What Happened
Last month, Facebook announced a partnership with A+E and streaming startup Tubi TV to bring Facebook ads to OTT streaming devices like Roku and Apple TV. Now a Bloomberg report reveals that the social network has been testing personalized ad targeting in this new program by linking Facebook profiles tied to the IP addresses of the streaming set-top boxes. Facebook customizes commercials based on the user data and certain A&E shows they are watching, and it is testing ads for nonprofits or its own products along with a handful of name brands, according to a company spokesman.
What Brands Should Do
The update better illustrates Facebook’s ambition in expanding its ad product and reach into the living room and onto the streaming devices. As we noted when this OTT partnership was announced, Facebook’s venture into streaming ads should provide brand advertisers with better targeting capabilities to reach OTT viewers and cord-cutters by bringing the same audience data that powers the rest of its ad network to the set-top boxes. And that looks like exactly what they have been doing. With more and more viewers choosing on-demand streaming over linear TV, brands wishing to reach consumers at scale should start exploring the advertising opportunities on the ad-supported streaming services.
To read more on how brands can deal with TV’s shift toward streaming platforms, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.
Source: Bloomberg
