Our latest post: Can Facebook win at direct-response and brand advertising? ift.tt/1jn8fMr By John McDermott Facebook started off in advertising promising to remake the industry for a social world. Then it met reality and has, since the launch of its ad exchange in September 2012, basically peddled really efficient direct-response ads. And there’s no arguing that hasn’t worked. Thanks to retargeting ads, app downloads and the like, Facebook has built an ad business that generated $2.3 billion in revenue in the first quarter alone. But there’s the matter of brand advertising, the bastion of big-spending TV advertisers. Direct response may constitute the lion’s share (59.1 percent) of the digital ad market, according to eMarketer, but there’s still $20.5 billion being spent on branding campaigns this year. And right now, while Facebook remains a must-buy for direct-response campaigns, media buyers are less sold on Facebook as a home for more creative brand-awareness campaigns. “They’re finally clarifying their message into two parts,” Ben Winkler, chief digital officer at OMD, said. “Before they had one message, which was drive fans and likes. It was a clear message, but the value wasn’t because fans don’t mean much for branding or direct response. Now they have two messages: For the preferred marketing developers, it’s about direct response, and it’s a strong one. The other message is still in development, but it’s promising, and that’s the brand message via the video product.” Facebook is preparing to roll out its long-awaited 15-second autoplay video ads, and their introduction gives Facebook a chance to contend with YouTube in the growing digital video advertising industry. The implementation will reportedly involve seven to 15 advertisers paying $1 million per day for the video ads. Facebook has positioned its video ads as a white-glove product, making known they will not accept just any brand into its billion users’ feeds. On the metrics side, Facebook said last week that it would soon allow brands to see the average viewing time for one of their videos and how many Facebook users watched the video to 95 percent completion. There’s no surprise that Facebook is making this push. Overall spending in the U.S. digital video category is expected to double to $12.27 in 2018 from $5.89 in 2014, according to eMarketer, and its share of digital ad spend is expected to go from 11.7 percent to 15.5 percent over that same period of time. And if digital video could ever eat away at the growing behemoth that is the traditional TV ad market, that growth could be even greater. Still, Facebook’s ability to take advantage of that increase is predicated on it shaking its image as a predominantly direct-response channel. “I don’t think anyone in Silicon Valley understands the difference between a media platform — even one that highly targetable — and the process that goes into creating something people want to see,” said Steve Wax, partner at brand-design shop Cooke&Co. For now, Facebook is banking on video ads. It has largely abandoned its early positioning of its platform as a nirvana for brands to engage in social advertising. Facebook once peddled likes to …read more Source: Digiday: Digital Communications Category: Platforms Unconventional May 13, 2014 at 02:35AM
Posted on: Tue, 13 May 2014 10:39:39 +0000
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