He also serves in the active reserve of the US Navy, where he is the Commanding Officer of a highly deployable, selectively staffed, joint-service combat logistics unit that supports forward deployed war-fighters.

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“It’s the Advice, Stupid”

March 5, 2013September 11, 2013 Don Mathis1 Comment

By Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO

Earlier this week, we began to hear more details regarding the changes Facebook has made to the Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program, in particular as these changes will relate to both the initial application to the PMD program as well as to the recertification process for existing badge holders.

Of all of the new requirements, I believe the first one mentioned by Zach Rodgers in an AdExchanger article will cause the most difficulty amongst the existing PMD community: “Going forward, all PMDs must demonstrate ‘the ability to advise marketers on ad spend to amplify word of mouth and ensure success of brands on the platform.’” (Read the full AdExchanger piece here).

Did everyone get that? To keep your PMD badge, you better be able to help your client understand not simply what to buy, but why they should buy it. It isn’t enough to be a smart buying platform. In fact, that’s becoming the price of admission to the game … to be an effective (preferred) marketing partner for Facebook, you better be good at providing outstanding strategic client advisory services.

Facebook is looking for partners who are able to help clients create holistic campaigns that take full advantage of the FB platform. Just arbitraging “Likes” for a cheaper price than the next guy does not equal effective campaign management or genuine brand building, and increasingly won’t cut it. That’s been true with the more sophisticated brand advertisers for a while; it is becoming true with Facebook now too.

Why should that be so hard for many of the PMDs? Because most PMDs were created as “platforms” to engage in the social media equivalent of programmatic buying. As a general rule, the PMD community has focused sharply on trying to be social trading desks and/or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms for social media buying.

There is nothing wrong with that, per se. In fact, to be an effective badge holder, a company must be very good at providing differentiated, optimized programmatic social media buying. But having a strong technical skill-set and platform which interfaces with the FB API is not enough.

The PMD community seems to operate as if they attended a big venture capital summit in 2010 or maybe early 2011. At that summit, some prominent VC made a speech along the lines of, “whatever you do, DO NOT claim to be in the media execution business. You’ll get a crappy agency-like multiple when you sell the company … instead, be a SaaS play! That’s the path to a 4-5x revenue multiple exit!”

And while I’m sure no such thing actually occurred (or if it did, we weren’t invited), the industry certainly seems to act like it. Don’t believe me? See how many times the word “Platform” is repeated on the websites or in the marketing materials of the badge holders. “Platform” has replaced “Optimization” as the ad:tech word of the year. Thankfully, the buzz phrase “Social Graph” is already starting to die.

But as I spoke about in my post last week, Facebook is the inventory aggregator in the social media ecosystem, not the publisher. Facebook’s one billion users are the publishers … and in this ecosystem, Facebook makes the buying easier – like an exchange, only better – and the role of the PMD ought to be to help the client access the FB universe effectively. Not just buying, but buying smartly to build a brand.

Bottom line: if you want to hold a PMD badge, you better be good at helping your clients grow their brands.

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Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a company launched in 2011 with a core focus of marrying “Big Data” to social media on behalf of large brand advertisers. He also serves in the active reserve of the US Navy, where he is the Commanding Officer of a highly deployable, selectively staffed, joint-service combat logistics unit that supports forward deployed war-fighters.

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From Chaos to Sanity: Facebook Modifies PMD Program

February 14, 2013September 11, 2013 Don Mathis2 Comments

By Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO

On Feb 13th, Business Insider broke a story about Facebook changing its PMD program that caught the attention of a lot of people in the social ad:tech space. AdExchanger picked up on the story as well. What’s going on? Facebook has changed the rules regarding new entrants to its Preferred Marketing Developer program – the single most important program for a company like my own, Kinetic Social, for conducting advertising on Facebook.

In the AdExchanger article, Zach Rodgers’ writes that Facebook is now telling “prospective PMD partners … (that) they’ll need to prove their knowledge of its ad products and their ability to “influence your clients on media spend.” Zach adds, “Facebook has stopped accepting new badge applications while it reshapes the PMD requirements and works its way through a glut of badge requests. The company expects to open up the program again in about two weeks, albeit with a significantly higher bar.”

See the full AdExchanger piece here.

At Kinetic Social, we see this development as a very good thing. AdExchanger reached out to us today, as well as two other PMD partners, for our opinions … which tracked pretty closely to each other, interestingly. It seems that the industry overall is looking for a “higher bar” and hoping to see the wheat culled from the chaff, as I discussed in a post last week.

Here is what we told AdExchanger:

“This is one more step in FB’s ongoing effort to improve the ad experience. They are raising the bar here, and that’s a good thing for the serious players … less noise in the ecosystem, more focus on actually adding value.

A potential concern would be with the emphasis on inside referrals, which could be good or bad. The current PMD program already seems to be heavily weighted in this direction … for the smaller players that have superior products but less penetration into the internal world of FB, this represents a hurdle which could work at cross-purposes with improving the program.

Bottom line: overall, we think this is good for the PMD program. It represents FB putting increasing emphasis on working with partners with real technology and demonstrable value-add, and who can guide brands on how to fully harness FB. It should help thin out a glutted space (have you seen the Lumascape recently??) and, in turn, make it easier for marketers to make a PMD choice based on skill. It probably isn’t such a good thing for the newbies with no FB relationship, or for the established PMDs who have pursued a ‘reseller’ business model.”

Find the full article here, well worth the read with astute comments from Rob Leathern and Jeff Dachis.

This development is part of a phenomenon I blogged about last week, The Smell of Social Desperation.

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Tag: PMD