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Facebook Making It Easier to Manage Ads

Written on October 2, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

I have to give the folks at Facebook credit. They keep grinding forward with news that is relevant to making money and providing a better service for marketers. Earlier this year everyone wanted to throw the whole Facebook thing in the center of the ring and stone it to death. They couldn’t do anything right ranging from redesign issues to terms of service debacles. Now Justin Smith of Inside Facebook is reporting that a new API for the Facebook ad platform is being rolled out to a few agencies and could be out in the general Facebook population very soon.

Earlier this year, we speculated on when Facebook would launch APIs for Facebook Ads to allow performance marketers to automate ad management. Well, it appears it’s happening now: recently, Facebook started beta testing its new advertising APIs with just a few agencies around the world.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the tests, saying that it will “open up to some more advertisers in the next week or so.”

This is the kind of thing that could give larger advertisers the kinds of tools that are expected from real companies. In other words, Facebook is modeling Google and others in taking the necessary steps to make it easier for advertisers to do what they best: advertise. Based on the last post I did which was bemoaning the near indifference of Twitter’s leadership regarding revenue generation this is refreshing.

Smith explains further

Because those tools have never existed for Facebook Ads, performance advertisers have had to either manage their Facebook Ads campaigns manually, or hack their own tools. Now, Facebook is testing simple yet powerful APIs that allow agencies and advertisers to create thousands of ads with different creative and targeting permutations and optimize bids in real time.

So while there is nothing to see quite yet there is at least something to look forward to. We are in a day and age where the changes in the marketing and advertising landscape are outpacing the ability to take advantage of them. Social media is sweeping everyone away with its constant talk of potential but now it is maturing in some areas to the point to start to deliver. We are starting to get past the sizzle and Facebook is looking to finally serve the steak.

Let’s hope this is just the start of this kind of improvement on the horizon. Lord knows we need it.

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Facebook Making It Easier to Manage Ads

Facebook Working to Amp Up Ad Opps

Written on July 15, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

Facebook has been a little quiet as of late. Apparently if you aren’t a search engine moving in on the flagship product of your sworn enemy or you’re not the media darling with apparently little or no security in your fiefdom it’s just not news.

Well, it looks like Facebook has been keeping their heads down and their noses clean and doing something that they have deemed pretty important; finding ways to make money. The Inside Facebook blog tells of three new additions to the ad network offering that make it easier for advertisers to target folks within Facebook. These additions come on the heels of some other improvements that are almost flying under the radar but the numbers are starting to show some progress. Considering that these actions are around actually doing business it’s a breath of fresh air as compared to the speculation and drama that is in the Internet industry news.

The recent spate of enhancements to Facebook Ads is continuing today with several new ways to target Facebook ad campaigns. Last week, Facebook turned on time scheduling, and this weekend, ad editing. Today, it’s enabling three new features: connection targeting, multiple country targeting, and birthday targeting.

Here’s a quick summary of three new enhancements

Connection Targeting

This allows advertisers to hit specific groups within their network of connections. This targeting allows an advertiser to directly put ads in front of fans of any of their pages, users of any of their applications, members of any of their groups and attendees of any of their events.

Basically, Facebook wants to make it easy for business and brands to increase engagement with any users they’re connected to on Facebook through Facebook Ads, using it as a paid notification or cross-promotion channel. You can also target users who are connected to one of your Pages/Groups/Apps/Events but not to another in order to do more specific cross-promotions.

Multiple Country Targeting

Now rather than having to create individual ads for each country, advertisers can now create one ad for up to 25 countries so the benefits of this offering are obvious.

Birthday Targeting

While I don’t pay much attention to my own birthday, many folks on Facebook really do. Facebook sees that and is allowing advertisers to target these folks at a time that they may be so giddy that they’ll buy something.

The expectation is that Facebook is going to be adding enhancements pretty rapidly in the near future. When you have over 200 million ‘members’ it can be incredibly powerful to slice that group into more and more targeted segments so advertisers will have success without breaking the bank. Should be interesting to watch. Remember that $500 million in revenue number that was floating around recently? There will need to be innovation to get there and maybe Facebook gets it.

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Facebook Working to Amp Up Ad Opps

Facebook Taking Status Updates Public (A La Twitter)

Written on June 26, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

This week, Facebook announced some coming changes to your status updates. Soon, just like with Twitter, you’ll have the option to make them public—but not just to everyone on the world’s most popular social network, but everyone around the world. (You know, with Internet access.)

Because this feature is being implemented on the Facebook Publisher, you can add more to your newsstream than just text updates and links. The buttons below the text area allow you to add photos, videos and announcements or other integrations from your apps that have integrated with the publisher.

Facebook also gave an in-depth explanation of each level of access:

• Everyone: Anyone, on or off, of Facebook can see it.
• Friends and Networks: People you have confirmed as friends and people in any school or work networks that you’ve joined can see it.
• Friends of Friends: Anyone who is friends with a friend of yours can see it.
• Friends: Only people you have confirmed as friends can see it.
• Custom: Choose any friend or Friend List to include or exclude from seeing that piece of content.

According to Inside Facebook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg promised more granular privacy controls recently, and this may have been exactly what he meant.

Right now, this feature is being tested with users who have chosen to set their profile and status updates to “Everyone,” but for everyone else, the Publisher settings will remain the same.

What do you think? Will multi-media, real-time updates on a site that already has widespread traction ever take the place of Twitter in your heart (and the media’s)?

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Facebook Taking Status Updates Public (A La Twitter)