Razorfish measures the social media value

Razorfish (one of the world’s largest interactive agencies) filed for a patent back in December for how to measure social influence.

Today social media apps (widgets, applications, viral media, etc.) cannot track or account for unique individuals other than those who download the application and those that download the application from a friend. Couple that with the lack of known quantitative methods for identifying key influencers within a social network in regards to a specific application and you’ve got a big problem for the industry. Certainly a billion dollar problem and one that matters a lot if we want to make social influence marketing more real for marketers.

Core Questions Razorfish Tried To Answer:

• What is the value of a key influencer?
• How viral or how many generations of influence has my social media application achieved?
• What is the value of someone who receives a social application from a friend versus someone who receives it via media or a paid seeding strategy?

The Razorfish Incrementing Action Tag Solution:

The solution is the Incrementing Action Tag which is a set of functions within a social media application that creates a variable that may be read externally based on where the user acquires the application.  When a user downloads the application from the original source, the Incrementing Action Tag notes the source and assigns the downloader the value of first generation (or one). When another downloader obtains the application from somewhere other than the original source (e.g. a friend, other website, etc.), the Incrementing Action Tag looks at the variable (or generation) assigned to the current source and increments it by one; thus making the next downloader generation two or other appropriate generation number.

The Incrementing Action Tag is thus able to identify (via a cookie and unique identifier and not through personally identifiable information) and track social media, identify how far removed (generation) cookies are from the original source of the social media, and identify key influencers (again no PII- see note above) of users of social media. In essence, this technology enables our agency to create a system that allows us to value and reach key influencers across the Internet, regardless of property.

In everyday language, this is very important as social media spreads through the viral influence. Brands really need to know how and why something goes viral so that when they optimize who their efforts, they can target and seed more efficiently.

The system is similar to the ForwardTrack system created by Eyebeam R&D designed to promote on-line activism. The system tracks and maps the diffusion of email forwards, political calls-to-action, and online petitions. It can trace email forwards, map the impact of blogs, and facilitate web-based sign-ups and social networking.

The difference, as far as I have understood (From speaking with Lee Sherman at Ad:Tech Singapore) is that the Action Tag solution sits on top of an ad serving & tracking system thereby providing the advertiser or agency with a complete overview of the campaign performance and value – NICE!

So the question is – when will Doubleclick, Atlas, Eyeblaster or Adform include this as a part of their ad serving & tracking system?