Facebook isn’t putting any advertising into Instagram, so brands and advertisers have been making their own. Marketers, from Pepsi to Nike, are creating sponsored posts on the platform, but Facebook isn’t earning any revenue from the practice. Following the infamous Terms of Service debacle, Instagram had to make it clear that it wouldn’t take users’ photos and use them for advertising without permission. Instead, brands are experimenting with the platform with celebrity and sponsored posts; for instance, Nicole Richie this week posted a photo while using a hair product made by Unilever’s Suave. She also included a link to a microsite by Suave introducing users to their products. LeBron James similarly posted a picture of his Nike’s, and Beyonce posted a pop-art collage with Pepsi. Whether these posts actually translate into revenue is to be determined, but this is a trend that will need to be addressed by Instagram and Facebook – and marketers as well – before it becomes much bigger.
Tag: Facebook
Facebook Phone Launches…Sort Of
The Facebook Phone has arrived…sort of. Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Home, an Android-compatible integration that replaces the Android home screen with a Facebook-branded experience dedicated to providing easier personal communication than the current app model does. Apps are still easily accessible via an app launcher. Facebook’s clever move relieves them of the hassle of producing a hardware piece, while gaining them deeper hardware integration. The question remains: Will other companies create similar top-level integration packages for Android devices to promote their brands?
What Does Facebook’s Redesign Mean For Advertisers?
As many of you know, Facebook’s big news feed announcement was yesterday, and its key new feature was the “mobile-inspired interface” with bigger photos and a unified design for, “a more immersive [experience].” Yes, there was also the new organization of the feeds, the new prominence placed on visual content, and the black sidebar, but the new redesign really does mean a whole new advertisement approach to the social network. Facebook’s streamlined UI means more space for bigger featured photos, which means businesses can buy ad space that will, almost literally, take up the entire screen – this feature could mean that luxury brands that are used to larger ad spaces in magazines could easily turn these campaigns into digital projects. Image-based advertising for the social media platform instantly became richer, more visible, and much more accessible to the average user. As well, promoted links will have larger blurbs of text to read, allowing advertisers more space to legitimately sell each click, rather than just hoping for sometimes gimmicky click estimates.
In addition, Facebook’s new content-specific feeds can be a boon to advertisers, or conversely hurt them depending on how often a given user frequents specific feeds. But, the biggest plus for advertisers is that the Pages feed, now called “Following,” is much more prominent and gives users regular updates. People who want stories now have a much easier way of finding them, and in turn, clicking on the ads that they want to see. Then again, the Friends-only feed is ostensibly a no-go zone for advertisers, so trying to break into the users who tune ads out entirely by just following friends will be more challenging.
The moral of the story is that Facebook now puts much more control into the users hands; if advertisers play their cards right, however, they will be able to interact with users in a much more pronounced and nuanced fashion. There will be many more daily opportunities for advertisers, so long as they exploit these new opportunities with intent and purpose.
Facebook Acquires Atlas
Facebook has announced that they are purchasing Microsoft’s Atlas Solutions division for a rumored price of less than $100mm. This brings to a close several months of speculation after details of purchase discussions leaked late last year. Facebook is demonstrating that they’re willing to spend the money and resources that are required to expand their ad stack. While they may never achieve their stated ambition of displacing Windows/iOS as the main method of interacting with a computer, there may come a time when Facebook is the primary interface for a brand to manage a digital advertising campaign.
Facebook Will Debut New Newsfeed On March 7th
Facebook has invited reporters to its headquarters to look at a redesigned News Feed on March 7th. It’s already being tested in New Zealand, so we have a good idea of what to expect at this point: a new toolbar at the top of the screen, a new About widget, and the Timeline navigation has been relocated to the top right of the screen – which is a direct swap with the sponsored ads. And now, when you share a story in your Timeline, a Like button for that page will appear below the post, encouraging Friends to like the page as well if they like the content.
Facebook To Advertise Based On Offline Habits
Starting today, Facebook will be able to target some of its advertising based on offline habits as a result of new partnerships announced today with Datalogix, Acxiom and Epsilon that will apply their records about purchase histories to Facebook’s Custom Audience’s product. Custom Audience allows advertisers identify Facebook users by their Facebook ID, phone number, or email, and now advertisers can match that information with data from these firms, gathered from customer loyalty programs. Businesses, Facebooks says, can now target categories like soda drinkers or auto intenders. However, as with any Facebook ad, the user can opt out at any chosen time.
Facebook Incorporates Third Party Data Targeting
Facebook is expanding its custom audiences tools to let advertisers target based on information from third party sites like Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai. This means a car company, for example, could target users on Facebook that have been ID-ed by third parties as being in the market to buy a new car. While privacy advocates will likely sound the emergency alarm, it’s an opportunity for big brands to increase efficiency and spend money on users likely to return the favor.
Google+ Sign-In Rivals Facebook Connect
In a direct play to rival Facebook, Google today announced Google+ Sign-In. It’s an answer to Facebook Connect that provides a single login interface for websites and mobile apps that brings user information onto third-party sites. In a now-familiar setup: the user logs in with social media credentials while the website explains what information the site or app needs to access; in Google’s case this also includes Gmail, Calendar, etc. The user can choose which circles to share this information with, and if desired the “private” setting prevents anybody else from seeing the activity. This feature is now available with Android and iOS.
But where this feature departs from Facebook is in the distinction between passive and active sharing. Things that are passively passed to the G+ network, like what you’re listening to on Spotify, don’t pop up in streams at all in an attempt to sort out spamming and constant advertising overload, though if you grant users the right permissions to view your profile they can find this information if they seek it out. Active sharing, in contrast, is a direct, interactive post to the feed of the person or circle you’ve chosen, and each app or website has a stylized button, i.e. “buy” or “listen” that then kicks back to the related website or app. It might have a way to go yet to catch up with Facebook, but the more nuanced Google+ Sign-In system seems poised to at least rival Facebook’s far-reaching platform of sign-in and sharing across the web.
Facebook Expands Graph Search
Facebook, at an event today, expanded graph search from its original 100,000 beta testers to “hundreds of thousands” of users, and is trying to convince even more users to get on an early access waiting list. It’s accomplishing the latter via the former: when new people get access to the service, Facebook automatically generates a news feed story, and by clicking on the words “Graph Search” in this story, you can sign up for early access as well.
Facebook is clearly making a big push to rollout the new product that overlaps with many discovery services like Google Search and Yelp. Time will tell if users will actually embrace the new functionality that would make Facebook a powerful tool for finding merchants, content and more.
Facebook to Partner With Acxiom, Epsilon to Match Store Purchases With User Profiles
Facebook is testing out a new kind of ad targeting that matches offline purchases to Facebook profiles.
