Mixi and Nike Japan Get Results With Social Banner Ads Campaign

Mixi is the biggest social network in Japan and it has always aimed to create its social graph based on real human-to-human connections. The folks at Mixi have kept silent for a while with no major announcements on this. But just a couple days ago, they sent out a PDF press release to us (in Japanese, see below), giving a hint on how the company plans to leverage its social graph for monetization.

In partnership with Nike Japan, this is Mixi’s first attempt at social advertising: an integration between online banner advertising and its social graph. The campaign is titled the “NIKEiD FRIEND STUDIO.”

NIKEiD FRIEND STUDIO

The campaign lasted for just short 21 days but managed to bring in 2.13 million visitors to the NIKEiD official website. It has shown some really impressive results.

There are more than 100 products available on NIKEiD, a service which allows users to create customized products such as shoes and bags. With a banner generator on Mixi. Users were given their own iD to create an original banner with their very own customized product designed. With hundreds and thousands of such NIKEiD banners made by users, it brought tons of traffic to the official website.

Traditional online banner ads have received a fair share of criticism, and Mixi aspires to introduce new of online advertisements like this that leverage on its social graph. For users, the social banner provides another avenue to express themselves, sharing the products they like, and their style preferences with friends. If friends like what they see, they can click on the “Cool” button to vote for their friends’ banner ad, just like Facebook’s ‘like’ button.

Results

Here are some stats revealed in the press release:

• Number of visitors to the NIKE FRIEND STUDIO: 2.13 million
• 80% of the visits were through clicking on a friend’s banner or social feed shown on their mixi page.
• Click Through Rate (CTR) for desktop computers is 11 times more than an average online banner. CTR is 16 times more on mobile compared to a regular banner.

Apparently Nike Japan is very much satisfied with the result of the campaign. Let’s hope we can get to see more of these campaigns by Mixi in the future.

Mixi Press Release