User:Wil.heintz/sandbox

SocialVibe is a digital media advertising company specializing in engagement advertising. Its digital advertising platform reaches over 200 million unique consumers each month, making it one of the largest on the Internet. Led by digital media expert and CEO Jay Samit, SocialVibe has placed hundreds of campaigns for marketers such as GE, Best Buy, McDonald's, Microsoft, American Express, Visa, Apple, Disney, Coca Cola, Kia, Toyota, Kraft, Macys, Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Discover.

Engagement Marketing
SocialVibe’s digital advertising technology allows brands to reach, engage, and spread messages through a targeted audience of consumers in social media. SocialVibe serves engagements for brands by positioning their ads in a value-exchange system. Consumers can watch and engage with advertisements in order to receive things they want such as virtual currency or premium content without ever paying out of pocket.

The company’s ads on average see better click through rates than traditional display advertising. The company says that its incentivized engagements enable consumers to decide how and when they would like to engage with a brand. By self-selecting social media engagements from SocialVibe, consumers have a greater likelihood of spending time with the message, completing the engagement and sharing the advertisement with their social community across Facebook and Twitter. The company was featured in Advertising Age in October 2010 for its brand advertising solution for major publishers including the world's largest social gaming network.

Beginning in May 2011 SocialVibe integrated with Facebook Platform allowing users to earn Facebook Credits by interacting with SocialVibe brand video engagements.

On August 3, 2011, SocialVibe announced its launch of a political advertising platform for candidates beginning with 2012's political campaigns.

SocialVibe Charity


SocialVibe maintains its original social networking advertising website, founded in 2007, which rewards publishers of social media content through mechanisms such as donations to their charity of choice.

After joining SocialVibe, in addition to creating a personal profile, users are asked to select their favorite cause to support and to choose a sponsor. Once they have done so, they can earn points for themselves, which can be redeemed for a variety of different perks and money for their respective charities by posting their "badge" (a kind of advertisement prominently displaying their chosen sponsor) to another social networking site. The more a SocialVibe user's networking site is visited, the more points they are able to earn. It was launched in February 2008 in public beta, and, as of October 19, 2009, its members have raised a total of more than $700,000 for their respective charities.

Badge
A badge is defined as "a distinguishing emblem or mark worn to show membership or achievement."

The SocialVibe charity badge brings its members together with their favourite brand and charity. The badges are customised to be the member's own, but all consist of their brand sponsor logo, cause logo, member profile picture and a personalised message.

Once the badge has been created, members put them on their social networking sites and/or blog. With the old system, which finished February 2010, each view that a badge received on the site they have chosen to post it on, earned them points. These points contribute to a larger donation to their charity or cause.

The new system implemented in February 2010 now works slightly differently, (no points per view, but varying points per activity) but has the same effect of bringing members more together to help each others cause or charity, as well as their own.

Funding
SocialVibe received $4.2 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures in December 2007.

In January 2009, Jafco Ventures led a Series B initiative along with Redpoint Ventures to raise the total amount invested in the company to $12 million.

Series C funding added an additional $12 million to SocialVibe’s valuation in May 2010.

Norwest Venture Partners led a Series D funding round accompanied by existing backers Redpoint Ventures, Jafco Ventures and Pinnacle Ventures in March 2011.

Awards & Recognition
In August 2010, Forbes recognized SocialVibe's engagement for Microsoft Bing on Zynga's FarmVille as one of the "Best-Ever Social Media Campaigns." The campaign garnered over 425,000 fans for Bing in less than one day, and 70% of the fans visited the search engine in the following month.[ The campaign was also won a OMMA Award for Online Advertising Creativity in the social media category in September 2010.

Management
SocialVibe was co-founded by Joe Marchese, David Levy, and Brandon Mills. Jay Samit is CEO, Todd Tappin is COO/CFO, Larry Lieberman is CMO and Nick Loria is CRO. SocialVibe is backed by Redpoint Ventures, Woven Digital, Norwest Venture Partners, Archer Venture Capital, Jafco Ventures, and Pinnacle Ventures and is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.