SMSocial
Every SMSocial Pro licence will soon include something that normally requires another plugin, another subscription or an external advertising platform: a fully integrated SMSocial Ads Manager, built directly into your own social network.
This is not a connection to one central SMSocial advertising network. It is your own independent advertising system, running inside your own SMSocial installation and connected directly to the community you operate.
That means every business, organisation, publisher or community running SMSocial Pro will be able to create its own advertising inventory, decide where advertising appears and manage campaigns directly from WordPress.
You will be able to create advertising placements across the social experience and then manage campaigns separately, without rebuilding placement settings every time a new advertiser arrives. Feed advertising, article placements and other areas of the SMSocial ecosystem can become part of one controlled monetisation system.
For communities that already have an audience, this changes the economics considerably.
Instead of sending every advertiser to Google or relying entirely on third-party ad networks, an SMSocial owner can sell advertising directly to local businesses, sponsors, partners and organisations. A campaign can be created, assigned to selected placements and delivered directly inside the social network.
The Ads Manager already includes the foundations for Direct campaigns and House campaigns, campaign priority, rotation, desktop and mobile targeting, placement management and performance reporting.
Administrators can see important advertising data such as impressions, clicks and CTR, together with active campaigns and recent campaign performance from one dashboard.
And because placements and campaigns are separated, the system is designed to scale. You configure the available advertising inventory once and then connect different campaigns to those placements as your advertising business grows.
There is also room for a hybrid model. SMSocial can prioritise advertising sold directly by the community while allowing external advertising such as Google to act as fallback inventory when required. Your own advertisers remain under your control, while unused advertising space does not necessarily have to remain empty.
For publishers, niche communities, membership platforms and local social networks, this opens an important opportunity: the audience you build can become an asset you monetise yourself.
A local community could sell campaigns to restaurants, accountants, solicitors, tradespeople or events. A specialist professional network could sell directly to companies targeting that industry. A sports community could work with sponsors. A publisher could combine traditional articles, community activity and advertising inside the same platform.
And SMSocial does not take over that relationship.
Your network.
Your advertisers.
Your placements.
Your campaigns.
Your revenue.
The Ads Manager is being developed as a Pro feature, meaning every active SMSocial Pro licence will unlock the advertising and monetisation system together with the wider commercial functionality available to Pro users.
We are currently completing the system, interface and delivery infrastructure before opening it more widely.
SMSocial Ads Manager is coming very soon to SMSocial Pro.
SMSocial started as a way to give WordPress owners control over their own social community. The next stage is giving them much greater control over how that community can generate revenue as well.