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Targeting Teenagers with Your ads? Here are the Four Personas to Appeal to

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Academics have identified four distinct personas of social media user that teenagers describe as shaping how they behave on social media.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Young social media users are categorised as either acting like the Geek, the Internet Celebrity, the Victim or the Lurker depending on their levels of online activity and visibility, University of Sussex academics say.

The categorisations are based on interviews the researchers conducted with children aged between 10 and 15-years-old for a new book, Researching Everyday Childhoods, published by Bloomsbury last month.

The interviews revealed many youngsters were increasingly savvy about maintaining their privacy online, often being motivated to protect themselves by unpleasant past personal experiences or negative incidents that affected classmates.

Dr Liam Berriman, lecturer in digital humanities at the University of Sussex, said: “Our research found that concerns about staying safe online created an atmosphere of intense anxiety for young people, even if they had not directly experienced any problems themselves. The young people we spoke to felt a great weight of responsibility for their safety online and were often motivated by the concern of being labelled a victim.”

“While there has been a lot of negative media coverage around teenagers’ interaction with social media, our findings are more hopeful that teenagers are responsible users of social media, are very conscious of the dangers and make considerable efforts to protect themselves against those risks.”

Teenagers navigate between the desire to be praised and recognised online and anxieties over the risk of opening themselves up to criticism and trolling. Among the four personas is the Internet Celebrity who is able to best use the latest trends and increasingly values “visibility of the self” through Instagram, Snapchat, the selfie and YouTube vlogging.

The internet celebrity

But academics also identified how young people are experimenting with and enjoying invisibility online. They describe the Lurker as someone able to avoid peer dramas arising through platforms such as Facebook, whilst still engaging in fun peer activities such as stalking their favourite music bands online.

The lurker

The Geek, meanwhile, uses invisibility to anonymously share and promote their amateur media creations online, such as music videos or fan fiction writing. The academics described how the Geeks’ long hours of labour on projects risked parental concern that their behaviour was obsessive or addictive.

The geek

Professor Rachel Thomson, professor of childhood and youth studies at the University of Sussex, said, “What is distinctive about these active social media users was the entrepreneurial character of their practice, with ‘play’ re-envisaged as a form of economically rewarding work. By gaining an audience, young people are aware that they could capture advertising and corporate sponsorship. The dream is to ‘go viral’, establishing a career as a cultural creator.”

The research also highlights the risks contained in a world dominated by personal visibility with the Victim left to suffer personal exposure and shame following the creation and display of intimate material such as sexting and the loss of control of this material.

The victim

The Victim’s high visibility is often out of their control with their presence and heightened without their consent as private material is extracted from them and exchanged under false premises.

This can vary from the frustration of being tagged in photographs and the creation of an unflattering digital footprint through the activities of others to the more invasive techniques of fraping, where a person’s online identity is hijacked without their permission, or sharing of intimate photographs.

Dr Berriman said, “These examples reveal the impossibility of non- participation in the world of social media. A teenager does not necessarily have to create an online persona, it is something that can be created by others.”

This is great food for thought for anyone trying to catch the attention of teenagers online. You may even need to consider four different approaches when targeting the teen market. Thanks, science!

 

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Millennials Are Not All Alike (And They May Surprise You!)

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New research studying the millennials market has identified five unique subgroups.

A new research study from Zeldis Research Associates reveals surprising findings for marketers which belie the frequent mythology that Millennials are “all the same.”

Unlike many other market studies attempting to better understand Millennials as a single group, Zeldis researchers identified five Millennial segments based on income, attitudes, and other important factors.  This “Seen One Millennial and You Haven’t Seen Them All” study is part of Zeldis’ ongoing investigation into how marketers can better reach and successfully engage this group.

“Despite a lot of the media coverage we hear, Millennials are not one homogenous group, unfortunately and incorrectly characterised by a few negative stereotypes such as lazy or entitled,” said Zeldis Executive Vice President Amy Rey. “Our research shows that there are important differences among Millennials. We wanted to dispel some of the myths and help marketers better understand the nuances that will help make Millennial-targeted outreach, products and messaging more effective.”

Five Identifiable Segments

Based on online interviews with 1000 Millennials aged 21-36, the Zeldis researchers identified five unique segments:  Faithful Optimists (31% of the sample), Struggling Parents (23%), Secular Activists (22%) Tech-Savvy Independents (14%), and Pessimistic Conservatives (10%).  Some of their findings include:

– Faithful Optimists, the largest segment, tend to be joyful, hardworking, dependable, and religious. They are more likely to be non-white and heterosexual.

– Struggling Parents tend to be pessimistic about their lives and about the country. They don’t pay much attention to politics or technology. They are more likely to be white women with children and tend to be less educated and from rural areas.

– Secular Activists are more likely to be politically liberal, and to be pessimistic about the country’s future. They tend to be single, childless, and secular and are more likely to be part of the LGBT community.

-Tech-Savvy Independents are more politically conservative but also environmentally conscious. Optimistic about the economy, this segment has a higher proportion of males and non-whites, and tends to be from urban locations.

– Pessimistic Conservatives, the smallest segment, are likely to be from suburban areas. They tend to be religious and politically conservative. Skewing male and non-white, they have high incomes but are pessimistic about their economic future.

Though holding some attitudes and beliefs in common with other segments, each group showed nuanced differences that the Zeldis researchers believe are important for companies to understand and apply when marketing their products.

The full results are available at ZeldisMillennialsStudy.com.

 

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You Might be Paying too Much for ads on Google and Bing

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Before you dish out money to bid for a top-ranked ad position on a search engine, you may want to pause and make sure it’s actually going to pay off.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

New research out of Binghamton University, State University of New York suggests that instead of just spending to get that top spot, advertisers should be considering other factors as well to ensure they are getting the best results from their sponsored search advertising campaigns.

Sponsored search advertising involves paying search engines, like Google and Bing, to bid for placements on the search results pages for specific keywords and terms. The ads appear in sponsored sections, separate from the organic search results, on those pages.

“The common belief in sponsored search advertising is that you should buy the top ad position to get more clicks, because that will lead to more sales,” said Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Marketing Chang Hee Park. “But the fee for the top position could be larger than the expected sales you’d get off that top position.”

Park, with the help of Binghamton University Professor of Marketing Manoj Agarwal, analysed data collected from a search engine and created a model that can forecast the number of clicks advertisers could expect in sponsored search markets based on four factors:

  • Rank in the sponsored listings
  • Website quality
  • Brand equity
  • Selling proposition

The model gives advertisers a way to quantify the expected clicks they’d get by adjusting these four factors, while also taking into consideration how their competitors are managing these four factors. This could enable advertisers to find a perfect blend of the four factors to ensure they are getting the most out of what they are paying for their ad positions.

It may also indicate that they should be spending more money to bolster their brand or website rather than amplifying their offers in top ad positions.

“Using this model, you may find that paying less for a lower ad position while investing more in improving your website is more effective than spending all of that money strictly on securing top ad positions,” said Agarwal.

This applies especially if your competitor has a poorer-quality website, but is spending more than you on securing top ad positions.

Their model found that poor-quality advertisers that are ranked higher in ad positions drive consumers back to the search results page, leading consumers to then click on advertisers in lower ad positions to find what they are looking for.

In contrast, they also found that a highly-ranked good-quality advertiser results in significantly less clicks for all the advertisers ranked below them.

“It’s more likely that in the top position, all advertisers being equal, you’ll get more clicks. But depending on these four factors, as well as the quality of your competitors, you may find that you’ll get more clicks in the second or the third position,” said Park.

“Conceptually, this is not a new idea, but now the model can help determine this by accounting for multiple factors at play at the same time.”

Advertisers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from this research.

Park and Agarwal’s model found that simply reordering the listed advertisers could result in significant changes in overall click volume (the total number of clicks across all advertisers) for search engines.

“Because they often charge on a pay-per-click model, search engines can now simulate which ordering of advertisers in a sponsored search market results in the most overall clicks and, therefore, most revenue” said Park. “Search engines may want to consider charging advertisers in a way that gives the search engine more flexibility in determining the order in which the ads in sponsored sections are displayed.”

 

 

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Understanding Facebook Emoticons Can Impact How You Advertise on Social Media

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Not all “likes” are equal.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

While the trusty “like” button is still the most popular way to signal approval for Facebook posts, a computer model may help users and businesses navigate the increasingly complicated way people are expressing how they feel on social media.

In a study, researchers developed a social emotion mining computer model that one day could be used to better predict people’s emotional reactions to Facebook posts, said Jason Zhang, a research assistant in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. While Facebook once featured only one official emoticon reaction – the like button – the social media site added five more buttons – love, haha, wow, sad and angry – in early 2016.

“We want to understand the user’s reactions behind these clicks on the emoticons by modelling the problem as the ranking problem – given a Facebook post, can an algorithm predict the right ordering among six emoticons in terms of votes?” said Zhang. “But, what we found out was that existing solutions predict the user’s emotions and their rankings poorly in some times.”

Zhang added that merely counting clicks fails to acknowledge that some emoticons are less likely to be clicked than others, which is called the imbalance issue. For example, users tend to click the like button the most because it signals a positive interaction and it is also the default emoticon on Facebook.

“When we post something on Facebook, our friends tend to click the positive reactions, usually love, haha, or, simply, like, but they’ll seldom click angry,” said Zhang. “And this causes the severe imbalance issue.”

For social media managers and advertisers, who spend billions buying Facebook advertisements each year, this imbalance may skew their analysis on how their content is actually performing on Facebook, said Dongwon Lee, associate professor of information sciences and technology. The new model – which they call robust label ranking, or ROAR – could lead to better analytic packages for social media analysts and researchers.

“A lot of the commercial advertisements on Facebook are driven by likes,” said Lee. “Eventually, if we can predict these emoticons more accurately using six emoticons, we can build a better model that can discern more precise distribution of emotions in the social platforms with only one emoticon – like – such as on Facebook before 2016. This is a step in the direction of creating a model that could tell, for instance, that a Facebook posting made in 2015 with a million likes in fact consists only 80 percent likes and 20 percent angry. If such a precise understanding on social emotions is possible, that may impact how you advertise.”

The researchers used an AI technique called “supervised machine learning” to evaluate their newly-developed solution. In this study, the researchers trained the model using four Facebook post data sets including public posts from ordinary users, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and showed that their solution significantly outperformed existing solutions. All four sets of data were analysed after Facebook introduced the six emoticons in 2016.

The researchers suggest future research may explore the multiple meanings for liking a post.

“Coming up with right taxonomy for the meanings of like is another step in the research,” said Lee. “When you click on the like button, you could really be signalling several emotions – maybe you agree with it, or you’re adding your support, or you just like it.”

And we as marketers know, the more you understand how your market feels, the better you can tailor your advertising to them.

 

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Buyer Behaviour: Love Trumps Budget When Your Customer is Buying Sentimental Items

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People will always pay more when being led by the heart and not the head.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Brides and the bereaved beware: You, like many shoppers, may have a tendency to reject thriftiness when your purchase is a matter of the heart, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

People are reluctant to seek cost-saving options when buying what they consider sacred – such as engagement rings, cremation urns, or even desserts for a birthday party – for or to commemorate loved ones. The paper, published in Judgment and Decision Making, is the first to examine the implications of this phenomenon.

Even when they identify a less expensive alternative to be equally desirable, people choose the more expensive of two items. They also avoid searching for lower prices and negotiating better prices when the goods they’re buying are symbolic of love.

“People’s buying behaviour changes when they’re making purchases out of love because it feels wrong to engage in cost-saving measures,” said Peter McGraw, associate professor of marketing and psychology at CU. “People abandon cost-saving measures when it comes to sentimental buys because they want to avoid having to decide what is the right amount of money to spend on a loving relationship.”

The findings highlight how wedding, funeral and other industries can exploit consumers, said McGraw.

In one part of the study, which involved nearly 245 participants, the researchers asked attendees at a Boulder wedding show about their preference between two engagement rings. The attendees nearly always chose the more expensive ring when deciding between a more expensive ring with a bigger carat and a less expensive ring with a smaller carat.

“It’s important to be aware of this tendency not to seek cost savings because, over a lifetime, consumers make many purchases that are symbolic of love — whether for weddings, funerals, birthdays, and anniversaries,” said McGraw. “The loss of savings can really add up and put people in compromising financial situations.”

So how can we apply this to a marketing situation? If you are selling goods or services for sentimental events, play up the quality, not the price.

 

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Most Businesses Invest in Social Media Marketing to Support SEO Strategy

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Adapting SEO priorities to the customer journey and balancing organic versus paid search shape SEO strategy in 2018, according to new survey.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Social media marketing is the leading SEO service priority among businesses in 2018, according to new research from Clutch and Ignite Visibility. Over 90% of businesses that invest in SEO also invest in social media.

The survey of 303 marketing decision-makers reveals that most tend to shape their SEO strategy based on the SEO services they prioritise and the challenges they face.

Top SEO Priorities 2018

Two factors impact the direction of a business’ SEO strategy: The shifting customer journey and whether the business focuses on paid search or organic SEO services.

Organic SEO services include:

  • On-site optimisation – web design, site infrastructure, blogging
  • Off-site optimisation – content marketing, social media marketing

Over 40% of businesses that invest in SEO focus on organic services, compared to 19% that focus on paid search.

Businesses that focus on organic SEO are more likely to use in-house staff for general marketing, such as content marketing and social media. Over three-fourths (76%) of businesses that focus on organic services use in-house staff.

On the other hand, businesses that focus on paid search are more likely to hire an SEO company. More than two-thirds (68%) of businesses that focus on paid search hire an SEO company, compared to just 37% that rely on in-house staff.

Top SEO Priorities 2018 (PRNewsfoto/Clutch)

“Paid search complements organic SEO by providing feedback on keyword research, audience targeting, and effective ad copy,” said Eythor Westman, head of paid media at Ignite Visibility.

How businesses adapt to shifts in the customer buying journey is another factor that shapes SEO strategy. The rise of mobile search drives changes to the customer buying journey.

SEO experts agree that customers use their mobile devices to learn about a company through social media and site content before converting to make a purchase.

“Now, somebody Googles a keyword. Then they click on a top ranking term like, ‘SEO company.’ They read our blog and click around social media,” said John Lincoln, CEO of Ignite Visibility. “Then, they convert three weeks later after they feel comfortable with you.”

In response, businesses prioritise SEO services that facilitate the customer journey. Along with social media (20%), businesses rate creating content to earn links (15%), and mobile search optimisation (14%) as their top SEO priorities.

Read the full report here.

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Small Businesses Use Social Media Instead of a Website, Despite Risks

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A new survey indicates that 1 in 5 small businesses use social media in place of a website. Many assume a website is cost-prohibitive and may not consider the risks of not having one.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

More than one-third (36%) of small businesses do not have a website, according to the websites section of the fourth annual Small Business Survey conducted by Clutch, a B2B research firm. One in five small businesses (21%) selectively use social media instead of a website in an effort to engage customers.

The survey indicates that small businesses consider cost a bigger concern than the potential repercussions of not having a website.

 

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram attract small businesses by cultivating a highly engaged user base. However, relying solely on social media may be a risky strategy for businesses.

“Whenever you put all of your eggs into someone else’s basket, it’s risky,” said Judd Mercer, Creative Director of Elevated Third, a web development firm. “If Facebook changes their algorithm, there’s nothing you can do.”

Facebook recently announced changes that potentially increase the risk of using social media in place of a website. The social media platform plans to prioritise posts from family and friends over posts from brands.

This new policy may make it more difficult for small businesses to reach their audiences through social media. As a result, websites are expected to regain importance among businesses – as long as cost is not considered an obstacle.

Among small businesses that do not currently have a website, more than half (58%) plan to build one in 2018.

Some Small Businesses Say Website Cost is Prohibitive, But Others Cite Costs of $500 or Less

More than a quarter (26%) of small businesses surveyed say cost is a key factor that prevents them from having a website. However, nearly one-third of small businesses with websites (28%) report spending $500 or less.

Small businesses may not be aware that some web development agencies offer packages that defray costs by dividing website construction into multiple phases or sliding rates for small businesses. “You don’t necessarily need to launch with your first-generation website,” said Vanessa Petersen, Executive Director of Strategy at ArtVersion Interactive Agency, a web design and branding agency based in Chicago. “Maybe just start small.”

Mobile-Friendly Websites Becoming Standard
Businesses that do have websites are moving en mass to mobile friendly ones, the survey found. Over 90% of respondents said their company websites will be optimised for viewing on mobile devices by the end of this year.

In addition to the 81% of company websites that are already optimised for mobile, an additional 13% that say they plan to optimise for mobile in 2018.

Clutch’s 2018 Small Business Survey included 351 small business owners. The small businesses surveyed have between 1 and 500 employees, with 55% indicating that they have 10 or fewer employees.

To read the full report and source the survey data, click here.

 

 

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The Internet Crosses 4 Billion-User Mark

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80 percent of the world’s Internet users are active on social media

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Social media management platform Hootsuite, and We Are Social, the global socially-led creative agency, have released Digital in 2018, a report of social media and digital trends around the world.

Representing 239 countries and territories, the seventh annual report finds the number of Internet users in the world has now surpassed the 4 billion mark, putting more than half the global population online. Of that, social media brings nearly 3.2 billion active users online to connect with each other, consume media, interact with brands, and more.

The 2018 key findings include:

  • Internet user numbers increased 7 percent in the last 12 months to hit 4.021 billion, or 53 percent of the world’s population
  • Global social media usage has increased by 13 percent in the last 12 months, reaching 3.196 billion users
  • Mobile social media usage has increased by 14 percent year over year to 2.958 billion users, with 93 percent of social media users accessing social from mobile
  • Internet users are projected to spend a combined total of 1 billion years online in 2018, of which 325 million years will be spent on social media

The report also found that global growth of the Internet is propelling ecommerce forward, with 1.77 billion Internet users purchasing consumer goods online in 2017, an increase of 8 percent compared to a year ago. Collectively, consumers spent a total of USD $1.474 trillion on ecommerce platforms in the past 12 months, 16 percent more than in 2016.

Said Simon Kemp, Global Consultant, We Are Social, “With four billion people now online, connectivity is already a way of life for most of us. However, as Internet companies strive to serve the next billion users, we’ll see important changes in digital over the coming months. Audio-visual content will take priority over text – especially in social media and messaging apps – while voice commands and cameras will replace keyboards as our primary means of input. Social relationships and online communities will evolve to accommodate these new ways for people to interact with each other. This will result in rich new experiences for all of us, but businesses need to start preparing for these changes today.”

“The Digital in 2018 report highlights the continuing growth of the Internet and social media to individuals and businesses around the world. This dynamic has forever altered the customer journey as consumers and B2B professionals increasingly conduct research, make buying decisions, seek support, and recommend brands online. To achieve competitive advantage, all executives must dive deep into digital now, meeting their customers where they are to best market, sell, and serve them,” said Penny Wilson, CMO, Hootsuite.

 

 

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Forget product placement: now advertisers can buy storylines

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Sourced from The Guardian

An episode of US show Black-ish saw a character discussing an ad campaign by Procter & Gamble. Is this the future of TV?

Advertiser-funded programming is an important source of money for broadcasters, but could advertiser-funded dialogue be the next step? Last week saw a groundbreaking attempt to blend advertising and editorial in an episode of the hit US sitcom Black-ish, which involved consumer goods firm Procter & Gamble paying for a plotline.

In the episode, broadcast on ABC, characters discussed P&G’s award-winning ad campaign, “The Talk”, which features African American parents talking about racism to their children. The show’s storyline involved character Dre Johnson – the father of the family, who is himself black and an ad executive – developing an advertising campaign that focuses on P&G’s film.

While we are in a new golden age of television, it has been less memorable for advertisers, who have found the digital audiences provided by Google and Facebook more alluring. Global spending on ad slots will grow 1.1% this year to $188.7bn (£136bn), according to media buyer ZenithOptimedia, while digital spending is expected to rise more than 10% to $224.7bn.

This has forced broadcasters to find new ways of bringing in money and set up deals like the Black-ish episode with P&G.

The explosion of catch-up and on-demand services such as Netflix, the rise in the recording of shows and the skipping of ads, and a decline in viewing on traditional TV sets by younger viewers has led advertisers to look beyond the 30-second commercial break. P&G’s jump to a starring role in a show is nirvana for brands targeting the kind of viewers who are increasingly switched off by TV ads.

Advertisers are now frequently heavily involved in all aspects of a TV show, from providing funding and doing product-placement deals to having products digitally inserted into scenes using special effects.

Viewers of Channel 4’s hit celebrity winter sports show The Jump, Sheridan Smith’s turn in ITV drama Cilla, Channel 5’s The Yorkshire Vet, or Air Ambulance ER on Sky might be unaware that they made it to the small screen in part because of co-financing from an arm of WPP, the world’s biggest advertising group.

Former Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington in The Jump.
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Former Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington in The Jump, which was co-financed by advertising giant WPP. Photograph: Ian Derry/Channel 4/PA

Advertisers looking for even more control are becoming involved in creating shows that will appeal to viewers and show off their brand. The deal for Channel 4’s Eat The Week with Iceland, which shows attempts by time-starved families to cook together, included the frozen-food chain having naming rights for the show. “Iceland was fully integrated,” says Liam Mullins, managing partner at media agency the7stars, which struck the deal. “We even chose the freezer.”

Three years ago, UKTV, which owns 10 TV channels including Dave and Gold, revealed that a quarter of its original commissions were part-funded by advertisers. Kate Norum, senior commercial partnerships manager at the company, says the proportion is now much lower, at about five shows per year, but that it remains an important part of the business.

“Nearly every brand is looking to move into content creation but a lot of what they do is sitting unwatched on digital platforms,” she says. “If we can bring top-up funding to the table, then every penny goes into the production of the show. We will only do things that we think are editorially relevant: we wouldn’t want viewers thinking they were being bashed around the head with a commercial partnership.”

One example is a tie-up with Ancestry.co.uk to make The Secrets in My Family, a show that dug into a family’s history each week, fronted by The One Show’s co-host Alex Jones. The genealogy company was consulted on elements including the talent, the title, the contributors and their stories, but ultimate editorial control was held by UKTV.

Advertisers can also pay to have products featured in shows, which must carry a “P” logo to indicate the presence of paid-for placements – something that has been allowed in the UK only since 2011.

The problem with the modest £30m-a-year product-placement business is that sometimes brands don’t realise what they are getting themselves into. For every success like Superdrug’s tie-up with ITV2’s Love Island, which saw bottles of suntan lotion located strategically throughout the set of the runaway hit show, there is the cautionary tale of Big Brother.

In 2012, Henkel, which owns brands including haircare label Schwarzkopf, spent £2m on a Big Brother deal, but the Channel 5 reality show became embroiled in an abuse and racism scandal between housemates. The deal, which included the housemates and presenter Emma Willis dyeing their hair the brand’s distinctive red colour, did not go as intended for Henkel, as more than 1,200 viewers complained to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom.

Sheridan Smith in ITV’s Cilla.
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Sheridan Smith in ITV’s Cilla. Photograph: McPix Ltd/REX

Some advertisers are now looking to Hollywood-style effects to make sure they get the perfect placement.

London-based Mirriad places virtual advertising inventory into finished TV programmes – for example, inserting a billboard advert for insurer Prudential into an episode of the hit US comedy Modern Family.

“It is all about putting in images that were never there,” says Mark Popkiewicz, chief executive of Mirriad. “In today’s world, where audiences are ignoring traditional ads more and more, or blocking them, it is critical for an advertiser to be able to benefit from great content in a natural way.”

However, these innovations – from dialogue to superimposed ads – carry a health warning. Advertisers need to tread carefully as modern audiences have an increasingly low tolerance for commercial exploitation, and blurring the line between advertising and content can run the risk of a viewer backlash.

The makers of The Great British Bake Off banned potentially extremely lucrative product placement deals when it moved from ad-free BBC to Channel 4, in order to protect the integrity of the UK’s most popular TV show.

“It is a careful balance,” says Richard McKerrow, co-founder of Bake Off maker Love Productions. “While obviously we have scrutinised commercial opportunities, you have to be careful to protect the creative integrity and authenticity of a show. It is vital that viewers trust what they are seeing.”

If the example set by the Black-ish episode takes off, it could also be question of whether viewers trust what they are hearing.

Sourced from The Guardian

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‘Organic reach on Facebook is dead’: Advertisers expect price hikes after Facebook’s feed purge

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By Seb Joseph

If any brands haven’t already shifted their Facebook strategy entirely to paid, then they may have to soon.

The social network is changing its news feed to prioritize what friends and family share, which will reduce the amount of content that users see from brands and publishers.

Agencies believe brands will have to spend more on paid ads on Facebook in order to get the same number of views — further lining Facebook’s pockets. This is just the “final nail in the existing coffin” of organic reach, said Doug Baker, director of strategic services at digital agency AnalogFolk.

Facebook’s ad rates have risen by 35 percent in the last quarter alone. Agencies have noticed a slow decline in organic reach on Facebook for some time. Digital agency Jellyfish said organic reach on Facebook is already around 2 percent across most European clients. John Hegeman, Facebook’s vp of product management, said in a statement on the news feed update that advertising on the social network will be “unaffected,” but agencies disagree.

Far too many brands pump bland broadcast comms into mass-reach media buys on Facebook and spam millions of news feeds, said Mobbie Nazir, chief strategy officer at agency We Are Social. Now, there will be far more onus on planning Facebook campaigns that go deeper into media planning, campaign execution and optimization, and reporting on various metrics, she added.

“We all need to become better media planners, said Greg Allum, head of social at Jellyfish. There’s a “fundamental shift” in the roles of traditional social media marketers encapsulated in the news feed update, he added. Not only “do you have to understand brand and content,” marketers also require a key understanding of how to plan media campaigns on social.

For many brands, the bigger challenge will emerge from Facebook’s parallel war on low-quality brand content, with the platform’s December announcement that it was deprioritizing “engagement bait.” While agencies accept it will be difficult for most brands to be consistently “meaningful” — particularly when competing with treasured moments with friends and family — there is an opportunity to drive higher creative standards. “Those brands that look to add value to people’s lives and invest in high-quality, original content will have the most sustained success,” Baker said.

The risk could come once brands find loopholes in the algorithm. “I can see brands that tap into authentic conversations with a credible point of view will do well,” said Chris Pearce, the CEO at digital agency TMW Unlimited, “whereas others will be tempted to be increasingly controversial or polarizing in order to stimulate conversation.”

Another risk is if posts are boosted. Ad rankings on Facebook are not affected by the news feed’s overhaul. But as Kevin Chan, the integrated performance director at iProspect, pointed out, if a boosted page post is getting less organic reach due to these changes, then that might impact the auction. Engagement is a “very small” part of ad ranking on the social network, which relies on many other data points to determine what ads people see to ensure relevancy and value, he said.

It seems like Facebook is returning to being a social network rather than a news organization. In the enduring debate on Facebook’s impact on post-truth politics, the social network has continually denied it is a media company. This algorithm change looks like a step to confirm that, returning to the days of wall posts and status updates.

In terms of how this change will be pitched to brands, Edie Greaves, senior strategist at digital agency Possible, believes there will be a continuation of the stance from both Facebook and Snapchat that brands are “partners,” not “advertisers.”

Greaves believes Facebook will begin offering brands new ways to communicate with people, but they will have to up their spend to get into the news feed. Perhaps Facebook will follow in the footsteps of networks like WeChat that heavily restrict the role brands play in the news feed but give more free reign to advertisers within messaging apps, she added.

By Seb Joseph

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

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