The Pirate Bay’s advertising program actually works

A little less than one year ago, The Pirate Bay announced a new campaign where the site’s iconic logo would be replaced by an ad for some form of media — usually music. Dubbed The Promo Bay, the promotional campaign aimed to help artists promote their work — no doubt an effort by The Pirate Bay to show that it isn’t just a platform for piracy. Those of you that have visited the site frequently enough may have wondered how well the promotion platform is working, and luckily for us, the developer of the indie game — Sean Hogan — Anodyne broke down just how much the promotion helped.

The Promo Bay isn’t simply a free promotion, as the catch is that the featured artist must provide a free torrent to the promoted work. Hogan said that the promotion was a success, and fueled sales to far exceed the projected numbers.

Over the three days that Anodyne was promoted on The Pirate Bay, Sean experienced traffic of over 240,000 unique visitors, with the largest referral being from The Pirate Bay. The total cost of the promotion was $7, but that was simply web-hosting costs. The release trailer of the game broke 100,000 views, and the Facebook page gained around 200 to 300 Likes.

To compare to how the game was doing before The Promo Bay, the developers only experienced traffic of around 40,000 unique visitors, which resulted in around 800 to 900 sales at an average of $8 a pop, which results in around $6,400 to $7,200. The sale resulted in around 6,700 purchases of the game, and though the average price paid was much lower than $8 — at around $1.50 to $2.76 depending on game-only or bundle purchases — the developers doubled their revenue from the sale, generating around $12,000.

So, at least for one developer, The Promo Bay actually worked, showing that more sales come with more exposure, even if the product is sitting right there available for free.

Facebook's Rose: Content Discovery Has Always Been Social, and It Always Will Be

Facebook likes to think of itself as a gateway to the huge markets that have arisen around the social graphs of its users. There’s no arguing with that. Facebook’s audience is a massive one, and there’s obvious value in reaching it. The question is, how do companies do that, and do it effectively? As VP of partnerships at Facebook, Dan Rose is charged with convincing media companies that Facebook’s audience is one worth reaching, and then delivering on that promise. Not always a sure thing, as Facebook’s high-profile falling out with General Motors last year shows.

During a wide-ranging interview at D: Dive Into Media, Rose talked about how Facebook views media, and how media should view Facebook.

“Facebook is primarily two core pillars — identity and sharing,” Rose said, adding that both pillars are part of Facebook’s media pitch.

“From an identity perspective, so much of who we are and how we identify ourselves comes from what we read and what we watch,” Rose continued. “So our identity platform can’t be complete without media being part of it. Similarly, the sharing piece can’t be complete without status updates about news stories, music friends are listening to, updates about movies people are seeing.”

The high-level principle driving this is the idea of finding the perfect balance between great user experience and delivering audience to platform partners.

“At its core, what we’re really striving to do is find the perfect equilibrium from a great user experience and a strong platform that developers and partners will continue to invest in,” Rose said. “… We need to keep the news feed interesting, and one of the ways we do that is through media.”

At the same time, however, Rose said Facebook must “honor” content, and presumably appetite for audience and buzz that’s ever-present behind it.

“We think it’s our job to honor content,” Rose said. “Media content deserves to be honored and respected in the news feed. For example, we recently increased the size of images from media partners. That’s more engaging for users, and for partners it’s great, because click-throughs and engagement increased.”

Media content also deserves to be consumed, says Rose. And here, too, Facebook plays a big role, and hopes to play an even bigger one in the future.

“How did you hear about ‘Downton Abbey’?” Rose asked. “I discovered it on Facebook. I kept seeing it pop up in my news feed. The simple fact is most of us find the TV shows we enjoy by listening to suggestions from our friends. That’s the primary discovery mechanism for content right now. Imagine a future, though, in which you turn on the TV and see a feed of all the shows your friends watch. We think that’s a very compelling idea. Content discovery always has been and always will be social.”

Additional Notes From the Session

• On mobile: “So many things are unlocked on mobile. You don't bring your computer to a restaurant or a party.”
• On Zynga: “I don’t think we walked away from Zynga at all. They built a large and successful business on our platform. … We still spend a lot of time with Zynga.”
• On Instagram: In the past, Facebook acquired small companies for talent, with Instagram being the first company it bought for the product. However, Rose said that more deals for product and technologies are likely.

[ See post to watch video ]

Ubisoft Release Survival Guide Trailer For Far Cry 3

With a few games planned for launch over the next couple of months it seems that the gamer will be spoilt for choice, however developer Ubisoft have left the launch of Far Cry 3 for late November giving them a good run into the festive season. However, just to keep up the interest, they have released this teaser trailer, which acts as a sort of survival guide for the islands, not that you are going to need it!

Here is a little bit about the game even though most of you will know this already;

Beyond the reach of civilization lies a lawless island ruled by violence. This is where you find yourself stranded, caught in a bloody conflict between psychotic warlords and indigenous rebels. Struggling to survive, your only hope of escape is through the muzzle of a gun. Discover the island’s dark secrets and take the fight to the enemy; improvise and use your environment to your advantage; and outwit its cast of ruthless, deranged inhabitants. Beware the beauty and mystery of this island of insanity… You’ll need more than luck to escape alive.

Far Cry 3 will be available December 4th 2012 in the US and November 29th 2012 everywhere else on the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3 and PC.

Source [Geeky Gadgets]