If you’re going to advertise to your friends, you might as well get paid for it. Or at least that’s SocialVibe’s thought on the matter.
The social media brand promotion site announced today a partnership with Interpublic, an owner of online advertising agencies that plans to introduce SocialVibe to IPG's media services and advertising agencies.
SocialVibe offers incentives to social media users to endorse brands and products through a SocialVibe badge on sites like Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and other social networking sites. Working with brands like Sprint, Adobe, and Coca-Cola, SocialVibe offers a variety of enticements —monetary, schwag, or through charitable donations — to encourage users to positively endorse brands to their friends.
Out of these options, charitable donations — to groups like World Wildlife Fund, Stand Up To Cancer, and Charity Water — have proven the most powerful incentive to social network users, a fact that might help individuals avoid feeling like poorly paid corporate shills.
Today’s deal is the most public support for SocialVibe, which received $4.2 million in Series A funding from Redpoint Ventures in December 2007 and was in development for almost a year before its beta launch in May.
SocialVibe's approach is part of a growing trend toward giving consumers more control in promoting brands, especially in the market of social media, where users come to connect with friends (and have far less tolerance for traditional advertising methods). Mike Parker, director of digital strategy at
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, an agency that has partnered with SocialVibe to help its clients' brands, tells MediaPost:
