Elanso

Today at the Conversational Marketing Summit in NYC, Meebo will announce the launch of the "Meebo Marketing Platform". There are four components to the Meebo Marketing Platform which include: Meebo MediaBar, Meebo SparkAds, Link Sharing, and a partnership with 33Across. The goal of the marketing platform is to connect brands with Meebo users but more importantly for Meebo users to share the ads with other Meebo users and make the ads viral. What could be better for a brand than a person sharing an advertisement with a friend?

The Meebo Mediabar is a rich media ad panel that can run basically anything in the space from games, applications, feeds, and digital goods. Next is SparkAds which are text ads that will drive clicks to brand sites. Link Sharing currently allows for a way to share and discover links between friends and now will be used as a viral system where advertisers seed their links and then Meebo users push them around the network. The 33Across partnership allows advertisers more in-depth analysis of the campaigns run on Meebo.

What I didn't see in the notes was whether 33Across helps to increase conversion while the ads are running and whether immediate user feedback is reported. This is the key with any ad campaigns on conversational sites. People will react and it's critical that the brand is monitoring public channels for the feedback so they can optimize in real-time accordingly.

The initial brands signed to the "Meebo Marketing Platform" include: Havaianas, Sony Electronics, Universal Pictures, and the band Weezer.

I plan to watch this launch closely as viral advertising will continue to slowly grow this year. If brands maximize this type of advertising, it could change online advertising as a whole. The idea of sharing an advertisement could almost be seen as an endorsement by the sending user and could push the receiving user to actually interact with the ad. Real-time monitoring and updating is the key for success with this new type of online advertising.

This April, Meebo hired a chief revenue officer who is located in NYC. Also check out our interview with Meebo founder Seth Sternberg.

Editor's note: Meebo competitor eBuddy is a CN sponsor.  Additionally, the news above was embargoed for Monday 9am, but the embargo has been broken and so we will post now per Meebo's direction.