facebook advertising at work

Just a quick post before I head off to Thailand for 6 days.

I've been curious to see if facebook was starting to index profile updates into their advertising mix.

Basically, the premise is, if you write an update, facebook would index keywords in that update and begin pushing advertisements to you based on those keywords in realtime.

I was unsure if they had started this process in Australia, as I was yet to see any evidence of it happening, until this morning.

On Thursday morning I wrote this update "Heading to the land of Thai's v soon."



Then this morning I get this ad.


I don't have the word Thailand anywhere in my profle info. The only indication I had given to facebook that I was leaving to Thailand was that update. It didn't even include the countries full name, yet still, I managed to receive a relevant ad specific to Thailand.

Looks like facebook are starting to ramp up their real-time advertising activities.

facebook advertising "It's disruptive and it doesn't work"

"Noone wants to be advertised to through facebook, it's a place to connect and share with my friends & family, why would I want a brand in that space? It's disruptive and it doesn't work."

Advertising - is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action.

Disruption - is the (usually deliberate or intended) interruption of normal work or practice.

Advertising has always been disruptive. It is primarily designed to interrupt you from your normal everyday activities and pursuade you to take some action. The constructs of traditional mass media (print, TV, radio) have always facilitated this model of advertising, the advert or message is always pre-packaged, aimed and broadcast at a pre-determined group of consumers, mostly via generic fields such as age, sex and location. It interrupts these consumers whilst they are watching TV, reading the newspaper, sitting at a bus stop or listening to the radio. It's forced, it's a push of content towards consumers. Whether they like it or not, they're still going to be fed the message.

Along comes something like facebook. It's a place to connect, share, interact and keep up to date with things happening in your world. It's also a place where you can become connected to non living entities like brands, common interest groups or companies.

YOU decide to be connected to these things.

If you have an affinity with a brand, you fan them. You are then connected with them. You have given that brand explicit permission to have access into your social graph, you are effectively welcoming that brands message into your social world, because you find it relevant to you.

If the brand is smart, they will understand and respect your social space, grateful for the personal access you have granted them and send you information that interests you, is relevant to you and can help improve your life in a helpful, meaningful way.

Understand that this approach is still, very much, advertising. The brand still needs to sell products and make money. It still needs to pursuade an audience to take action.

The thing that doesn't need to apply to advertising anymore, the part that is irrelevant now, is disruption.

Social Networking revenue to jump 475% to US$1.9B in 2013

I picked up the latest edition of the economist today.

It's got Steve Jobs on the cover (why i picked it up), but also features an 18 page special report on social networking.

If you haven't picked one up yet, I suggest you do as it makes for some very interesting and insightful reading.

As I initially flicked through the report a small graph caught my eye, it was labeled 'Money Talks' and forcasted the growth of web 2.0 revenues from 2009-2013.

I'll detail the list below as I can't find a link to it online (all behind a paywall),

web 2.0 revenues by technology, $m

2009 2013

RSS $190m $575m
Blogs $200m $325m
Wikis $180m $450m
Mashups $100m $675m
Podcasting $75m $275m
Widgets $75m $350m


Social Networking $425m $1.997b

I knew social networking was no where near being mature from a monitsation point of view, but a near 500% jump in revenue over a 4 year period is insane.

Who or what do you think is going to take in most of this revenue an how do you think its going to be done?

Google now indexing 620 Million facebook groups

Cut out the usual 1/4 of the results below (as they're spammers or screenscrapers) and you reach a relative figure of around 620M.



Thats almost as many videos on youtube (684 according to Google).

There is currently around 2.5M fan pages on facebook, so you get an idea of how integral groups really are to the entire facebook experience.

Groups are old school though and produce far less engagement than Pages, this is partly due to the way facebook has engineered pages, they have more reach into the social graph therefore they're going to produce more engagement and more insight for brands.

With that in mind, the real benefits of Google having access to facebook data will be seen when facebook Pages become more widely available to the search engine.

Social Media & the Superbowl. Pepsi/Coke says no to traditional ad's, yes to Social Media.

Pepsi have created the US$20M 'Refresh Everything' Social Media campaign to replace their traditional 1-2 Superbowl ad's during the uber huge sporting event.

Coke has taken a philanthropic turn and wants to 'do a little good while refreshing people' by offering all fans of their 'Live Positively' facebook page the chance to give gifts to their friends. Coke will donate US$1 to a charity for each gift given during the Superbowl period.

So is social growing up, are big brands finally seeing the benefits of social media over traditional media or are they just willing to take a gamble and see how it goes?

If well, social becomes a very viable primary channel for big brands. If not so well, social will slip back into the backroom as a 'bolt on' solution that a few marketers now feel comfortable dismissing it as.

Will Pepsi get more qualified exposure and consumer engagement out of a US$20M social media campaign than if they ran their traditional Superbowl ad's? I think they will.

What do you think?

Shit just got real - facebook page updates now measurable in CPM, this is HUGE.

A major hurdle has just been overcome in the 'how do you measure social media' debate.

About 3-4 hours ago facebook page admins will have noticed that one new line of data appears under their branded page updates, impressions and % feedback.

This is significant to the advertising industry for three reasons - marketers now have justification to create a pricing model around facebook updates through CPM, smart marketers will be able to determine the best time of day to send updates for the most exposure/engagement and lastly marketers will know the effectiveness of each individual update in realtime, as engagement is occuring.

Below are just a few thoughts about how this development could really change things.

Creation of a 'per update' pricing model

Marketers now have a concrete and tradititional measurement unit with which to charge out facebook page management and update creation. The days of facebook pages being ambiguous and hard to sell to the boardroom in terms of reach and cost are effectively over.

Updates can now justifiably be sold to 3rd parties

Now that page admins have access to the amount of impressions each of their updates receives, its conceivable that owners (brands) that have a large fanbase will now be able to sell updates to outside advertisers through a traditional CPM pricing model.

Realtime engagement monitoring

Being able to track feedback in realtime is incredibly insighful for fb marketers as it allows them to keep brands informed on consumer sentiment as it happens, effectively allowing them (the brand) to react instantly.

Lastly, I think the biggest question is....how much is a fb update CPM worth compared to a traditional CPM?

Traditional CPM

• Usually targeted at a cluster of 'similar' websites that have a 'similar' audience.
  
• Your message can often be associated with content that doesn't suit your brand.
  
• It can be relatively unclear who is actually seeing and engaging with your message.
• There is no flow on (viral) brand effect when a consumer engages with your message.
  

Facebook CPM

• You know exactly what type of consumer your message will be getting exposed to, as the consumer connected themselves to the page, the relationship is voluntary, they want to receive the message from the page (basically the inverse to traditional CPM banner ad's offerings).
  
• You can monitor and communicate with consumers who engage with your message in realtime.
  
• You can see the exposure/reach the message is getting and how effective it is as it happens.
  
• There is significant flow on effect through facebooks social graph when your message is engaged by each consumer, increasing brand exposure throughout the platform.
  

I think a facebook CPM should inherently be more expensive than traditional CPM's because

1. the market they reach is more qualified
2. consumer sentiment data and reach are both offered in realtime
3. consumers can actually engage and share opinion about the message
   
4. brands can respond to consumers engaging with the message instantly
5. their is significant flow on effect for brand exposure, ensuring your message will reach more consumers.
   

Will facebook update CPM's become an integral part of the advertising landscape?

Will they will be more or less expensive than traditional CPM's?

What do you think?

mudo