Facebook doesn’t eat their own dog food

Wait, aren’t Sponsored Stories and other FB ads the perfect fit for this?  I guess not because FB had to go to TV to broadcast their message!

The company is taking the Airplane spot it showed at Thursday’s launch event and airing it as a TV commercial, starting with today’s Final Four men’s college basketball games on CBS. Additional spots — all produced by ad firm Wieden + Kennedy, will come in the coming weeks, Facebook said.

via Facebook Begins Big Push to Bring Mobile Users “Home” – Ina Fried – Mobile – AllThingsD.

Has Facebook Lost Faith in Social Ads?

Great headline and discussion of what’s going on with monetization at Facebook.  If it’s one thing I can give FB, it’s that they are really transparent with the way they play their cards.  I think the biggest strategic implication here is– if native monetization didn’t work for FB, then how can it work for any other property at scale?

While Facebook clearly isn’t abandoning social ads, its adoption of more tried-and-true online-ad models has the advantage of being more easily explained to CMOs, most of whom never grasped the significance of accruing fans and “likes,” according to Colin Sutton, social-media director at OMD

via Has Facebook Lost Faith in Social Ads? | Digital – Advertising Age.

Publishers can now see Graph Search keywords that led to their sites

Facebook is really bringing their A game:

Facebook has begun passing keyword data to websites that receive referral traffic from search queries that originate on the social network, allowing sites to more accurately track where visitors are coming from.

via Publishers can now see Graph Search keywords that led to their sites.

Facebook Expands Targeted Advertising Through Outside Data Sources – NYTimes.com

I think this is misguided– the primary benefit to these partnerships is to be able to measure the effectiveness of seeing Facebook ads by connecting views to purchase data.  These firms, through partnerships can access purchase information and tie it back to individual accounts.  Targeting may be in the works too but it’s not the primary driver here:

In shaping its targeted advertising strategy, it is no longer relying solely on what Facebook users reveal about themselves. Instead, it is tapping into outside sources of data to learn even more about them — and to sell ads that are more finely targeted to them. Facebook says that this way, marketers will be able to reach the right audience for the right products, and consumers will see advertisements that are, as the company calls it, “relevant” to them.

via Facebook Expands Targeted Advertising Through Outside Data Sources – NYTimes.com.

Facebook Retargeter Perfect Audience (YC S11) Launches API For Agencies, Devs

Perfect Audience getting a lot of love on Hacker News comments.  As they should since they are a YC company:

Facebook Retargeter Perfect Audience (YC S11) Launches API For Agencies, Devs | Hacker News.

Facebook advertisement studies: Their ads are more like TV ads than Google ads. – Slate Magazine

I wrote this ten days ago:

No, wrong.   The point of these offline data partnerships that Facebook is doing is that that consumers don’t need to engage with these ads.  All they need to show is a lift via a control/exposed study.  Obviously, if they don’t show any impact from ad exposure in news streams, that’s not good.  The ability to do this is what makes the Datalogix partnership so big.

Slate just published on this today.  I hope we don’t have an attribution issue here:

Even if you never click on Facebook ads, they are making you buy things.

via Facebook advertisement studies: Their ads are more like TV ads than Google ads. – Slate Magazine.

 

News Feed Is Facebook’s New Jackpot

Of course, this could all go horribly wrong, if users don’t, in fact, engage with those huge ads, the potential downside to larger visuals is perhaps a more pronounced negative knee-jerk reaction to poorly targeted ads. “If I’m served up an irrelevant ad, and it’s even larger than it used to be, I’ll probably be distracted by it and dislike it that much more,” added Newcomb.

via News Feed Is Facebook’s New Jackpot – Rebecca Greenfield – The Atlantic Wire.

No, wrong.   The point of these offline data partnerships that Facebook is doing is that that consumers don’t need to engage with these ads.  All they need to show is a lift via a control/exposed study.  Obviously, if they don’t show any impact from ad exposure in news streams, that’s not good.  The ability to do this is what makes the Datalogix partnership so big.

 

Facebook’s Zero Sum Fight

It’s even harder to fight this battle between user experience and monetization when it’s starting as a zero sum fight from right off the bat.

Mr. Cathcart acknowledges that maintaining the balance on news feed between ads and user-generated content is an ongoing challenge.

via Facebook on its Clutter Conundrum – Digits – WSJ.

And the way Facebook uses data to back up this tradeoff is the same way that most pubs use it.  These are vanity metrics because the (engagement) data presented does not truly capture the impact of ads.

According to Mr. Cathcart, the study showed a 2% drop in engagement for the group that saw the normal flow of ads versus the group that saw no ads. Any drop in engagement should upset Facebook, given its loftier mission of connecting the world on its platform. But all things considered, Mr. Cathcart said, it really wasn’t so bad.

Meet the man behind Facebook’s ad revenue – Fortune Tech

Wasn’t there an article three months ago on adexchanger with the same title but featuring Gokul Rajaram?

David Fischer, Facebook’s vice president of business and marketing partnerships, has helped Facebook built its profit engine. via Meet the man behind Facebook’s ad revenue – Fortune Tech.

Nothing terribly interesting here but a highly relevant piece.  There’s the same old stuff about how they’re playing the long game and how they want to create monetization products that aren’t zero sum between their ad clients and user base.  There’s also a lot of discussion about mobile, user experience, privacy, targeting, etc.

 

 

 

Dreaded Auto-Play Video Ads Could Be Coming To Facebook, VP Confirms | TechCrunch

It’s the old “balancing user experience and monetization” line:

Could Facebook run auto-play video ads without overly distracting users from their friends’ content?”

Fischer admirably gave a straight answer (which I’ve verified with Facebook) when he easily could have dodged. “I believe there are ways we could do it. There are ways that could be destructive and distracting to the user experience. But there are ways that could potentially balance user experience with advertiser experience. We haven’t put a product out yet because we haven’t had one we’re comfortable with. But if we could, then we would do it.”

via Dreaded Auto-Play Video Ads Could Be Coming To Facebook, VP Confirms | TechCrunch.