Facebook Unveils New Advertising Platform for Ads Based on Goals

, , ,

Facebook announced yesterday via Facebook for Business News that they have created a new platform which will allow advertiser to create ads and influence their impact more easily, as Kelsey Jones reported.

The news release said that Facebook has received feedback from advertisers wanting to create ads based on their overall goal or objective, not just the type of ads that would be displayed. The company identified eight objectives as being crucial for business advertisers, specifically:

  1. Clicks to Website
  2. Website Conversions
  3. Page Post Engagement
  4. Page Likes
  5. App Installs
  6. App Engagement
  7. In-Store Offer Claims
  8. Event Responses

To help advertisers meet their goals and create advertisements more based on what they want to accomplish, they released the new platform, which will help advertisers decide how they want to best serve their advertisements. Foe example, an ad viewed on a smartphone can be set so that the users are directed to the company’s mobile site, rather than a non-optimized full desktop site.

Advertisers can also see how their ads are performing based on the objective they chose when creating a campaign. If your focus is website conversion, the highlighted metrics will reflect that. This way there is less confusion and advertisers have easy access to what they consider to be the most important metric for their efforts.

The options will be available via the Ad Create tool, the Power Editor, and the API. It will be a gradual rollout, which may take weeks, but will eventually be available to all advertisers.

/0 Comments

Instagram Begins Including Ads In Your Photo Stream

, , ,

Instagram LOgoMany considered it only a matter of time before advertising would find its way onto Instagram, since Facebook purchased the app. However it took much longer than most expected. Instagram has remained ad-less until now, but over the next few months you will finally see that change. Instagram announced late last week that advertising would begin rolling out within the Instagram photo stream over the next few months.

This doesn’t mark the first possible attempt to monetize Instagram. Jennifer Slegg reminds us of late last year when Instagram altered its terms to suggest that Instagram would all the rights to all photos posted on it, implicating that Instagram would begin selling those photos to advertisers. The response was massive and overwhelmingly negative, as users began to flee from the service until the terms were reverted.

Since then, the waters have been quiet, but it was heavily expected that Facebook would attempt to turn Instagram into a revenue generating service, seeing as it cost Facebook $1 billion.

This attempt is a little more direct than their change to their terms, but it appears they will be slowly integrating advertisers. They are clearly more cautious this time around – Instagram even emphasized that there would be no changes to how image or video ownership would be viewed.

The company is starting with just a limited number of U.S. advertising firms only showing small and occasional ads. All ads are required to use high-quality images and videos, so they should blend in on the feed.

Seeing photos and videos from brands you don’t follow will be new, so we’ll start slow. We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community.

Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands. After all, our team doesn’t just build Instagram, we use it each and every day. We want these ads to be enjoyable and creative in much the same way you see engaging, high-quality ads when you flip through your favorite magazine.

Expect the ads to be similar to the sponsored posts you see in Facebook, but designed for Instagram. The company will also be heavily soliciting feedback from users about the types of advertising being tested and shown, including the ability to hide them.

/0 Comments

Facebook Updates News Feed and Search Abilities

, ,

Facebook is revamping its News Feeds ads as part of their continuous efforts to make advertisements on their site more relevant to users.

They released an announcement late last week stating, “When deciding which ad to show to which groups of people, we are placing more emphasis on feedback we receive from people about ads, including how often people report or hide an ad.”

Facebook did say they believe advertisers will ultimately benefit from the updates.

“If someone always hides ads for electronics, we will reduce the number of those types of ads that we show them. […] This is ultimately better for marketers, because it means their messages are reaching the people most interested in what they have to offer.”

That isn’t the only change Facebook is rolling out though. They also announced the ability to search your posts and status updates within graph search, stating, “Today Graph Search will include posts and status updates,” which which you “will be able to search for status updates, photo captions, check-ins and comments to find things shared with you.”

You might not have access to either feature yet, but you can expect to see them within the next few weeks as they are rolled out.

/0 Comments

Facebook Hashtags Aren’t Seeing Results

, ,

When Facebook announced their introduction of hashtags in June, it seemed to be a pretty big deal, especially within the social media marketing industry. Every online marketer immediately began investigating how to make the most out of the use of hashtags, and if they are even worth the effort. A few months later, it appears the hashtags aren’t faring well.

Facebook Hashtag Graph

In late July, Simply Measured reported status updates with hashtags weren’t gaining brands any extra exposure, now Search Engine Watch reports EdgeRank Checker has similar findings.

According to EdgeRank Checker’s data, viral reach and engagement were down on posts with hashtags compared to those without hashtags. They studied over 500 pages, and then compared their data to a sample of 50 Twitter accounts from Fortune 500 brands. They found that 70 percent of brands experienced an increase in retweets when using a hashtag, indicating higher engagement.

EdgeRank Checker did have an idea why Facebook users may not be responding to the hashtags:

Our hypothesis is that not many people are clicking on hashtags. If many people were clicking hashtags, we should see an increase in Viral Reach for posts with hashtags. The data is not showing that. If anything, it’s showing a decrease in Viral Reach.

We hypothesize that hashtagged posts don’t have the expected increase in Viral Reach due to how brands are using them. After examining how hashtags are being used, hashtags are often used in promotional material. For some brands, they’ve created campaigns around particular hashtags and use them in all posts associated with the campaign. By nature, campaigns are promotional, therefore more likely to drive less engagement, less clicks, and ultimately less Reach.

/0 Comments

Facebook Updates Their Contest and Promotion Rules for Businesses

, ,

Facebook Sticker IconFacebook appears to be undergoing large changes to their rules for businesses as they have recently created the opportunity for verified paged, embedding posts, and even giving advertisers access to a large stock photo library.

But, the change users are most likely to notice is a huge revision to the rules for how businesses run contests on their pages. As Jessica Lee from Search Engine Watch reports, businesses will now be able to run contests and promotions directly from their own timelines without the use of third-party apps, greatly streamlining the process.

As they announced last week, Facebook has reversed their original rules to allow for users to like, comment, or create posts on a page solely as a voting mechanism or entry into contest. Facebook stated in its promotions help document, “we want to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to create and administer promotions of Facebook and to align our policies to better meet the needs of marketers.”

All of this means businesses can run promotions directly from their timeline and

  • Collect entries via posts, comments, or likes on a page post.
  • Collect entries via messages from users to the page.
  • Utilize likes as a means of voting.

Facebook did say they don’t intend to put an end to contests run through apps. Instead, they see apps as a means to “create a more personalized experience, more in line with your branding strategy.”

They explained the differentiation more, saying:

Apps provide more space and flexibility for content than Page posts alone. Promotions run through apps can collect data in a secure, structured way that may be appealing to advertisers, particularly larger brands.

Creating a promotion with a Page is faster and easier. Additionally, as with all Page posts, Page posts about promotions are eligible to be displayed in the News Feeds of the people who like the Page and can be promoted to a broader audience.

Businesses always have the option of using both an app and their Page to administer a promotion.

On the other hand, Facebook also updated its page terms to restrict pages from encouraging users to tag themselves in content “they are not actually depicted in.” So it is acceptable to ask for likes or comments as part of a promotion, but you cannot post a picture and tag users or ask them to tag themselves, unless they actually appear in the image.

/0 Comments

Facebook Gives Advertisers Access to Stock Photo Library

, ,

Example of the Stock Photo InterfaceFacebook advertisers won’t have to rely on expensive stock photo subscriptions of licenses soon, as Facebook has announced they have formed a deal with Shutterstock to allow advertisers to access millions of stock photos for all Facebook ad formats, provided at no extra cost. They will be fully searchable and accessible directly through the ad creation tool, making it much easier to add quality images to your ads.

The announcement from Facebook said, “High-quality, engaging photos often increase the performance of ads, particularly in News Feed. And now, through our collaboration with Shutterstock, it will be easier for businesses to integrate beautiful photography into their Facebook ads.”

With the addition of this new feature, Facebook advertisers will also be able to create multiple ads at a time with several images. The image uploader has been improved to allow users to select from a range of photos from your Page, as well as previous ads and the Shutterstock library. This also opens up the possibility of creating multiple ads for a single campaign and testing images to increase performance.

/0 Comments

Facebook Q2 Review Shows Large Gains in Click Through Rates, Conversions

, , ,

Facebook Sticker IconDespite constant detractors proclaiming the death of Facebook, advertising on the social media platform continues to show strong results for marketers according to the Q2 review of Facebook advertising by Kenshoo Social. Their statistics show significant increases for all metrics, from analysis of more than 75 billion Facebook ad impressions from advertisers using the Kenshoo Social platform.

Throughout Q2, the company saw click through rates rise 18.5 percent, with total clicks increasing by 16.5 percent compared to Q1 of this year. Engagement rates beyond the click also saw substantial increases as conversions rose 56.9 percent and revenue increased by 28.3 percent.

Todd Herrold, senior director of product marketing for Kenshoo Social says the gains are the result of advertisers continuing to refine their techniques and becoming more savy about the social media platform, as well as improvements made by Facebook itself. He told Marketing Land:

“Facebook has been steadily optimizing its ad units and launching new ad targeting products designed specifically for direct response, including Custom and Lookalike Audiences, Partner Categories and the Facebook Exchange (FBX).”

/0 Comments

Viralheat Adds Advanced Facebook Targeting

, ,

Viralheat LogoSocial media analytics and publishing platform Viralheat announced today they will continue to expand their dashboard with new advanced Facebook targeting. That means businesses and marketers will be able to publish and customize ads and other marketing content targeted towards specific relevant demographics based on criteria such as location, age, gender, education, and marital status.

Viralheat has been expanding their dashboard since their redesign was unveiled in February adding the capabilities to manage multiple accounts and engage with audiences easier, as well as including new tracking analytics.

The platform is one of many social media marketing platforms, but the makers of Viralheat hope to simplify the tedious task of managing multiple social media account. It allows users to create Smart Stream Feeds which filters based on keywords, social networks, and sentiment. It also allows users to publish directly to personal accounts.

“We saw the need for our larger clients to be able to target their audience based on specific demographic criteria,” TechCrunch reports Viralheat CEO Raj Kadam said in a statement. “Often times they’ve expended their marketing budgets trying to manually reach a target audience without blasting announcements or offers to their entire following. Our advanced Facebook targeting features allows users to reach a very specific demographic. It has been particularly helpful to our customers that are trying to reach very niche audiences.”

/0 Comments

Facebook Announces The Ability To Embed Posts

, ,

It has become pretty obvious that traffic potential increases quite a bit when a YouTube video or tweet is embedded into posts. Most people consider videos as more valuable content than regular blog posts, and the appreciate posts that condense relevant tons of tweets on a topic so that they don’t have to dig through all the spam, “trolling”, or other nonsense. Now, as Search Engine Journal reports, Facebook has made it possible for you to embed posts from their site as well.

A Facebook post from Venus Williams

The social media platform shared the above image as an illustration of the concept, which shows that you’ll be able to click on the ‘Embed Post’ button and be given a simple code that can be placed into an article. It’s pretty simple, though it hasn’t been widely released yet. Only a small group of organizations and businesses have already been given the ability. Instead, the embedded post ability will be rolled out with the new hashtag capability.

The new announcement also means that your Facebook posts can get additional exposure and sharing, as well as opening another way for advertisers to connect with people.

/0 Comments