We at Pink Shark Marketing have sympathy for Facebook. They are under constant heat for the way they do things and for flaws in their software but a few reasons why they can afford to is because well, they are Facebook. This year has been rather impressive for them as they have been working diligently to please two audiences: businesses and normal every day users. You have to imagine that it is difficult to have a product that massive and be able to please both. On one hand, you have to make it easy for advertiser’s and social media companies to push whatever product or service they represent. On the other hand, you have to maintain the level of privacy for the average user so they don’t feel violated because someone keeps following around on Facebook with ads regarding a widget that they look at once 6 month’s ago on a late-night internet shopping binge. We think that they do a pretty good job of catering to both parties as we enjoy using as a digital marketing agency and as average users. With that said, we are extremely excited for some of the updates that they are rolling out over the next few months.
1. Instagram Ads
That’s right! Facebook is finally extending their self-serving ads to Instagram! This means that agencies and businesses alike will be able to capitalize on traffic from the platform in a whole new way. While this is exciting, we would advise that you be patient because this service has not been rolled out completely. We are definitely excited to be extending this service to our clients, especially for those that have most of their demographic there! Once we give it a proper test run we will publish a case study to showcase our results!
2. New 100% In-View Impression Buying
It’s quite often in the marketing industry or within your own organization that you’re discussing conversion rates to some extent. The basic formula would be however many people saw the ad divided by the amount of people who took the desired action from the ad. But, are the numbers really accurate? What counts as an impression? That’s what Facebook has received a little backlash for and now they aim to fix it. Soon Facebook will roll-out a tiered ad buying system meaning that it will cost you more per view/click via premium to ensure that your ad is only charged when it is 100% in-view. We believe that this is a huge advantage. More is usually better but if the ads are nothing but a blur, does it really matter?
3. Partnership with Moat
Facebook has also addressed adding accuracy to video ads. There has been recent discussion about their proposed metric and how accurate they can be with it. Basically, they want to provide you with an accurate number of views and even accurate reports of how long each person viewed your video. This is extremely beneficial for understanding how to optimize your content in the every dwindling attention span of a social media user. To do this Facebook has partnered with Moat, a third-party analytics provider who specializes in these very metrics.
It truly seems like Facebook is moving in the right direction to accommodate new marketers and even sole proprietors to put together a decent campaign. Now you just have to ask yourself if you have the time to do it! I guess at this point it is worth mentioning that if you aren’t spending money on Facebook, you should be. Whether you manage it yourself or you employ the services of a digital marketing agency, you will definitely need this in addition to whatever marketing you are doing. We hope that you enjoyed this information and we look forward to keeping you updated!
