Tag Archive for: Facebook ads

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For many advertising platforms, the rising use of mobile devices to browse the internet has been both a boon and a relief.

While the greater number of people accessing the internet on-the-go means advertisers have a better chance of connecting with potential customers close to the point of sale, but it has also created a schism where online advertising is either mobile or desktop based.

Some advertising platforms such as Google have been able to unify their platforms in many ways, but other services are still struggling to come together. Soon however, Facebook will be making big moves to bring their advertising into a cohesive platform.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook is closing in on the launch of an entirely new advertising platform which will allow marketers to more effectively reach target audiences across the plethora of different devices used to surf the web today.

The new platform is rumored to be a reworked adaptation of the Atlas Advertising Suite, an ad-serving platform purchased from Microsoft last year, and will supposedly be rebranded to just ‘Atlas’.

Beyond just improving ad targeting across devices, Atlas will also supposedly be able to help marketers see which ads are being viewed and which are drawing clicks or influencing purchasing decisions.

Current reports say Atlas will work by collecting data from Facebook and other third-party applications and services that serve Facebook ads. It will also come equipped with an automated ad-bidding tool which will facilitate the ability to buy targeted advertising space.

The Wall Street Journal cites an unnamed executive who claims to know Facebook’s plans as their source. The executive is quoted as saying:

The biggest impact of this will be in mobile. People spend more time on mobile than on desktop, but marketers don’t spend there because cookies don’t work. This could finally enable us to spend more money in mobile.

With its ever decreasing organic reach, Facebook is putting a lot of attention into their paid ad platform, especially the ads shown on mobile devices. Now, the reporting side of Facebook’s paid ad is getting improved to reflect the huge increases in mobile ads in recent times.

One of these improvements is the launch of cross-device reporting for Facebook ads. Now Facebook advertisers are able to see how users move throughout their sales process, even if they move across devices. The announcement described just how advertisers may benefit:

Imagine seeing an ad for a product on your mobile phone while in line at the bank. Do you immediately make a purchase on your phone? Probably not. But perhaps you go back to your office later that day and buy on your desktop computer. Such cross-device conversions are becoming increasingly common as people move between their phones, tablets and desktop computers to interact with businesses.

Cross-device reporting allows advertisers to be able to see which devices ads were viewed on, and on which devices conversions subsequently occurred. That means you can see how many people clicked an ad on iPhone but then later finished their conversion on desktop, and vice-versa.

In a recent analysis of US Facebook campaigns, it was found that of the people who show interest in a mobile Facebook ad before converting, over 32% converted on desktop within 28 days.

You can view the cross-device conversions for campaigns by going to your Facebook Ad Reports, where you will click Edit Columns, and select Cross-Device on the left-hand menu.

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.

As Facebook establishes itself as an option to gain a piece of your advertising budget, you may find yourself wondering if can actually give you a solid ROI. Because it is a fairly new platform, some are still a bit skeptical about the realistic expectations they should have when they dump money into a Facebook ad.

iMediaConnection set out to investigate this matter and returned with an interesting case study about how Facebook advertising has worked for one specific company. Follow the link and watch the included video interviews with a car dealership’s marketing manager to hear about how they found success through Facebook advertising and parlay that into success with your own campaigns.

When it comes to online marketing, images are very in. Facebook has taken notice and plans to up their advertising haul by expanding image size within their sidebar ads and tweaking the format.

Jennifer Van Grove, of CNet, writes that Facebook is currently testing the new ads on a small percentage of U.S. users’ screens. The image is larger and stretches from border to border of the right-hand column. Ad text, including a bold headline then appears underneath the ad.

This change makes Facebook ads more attractive to users, which in turn makes them more attractive for advertisers and brings in more money for Facebook.

Your ad for Facebook should be different from ads on other platforms. Even if you’re also advertising on other social media sites, your Facebook ad has to be unique, as would an ad for Twitter or Tumblr. That’s because you need to consider not only who is going to encounter this ad, but where they will see it and what mindset they’ll be in when they do. That seems like a lot but it is the key to crafting the ideal ad.

Robin Bresnark has an article at Business2Community that delves into this idea of incredibly specific audience targeting. Although I disagree with some of his finer points, everyone should agree on the core of the article, which is simply to think of who you are selling to before creating your selling tool.

The prevailing thought is ‘Facebook isn’t for selling’ so you’ll need to take a different route. Once you figure out what exactly works for Facebook, you can start trying to work within those parameters to find what works for your key demographic.

Though it isn’t a groundbreaking update, Facebook has made their ad tool a little more seamless by allowing users to create a new post without leaving the ad center.

This isn’t a development that will improve your ad performance or get you a bigger audience, but it might make your life just a little easier. Head over to Inside Facebook for Brittany Darwell’s article on the details.

Facebook mobile has allowed ads for less than a year, but they’ve put a lot of effort into making it an effective platform. Now they are seeing the benefits of that, as 20% of the ad buys on Facebook are for the mobile format.

The price of the mobile ads are significantly higher than their desktop counterpart, but they are worth it considering their higher visibility due to mobile showing only one ad at a time.

Head over to TechCrunch to check out the full story on the growing platform of Facebook’s mobile ads. If you haven’t already gotten started, you may want to consider allocating some of your ad budget there.