NextWidgets Blog

PRESS RELEASE: FUGA Launches NextWidgets Music E-Commerce Widget for Facebook

alexsavic — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:47:37 +0000

One of Europe’s largest digital music distribution companies extends functionality of its system through NextWidgets Facebook News Feed widget

Cannes, France – 31 January, 2012 – Today NextWidgets, a pioneer in transactional advertising solutions, announced that FUGA, the digital music business management platform of Independent IP (IIP), Netherlands, has launched NextWidgets Music E-Commerce widgets, named NextMusic, at MIDEM, the largest annual meet up of music industry professionals. FUGA is making the widgets available to its numerous music label clients already using the FUGA platform to distribute their music. The launch enables FUGA clients to sell music directly over their artists Facebook Fanpages News Feeds and utilizing a simple one step SMS payment system.

Musicians and their labels have for some time been interested in technologies that allow them to establish a closer and more direct communication with their fans. The possibility to leverage the Facebook Fanpage and its News Feed to directly offer music to fans for purchase is simply the next step in this evolution. Fans no longer need to look for the music, instead it comes directly to them via their favourite website; Facebook.

“It is important to stay ahead of the curve and offer the best technology to our clients,” said Martijn Tjho, CEO of IIP, the company behind FUGA. “We selected NextWidgets because of their experience and capability to deliver a robust system deployable across the many countries and languages we operate in. NextWidgets allow us to deliver the best consumer experience and an effective new sales channel to our clients.”

NextWidgets allows retailers to automate the process of promoting products through Fanpage News Feeds through its NextPromote product. NextMusic is the music selling iteration of this product and is being deployed today for the first time. The widgets can be customized to match the look and feel of the Label brand and they can be placed for distribution onto numerous Fanpages. The labels can track the entire shopping experience, from purchase intent to purchase conversions, for all activated widgets. NextWidgets integrates directly into the FUGA system to labels using the FUGA platform to distribute their music can be up and running without any change or duplication of any part of the existing workflow.

“Over the last decade, there has been a constant evolution in how music is distributed. Reaching fans directly through the most popular social network is simply the next logical step in simple and effective music retail. We’re proud that NextWidgets is at the forefront of where this movement is headed and we believe that today we’ve launched a product that provides a great service for music fans” said Alex Savic, CEO of NextWidgets. “The Facebook News Feed is similar to the e-mail marketing model, where you sign up to receive a newsletter. The only difference is that this medium allows the merchant to post very rich functionality and easily collect payment through SMS based processing. Overall we’re hoping this will become the standard in promoting new music directly to fans because of the simple but effective user experience.”

About NextWidgets

NextWidgets develops the leading marketing toolset for online merchants that enables advanced Display and Facebook promotions, affiliation and e-commerce. NextWidgets is the world’s first Facebook affiliate network and trusted source for e-commerce extension technology by numerous global brands.

About FUGA

FUGA is a all in one platform for asset management, product management, delivery and reporting for content owners, which enables them to manage their digital music business with unprecedented control over their music on the internet.

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NextWidgets Media Contact:
Kai Meier
+41 (0)44 363 1314
press@nextwidgets.com

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IIP

Eleonora Larionenko
+31206204785
eleonora@independentip.com

Kelly Wearstler launches NextPromote

alexsavic — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:20:14 +0000

The story of E-Commerce over Facebook has been a mixed bag at best. The industry has gone through the full cycle of hype and disappointment at lack of results within the last year. When NextWidgets first launched Facebook storefront solutions in 2010, we felt that there was potential, but that placing a store on a tab inside a Fanpage was just not visible enough to consumers to deliver actual results. We quickly learned that, logically, Facebook users will visit a Fanpage far more rarely than they would interact with Fanpage content posted through the News Feed. With this insight in mind, we set about to create a system whereby we could allow merchants to post dynamic product related widgets directly into their Fanpage News Feeds as status update messages and thus allow fans to see and interact with these widgets directly within the Home screen.

Today, this product, named NextPromote, was launched by one of our favourite clients, Kelly Wearstler, a leading fashion and interior design brand based out of Los Angeles, through their Fanpage Wall. The results on this first post immediately surpassed anything we have seen from a tab based Fanpage store. Along with NextShare, our social recommendation product, we feel that this is the future of e-commerce on Facebook as it provides a rich, interesting and engaging experience for users as well as real results for merchants.

NextWidgets launches AIDS/HIV awareness campaign for Kenneth Cole

alexsavic — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:59:57 +0000

There’s few brands that I admire as much as Kenneth Cole. From their humble beginnings and the amazing story of their first success to the myriad of charity work that they do today, it’s one of the most inspiring companies we have had the pleasure of working with so far. Therefore it was with absolute delight when we were asked to launch a NextTab campaign to promote their AIDS & HIV awareness Double Ribbon product of which the proceeds go to charity.

The campaign was launched last week and will feature our NextTab on over a dozen fashion related blogs over the next month.

To show our own support, the tab will be featured also here on our blog for the duration of the campaign.

Do Click-Rates Really Matter?

alexsavic — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:49:12 +0000

Back in August I read a great article called ‘Still Banging Away…‘ by Doug Weaver which was actually a re-post of an article he had written in 2007. This article really gives a good sense of how despite technology moving forward at lighting speed, a lot of the mindset within the online ad industry is still there where it was many years ago.

The article explores how despite technologies that allow for dynamic, expandable and richly engaging ad units, success is still mostly measured in terms of Clicks:

“Ten (NOW 15) years have gone by and everything has changed. Everything, that is, except our crack-like dependency on the click. In recent months I’ve spoken to dozens of marketers, agency execs and publishers and it’s become dismally apparent that nobody’s really moving on. Maybe the click-based success of Google is effectively blocking the sun on this issue, but we’re still living in collective darkness. It’s impossible to realize the true depth of web ROI when we always default to a metric that says we fail 975 of every 1000 times we touch the consumer.”

In this kind of scenario, does it even make sense to swim against the current ?

T-Mobile’s Social Media Ambassadors Strategy Deploys NextShare

alexsavic — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:32:57 +0000

For a little while now, T-Mobile in the Netherlands has been testing NextShare on certain products on their website to see the effect of consumers sharing through Facebook under an affiliate model. Due to the positive results received, the program will be extended across the breadth of the product range and last week T-Mobile gave a presentation at Thuiswinkel 2011 in Utrecht outlining the entirety of their strategy that focuses on allowing and encouraging consumers to become Social Media Ambassadors for the brand. The presentation is embedded below.

T-Mobile – Thuiswinkel Update 2011- Social Media & Ambassadeurs

View more presentations from Leon Gerrits