It’s now increasingly simple to share your Pandora on Facebook. Starting tomorrow, tracks, stations, and songs you give a ‘thumbs up’ to will be shared directly to Facebook. Listening habits are then aggregated and displayed as part of the ‘music’ section on your Facebook profile. The idea is to deeply integrate Facebook with their online identity as they consume content around the Internet, and this partnership with Pandora is probably the first of many across the Internet.
Tag: Facebook
Video Ads Coming To Facebook
According to the Financial Times, Facebook users might find video advertisements in their newsfeeds as soon as July, with Facebook hoping to grab some advertising revenue away from TV and open up a new revenue stream to appease shareholders. Facebook’s client council include brands like Coca-Cola, Ford, and Unilever, all of whom expect to take part in trials. The worry, however, is that users will find the experience so disruptive that they will move on to other websites and social networks. Indeed, just last week it was reported that Facebook’s user numbers are on the decline despite Facebook Home and other attempts to keep users engaged. Facebook will present the videos silently, with the user choosing whether or not to activate the sound. At what price will this video advertising come? That remains to be seen, but raises another question: how long until Facebook offers an ad-free newsfeed, for a price?
Facebook Ups Target Ads Ante
Facebook announced that it’s now allowing developers and marketers to push targeted ads based on users’ app preferences and purchases with a new targeting system. Speaking at Mobile DevCon 2013 in London, Facebook developers showcased a new targeting field in the latest SDK for a feature called Custom Audiences, which will result in more relevant, targeted ads being displayed on both websites and native apps that pull from individual user preferences and purchase data. This means that a retail app could reach out to Facebook users with additional products that they might be interested in based on purchase history tied to a name. The Custom Audiences feature works by helping marketers find new customers among Facebook’s existing users via email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user IDs to make a match. Thus developers can use information about offline audiences to target the online population.
Facebook’s App Install Ads are Profitable
As app stores become cluttered with apps from nearly every brand, the competition to reach the top of the stack and be discovered is fierce. Facebook added a solution to this problem to their mobile service in October. “App Install Ads” display a large photo and direct link to the appropriate app store purchase page in the mobile news feed, providing fast turnover for brands and revenue for Facebook to the tune of $375 million last quarter. The removal of a typical web link from the equation makes the install process even easier on consumers, so the concept is likely to stick as part of Facebook’s efforts to make itself a natural fit into the mobile sphere long-term.
Instagram Introduces Photo Tagging
In a nod to earlier Facebook days, Instagram today introduced photo tagging. The new iOS and Android upgrade allows you to tag anybody in your photos – but with this update you can also tag brands and companies in photos. You, or the brand, can get notified if a tag happens, and can also require approvals before photos appear on your profile. You also have the option to detag yourself. This update replaces the often-hectic @mention function on the network that has functioned until this point. This wasn’t a truly effective method for keeping track of other users, and these new features are designed to help you more vividly capture moments and to build a collection of photos. Likely, when users get tag notifications they will head to the app, which will increase broad-base user interaction with the social network, which in turn will present many new opportunities for tagging brands and including products in a network that looks as if it’s programmed itself for interface expansion.
Your Eyeballs Are Money
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter were assembled on a panel to discuss advertising. The participants expressed some common views on the industry but also some sharp philosophical differences emerged.
Neal Mohan of Google stressed that for advertising they are trying to embrace context, for example mobile vs. desktop and lean forward vs. lean back settings. He also highlighted that measurement represents one of the biggest unsolved problems in the landscape today. It’s critical to be able to measure the efficacy of digital ads in terms of driving sales. Google is currently investing a lot in solving this problem.
Gokul Rajaram from Facebook agreed that context was important, and pointed out that Facebook has been focusing heavily on creating an optimized mobile experience. In fact, a full 23% of Facebook’s advertising revenue comes from mobile at this stage. The guiding philosophy behind the recently-launched Facebook Home was to put your friends at the center of your mobile experience rather than your apps. It was key, he indicated, that advertising not be interruptive, but that it fit into the flow of the natural way people are using an application.
Kevin Weil of Twitter discussed how the site is “a bridge, not an island”, insomuch as it drives action from sponsored content out into the world. He described the platform as the social soundtrack to TV, pointing out that 95% of social commentary about TV is on Twitter. He feels the two platforms thus make each other stronger for advertisers. Mr. Weil also pointed out that no one typically screenshots a banner ad and shares it, the way people actively retweet promoted tweets within their Twitter feeds.
A difference of opinion emerged into how to credit different digital marketing tools for effectiveness measuring purposes. Facebook’s point of view is that the last click before purchase doesn’t necessarily deserve all of the credit; they feel that brand-building interactions (e.g. Likes, Suggested Posts) play a more important role in driving purchase than conventional wisdom would currently say. Meanwhile Twitter feels as though engagement with Tweets and links therein that drive to purchase are critical, and the “last click” before purchase deservedly gets the lion’s share of attention.
Budweiser’s Buddy Cup Makes You Friends
As if providing embarrassing photos from your trip to the bar last night wasn’t simple enough with Facebook, Budweiser has provided another factor: the Buddy Cup. The Brazilian arm of the beer giant is introducing what are probably NFC-equipped cups to its branded events, offering participants the opportunity to enter their Facebook credentials on a page accessed via a QR code (there they are again) on the bottom of the cup. After this slight barrier to entry, any “cheers” with a similarly equipped cup will lead to a friend request being sent (and why wouldn’t Budweiser gain a “like” in the process?) and accepted. While this is an interesting application of emerging technology, its activation of brand values could lead to some unfortunate realizations on the morning after. The Buddy Cup was created by Agencia Africa in partnership with a digital advertising studio in Brazil called Bolha.
Adobe Tools Predict Social Media Impact
According to TechCrunch, Adobe is getting ready to announce new predictive tools for Adobe Social that will allow brands to optimize and predict engagement for posts on Facebook before they go live. While we’ve seen similar products in the space that analyze text and content type, Adobe’s access to unique user data and performance stats for a wide range of brands may give it an edge over competitors. The Facebook program should launch this summer, with predictive tools for other social media outlets getting added to the mix later this year.
Interactive Images Come To Facebook
Marketers and branders got a new tool to reach thousands of followers on Facebook: ThingLink’s interactive images. The platform hit the social media sphere this morning, and allows fans interact with content embedded inside of a single image – be it photos, video, or text – without leaving the Facebook Timeline. ThingLink allows users to enhance images with links to other pieces of content. So when you hover over a main image, icons pop up to demonstrate the additional content. Users just click on these icons to play YouTube videos, audio clips, open other websites, or really do anything that would have previously had to have been done on other websites. For brands, this offers a way to make a deeper impression in front of fans in one place. Though Stipple also put interactive images on Facebook in January, that Facebook is working with other, more innovative developers indicates that this is a trend that is taking off. Indeed, brands have “commonly seen” more than five times as much engagement on Twitter posts using ThingLink images. So to have the technology on Facebook presents a powerful new tool to social media marketers.
Facebook Amps Up Targeting With Acxiom and Others
Thanks to recently announced partnerships between Facebook and data providers Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon, marketers now have a greater degree of control than ever before when targeting their advertisements. These companies have compiled audience segments ready to be layered on top of the Facebook information-based targeting already available. These segments give marketers the ability to target based on the sites someone visits outside of Facebook, loyalty program memberships, household size, and more than 500 other criteria. With a billion-plus audience, Facebook has been attractive to marketers looking for broad spectrum coverage, and with these new additions, extremely detailed targeting is now a reality.
