Tag: Facebook

Facebook Extends The Instant Article Experience To Ads With “Canvas”

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Thursday, Facebook officially launched Canvas, an ad product that loads full-screen rich media right from the news feed, bringing a faster, cleaner mobile experience pioneered by Instant Articles to ads. Facebook started testing this immersive full-screen ad unit last September, and the company says early tests have shown users spend more time on Canvas ads, with the top Canvas ads gaining over 70 seconds of view time per user.

Facebook is also offering brands a straightforward self-serve tool to help brands build Canvas ads with no coding required, allowing brands to add interactive rich media like animations, carousels, product catalogs, tilt-to-view images, and videos to their ads with ease. Different versions of a Canvas ad can be targeted to different demographics, just like regular Facebook ads.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook made Instant Articles available to all users last week, which means Facebook users will soon be served with a lot of Instant Articles-enabled pages, familiarizing them to the fast-loading experience. And they will soon start to expect a similar experience when it comes to Facebook ads as well. Therefore, brands should take the initiative to use Canvas to create rich-media ads that work best on Facebook’s mobile app.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Header image courtesy of the Facebook Canvas site

Mobile World Congress 2016: Virtual Reality Becomes A Step Closer To Reality

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On the first day of the 2016 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, several brands eagerly shared news about their latest development in virtual reality.

The HTC Vive, which made its big debut at MWC last year, returns with an official $799 price tag,a preorder date of February 29th, and an early April ship date. HTC also announced that its Vive headset will integrate some phone functions on both iOS and Android to allow users to answer calls, check text messages, and view calendar reminders without removing the headset. Similarly, LG is also making its entry into the burgeoning VR market with a pair of new products: the lightweight and compact LG 360 VR headset and the LG 360 CAM for capturing spherical photos and video. LG partnered with Google for easy sharing of videos to YouTube 360 and photos can even be uploaded right to Google Street View.

Samsung also returned to Barcelona with an aggressive push for its Gear VR headsets. The company made the consumer version of Gear VR available for $99.99 in November last year, and now it is giving out the VR headset for free with the purchase of its new Galaxy 7 phone for a limited time period. Samsung also brought in Mark Zuckerberg for its press event to talk up Facebook’s partnership with Samsung to support 360-degree videos on Facebook and working to make the VR experience more social. Moreover, Samsung also unveiled the Gear 360 camera that is just smaller than a baseball and aims to make shooting and sharing 360-degree photos and videos easier.

What Brands Need To Do
In line with what we saw at CES earlier this year, the news from MWC shows that virtual reality is quickly gaining momentum as a nascent medium, as more and more companies start developing affordable, consumer-facing VR headsets, as well as the tools for capturing, creating, and sharing 360-degree content. While virtual reality technologies may still be a few years away from mass adoption, as we predicted in the 2020 section in our Outlook 2016, companies like Samsung and Facebook are laying the groundwork for that to happen. For brands, this means that it is time to start exploring what VR technologies have to offer and consider developing branded VR content to excite and engage consumers with immersive experiences.

 

Header image courtesy of mluxurystyle.com

Facebook’s Instant Articles To Be Available For All Publishers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Nearly nine months since its debut, Facebook is ready to make its mobile content initiative Instant Articles available to all publishers. Starting on April 12, anyone with a website and a Facebook page will be able to take advantage of the program and publish content directly on Facebook instead of posting links that direct users to their own sites. Facebook initially placed some restrictions on ad placement in Instant Articles, but loosened its grip after pushback from major publishers. Now some publishers are reportedly able to generate the same amount of ad revenue from Instant Articles as from their own mobile properties on a per-view basis.

What Retailers Need To Do
Making Instant Articles widely available will no doubt increase its reach and encourage more publishers to try it out. For brand advertisers, this presents more opportunities to reach mobile Facebook users by offering them quick access to content. At a time when more and more consumers are turning to ad-blockers for a less cluttered online experience, Instant Articles can provide brands with a valuable platform where the ads will not be blocked.

For more information on how brands and publishers should deal with the rise of ad-blockers and earn consumer eyeballs, check out the Ad Avoidance section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Wall Street Journal

Facebook’s Live-Streaming Feature Now Available To All iOS Users In U.S.

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Nearly two months after Facebook started rolling out its live-streaming feature Live Video to non-celebrity users, the social network now declares that the feature is available to all U.S. users with iPhones. Android users and international markets will receive the self-broadcasting tool in coming weeks. Facebook introduced the feature in August last year to certified celebrity Pages exclusively at first, five months after live-streaming app Meerkat broke out at the SXSW festival last March.

What Brands Need To Do
Compared to Meerkat and Twitter’s Periscope, Facebook may be late in its entry. But its vast user base (1.59 billion and growing, per Facebook’s latest quarterly report) should give this new feature a competitive edge over the two aforementioned early movers in mobile live streaming. The option to save a live broadcast to a timeline should come in handy for brands seeking to create video content straight from their live events. Overall, this new feature will provide brands with a new channel to connect with fans in real time, as well as opportunities for sponsoring social influencers or broadcasting branded events.

 

Source: Wired

Header image courtesy of Facebook Newsroom

Facebook To Roll Out “Reactions” Emojis In Coming Weeks

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Expanding from the simple Like, Facebook is finally ready to launch what it calls “Reactions” to its platform after months of limited testing in foreign markets. The new Like button will give users five emojis to properly express their reactions toward the content they come across on Facebook, such as surprise, anger, and sadness. Facebook says the new feature will be available worldwide in “the next few weeks.”

What Brands Need To Do
As we noted when Facebook announced the feature, this expansion of the Like button can provide brands with a new tool to accurately gauge consumer sentiment. Now with this feature coming soon to all users, brands will no longer need to rely on third-party analytics firms to run sentiment analysis to measure customer feedback on Facebook. Brands with a Facebook presence need to learn to closely monitor Reactions and adjust communications strategy accordingly.

 

Source: Engadget

Facebook Extends Ad Network To Mobile Web

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook is broadening the reach of its ad network by allowing publishers to sell ads on their mobile websites with its Audience Network, which previously only sold mobile in-app ads. The social network has been reportedly testing the new ad network with media partners including Hearst, Slate, USA Today, and TIME over the last few months.

What Brands Need To Do
With this expansion, brands will be able to use Facebook’s data-rich platform to target consumers outside Facebook and third-party apps, making Audience Network a serious contender to rival mobile ad networks from Google, Apple, and AOL. Brands that are already using Facebook’s ad network to reach mobile consumers should branch out to the mobile web to see if it helps increase reach, while brands currently using other mobile ad networks should consider giving the new Audience Network a try to take advantage of Facebook’s rich user data for better targeting.

 

Source: Wall Street Journal

Facebook Adds Tagging For Organic Audience Optimization

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Earlier today Facebook introduced a new targeting tool named Audience Optimization for brand publishers to improve their organic reach. Now with each post, content creators will be able to tag the targeted audience by interests, demographics, or geography, and Facebook will prioritize the posts in their followers’ news feeds accordingly. They will also have the option to restrict the visibility of certain posts from audiences that would not find the content relevant, based on gender, location, and language. Facebook says it is gradually rolling out the tool to all English-language Pages over the next week.

What Brands Need To Do
This new tool gives brands a free and simple way to improve their content targeting on Facebook. Brands can use it to ensure that posts that resonate with niche Facebook communities, such as TV fans or sports fans, can seed into those communities to maximize the content reach and engagement. Therefore, brands publishing content on Facebook, especially those with a targeted audience in mind, should definitely start utilizing this new tool.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Header image courtesy of Facebook Media

Facebook Launches Live Sports Hub Just In Time For Super Bowl

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has started building its own content hub for sports fans in order to compete for second-screen attention during live events. Dubbed Sports Stadium, the new content vertical went live on Wednesday in the Facebook iOS app. It shows live scores, player stats, and play-by-play information alongside relevant user-generated content. Sports fans will be able to see what their friends are saying as well as comments from “certified experts,” such as teams, leagues, and journalists, and voice their own opinions as games progress.

What Brands Need To Do
A huge number of sports watchers already turn to the Facebook app for the second screen experience during games. According to Facebook, over 350 million users talked about the matches during the 2014 World Cup, and about 65 million people posted on Facebook during last year’s Super Bowl. So it makes sense for the social network to create a content hub for sports event in order to congregate the fans and offer brands a channel to reach this interest-based demo.  

 

Source: Re/code

Header image courtesy of Facebook Newsroom

WhatsApp To Test Business Accounts

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following its 19 billion-dollar acquisition by Facebook in 2014, WhatsApp has so far held onto its no-advertising policy , focusing instead on steadily growing its user base. Now, with its user base approaching the milestone of one billion global users, WhatsApp seems finally ready to develop some business-friendly features, starting with testing business accounts which brands can use to connect with customers right in the popular messaging app. The app will also drop the $0.99 yearly subscription fee it charges users after the first year, which underscores the company’s shift in monetization focus and will decrease friction for users and help maximize growth.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook has been making great progress in making its Messenger app more useful and brand-friendly, with one of the most successful use cases so far being helping brands, such as Hyatt Hotels, to provide customer service via messaging. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that Facebook is bringing similar features to WhatsApp.

Although it seems unlikely that Facebook would be drastically revamping WhatsApp to add advertisements or third-party app integration any time soon, the announcement signifies the opportunities to come for brands to connect with WhatsApp’s predominantly international audience. Therefore, brands with a heavy dependence on international markets need to recalibrate their mobile communications strategies and take WhatsApp into consideration.

 

Source: AdNews

 

You Can Now Get An Uber Ride On Facebook Messenger

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has partnered with Uber to allow users of its Messenger app to hail rides without leaving the chat app. Users simply need to tap an address in chat messages or select the new Transportation icon under the “More” menu to open a micro-app where they can log in with their existing Uber accounts or create a new one. Facebook is also letting users share updates of their rides with friends to prove they are indeed on the way. The feature started rolling out in the U.S. on Wednesday with plans to expand internationally.

Market Impact
Facebook continues to build out the functionality of its Messenger platform to lock down more users in its ecosystem while also luring more users to its messaging app by offering promotions (the first Uber ride ordered within Messenger is free).  On the other hand, Uber gets to broaden its reach and acquire new users through Facebook, further solidifying its leading position in the on-demand ride-hailing market.

Source: TechCrunch