Vitrue, the global leader and innovator of social enterprise software, today announced an industry-first launch of its Media Partner Program (MPP) for marketers. This new program allows marketers, who leverage Vitrue´s Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform, to select their platform of choice and maintain existing relationships with leading ad management solution providers, thereby benefiting from integrated workflow, data, insights and growth of Sponsored Story ads. Vitrue´s MPP eco-system of best-of-breed ad management partners currently includes Involved Media, Marin Software, Nanigans, Optimal, SocialCode, Spruce Media and Unified. Additional ad management partners will be added to Vitrue´s MPP in the future.
MPP members log into Vitrue´s cloud-based SRM platform giving them insight into a brand´s Facebook post data and metrics, as well as extensive workflow capabilities that allow for real-time, seamless collaboration and communication between community managers and media buyers. Community managers have the ability to flag posts that receive high engagement and immediately notify media buyers. In addition, media buyers will have access to all Facebook post metrics, giving them the opportunity to leverage high engagement to create paid opportunities. Further, the Vitrue SRM will integrate numerous Facebook engagement metrics across paid, owned and earned content to present a comprehensive social snapshot.
"Facebook´s recent announcements clearly indicate earned content is now becoming paid, and owned content needs to be paid to achieve mass appeal with a Facebook page," said Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst, Altimeter Group, in a March 14 blog entry referencing Altimeter´s upcoming POEM research report. "Inside companies, we´re seeing the corporate social strategist cross the aisle to work with direct marketers. Advertising agencies are extending their budgets into the social world. Brands that integrate paid, owned and earned media will benefit because they will reach customers in the most effective manner."
On February 24, eMarketer predicted that advertisers worldwide will spend $7.7 billion in 2012 on social advertising, growing nearly 50% from last year´s $5.2 billion. Additionally, they expect spending to continue to rise hitting nearly $12 billion by 2014. Facebook continues its dominance with an approximate 70% market share over these years. In addition, Borrell Associates stated in January 2012 that small- and medium-sized businesses plan to double their social media advertising budgets this year, which is estimated at $2 billion in the U.S. alone.
"Adding collaborative workflow and insights from Vitrue´s Page Management into our platform is another important step in our ongoing mission to provide the online advertising industry´s most comprehensive and transparent media buying and campaign management platform," said Rob Jewell, founder and CEO, Spruce Media. This integrated solution ties together the impact of earned and owned media with our proprietary technology for buying and targeting paid media and empowers customers."
"As opposed to offering only one media buying solution within a social marketing platform, our MPP strategy gives brands the choice to seamlessly integrate and connect their ad systems and solutions with either an existing partner or other best-in-class options," said Reggie Bradford, CEO and founder of Vitrue. "Building on our innovative social publishing and marketing platform technology, we partnered with other industry leaders to offer our clients a complete social solution that includes integrated, real-time workflow and analytics capabilities."
The Vitrue SRM platform enables brands to engage consumers on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and emerging platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram through a singular, centralized platform interface. Vitrue also provides integrated analytics, including detailed reports for visibility and insight into the combined impact of paid, earned and owned media. Marketers can leverage pre-defined analytics or create custom reports based on specific platforms and data.
Vitrue´s MPP reinforces the company´s recently announced "Love" campaign that centers on a powerful statement, "Like Can Never Replace Love." The new brand campaign captures the philosophy that the world´s greatest brands aren´t built on clicks, but rather by creating meaningful relationships with real people. Building strong relationships in social depends on marketers executing a cohesive and integrated social marketing strategy.
"Vitrue has been successful at integrating our technology with leading web analytics partners such as Omniture, Coremetrics and Google Analytics in the past," concluded Bradford. "We will continue to push innovation and empower the industry."
About Vitrue
Vitrue offers the industry´s most scalable and secure cloud-based social marketing solution, enabling brands to harness the full marketing potential of social on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and emerging platforms. The award-winning Vitrue SRM platform collectively manages more than one billion social relationships in over 100 countries across more than 4,500 social accounts for its clients. For more information, visit www.vitrue.com, Like on Facebook and follow on Twitter. Share the love "´ #vitruelove.
