Clickcast — an application from Rochester-based ad agency Daniel Brian & Associates — lets users take part in live video conferences through Facebook. View larger photo

The well-documented struggles of the advertising industry have prompted agencies to increasingly rely on the exploding universe of social media as a tool for clients — with Facebook.com at the top of the list.

One metro Detroit firm is using a new live video conference /text/chat application for Facebook to lure new clients and entice current customers to stay.

Called ClickCast, the application allows users to participate in the video conferencing by asking questions that are posted in a person's status update, which are viewable by their network of friends. The update has a link back to the video-chat conference, allowing those friends to join.

The goal is to use Facebook's core feature — a user's network of friends — to virally grow participation in the live online event. The Web site claims more than 350 million active members and is the No. 2 most-visited site worldwide.

The app is the brainchild of Rochester-based advertising agency Daniel Brian & Associates, which has offices in Los Angeles, Dallas and Miami. The firm is in the process of changing its name to DBA.

Almost 20 percent of the agency's $8 million in annual billings are now linked to social media and Web applications.

Daniel Cobb, 41, a Crain's “40 under 40” honoree in 2004, founded the agency in 1992, and today its clients include Paramount Digital Entertainment, Hungry Howie's Pizza and Henry Ford Health System.

When the national economic recession slammed the advertising industry, and DBA found itself pitching against 50 agencies for a single account rather than against just a handful, Cobb decided to take action.

“We started thinking about what kind of apps we can develop that make us unique,” he said. “This is one of the niches we developed. We wanted to integrate into social media in a new way.”

So he hired what he calls technologists to develop social media applications.

The result was ClickCast, which DBA offers to clients as part of the agency's services.

So far, it's had several high-profile deployments, including:

• The launch of the 2009 documentary “The Cove,” about dolphin hunting in Japan. It used ClickCast to introduce the film's director to online conservationist and dolphin advocate communities — and more than 250,000 participated. The film reportedly is a semifinalist for the five Best Documentary entry slots at the Academy Awards.

• Austin, Texas-based grocer Whole Foods Market used ClickCast to have the chain's “Renegade Lunch Lady” personality talk about healthy foods at schools, an event the agency said drew more than 80,000 online participants.

“You could spend a million dollars in promotion and not get that many people to show up,” Cobb said.

It's not just the agencies turning to social media, but the clients are directly as well: Batavia, Ohio-based Procter & Gamble Co., the world's biggest marketer with $9.7 billion in estimated ad spending, recently opened a California office devoted to developing its Facebook presence.

“It's definitely the hot thing at the moment, and I don't know if its just for the moment,” said Steve Glauberman, CEO of Ann Arbor-based Enlighten Inc., which develops Web sites and helps conduct online advertising campaigns. “A lot of the realization now is to engage with consumers where consumers already are.”

Enlighten uses a wide variety of social media outlets for its clients and is heavily involved in Facebook applications for campaigns, such as the “In-Between Nation” for Bioré skincare products.

Those campaigns are typically part of a broader effort for clients.

“For several of our major clients, we are creating social media engagement plans and integrating our approach to the platform within broader customer-relationship management and digital marketing programs,” Glauberman said.

Ann Arbor-based Fry Inc., which provides e-commerce services ranging from Web site development and promotion to online order processing, is working on a prototype of what it calls a shared online shopping experience.

People would be able to let their Facebook friends know, in real time, about something they're thinking of buying on a retailer's Web site and could connect via a live Web cam to talk about it while on the same page together, said David Fry, the company's founder and CEO.

Retailers and others that use social media as a business tool still need to let consumers know what's going on, and that often means traditional print and broadcast advertising.

“Marketing of these things is going to be a priority,” he said.

Launched as a social media portal for college students in 2004, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook quickly grew into the 350 million active users it claims — a number that has marketers salivating.

Total U.S. ad spending was $142 billion in 2008, the most recent figures available in Advertising Age's 2010 annual ad spending wrap-up. Of that, $9.7 billion was spent online.

But like its owners, advertisers are still exploring ways to monetize the site and its mammoth population. Insiders estimate the site was going to generate $550 million in revenue for itself last year — a fraction compared to the No. 1 online site, Google Inc., whose fourth-quarter revenue alone was nearly $5 billion.

Facebook is the second-most-visited Web site in the U.S. and globally, according to San Francisco-based Alexa.com, a Web traffic measurement service owned by online retail giant Amazon.com.