We are exactly half-way through 2017! The official summer season and the matching relaxed mindset is in full effect. But, as marketers, we can’t take our eye off the goal post entirely.
Last Friday, a Facebook update announced new tools in an effort to provide more “transparency and understanding” about how ads are performing on the platform. In Facebook’s announcement, the company said that it plans to launch a series of new features every month in its ad management tool.
Great news, right? Especially after Facebook admitted to not being totally transparent in the past and even inflating some performance statistics. Fortunately, Facebook is taking on full accountability, even saying they regret not going public with the miscalculations sooner.
Let’s take a look at what’s new in the advertiser platform.
New Features
The first set of new features will be metrics related to how ads increase web site traffic. It will measure how many people actually click on an ad and then visit a website or landing page, placing preference on the landing page. Mobile websites with lagging or longer load times will be penalized. Performance metrics show that load times effect the number of visits to a website after clicking an ad. This makes the case for mobile-optimized pages - duh, as if this hasn’t been jammed down our throats enough - but we will get back to that later.
Pre-impression activity breakdown
Another feature that will be released in the coming weeks (leading up to the holiday shopping season) will tell you whether a person who clicks on an ad has previous experience with your brand. It does this by tracking and playing close attention to Facebook Pixel. This action compares new visitors to returning visitors.
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Pages Update
Pages, Facebook’s business brand management app, will also roll out new features. It will now break down how many followers brand pages receive over time. This feature will provide deeper insights, such as where the followers came from and more insightful demographic information. Facebook will clearly display organic followers and paid followers. (We predict this is the beginning of the end of having ‘Page Likes’ as a campaign objective.) It will also show how many have previewed a brand page and didn’t click, and how many times a brand page follower recommends the brand page to their friends.
Household Audience Feature
Facebook has released a feature that allows targeting to multiple members in the same household. Think TV commercials circa the 1990s, when the advertiser rule of thumb was that TV commercials were the most effective advertising medium to reach all members in the household at the same time. Using data and content shared by users, Facebook will be able to target your dynamic video ads to members within users’ households. Brands that have different aged targets will benefit greatly from this new feature - perfect for planning your holiday season ad campaign.
There are some great things to look forward to this summer. New tools for reporting will make the creation process much smoother. You will be able to streamline your reporting efforts and create clear targets when placing ads - dynamic ads!
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