ChasNote

We put out a press release announcing several new relationships with leading Facebook applications, such as Graffiti Wall, PROTRADE and Watercooler, and early sponsorships by HP and Wacom.

Some coverage at AllFacebook, the unofficial Facebook blog:

“This announcement provides legitimacy to the Facebook application advertising space and serves a massive blow to existing Facebook advertisers. One of the main issues facing large Facebook developers is the difficulty to connect with the companies (and brands) best fit to integrate advertising campaigns into applications. Federated Media will help bridge this gap for larger application developers and existing Federated Media partners. Federated Media is now the largest advertising network to join the Facebook platform. This is a monumental step that will surely legitimize the platform’s potential.”

I’ll accept that positioning!

Here’s more on Wacom’s Graffiti Monster Contest.

UPDATE: From WebProNews:

“A number of recent stories have noted rifts between Facebook and advertisers; the launch of Beacon was, all in all, a bad move. But Federated Media Publishing wasn’t scared away, and has actually partnered with the owners of some Facebook applications. Graffiti Wall and the ‘Addicted To…’ series aren’t the most popular apps in existence - I’ve been asked to become a zombie or vampire far more often than I’ve been bothered by anything having to do with them. Still, they boast some impressive user counts - there are 300,000 of the ‘daily active’ variety for Graffiti Wall alone, according to company stats - so the development is rather important.”

UPDATE 12/4: Here’s ClickZ and Mashable coverage.

In partnership with FM, Samsung launched Defining Moment of the Weekend, a site that invites visitors and passionate sports bloggers to submit their takes on “defining moments” among the latest NFL match-ups.

Bloggers from the SB Nation sites, ArmchairGM and PROTRADE, as well as visitors to the site, contribute content, and other visitors can vote on the “defining moments” they like best.

Jeff Ma, co-founder of PROTRADE and unabashed Patriots fan, posts his “defining moments” in video:

Here’s a post by Fooch at Niners Nation, in which he explains to his readers how the Samsung sponsorship works:

“While we get the taste of another ugly loss out of our mouths, I wanted to point everyone’s attention to a little something with which SB Nation has become involved. Federated Media is the marketing company for SB Nation and they have scored us a campaign with Samsung called “Defining Moments.” What it entails is various blogs (SB Nation football blogs among others) offer up their thoughts on the defining moment for the past Sunday’s games. At that point they post all the submissions at their website (click on the logo to the right to get to it) and open up the polls to vote for which one you think is the defining moment of the week….

“Anyways, head on over to the Defining Moments and if you agree with me, go ahead and vote for me. I think if I get the most votes, they’ll post video from the Patriots game with Niners Nation listed below the video in the top left of the page. However, you do have the option of submitting your own defining moments through a link at the top of the page.”

See? It’s not that hard to do cool, high-value marketing sponsorships and still be transparent with your readers! One way to measure whether or not it’s working for the target audience (ie, is it, in fact, high-value) is visitor engagement levels. In the first 48 hours, one in five visitors to the site participated at some level, either by submitting their own “defining moment” or by voting on one they liked. Not a bad start.

Congrats to Dev Pillette, Matt Jessell, Bernie Albers and Bill Brazell — the FM team that worked on this program — and to Louis Giagrande and the innovative crew at Samsung for bringing this idea to life.