Thursday, July 26, 2012

Facebook's Money Engine - "Mid Funnel" Users

Back in March, I wrote about ad placement on social versus search sites. I was basically trying to break down some of the differences in a person's intent when they go to a search or social site and what they might do with ads. It seemed pretty clear to me that someone going to a social site isn't likely to just click on ads and immediately purchase something, but that much of the marketing on facebook is to build awareness.

I just read an interesting piece on Wired about Facebook's advertising products (via @Lessien). The piece is actually an interview with the director of Facebook Advertising Product Director, Gokul Rajaram, and gets at some things which I find really telling. They seem to match with many of the ads or sponsored content I've been seeing on Facebook of late (both on the desktop and on mobile)

Here are some interesting tidbits which align pretty well with what I wrote previously:
Facebook’s advertising mission, then, is not to inject commercial messages into social discussions, but to amplify the messages that are already there. And it’s not to drive immediate purchases, as Google’s contextual advertising does, but to influence buying decisions a little further down the road. 
They use a term, "mid-funnel" which I find a little odd, but makes sense because a person on Facebook typically isn't ready to buy something that might be shown on an ad, but specific other things they see on Facebook may nudge them lower into the funnel to actually buy something (such as a gift for their friend's birthday or a Groupon type offer for a local restaurant that a friend loves.

To that end, here's a quote from Rajaram exactly on that point:
“We always think about, how can Facebook add that extra social, viral dimension to advertising,” Rajaram says. “We always think about stories and how, it’s not just businesses communicating to people, it’s businesses communicating with their loyal lists of fans and how then those fan’s interactions with that message can lead to their friends being impacted.”
It's nice to see that a research article posted recently aligns pretty well with what I wrote almost 5 months ago :)

I've been compiling examples of ads on Facebook over the past few weeks (again, both on the desktop and on mobile). I promise to post those along with my commentary soon!


Friday, July 06, 2012

Facebook - Featuring Pinterest Pins more visually

Yes, I've been very lax in posting updates so I'm trying to get back in the swing of things now.

Since I usually login to Facebook both on the desktop and iPhone everyday, I tend to notice things out of the ordinary. Sometimes it's rollout of new features I've heard about and others I think it's just A/B testing.

The latest feature I saw was a different, more visual way to show Pinterest Pins. One of my facebook friends pinned a few things to her boards and they showed up in my timeline like this:

The tiles go the width of the timeline and graphically feature what she pinned. Moreover, there are "Like" and Comment links for each one. When you hover your mouse over images, a Pinterest logo pops up in the top left and you can click-through to the pin on Pinterest. This was the first time I noticed this new format and I like it.

More broadly, what I've seen Facebook doing is not necessarily about adding brand new features, but making existing features more readily available and customized based on the content. In this case, even though they're featuring the pins prominently, they're also featuring their own Like and Comment features very prominently. They've found a way to make the timeline more visually appealing while also encouraging interaction on the timeline.

Have you seen other similar formatting for other content on the Facebook timeline? I'd love to see!