Tag: Facebook

American Express Debuts Financial Service Chatbot On Facebook Messenger

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
American Express has snatched the honor of becoming the first financial institution to create a chatbot on Facebook Messenger. The credit card company demoed the chatbot at Cannes Lions with plans for a roll-out in the coming months. Designed to provide transaction alerts and other purchase-related content, the AmEx bot will message users receipts, reminders for flights they purchased, and restaurant recommendations. The company also says it is working on leveraging the purchase data to personalize the recommendations.

What Brands Need To Do
Ever since Facebook introduced chatbots to its messaging app at its annual F8 conference in April, some early adopting brands such as Mondelez and Staples have been experimenting with bots to reach the over 900 million active users on Messenger. With increased usage of messaging apps, brands need to follow the consumer attention and start developing useful bots to better serve their customers.

To learn more about Facebook’s F8 conference this year, click here to read our Fast Forward analysis of the event.

 

Source: AdWeek

Facebook Live Adds New Features, Readies For Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues to make a strong push for its live-streaming product as the company unveiled some upcoming features of Live at the 2016 VidCon on Thursday. Soon, users will be able to add another broadcaster to a live video, pre-schedule a live broadcast to enable Facebook to send viewers notifications, and create a virtual waiting room for viewers before the broadcasts commence. Moreover, the social network is also getting ready to test different monetization models for Facebook Live over the next couple months according to Fidji Simo, head of Facebook’s video product, who indicated that in-stream ads are part of the plan.

What Brands Need To Do
The new features should be helpful for content creators and brands to spice up their broadcasts with celebrity guests and cameos and amass an audience for their live videos before they start. Some early-adopting brands, such as Birchbox and GE, are already using Facebook Live to build relationships with customers and convert interested social followers into customers. The confirmation that Facebook is getting ready to introduce ads to Live videos should also come as a promising sign for bringing brand marketers more opportunities to reach the massive audience that Facebook Live captures.

 

Source: TechCrunch & Marketing Land

 

Mondelez Doubles Down On Facebook Chatbots

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Mondelez International has reportedly increased its investment in developing branded chatbots for Facebook’s messaging app. Mondelez, whose brand portfolio includes household names such as Oreo, Cadbury, and Trident, has renewed its global partnership with Facebook, specifically doubling down on creating Messenger bots and targeted ads using Facebook’s Audience Insights API. Though the company has yet to reveal which brands it is building chatbots for or when they will roll out, it did confirm that the chatbots in development will be designed to either support customer service or push for direct sales on Messenger.  

What Brands Need To Do
As more and more smartphone users turn to messaging apps, brands would be smart to follow suit and join them on those conversational platforms. In that context, chatbots can be a great tool for promoting fan engagement, handling simple customer service requests, or even serving as an ecommerce portal. Mondelez’s increased investment shows its confidence in the potential of Facebook chatbots and that it can leverage them to better serve its customers.

For more information on how brands can make use of chatbots to connect with fans, please check out our Fast Forward analysis on Facebook’s F8 Event.

 

Source: AdWeek

Facebook Canvas

Facebook Now Allows Brands To Use Canvas For Page Posts

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook launched Canvas ads in late February, enabling brands to extend the fast-loading speed they get with Instant Articles and rich media support to their mobile ads. Starting Tuesday, the social network is also allowing brands to use the interactive format for organic posts on their Pages. Canvas posts can include text, auto-playing videos, photo carousels, and even panoramic photos. According to Facebook, users have spent 31 seconds on average in a Canvas ad since the format’s launch.

What Brands Need To Do
By making Canvas widely available for Page owners without requiring ad buys, Facebook is no doubt trying to lure more brands into trying out this relatively new ad format so that they will be convinced of its advantages for ads, too. For brands, the extended availability should come as a welcome tool that they can leverage to create fast-loading, rich media content on Facebook to fully engage with their followers.

For more information on how and why brands should try out Facebook Canvas, click here to read our Fast Forward analysis on the ad product.

 

Source: Marketing Land

How Intel Is Embracing Facebook’s Instant Articles

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Intel has become the first brand to publish on Facebook’s Instant Articles as the brand seeks to reach more people with its branded content. Starting in 2012, the company has been operating a tech-focused digital publication, iQ, to showcase its expertise in cutting-edge technologies and build its brand equity. Now, Intel has started posting content from iQ on Facebook using Instant Articles which does not restrict brands from publishing content as long as they have an existing publishing operation that puts out content that meets Facebook’s standards on a regular basis.

What Brands Need To Do
According to Intel, the U.S. editions of iQ reach its one to five million monthly readers mostly through paid social distribution. So it makes perfect sense for Intel to take advantage of the fast-loading publishing program to make their branded content easier to access on Facebook. Brands looking to distribute their branded content on social channels should take a cue from Intel and start exploring Instant Articles, whereas brands that simply wish to make their ads load faster and provide a better user experience can look into Facebook’s Canvas ads, which are basically “Instant Articles for brands.”

 

Source: Digiday

Facebook Partners With Square And Marketo To Track Offline Purchases

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
A week after announcing its partnership with Quantium to improve its offline measurements, Facebook has once again stepped up its attribution game by partnering with Square and Marketo, both makers of point-of-sale systems, to track how well their ads lead to offline purchases. Even when no purchase is made, the social network will still be able to track store visits thanks to a new feature that matches smartphone coordinates from GPS, beacons, WiFi, radio signals, and cell towers with store locations.

What Brands Need To Do
With digital ad measurement becoming more accurate and sophisticated, advertisers have turned toward tracking their impact in the real world. Measuring offline sales and store visits driven by digital ads is especially important for retailers and CPG brands, as those metrics are the typical KPIs for measuring their campaigns. As social platforms appeal to advertisers by building out their attribution tools, brands should learn to leverage the new data they generate to inform their current and future campaigns.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook Tests Social Commerce Payments In Thailand

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook again shows its ambition in conquering social commerce with a new trial that launched in Thailand. Working with local fin-tech company 2C2P, Facebook integrated their digital payment product Qwik into its platform to enable users to pay for products listed on Facebook Pages without leaving the social network. Users will be able to complete purchases with a credit card, debit card, or even online bank transfer online with just a few clicks. Multiple sources in Thailand’s ecommerce space reported that Facebook is planning to roll out the trial to other countries in Southeast Asia over time.

Why Brands Should Care
Facebook has been working on incorporating payment solutions into its platform for a few years now, most recently adding a payment product to its Messenger app to allow users to link their debit card to the messaging app and send payments to their friends by striking up a conversation. This new trial reveals Facebook’s plan to keep the payment process entirely on its platform. Whereas Twitter has all but given up on its Buy Button, Facebook still seems to be rather confident in building out its commerce features and making its platform more business-friendly. Any brands that wish to sell directly on social platforms should heed Facebook’s developments in this domain.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook And Pinterest Partner With Analytics Firms To Track Offline Attribution

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In order to better measure how their ads impact offline sales and boost their ad attribution capabilities, Facebook and Pinterest announced new partnerships with Quantium and Oracle Data Cloud, respectively, earlier this week. For Facebook, the decision to team up with Quantium, an Australian data analytics and strategy firm, stems from their clients’ need to better understand the effectiveness of their ad spending on social media. Brands that have joined the beta test include L’Oreal, Kelloggs, and Proctor & Gamble.

As for Pinterest, the new partnership with Oracle Data Cloud aims to further convince brand advertisers of its conversion prowess. Citing the results of a new Oracle study, which “measured in-store sales for 26 Pinterest campaigns across major food and drink, household goods, and beauty brands,” the company says its Promoted Pins “drive five times more incremental in-store sales per impression” compared to other online advertising.

What Brands Need To Do
While measuring offline sales and store visits driven by online and mobile ads are still relatively new in ad attribution, they have quickly become crucial parts of digital ad measurement, especially for retailers and CPG brands. As social platforms like Facebook and Pinterest try to appeal to advertisers by beefing up their attribution tools, brands should learn to leverage the new data they generate to inform their current and future campaigns.

Sources: Mumbrella & Marketing Land

Facebook Challenges Twitch With Blizzard Integration

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following the launch of an eSports network and programming on Facebook last month, popular video game maker Blizzard is forging a bond with the social network by integrating Facebook’s login and Live video features into its PC games and online gameplay service Battle.net. This integration allows players to easily start broadcasting their gameplay on Facebook. Although Battle.net added support for Twitch last September, this will no doubt put some pressure on Twitch as Facebook gears up to compete for the game streaming market.

What Brands Need To Do
Given Facebook’s massive user base, its newfound interest in gameplay streaming should come as an auspicious sign for the gaming industry. Quickly growing from a nerdy niche to a legitimate new media segment that commands millions of eyeballs, the gaming industry has enjoyed rapid growth in the past few years. Meanwhile, Facebook has been making a strong push for its Live video product in the recent months, so it makes sense for the social network to tap into one of the most popular content segments in live streaming. For brands seeking to connect with a young, male-skewing audience that video games typically deliver, this provides a new channel to reach a wide audience. Therefore, now is the time for brands to include video game streaming and eSports as part of the media strategy via relevant sponsorships.

 

Source: VentureBeat

The First Sports Chatbot For Facebook Messenger Is Here

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
If you ever wanted to receive sports updates via text but don’t know anyone who follows the same teams and loves texting, you are in luck. The Toronto-based sports media company theScore has created the first-ever sports chatbot on Facebook Messenger to keep fans in the loop. As it is, the chatbot is not exactly conversational; instead, it is designed to figure out which sports teams you would like to follow and then dispense news and updates about them to you via Messenger in a timely manner. The chatbot currently covers all teams in major U.S. sports leagues such as MLB or NFL, as well as most major European soccer leagues.

Why Sports Brands Should Care
As more and more smartphone users turn to messaging apps, sports brands would be smart to follow the fans and engage them on the messaging platforms they are already on, and chatbots should come in handy as a tool for promoting fan engagement and communications. This is not only true for sports media companies, but also for sports franchises as well. In fact, The Sacramento Kings, an NBA team, is working with startup JiffyBots to create a team chatbot on Facebook to serve fans with game stats and digital content upon request. They also plan to add more commerce features to the chatbot, such as guiding fans to purchase tickets or upgrade their seats, something that most teams should consider to boost ticket and merchandise sales.

For more information on how sports brands can make use of chatbots to connect with fans, please check out our Fast Forward analysis on Facebook’s F8 Event.

 

Source: GeekWire