The New Facebook Ad Platform: What Does This Mean?
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 7th, 2007 9:00 AMYesterday, Facebook officially announced their new ad system and it’s significant. One thing that went missing is the supposed external ads that many of us were waiting for. While we can target within the site, there is currently no way to target outside users. So much for a direct attack on Google. That’s not to say that it won’t ever occur but it doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon. While we’ll have to wait on the Google ad killer, what is the significance of the latest announcement by Facebook for users, developers and brands?
Users
Users are going to continue to use Facebook the way they always did. The only additional feature is going to be the ability to add brands as friends. While I am all about saving the planet, I’m not quite sure that a Toyota Prius or a Saturn are going to end up in my friend list. Honestly, this seems a little bit ridiculous but apparently this model has been successful in targeting the younger crowd. I would be interested to see what the demographic breakdown of users in sponsored groups has been over the past year. Don’t count on that information showing up on this blog anytime soon!
If you were ever a MySpace user, you will quickly realize that this is something that MySpace already offered. MySpace is famous for their company pages users can add as friends to help express their affiliations. If you studied marketing for even one semester, chances are that you will know that brand personification is the apex of marketing strategy. Adding a brand as a friend effectively translates this maxim into reality on Facebook. Are you going to be adding brands as friends now?
Developers
Developers actually get some new options here. According to Facebook, brands can now opt to add applications to their brand “Pages.” Facebook hasn’t publicly addressed whether advertising partners can select from a directory of Facebook developed applications (unavailable to the public) or if they have to select from the publicly available application directory. I have a feeling that this is where Facebook will compete to provide custom applications to brands.
Conversely, if your application does make it to one of these sponsored pages, your application will receive a higher priority within news feeds of friends of the user who is interacting with your application (did I make that confusing enough for you?). Additionally, developers will now be able to pay for more effective ads. Rather than simply paying for flyers (which a number of application owners are already doing), ads will also be accompanied by a small list that informs the user of which of their friends have installed the application.
Brands
So what do brands get out of this? A lot. Up until now, Facebook brands were able to purchase sponsored groups that members became affiliated with. Instead of that, brands will now be able to purchase custom profiles which consist of ultimately the same features that traditional user profiles have without all of the personal information. Instead of information a brand can display:
- Company website
- Company location
- Hours of operation
- Band Members
- Record Label
- Season Schedule
- and more
When I first read about this, I didn’t realize how significant this is but imagine if your favorite bar down the street creates a page. You can view their page that has all the regulars and there is conversation that takes place on that page. This is the concept of hyper-targeting. Local businesses will be able to interact directly with local customers via the social graph. I can now see college students running aroung to businesses trying to make a buck off of this new platform by offering consulting to local businesses.
So is this significant? Yes. It is going to take time though for businesses and consumers to realize the actual impact of this system. When you are interacting with the brands that you interact daily with (don’t think Nike, think the local restaurant down the street) these ads could easily become more significant. Look for some exciting things to come. It will be interesting to see what the true impact of this new system is.
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November 7th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Is there a directory or something where we can see some more examples of pages?
I think that Facebook Page is significant because it is basically a recommendation directory that will be used mainly for local businesses. It will be a great way to find good restaurants etc’
November 7th, 2007 at 10:19 am
They haven’t really loosened up on their tight restrictions, though. I tried to run some ads for my I Love Beer Pong blog and they shut them down - because of beer. I can’t use the word beer on a prominently college-aged network?
I guess college students don’t play beer pong.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Impressed with the lengths you have gone to in analysing the new system and thought I could add something as I have just seen the first UK presentation of the Facebook Ads platform - Owen van Natta (Facebook’s Chief Revenue Officer) flew in to bring everyone up to speed.
I have to say, I’m very impressed with it.
One slight amendment to your post - you can’t make brand pages friends, you can only declare that you are a ‘fan’ of them. This is then declared in your Feeds - it is important for Facebook to make a distinction between Friends and Advertisers.
The Social Ads model is very clever too. An advertiser will upload a product tag line and a product image. If a user interacts with an ad page an update will be included in the feed and this will be combined with the ad message. (Eg if I bought a new pair of trainers my feed would describe my action, credit the brand and also show a picture.)
Rather than being a Google killer it has the potential to be a Google alternative - trust referral vs Google referral.
I have written a bit more about it on my blog here: http://www.nickburcher.com/2007/11/owen-van-natta-from-facebook-presents.html and will update this once I have had the time to play around a bit with the new Facebook system - planning to create a http://www.nickburcher.com page to support my blog!
November 7th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Is there a directory or something where we can see some more examples of pages?
I think that Facebook Page is significant because it is basically a recommendation directory that will be used mainly for local businesses. It will be a great way to find good restaurants etc’
November 7th, 2007 at 11:36 am
I think it’s not just local businesses that will benefit! Despite the skepticism as to who would choose to add a large brand to their friend list, I work at MTV and early on we had an MTV profile (deleted as it broke the tncs - farily enough), which was incredibly popular with a large number of people adding us to their friend list on a daily basis - unprompted - there are major brands out there that people want to be associated with. It’s great for us because we can find people who like our content and show them how they can get it - e.g. lots of people who watch The Hills are on Facebook, and want to watch The Hills online. So we have a group for The Hills and we post links to watch episodes online. The response we’ve had has been really positive. Of course, any large brand needs to be aware of how they go about using FB to promote their services. People can smell bad exploitative marketing a mile off and will react to it.
I’m very excited about these developments.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
They haven’t really loosened up on their tight restrictions, though. I tried to run some ads for my I Love Beer Pong blog and they shut them down - because of beer. I can’t use the word beer on a prominently college-aged network?
I guess college students don’t play beer pong.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Impressed with the lengths you have gone to in analysing the new system and thought I could add something as I have just seen the first UK presentation of the Facebook Ads platform - Owen van Natta (Facebook’s Chief Revenue Officer) flew in to bring everyone up to speed.
I have to say, I’m very impressed with it.
One slight amendment to your post - you can’t make brand pages friends, you can only declare that you are a ‘fan’ of them. This is then declared in your Feeds - it is important for Facebook to make a distinction between Friends and Advertisers.
The Social Ads model is very clever too. An advertiser will upload a product tag line and a product image. If a user interacts with an ad page an update will be included in the feed and this will be combined with the ad message. (Eg if I bought a new pair of trainers my feed would describe my action, credit the brand and also show a picture.)
Rather than being a Google killer it has the potential to be a Google alternative - trust referral vs Google referral.
I have written a bit more about it on my blog here: http://www.nickburcher.com/2007/11/owen-van-natta-from-facebook-presents.html and will update this once I have had the time to play around a bit with the new Facebook system - planning to create a http://www.nickburcher.com page to support my blog!
November 7th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I think it’s not just local businesses that will benefit! Despite the skepticism as to who would choose to add a large brand to their friend list, I work at MTV and early on we had an MTV profile (deleted as it broke the tncs - farily enough), which was incredibly popular with a large number of people adding us to their friend list on a daily basis - unprompted - there are major brands out there that people want to be associated with. It’s great for us because we can find people who like our content and show them how they can get it - e.g. lots of people who watch The Hills are on Facebook, and want to watch The Hills online. So we have a group for The Hills and we post links to watch episodes online. The response we’ve had has been really positive. Of course, any large brand needs to be aware of how they go about using FB to promote their services. People can smell bad exploitative marketing a mile off and will react to it.
I’m very excited about these developments.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
[...] Social networking sites like Facebook have lot to do with communicating through one’s profile who we are. What do we like? What have we done? What have we seen? The ability to put forth what one wants is an important aspect to finding what one wants! The same is true with tickets! Users are now self-describing who they are and what they are interested in, including their ticket interests, and marketers can target their specific needs. (see the recent news regarding the new Facebook Ad network). [...]