What follows is an excerpt from a “Digitas Perspective” client letter written by Beth McCabe, Digitas‘ vice president and director for social marketing and technology. You can read the full letter here.

Brand Pages: As of right now, brand pages have not changed to a Timeline view. While we do know that Facebook is working on them and there will be changes eventually, no dates have been given yet, and it’s unknown what the changes will be.

“Likes” in the Timeline: Timeline is a shift from a chronological posting of your activity on the platform to aggregated content displayed by relevancy via Graph Rank. Consequently, stories posted when users “like” your brand’s page may not be shown as the top story on their profile pages for long. Brand “likes” will be collected together and displayed as a group within the time period the actions were taken. This means that they may drift down the page and be shown with older content. In the same vein, because it is much easier to explore a user’s history on the Timeline, older “likes” will be uncovered as a user drills into past months and years in a way that wasn’t possible before.

Sponsored Stories: Though the number and format of sponsored stories has not changed on the newsfeed, they have been reduced within the profile Timeline environment. In the “old Facebook,” there could be upwards of seven sponsored stories along the right-hand column of a user’s profile. Now, with the addition of the Timeline navigator, the number of sponsored stories has been reduced to approximately two to three. As Timeline invites users to explore friends’ “digital scrapbook,” time spent on Timeline profiles will arguably increase because there is more to do and more to see. This adds to the value of the ticker’s real estate for brands and the stories their apps post there.

Graph Rank: For a long time, Edge Rank has been Facebook’s algorithm for determining relevancy and filtering the content shown on users’ newsfeeds. Graph Rank takes Edge Rank and adds Open Graph apps to the equation, including factors like how often you or your friends interact with content posted by an app. This rewards apps that are popular by pulling them to the top of the feed and highlighting their use. “How often will this app be used?” is a question we should strongly consider when designing these apps for our clients. Apps that only publish stories once (for example, when you first use them) will be less valuable to brands because they are less likely to earn high Graph Rank and will tend to drift to the bottom of the pile.

The Agency of the Year nod went to Questus, a firm that’s going so far as to producing a documentary on the challenges it and its peer advertisers face (there’s a clip on the iMedia website). Starcom won for Campaign of the Year, for their social media campaign for ESPN, pumping up the 2011 NFL draft at a point when negotiations were fraught between NFL players and owners and the season’s sheer existence seemed questionable. Other winners were Ignition Interactive for Digital Boutique Agency of the Year, AKQA for Most Innovative Agency Website, Media Storm for Best Agency for Video, The Hyperfactory for Best Agency for Mobile, 22Squared for Best Agency for Social, Razorfish for Best Agency for Out-of-Home, Digitas for Best Agency for Integrated Media and iProspect for Best Agency for Search.

This is an excerpt from a client letter issued recently by Noah Mallin, vice president/group director of social marketing with Digitas. Click here to read the whole report.

While the Google+ platform has grown to 40 million users and counting, it is still unclear how many of them are active. In addition, the main elements that differentiate Google+ from Facebook and Twitter (Circles and Hangouts) come with their own set of hurdles for a brand page versus an individual’s profile. Google is expecting to evolve many of these features over the coming weeks and months, and Digitas will stay close to these developments as well as our partners at Google. We will continue to provide updates as we have them.

For marketers, this news is a bit of a mixed bag. For organizations that are already managing profiles (in some cases multiple profiles) across social platforms that range from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to Tumblr, Foursquare, Instagram and others, the prospect of adding Google+ to the mix may seem daunting. These are the considerations marketers need to keep in mind when thinking about Google+.

• Impact on SEO: Google is making a huge effort to tie social to search results, and in turn is using the power of search to potentially drive users to Google+. The two most obvious ways this is happening are through the +1 aggregation on brand pages (which may be read as incoming links – a good thing in Google’s search algorithm) and Direct Connect which allows users to search for brand pages from Google search by putting a + in front of the brand name.

• Connect with tech influencers and those that are influenced by them: Google+ has become fertile ground for this group. Brands that covet their seal of approval may find this a welcome environment in which to interact.

• Test content: Google+ has some slick analytics tools that leave both Facebook and Twitter’s standard tools in the dust. Particularly when it comes to content getting passed along generationally, Google+ may be an effective testing ground.

• Competition is good: Whether or not your brand launches a page on Google+, the addition of a well-funded competitor may push Facebook to offer things like better analytics or built-in publishing granularity to compete with future iterations of Circles.

• Hangout for customer service: One area where Hangout’s restriction on participants won’t be a hindrance is customer service, which ideally is one-on-one. For some brands, being able to demonstrate solutions live may be a boon to their ability to troubleshoot for customers.

• Use Hangouts wisely: The first widely publicized broadcast Hangout so far was for The Muppets, and for many, it felt like a commercial. Brands should consider what to do with the nine slots they have and how to distinguish the Hangout format from a regular livestream or canned video content.

• Managing Google+ takes work: Currently only one Gmail account can be linked to a single brand page, which means either a single page administrator or multiple people using a specially created Gmail account to allow them each to update from the brand page. Google claims they will have the ability to add multiple administrators to brand pages very soon but in the meantime brands should create a protocol to manage this.

Similarly, many brands use a content management system to vet updates internally before publishing on social profiles. Google+ currently isn’t set up with an API that would allow such systems to work, so an internal process needs to be in place for many brands to insure that only approved content gets posted.

Where to get updates: Google recommends circling the following profiles: Google+ Your Business, Google+, YouTube, Think.

This is an excerpt from a client letter issued recently by Noah Mallin, vice president/group director of social marketing with Digitas. Click here to read the whole report.

ADOTAS

• Lead-gen network NeverBlue has introduced a day-parting service to its affiliate interface, allowing clients to break down and optimize campaigns by hour of the day, day of the week, week of the month, and month of the year. In addition, reports can be filtered by country, region and even the time zone of an affiliate’s location.

• A new study by Casale Media suggests that digital video ad spend will increase by 25% over the next year to amount to about 23.8% of total online ad budgets. Just 23.8%? Well, Casale found that 40% of advertisers were holding back on the space because it’s too difficult to measure ROI, while 38% cited a lack of enough ROI to justify increasing spend. At the same time, 80% of respondents said video ads increased awareness of traditional and new brands, products and/or services — considering how much online and mobile video have exploded over the last year, perhaps ROI isn’t being defined correctly…

• Publisher Ad Network (PAN) has introduced the easily implemented Platinum Reel, which provides publishers with fully-licensed video content related to a site’s content focus (e.g., level guides for gaming sites, television episode recaps for entertainment sites) along with advertising, from which pubs get a cut of the revenue. Currently the program is in a phased rollout and only available for entertainment, fashion/beauty and gaming publishers — the latter appears to be the prime target as PAN boasts the high quality of its original gaming videos.

• Real-time brand lift measurement and optimization service Vizu Corporation has integrated its tools into Firefly Video, powered by Tribal Fusion’s E9 Audience Engagement Platform.

• DIDMO, the Swedish-based company behind cross-platform mobile app development tool Magmito, released version 3.0 of the platform, which allows developers to remove the main menu to build “one-page apps” and a “copy page” function. In addition, the company launched the Magmito Application Developer (MAD) Certification Program so developers can promote they know their way around the program — so, yes, they can call themselves MAD men (and women).

• Digitas has built a Mobile Retail Showcase in its Boston office to illustrate how cool mobile-related tech — such as QR codes, NFC and augmented reality — are transforming retail marketing. The room is pretty epic, resembling an exhibit at a museum — can Digitas clients bring their whole families to learn and be awed?

Rabbit Punches:

• Ad tech finance platform FastPay has officially launched, with $25 million already in the pockets of media companies.

• Cox Digital Solutions is giving its pubs access to real-time bidding through the new CDS Connect platform powered by AppNexus.

• Media Ventures Group and Blue Sky Media are teaming up.

• According to video platform YuMe’s third-quarter video ad metrics report, completion rates for 15-second pre-rolls are up to 79% from 72% last quarter, while their 30-second cousins are up to 68% from 64%.

• Blogging community YouSayToo has partnered with InfoLinks to offer bloggers contextually targeted in-text advertising.

• Since January, GSI Commerce’s PepperJam Exchange has added 275 affiliate programs, including retailers Toys ‘R’ Us, Aéropostale, Timberland and Anthropologie, who all named the PepperJam Exchange the exclusive tech platform for their affiliate marketing programs.

Centered around the theme “When you have sex with somebody, you’re having sex with everybody they’ve ever had sex with,” the campaign to promote condom use among young Swedes through a Facebook-integrated social app that employed pictures from user’s Facebook account to paint an overgrown tree of sex partners. Say you’ve formed the beast with two backs with eight people — taking into account all their coital encounters, you’ve actually got it on with 584 (aren’t you a little slut!).

To make the campaign a bit more titillating, Starcom Sweden and Le Bureau filmed some softcore porn of pretty young Swedish actors and musicians trading partners (often one replacing another in the same setting), then recruited 400 bloggers to share these videos as well as their own “f**k trees.” Watch a video describing the campaign here (most definitely NSFW).

Personally, my father’s advice of “No love without the glove” still works on me, but the sex-crazed youth of Sweden needed something more over-the-top. Watch the video and it’s understandable why they’re so libidinous.

Other notable winners were CP+B and Digitas’ “Small Business Saturday” for American Express, which took home a Brand Experience Gold award, and R/GA’s “The Film Room” for Nike, which received a Gold accolade for Creative Technologies as well as an honorable mention for Brand Experience. (R/GA actually picked up a slew of awards for its various Nike campaigns.) Sadly, I don’t think either of the mentioned campaigns featured hot Swedish people doing it.

Brand Experience

Gold
• CP+B and Digitas — American Express: “Small Business Saturday”
• Goodby Silverstein and Partners — Adobe: “Museum of Digital Media”

Silver
• Droga5 — Microsoft Bing: “Decode Jay-Z with Bing”
• MRM Worldwide — U.S. Army: “At the Ready”

Bronze
• JWT Melbourne — Melbourne Writers Festival: “Democratizing Literature”
• The Martin Agency — Walmart: “The Smack Talk Launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2”
• McKinney — Qwest: “Starting a Conversation without Uttering a Word”

Honorable Mention
• R/GA — Nike: “The Film Room”

Social Media Strategy

Gold
• Starcom Sweden/Le Bureau — The National HIV Council: “F**K TREE”

Silver
• M&C Saatchi/Profero— Pizza Hut: “Feed A Friend: Leveraging the Natural Fit between Loyalty and Social Media”

Bronze
• CP+B — Kraft Mac & Cheese: “Tweet Your Love”
• Lew’Lara\TBWA — IG: “#ihcomplicou”

Honorable Mention
• Anomaly — Converse: “How Converse Became the Biggest Little Sneaker Brand on Facebook”
• BBDO NY — M&M’s Pretzel: “Power to the People”
• The Brooklyn Brothers/Islenska — Promote Iceland: “Inspired by Iceland”
• COLLINS — New York Public Library
• Goodby Silverstein and Partners — Tostitos: “Reunite America”
• Porter Novelli — HP ePrint Live: “Socializing Printing with the Digital Generation”
• R/GA — InnovativeThunder: “Pay With a Tweet”

Campaign for a New Brand

Gold
• CP+B — Bolthouse Farms: “Baby Carrots | Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food”
• Fallon — The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas: “Just the Right Amount of Wrong”

Silver
• LBi — SeamlessWeb.com: “Hijacking an Icon of Food Delivery in New York City”

Bronze
• Gotham — Chobani: “A Love Story about Yogurt”

Honorable Mention
• Lowe Asia-Pacific — Nestlé Vietnam: “Cafe Viet | Are You Man Enough?”
• McGarryBowen — Verizon Wireless: “Power Trumps Pretty”

Communications/Media Strategy

Gold
• Droga5 — Microsoft Bing: “Decode Jay-Z with Bing”
• Goodby Silverstein and Partners — Adobe: “Adobe Creative Suite 5 Launch Campaign”

Silver
• Y&R Brasil — Santa Casa Blood Center: “Upgrading an Ancient Model”

Bronze
• VI Marketing and Branding —Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) & Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET): “5320”

Honorable Mention
• BBDO India — P&G/Gillette Mach3: “W.A.L.S. | Women Against Lazy Stubble”
• OMD — Pepsi: The Pepsi Refresh Project
• Optimedia — Citi Bank: “Citi Project Talk”

Creative Technologies

Gold
• Goodby, Silverstein and Partners: Dali Museum “Helping People See the World Through the Eyes of Dali”
• R/GA —Nike: “The Film Room”

Silver
• R/GA — Nike: “BOOM”

Bronze
• R/GA — Converse: “The Sampler”

Honorable Mention
• COLLINS — New York Public Library
• JWT — Bloomberg “The Art of Looking Sideways”
• McKinney — Qwest: “Solving Problems by Creating Some”
• Razorfish NY — Unilever: Lynx “Lynx Stream”

Campaign for Existing Brand

Gold
• BBH — Unilever: “Axe | Clean Your Balls”
• Droga5 — Puma: “For the Joy of Sport”

Bronze
• BBDO India — P&G/Gillette Mach3: “W.A.L.S. | Women Against Lazy Stubble”
• Leo Burnett, USA — Sealy Posturepedic: “Supporting All the Living that Happens in Bed”
• Publicis — Pepto-Bismol: “The Little Pink Bottle that Everybody Thought They Knew”

Honorable Mention
• Droga5 — Microsoft Bing: “Decode Jay-Z with Bing”
• Leo Burnett, USA — Allstate: “Mayhem is Everywhere”
• Grupo Gallegos — California Milk Processor Board: “Selling Health and Beauty by the Gallon”
• Lowe Asia-Pacific — Unilever Vietnam: “Vim – Power of 1”
• Venables Bell & Partners — Audi: “Shock the Sheep”

For Good Strategy

Gold
• Lowe & Partners — Colombian Ministry of Defense Program of Humanitarian Attention to the Demobilised (PAHD) “FARC | Operation Christmas”

Silver
• McKinney — Urban Ministries of Durham: “Spent”

Bronze
• The Martin Agency — The American Cancer Society: “How Can an Ageing Charity Compete with Sexy, Young Causes?”

Honorable Mention
• Arnold Worldwide — American Legacy Foundation (Truth): “Do You Have What It Takes to be a Tobacco Exec?”
• COLLINS — New York Public Library
• Pyper Paul + Kenney — ASPCA: “Help Joey”

Idea for New Product/Content

Gold
• Redscout — Gatorade: “G-Series Product Launch”

Silver
• AgênciaClick Isobar — Fiat “Fiat Mio”

Bronze
• Twofifteen McCann — Microsoft (Xbox): “Bright Falls: The Prequel to Alan Wake”

Honorable Mention
• Gotham — Denny’s: “a Whole New Way to Launch LTOs”
• Lew’Lara\TBWA — IG: ““#ihcomplicou”
• R/GA — InnovativeThunder “Pay With A Tweet”

Innovative Design

Gold
• R/GA — Nike: “Nike+ GPS”

Silver
• CP+B —Bolthouse Farms: “Baby Carrots | Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food”

Research Innovation

Gold
• BrainJuicer — “Let’s Get Emotional About Advertising”
• Starcom USA — “EQ”

Bronze
• The Marketing Arm — “Fans, brands, and properties | Finding the Perfect Match”

Honorable Mention
• co.r inovação — CO.R Youth Project: The Follow the Rabbit Methodology.”

• Simone Barrett is taking over as president of GSI Commerce email and social marketing division e-Dialog, as former head Joe Gagnon moves to other responsibilities within GSI. Barrett was previously president of GSI Global Marketing Services International, but prior to that held the position of managing director of e-Dialog for 10 years and oversaw expansion into EMEA. In addition, e-Dialog CTO Christian Wright was shifted to general manager of e-Dialog Americas and Luke Griffiths was named general manager of e-Dialog U.K. GSI Commerce was acquired by eBay last year for $2.4 billion.

• Targeting service Rocket Fuel has given some gas to the automotive industry with the launch Auto Booster, a tech platform focused boosting efficiency and effectiveness of brand and direct response campaigns in the vertical through audience targeting and circulating campaign insights.

• App development and monetization platform Netbiscuits has partnered with cloud optimization service Akamai Technologies to improve mobile site delivery and give clients better device intelligence through the Akamai Intelligent Platform.

• The Mobile Marketing Association has published a new whitepaper on explaining the operational nitty gritty and benefits of permission-based marketing. “Building Permission-Based Mobile Marketing” (PDF) was developed in coordination with MMA Task Force members Alcatel-Lucent, Blyk, Gemalto, IMIMobile, Lenco, Maxis, O2, Out There Media, Pontiflex, Telefonica, Turkcell, Velti and Vodafone.

• After noting last week that traffic to publishers such as The Next Web, Technorati and PRNewswire had apparently been spanked by Google’s Panda 2.5 search algorithm update, new data collected by SEO anayltics firm Searchmetrics has the company believing Google has rolled back some of these updates. Ten of the 30 domains whose traffic had taken a hit saw an 80% to 90% recovery while another 10 actually surged past their pre-Panda 2.5 levels.

• Video advertising platform VINDICO has lured in several new accomplished sales team members. New Director of Agency Sales for the East and Midwest Brooke Horlicke has joined from Google, where she was  senior account director/team lead at DoubleClick. Nicole Early, directory of agency sales for the Western region, was previously director of sales for SocialVibe and has previously held sales positions at CondeNast, Demand Media, CNNMoney.com and CBS Digital. And Senior Account Executive for the Midwest Cole Fischer was last seen managing Midwest sales at AdoTube; he also boasts some time over at DoubleClick. In July, Vindico appointed former NBCUniversal Vice President of Sales Jes Santoro senior vice president of sales.

• According to a new survey by customer loyalty strategist LoyaltyOne, 74% of American and Canadian consumers don’t feel they get anything back from sharing personal information with marketers. While 52% agreed that companies use their data to better serve them, 54% expected improved customer service and 55% expected exclusive discounts or offers for sharing info.

• Mobile video ad network AdColony, a subsidiary of mobile ad firm Jirbo, las launched AdColony Express, a self-serve HD mobile video advertising platform that it claims can deploy high-quality TV advertising across its growing network in just a matter of clicks.

• E-commerce solutions builder Barilliance has introduced a Facebook Fan Page Personalization product, allowing brands to offer Fan Page visitors product recommendations, coupons and user-targeted messaging.

Google has named Joshua Spanier its first director of media. Spanier was previously director of communications strategy at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

Social targeting platform 33Across has named Matt Arkin president and Allie Savarino Kline vice president of marketing. Arkin was most recently chief revenue officer at Sojern, but previously served as senior vice president of sales at AOL/Platform A, headed sales and operations for TACODA and filled the role of vice president of sales at MarketWatch.com. Kline was last seen overseeing brand development, marketing, and athlete and celebrity relationships for Brand Affinity Technologies, but also ran the global marketing shop at Unicast for 10 years prior.

Arnold Worldwide named Dave Dugan its first-ever chief commercial officer. Most recently, Dugan had served as president of word-or-mouth marketing company BzzAgent.

Gerry McGoldrick, former senior vice president of marketing at GSI Commerce, has grabbed the CMO role at group-buying/social commerce firm BuyWithMe. GSI was acquired by eBay earlier this year.

Digitas has brought Sarah Montague and Brooke Skinner, formerly senior vice presidents at DraftFCB, to Digitas Chicago and Robert Guay, last seen serving as group account director at Fallon, to Digitas Boston. As senior vice president of marketing, Montague will lead the Kaiser Permanente and Kraft accounts. Skinner will serve as senior vice president of account planning, while Guay will lead the Aflac account as senior vice president of marketing.

Multimedia studio Electus has found a new CEO in Shine International President Chris Grant. Grant will report to founder Ben Silverman, a former NBC bigwig who will still oversee all Electus operations. In addition, COO Drew Buckley’s role has been expanded to all operations, including digital, advertising, finance, mergers and acquisitions and managing the company’s Yahoo, Microsoft and Google relationships.

The Inter/Media Group of Companies announced that Jody Slater has been named senior vice president and managing director of digital unit Inter/Media Interactive. Previously Slater served as executive vice president and managing director of the digital unite of U.S. International Media.

In addition to opening new offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and a sales headquarters in New York, mobile rich media advertising platform GoldSpot Media has appointed Matthew Bryant, former president of Media Buying Services International, to its board of directors.

I understand the joy of consuming media socially — I’ve often reached a movie’s credits and thought that would have been far more fun in a crowded theater. Heading to bars to watch TV socially goes beyond sports events — who wants to dress up for “Mad Men” night?

But the social media age brings a new component that I’m not sold on. I first wrote about it with teen-oriented avatar site Meez — users meet up in social viewing rooms to watch advertiser-sponsored music videos, trailers, what-have-you.

Watch videos together — in a chat room? Then again, it’s a far more personal experience than joining a Twitter feed or a conversation portal for another real-time media event.

Samsung and Digitas are taking customized and socialized media viewing to the next step through “The Smart Living Room,” a campaign for Samsung televisions that sets up a social movie theater for consumers to invite their friends to a free screening.

At TheSmartLivingRoom.com, personalization technology provided by Hunch asked me a series of 10 questions and the site said it was 75% sure I’d like to watch a comedy with a group. (I guess Ingmar Bergman psychological dramas are best viewed alone.) The five suggestions: “Little Miss Sunshine” (a pretty funny remake of “National Lampoon’s Vacation”), “Being John Malkovich” (excellent), “Juno” (overrated), “The Devil Wears Prada” (I’m an H&M + thrift store kind of guy) and “Office Space” (damn, it feels good to be a gangsta).

The site then asked me to schedule a movie-watching event, invite friends and post the event on Facebook. A press release promises “surprises throughout the experience” — since I chose “Being John Malkovich,” I hope one surprise is an extended cut of the “Malkovich Malkovich” scene.

Brands supporting social media-watching experiences is an interesting concept — one could imagine this stretching to new TV shows or movies, even branded content. But the most effective use of such campaigns would require premium content being targeted at appropriate audiences. Doable? I think so.

Samsung and Digitas have taken marketing via Facebook application to new social networking relevance with Thr!veOn, an app that promotes the Samsung Galaxy S Android-powered smartphone by incentivizing organization of user-generated content on Facebook with a gaming element.

Logging into Thr!veOn, your profile photo appears in the middle of a circle of categories such as music, style, sports, and technology. You can move posts and status updates into their appropriate categories as you add them — when first loading up, Thr!veOn sorts your current posts and photos for you.

Each post appears as a label in the category — you can share a snapshot of your Thr!ve page to show how well you are Thr!ving or sort through your old posts via “Memory Lane.”

How do you know you’re Thr!ving? The social gaming touch — users get points for uploading photos and videos as well as updating status and performing actions such as tagging. The “Leaderboard” shows which friends are Thr!ving the most.

It’s a pretty ideal social marketing tool — a handy app for sorting previous posts with a point system to make it more fun, something those of us who aren’t obsessive-compulsive could really use….

The Rubicon Project, an online advertising infrastructure company, has added $9 million in venture funding bringing total financial investments to $42 million. The Series C funding round was lead by GE/NBCU’s Peacock Equity Fund with a $6 million investment and additional funding from existing investors Clearstone Venture Partners and Mayfield Fund. To date, the Rubicon Project has experienced 400% year over year revenue growth and the additional capital will fuel ongoing business growth initiatives including additional strategic acquisitions and international expansion.

Tribal Fusion, a digital marketing solutions company, announced its membership in the Premier Partner Program for BlueKai, and intent-focused data exchange. As a BlueKai Premier Partner, Tribal Fusion will integrate extensive data from BlueKai’s exchange with the data it collects from its own proprietary technology platform to provide clients with an unprecedented level of granularity in audience targeting.

BIA Advisory Services will now be known as BIA/Kelsey, representing the culmination of BIA’s acquisition of The Kelsey Group last October and the complete expanse of services the combined company now offers to multi-delivery platforms, including traditional and interactive media, the online local marketplace, and mobile advertising.

Digitas has hired Josh Miller in Atlanta as a media supervisor. He previously worked at Response Mine Interactive and Moxie Interactive.