This week I had the privilege of attending AdExchanger's "Industry Preview," their annual conference devoted to content on what to expect in the year ahead for the Ad Tech/Marketing Tech industry. One of the more interesting discussions, given the recent press coverage around Facebook, was with Facebook's VP of Global Marketing Solutions, Carolyn Everson. A nice recap is provided here.
Unsurprisingly the news about Facebook's changes to news feed, and increased focus on "meaningful interactions" has sent the advertising industry into a tizzy. Facebook is making a big push (I even got a notification at the top of my news feed the other day) saying news feeds will be more focused on close family and friends, so users see more of the content that they want to see and interact with. But where does that leave ads?
For their part, Facebook is assuring advertisers that "nothing is going to change," and I don't blame them. Advertising is an integral part of Facebook's revenue stream and they don't want to mess with that. With Amazon coming onto the ad scene like gangbusters, Facebook and Google have to do everything they can to maintain their top 2 positions in the market. If advertisers start seeing their ads aren't getting the same level of interaction on Facebook that they were before, they'll very quickly start moving their spend elsewhere.
The key here is about meaningful interactions. In a perfect world, this will be the push the ad world needs to focus more on making advertising beneficial and entertaining to consumers, not just the push to get clicks. In all likelihood this means increased spending on quality advertising content. This begs the question, if more spend on content leads to more engaging content, which leads to better user interaction and conversion on Facebook...then where does this leave small brands with small ad budgets?
Link to the recap AdExchanger provided on the Facebook fireside chat.
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