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.
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.
Facebook has announced it will prioritize “meaningful, social interactions” within the news feed in algorithm updates, in order to better connect users to meaningful posts between friends and family.
What does this means for marketers who run business Facebook pages? Facebook will show less of that content, or what it calls “public content,” including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.
If this has you frightened, it’s not quite time to jump ship yet. Yes, it’s a pretty big change for your Facebook organic marketing and engagement efforts, for now.
The good news is we’ve got some ways for you to prepare and shift your Facebook engagement efforts.
Here are things you should know — and do — about Facebook’s News Feed changes.
Create Meaningful Social Interactions
The bottom line for marketers is meaningful, social interactions are now the most important thing in terms what Facebook likes to serve up prominently in a news feed. Facebook announced the news feed changes in a blog post by Adam Mosseri, head of Facebook’s news feed. The ranking changes are the first step in, “making updates to ranking so people have more opportunities to interact with the people they care about,” states Mosseri in the aforementioned blog. According to him, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease.
User feedback suggests public content posts from businesses, brands and media is, “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post. So Zuckerberg and team Facebook made a major change in that product teams at the social network will shift focus from helping users find relevant content to helping users find more “meaningful social interactions.”
“For example,” Zuckerberg says, “there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We’ve seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience.”
Recognize What Facebook Likes
You should know what Facebook will be watching out for in terms of meaningful posts from Pages. And you should brace for which kind of posts will get less exposure in the News Feed. “Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution,” Mosseri said. “Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect… Using “engagement-bait” to goad people into commenting on posts is not a meaningful interaction, and we will continue to demote these posts in news feed.”
Keep this material in mind when crafting business page posts:
Facebook uses signals like how many people react to, comment on or share posts to determine how high they appear in news feed.
Facebook will predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about, and show these posts higher in the news feed. These are posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to.
Facebook will prioritize posts from friends and family over public content, consistent with its news feed values.
Your loyal Page followers can still see more posts from your Page if they choose “See First in News Feed Preferences.”
No Impact on Paid Advertising
Marketers and advertisers need not worry about paid-advertising efforts on Facebook. No changes to ads ranking for Facebook will occur through this change. Facebook’s Ads auction already optimizes for user value. Facebook’s systems will continue to take into account relevancy and feedback to deliver ads to the right people based on a company’s business objectives. Engagement is a very small part of ads ranking. Facebook relies on many other data points to determine what ads people see to ensure relevancy and value.
Use Your Page as ‘Hub for Thoughtful Content’
Kristin Johnson, director of communications for Sprout Social, told CMSWire that marketers should reframe Facebook within their strategy and reach beyond their own content and resources. “Instead of using your Facebook Page as another house for owned resources and links use it as a hub for thoughtful content and conversation around the topics your company and community care about,” she says.
Johnson cited Sprout Social research that confirms that 68 percent of people want to see brands joining in on conversations, giving marketers the opportunity to be more creative with their engagement strategies. “That is the type of interactive content people — and, in turn, platforms — actually respond to. This engagement-first approach will not only help your brand stand out, it will also carve out a defined purpose and opportunity for Facebook moving forward,” says Johnson.
Be a Video Hero
Stacy Maynard, social media strategist, says businesses need to focus on both live video and uploading native recorded video. Facebook is giving more visibility to video based posts. “We are seeing a shift to Digital TV and made for Social TV. Everyone has a TV camera in their pocket so ensure you find the right platform for your video goals. Focus on video for your Facebook feed. Video is the fastest growing ad format and by 2020 video will make up 80 percent of consumer Internet traffic,” says Maynard.
To break through the algorithmic challenge, try using live streaming and stories in order to get your business more news feed love. Facebook Live video is watched three times longer than regular videos and shows up higher in search results, according to Maynard.
You should also consider live videos simply because Facebook likes live videos. Stats make it clear, on average they get six times as many interactions as regular videos, according to Mosseri. “Though some have predicted that branded video will be hit by these news feed changes I don’t think it will be. Live and short-form video are the best-performing categories of content on Facebook for brands in my experience,” says Cappy Popp, principal and co-founder of Thought Labs.
Become Relevant
Greg Ng, vice president of digital engagement at PointSource, a Globant company, called Facebook’s change to the algorithm a huge wake-up call for brands. Brands that have traditionally existed with questionable ROI based on Likes and Shares in their Facebook marketing now need to “scramble to become relevant.”
Increase investment in influencer marketing, Ng suggested. For example, a makeup brand may struggle to be prioritized in a customer’s Facebook feed. “But, if a friend receives a sample and posts about it for their network, the brand may receive a higher positioning in the feed, thus more influence, in theory. This will create a need for Facebook to clearly define the rules around disclosure and paid endorsements, so brands can’t abuse marketing opportunities with influencers,” says Ng.
Change up your content strategy. “Without the luxury of showing up on a feed in a timely manner, content will have to be more engaging, more shareable and more urgent than ever before,” Ng says.
Consider Marketing Channel Alternatives
Nate Elliott, former Forrester analyst and principal of Nineteen Insights, suggests marketers should treat Facebook like any other paid media channel. “Give your Facebook budget to your media buying team so they can decide when to invest on Facebook and when those dollars will work better in search or display. And rather than optimizing for engagement, optimize for traditional success metrics like awareness and conversions,” says Elliott.
Elliott also suggests investing in relationship marketing channels that you control, like email. “It was always risky putting customer relationships in the hands of a third party. Encourage fans to sign up for emails, not to follow you on Facebook. If you have their email address you know that 90 percent of your messages will get through.”
User Interaction the Key
Focus on content that encourages, maybe requires, user interaction, according to Popp. “Making sure your content encourages (interaction) will go a long way to mitigating the difficulties these changes bring. Same goes for shareable content. Always a Holy Grail, true, but there’s nothing that will limit users from sharing branded content with their networks. User-shared content is ‘in-network’. It’s all hypothetical at the moment. … For marketers, experimentation, A/B testing, and rising costs are are going to come into play. We’re all in the dark at this point,” says Popp.
Feature Image:
Businesses need to be prepared for news ways to show up prominently in Facebook’s News Feed through organic posts. PHOTO: English106
Here are some of the main mistakes that big businesses make when it comes to using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the rest.
Social media is a vital tool for large corporates to market their products and communicate with their vast audiences, but even with big budgets and top teams, they can still get it totally wrong.
For example, Charlie Cottrell, head of editorial at media agency, We Are Social, thinks that big brands are still offending audiences on social media with worrying frequency.
Part of this stems from them being told that a millennial audience prefers companies that stand for something and reflect their progressive values, she explains. It’s likely because of this advice that campaigns have gone after stories with a strong social or cultural theme.
However, businesses run the risk of being accused of exploitation by not having a genuine connection to the cultural subject matter, thinks Ms Cottrell.
She says that “it’s better to be an ally, not a protagonist, and it’s important to remember that people have fought and suffered for lifetimes to see change on subjects such as civil and marriage rights.”
Brands and agencies must ensure that teams reflect the breadth of contemporary culture and stop trying to guess at it, she adds.
Don’t oversell
Mícheál Nagle, head of social and digital content at Paddy Power, advises businesses not to populate their social accounts with constant offers and products.
“Nobody wants to follow a business that does that,” he explains.
So what does a good social media content strategy look like? Paddy Power tries to create fun posts that engage with customers for 80pc of the time – and then try to upsell with products or offers for the remaining 20pc.
Just because memes are popular and easy to share, doesn’t mean that you shouldDavid Brady, TalkTalk
“It’s about cultivating a value exchange between a business and a consumer,” says TalkTalk’s senior digital marketing manager, David Brady. “If it’s not relevant, it’s not engaging.”
Mr Brady says that firms can find out what’s relevant to consumers by profiling them based on behaviours and needs (not by sales targets) and by asking what they need and how your business can help.
“You can then combine your first-party data with the wealth of personal and interest-based social data,” he says.
Above all, listen to what your customers are saying, he adds:
“Make it engaging by educating them about how your product or service solves a problem – don’t just shout about its features.
“Be conversational, but to the point.”
And remember, he says: you’re representing your business and its values, so just because memes are popular and easy to share, it doesn’t mean that you should.
Don’t blur the personal-professional line
Nick Masters, head of online at PwC, says that it’s important to consider the difference between a corporate social media account that shares company updates and info, and one manned by vocal or visible members of staff.
It’s an issue, he thinks, when employees post through company accounts, signing off posts with their initials or saying as such at the beginning of their shift.
Deliberately or not, accounts run in this way can become too
chatty (“cheers!”) and personal (“Hi Joe, love the post!”)
which Mr Masters thinks can sound inauthentic.
He says: “By their nature, organisations can’t express emotions or engage in public debate.
“We encourage PwC staff to have a personal presence on social media and engage directly through their accounts.
“It’s about real people responding in a more appropriate way.”
Feature Image: Implement an 80/20 rule, says Paddy Power’s Mícheál Nagle: ‘engage 80pc of the time, then upsell with products or offers for the remaining 20pc’Credit: PA/Dominic Lipinski
So, which citizens trust their media the most? And the least?
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
Let’s start with the USA. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust in the U.S. has suffered the largest-ever-recorded drop in the survey’s history among the general population. Trust among the general population fell nine points to 43, placing it in the lower quarter of the 28-country Trust Index. It is now the lowest of the 28 countries surveyed, below Russia and South Africa.
The collapse of trust in the U.S. is driven by a staggering lack of faith in government, which fell 14 points to 33 percent among the general population, and 30 points to 33 percent among the informed public. The remaining institutions of business, media and NGOs also experienced declines of 10 to 20 points. These decreases have all but eliminated last year’s 21-point trust gap between the general population and informed public in the U.S.
“The United States is enduring an unprecedented crisis of trust,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman. “This is the first time that a massive drop in trust has not been linked to a pressing economic issue or catastrophe like the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In fact, it’s the ultimate irony that it’s happening at a time of prosperity, with the stock market and employment rates in the U.S. at record highs. The root cause of this fall is the lack of objective facts and rational discourse.”
Conversely, China finds itself atop the Trust Index for both the general population (74) and the informed public (83). Institutions within China saw significant increases in trust led by government, which jumped eight points to 84 percent among the general population, and three points to 89 percent within the informed public. Joining China at the top of the Trust Index are India, Indonesia, UAE and Singapore.
For the first time media is the least trusted institution globally. In 22 of the 28 countries surveyed it is now distrusted. The demise of confidence in the Fourth Estate is driven primarily by a significant drop in trust in platforms, notably search engines and social media. Sixty-three percent of respondents say they do not know how to tell good journalism from rumour or falsehoods or if a piece of news was produced by a respected media organisation. The lack of faith in media has also led to an inability to identify the truth (59 percent), trust government leaders (56 percent) and trust business (42 percent).
This year saw a revival of faith in experts and decline in peers. Technical (63 percent) and academic (61 percent) experts distanced themselves as the most credible spokesperson from “a person like yourself,” which dropped six points to an all-time low of 54 percent.
“In a world where facts are under siege, credentialed sources are proving more important than ever,” said Stephen Kehoe, Global chair, Reputation. “There are credibility problems for both platforms and sources. People’s trust in them is collapsing, leaving a vacuum and an opportunity for bona fide experts to fill.”
Business is now expected to be an agent of change. The employer is the new safe house in global governance, with 72 percent of respondents saying that they trust their own company. And 64 percent believe a company can take actions that both increase profits and improve economic and social conditions in the community where it operates.
This past year saw CEO credibility rise sharply by seven points to 44 percent after a number of high-profile business leaders voiced their positions on the issues of the day. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they want CEOs to take the lead on policy change instead of waiting for government, which now ranks significantly below business in trust in 20 markets. This show of faith comes with new expectations; building trust (69 percent) is now the No. 1 job for CEOs, surpassing producing high-quality products and services (68 percent).
“Silence is a tax on the truth,” said Edelman. “Trust is only going to be regained when the truth moves back to centre stage. Institutions must answer the public’s call for providing factually accurate, timely information and joining the public debate. Media cannot do it alone because of political and financial constraints. Every institution must contribute to the education of the populace.”
Other key findings from the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer include:
Technology (75 percent) remains the most trusted industry sector followed by Education (70 percent), professional services (68 percent) and transportation (67 percent). Financial services (54 percent) was once again the least trusted sector along with consumer packaged goods (60 percent) and automotive (62 percent).
Companies headquartered in Canada (68 percent), Switzerland (66 percent), Sweden (65 percent) and Australia (63 percent) are most trusted. The least trusted country brands are Mexico (32 percent), India (32 percent), Brazil (34 percent) and China (36 percent). Trust in brand U.S. (50 percent) dropped five points, the biggest decline of the countries surveyed.
Nearly seven in 10 respondents worry about fake news and false information being used as a weapon.
Exactly half of those surveyed indicate that they interact with mainstream media less than once a week, while 25 percent said they read no media at all because it is too upsetting. And the majority of respondents believe that news organizations are overly focused on attracting large audiences (66 percent), breaking news (65 percent) and politics (59 percent).
It’s a brave new world, and we as marketers must realise that placing any marketing cash with distrusted media outlets could mean a very big waste of our advertising spending power.
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.
Snapchat seems to be sliding down the list of prefered ways for influencers to reach their fans. A new report had shown that not one influencer surveyed chose snapchat as their favourite platform.
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
New research released today by Carusele and TapInfluence uncovered some surprising results about how influencers feel about various platforms heading into 2018.
Of the 790 influencers surveyed, none answered Snapchat to the question, “What is your favourite channel to use for branded content?”
Personal blogs were the favourite of 36% of respondents, followed closely by Instagram at 35% and Facebook at 12%. Twitter (9%), Pinterest (6%) and YouTube (1%) also received votes.
Even when asked to name their second favourite choice, Snapchat collected fewer than 1% of the responses, while Facebook ranked first at 26% and Instagram second at 25%.
“Two things are clear from this part of our survey,” said Jim Tobin, president of Carusele. “The first is that blogs aren’t going anywhere, which I think is a good thing for both brands and influencers. And second, Instagram’s moves over the last year or two have really outmanoeuvred Snapchat, which had been a hot platform for creators two years ago.”
Influencers also plan to be in the space for the long haul, with 97% of influencers surveyed planning to continue their work “as long as I’m able.” This despite fewer than half surveyed reporting working full time in the vocation (46%) while 24% work full time elsewhere and 13% part time elsewhere. The balance report being full time parents or caregivers.
“Our earlier research legitimised influencer marketing as a sales driver. This new research supports the fact that it remains a viable career option for content creators,” said Promise Phelon, CEO of TapInfluence.
Carusele won the 2017 Small Agency of the Year Award at the Shorty Awards. It utilises a hand-crafted network of content producers to produce premium influencer campaigns for leading brands and retailers. TapInfluence is an influencer marketplace connecting brands with social media influencers. And if they say that Snapchat is no longer cool, then it probably isn’t.
A study based on 33,000 videos posted by almost 300 publishers shows that for publishers, the struggle is real.
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
Social video creation platform Wochit today reported that Facebook’s de-prioritisation of publisher and brand content is already having a negative impact across video metrics.
The annual report builds on insights published in the company’s quarterly indexes, informing brands, media companies and publishers of video trends and how to best leverage them to drive success.
So here is what you need to know:
Views are declining: Following significant increases in the first half of the year, declines of 8-15 percent in the second half point to the impact of changes in Facebook’s newsfeed.
Square is the winning format: As mobile is increasingly becoming audiences’ first screen, this format is proven to have a significant advantage over other aspect ratios, particularly in the increasingly important “comments” metric, which averages 5 times the average received by non-square video.
Video’s “1 percent” persists: The 1.2 percent of videos that get more than 1 million views continue to have a disproportionate level of engagement, receiving 38.7 percent of total views and 58.3 percent of total shares across all videos. While a higher number of page followers boosts the chances of virality, the number of smaller publishers achieving this level of success proves it’s not the only factor.
Longer videos get better results: Increasing in number but still a minority, videos longer than 90 seconds have considerably higher per-video metrics, receiving 52.1 percent more shares and 48.2 more views on average. This trend bodes well for the monetization opportunities of Facebook mid-roll, only applicable to videos of at least this length.
Average engagement per video is highest across all metrics in Latin American countries, with nearly triple (269.6 percent) the shares, 253.3 percent more reactions, 166.8 percent more views and 134.3 percent more comments.
All video is not created equally: Some content is simply more viral-ready, more a function of effective production techniques and compelling storylines rather than the result of artistry.
“In the Know” titles are popular but don’t perform: While video titles purporting to show something the viewer NEEDS to know are common, these videos receive considerably fewer views (15-70 percent fewer!) than average.
“While we’re only seeing the headlines about Facebook’s latest changes now, our 2017 report shows the impact is already setting in, and this makes it even more important for brands and publishers to know and act on trends,” said Wochit CEO Dror Ginzberg. “And let’s remember that, even with algorithm changes, Facebook is second to none when it comes to opportunity to reach and engage with audiences. The best way to capitalise on that is to focus on delivering great video storytelling that will create meaningful engagement with your audience. This was true before Facebook’s announcement, is relevant across platforms as well as owned and operated sites, and it will remain true after it.”
Facebook’s decision to re-prioritize its News Feed to favour “social interactions” over other forms of content may please its users, but will be challenging for brands.
In a post last night, Facebook announced that it would be introducing changes to its news feed algorithm in the coming year to ensure that posts by friends and family on Facebook appear higher in the news feed.
“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content—posts from businesses, brands, and media—is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” wrote Facebook chairman and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg.
The changes Facebook is rolling out to combat this will mean that users will start to see less public content such as posts from businesses, brands, and media. The platform claims that the content users see will be the material that “encourages meaningful interactions between people.”
This move may be detrimental to brands, businesses, and publishers and will even limit Facebook’s short-term growth, but is ultimately beneficial for the social network in the long-term, said Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Group.
“The company was understandably focused on driving user growth over the years, although former Facebook executives have recently described negative impacts on consumers from those efforts. To the extent that those criticisms are valid, action is warranted,” Wieser said, adding that time spent by users on Facebook had started to decline prior to this decision.
Impact on brands
As Facebook takes these steps and invests in premium content to improve its user-experience, so too must brands on Facebook look to create better content, advised Greg Allum, head of social at Jellyfish.
“We [marketers] need to be clever with our content and understand what resonates with the consumer and why. More importantly, we all need to become better media planners,” Allum said.
Facebook will be looking to offset the hit it will take to near-term revenue from advertisers by stoking Instagram’s growth, Wieser noted. The platform will also be able to use this new approach to focus on higher-paying advertisers, and using more refined targeting methods to satisfy advertiser goals with less inventory.
Publishers may be most affected
In the end though, media owners are likely to be the most affected by this update, commented Allum.
While Facebook’s announcement may, on the surface, appear to tackle the issue of the spread of fake news and click-bait, that will ultimately depend on a user’s friendship circles. This may, in fact, increase the filter bubble effect as users only see posts shared predominantly by the people they interact with the most.
Publishers, who are already challenged on the platform, may not agree to continue investing their media budgets in Facebook with this change.
However, Allum believes that while publishers will test and learn on other channels, they will ultimately return to Facebook.
“The lure of a captive audience will be too much for them, but they will shift their strategy and concentrate on creating less but bigger and better pieces of content, which in turn will improve the user experience for consumers. Although brands could see an increase in the cost to advertise as the channel becomes more competitive,” he said.
Financial Times chief executive, John Ridding, criticized Facebook’s update as not particularly helpful to quality publishers.
“As a long-standing publisher of quality journalism, the FT welcomes moves to recognize and support trusted and reliable news and analysis. But a sustainable solution to the challenges of the new information ecosystem requires further measure—in particular, a viable subscription model on platforms that enables publishers to build a direct relationship with readers and to manage the terms of access to their content,” he said. “Without that—as the large majority of all new online advertising spend continues to go to the search and social media platforms—quality content will no longer be a choice or an option. And that would be the worst outcome for all.”
Facebook and Google are dominating mobile advertising, so what are marketers to do? Columnist Brian Handly discusses the solution to competing with the internet behemoths.
Early this year, I was invited to attend a meeting with a digital sales team for a well-known media company and an agency with which they’ve been doing business for years. Our supporting role was to provide answers to anything related to location-based advertising.
As the conversation progressed, the truth came out. The agency principal looks at the sales team, shrugs and says, “I love working with you, but my clients are pushing me to advertise on Facebook. They’ve got great targeting, and everybody uses it. I’m struggling to send business your way.”
We immediately witnessed the blood draining from the faces of the sales reps, and the look of dejection that overcame them before they quickly rebounded in the positive fashion that salespeople often do.
This conversation happens hundreds, if not thousands, of times each day across the US. Any sales team that competes for ad dollars from local, regional or national advertisers is hitting a brick wall.
While Google has been a dominant force in digital ad spend for decades, Facebook has risen to become an advertising juggernaut. The problem is that the “duopoly” of Google and Facebook significantly impedes the ability for any other publisher to gain a foothold or even a tiny slice of the mobile advertising pie.
The stats that show Google and Facebook now command 99 percent of the growth opportunity in digital ad spend are both astounding and terrifying. They’re beating everyone else because they’ve built powerful targeting capabilities on top of troves of behavioral and demographic data. They make the tools simple enough to operate so that everyone from national brands to the local florist can build a campaign in 30 minutes.
For the publishers and marketers that wish to compete with these internet giants, the solution lies in making use of their own data or alternative data sources.
Facebook’s ability to create custom audiences based on other data sources is a powerful tool that few marketers take advantage of today. The mechanics are simple: Upload a CSV file of your own data, which Facebook then matches to their own users. The end result is a targeted audience of Facebook users who are matched to your own data sets.
The data sources a marketer can use when creating a custom audience include email, phone number, mobile advertiser ID, website traffic, app activity and location-based audiences, plus at least a dozen other criteria. Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat all provide similar functionality.
The benefits of making use of your own unique data sets
There are at least three benefits of using different data sources to build target audiences on social media. First, there is a cost savings. When a marketer brings their own data to a platform instead of using the built-in targeting tools, the cost-per-click fees can be significantly less.
Second, the ads can perform better. Increasing the relevancy of an audience that a campaign reaches increases engagement and performance.
Third, it provides marketers the targeting capabilities that the social media platforms can’t, or won’t, offer themselves. In the case of location-based audiences, the platforms enable real-time targeting of location and have begun testing the ability to target visitors to one’s own locations. They do not offer any competitive location targeting or the ability for a consumer packaged goods company to reach shoppers who visit stores that stock their products.
For the marketers and agencies that can source this data, they now have a significant competitive advantage and a valid reason to earn that ad spend, as opposed to having it be consumed by Facebook directly.
This last point will become even more salient in 2018. A recent article shared results from over 60 agencies which show that working with Facebook is a big challenge. The social media giant frequently attempts to circumvent agency-brand relationships by approaching the brand directly, citing its ability to provide more and better data than the agency can provide.
Ultimately, the smart marketers that wish to compete should begin taking advantage of their own unique data sets and finding new ones to remain competitive. They will not only be more innovative, but they’ll provide better, more efficient and effective ad campaigns for themselves and their clients.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Brian Handly, CEO of Reveal Mobile, possesses more than 20 years of technical, operational and executive management experience, with 18 years of that in advertising technology. Brian was co-founder and CEO of Accipiter, which was acquired by Atlas in December of 2006 followed by the $6.1 billion acquisition of Atlas by Microsoft in 2007. Before their recent acquisition, Handly served on the Board of Directors for WebAssign, and currently serves as an Operating Partner for Frontier Capital. Brian also has extensive experience as an angel investor and is an active advisor for several North Carolina technology companies.
