Social Performance Marketing - a definition

If

Performance Marketing = massively microtargeted, bidded, dynamically optimizable accountable online campaigns

Then

Social Performance Marketing = performance marketing campaigns executed on social web sites and leveraging social engagement "kickers" to enhance the performance of the performance media buys

Social Performance Marketing is a new option for marketers to engage consumers and drive cost-effective sales/leads online. It's new because only within the last several months has there been a way to buy bidded (CPC, bidded CPM) media on social network sites. Facebook's Social Ads, launched in November but a bit lost in the Beacon kerfuffle, is a tremendously promising option for buying targeted media on performance basis. Google Demographic Bidding let's you bid more for clicks/impressions from users of specific demographics on social network sites.

SPM (there, I coined another acronym) is REALLY new because there's only one place to tie the "engagement kickers" directly to the ads: Facebook Social Ads again. By creating an engaging page or application on Facebook, advertisers can build a fan base. Those fans give the marketer access to an extended "friend of a fan" network. Ads shown to friends of fans can carry an implied social endorsement: a Performics recruiting ad could carry a "Cam become a fan of DoubleClick Performics" message along with it when shown to my 150+ friends. Seeing my face and implied endorsement on the ad makes it much more relevant to my friends, meaning higher click rates and conversion rates and better performance for the dollar.

I'm going on the record as saying:

• Facebook won't be the only social network / social web site to make performance advertising more relevant by tapping social data
• If John Battelle's prediction comes true ("PS: I Think There is A *Huge* Business in Social Advertising"), it will be when Facebook or someone else or multiple players figures out how to make Social Performance Marketing scalable for large and small advertisers.

That's what made search work: scale + efficiency. Having seen search scale from an obscure, mom/pop affiliate channel to the largest online ad channel, I say "bring it on"!