Saturday, September 28, 2013

Facebook's New Approach to Ads

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, on Friday Facebook announced that it is tweaking the formula used to determine which ads members see in their newsfeeds. A company blog post on the change stated that the goal of the newsfeed is to show the right content to the right people at the right time. To do this, Facebook listens to both marketers who state the demographic target of their content as well as members who respond to the ads through their actions.

However, this change is an effort to make ads more relevant and less annoying. To do this, the new algorithm will put a greater emphasis on the feedback received from members. For instance, if a member fits a marketers target, but repeatedly hides the ads shown for that product, the member will be less likely to see ads from that type of retailer.

So what does this mean for marketers? It's another win for the empowered consumer. Again and again throughout the retail space, marketers struggle to provide relevant content and direct the consumer to their products. Yet, the consumer is increasingly in control over the marketing messages they receive. This change only seems confirms that its a consumers world and marketers are just living in it, scrambling keep up.

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