The leading social network has always been known for its large number of changes every so often, but in recent months is carrying out a series of changes that are already affecting significantly the way Strategy Social Media brands.
First, the decline in organic positioning of publications. According to Ogilvy, the organic range of publications pages dropped to 6% last month from February 2015, and this decline has been even up to 2% in the case of large brands with a large number of followers. Unofficial statements from internal sources indicate that Facebook will arrive this fall to 0% shortly.
Why this decline has occurred? The reason is the great expansion that has seen Facebook in recent years, a growth rate of 50% annually: Users have many “friends” on the social network that is impossible to display the contents of all of them in your timeline (one average user receives about 1,500 messages per day). Therefore, it is necessary to prioritize, and earn points content that Facebook consider more interesting. aspects such as originality (no repeat entries), the actual content (punishes everything that smacks of advertising), the engagement or coincidence with the insights of followers, including more than 100,000 variables are measured.
At least, this is the reason that has given Facebook. As a strategy ad hoc, has released a series of new advertising formats and meters to facilitate commercial task of the marks, upon payment of the amount: This is the case of ads Premium Video, Audience Insights, Facebook Audience Network or new metrics on engagement videos.
The ads Premium video are in beta in the US and its cost will eventually reach one million dollars a day, according to the Wall Street Journal. The operation is as follows: the video will start automatically when the user displayed in the TL, but without sound. To activate the sound, the user must click on the video. The maximum length of the content is 15 seconds, and each brand will be entitled to three different creatives with each purchase of space (only one per day will be displayed to avoid saturation).
Facebook introduces a significant change from YouTube videos, and audience measurement by Nielsen OCR. The ads will be bought by GRPs segmented, and the other options of classic segmentation Facebook will not be available for this type of format.
Creativity must be previously accepted by Facebook before publication. The social network has insisted his will that this new format will not be invasive for users, especially for teenagers, the most likely to leave their own.
Regarding the metric, besides indicating the number of people who have started playing the video, you can know the number of views (3 seconds or more), unique visitors, the average length of viewing and audience retention (ratio views in a particular video fragment on its total length).
Audience Insights is a new tool for advertisers to know more about the interests of your prospects and refine its target. Among others, analyze the following variables: demographics such as age, sex, status, employment, family type, education level or lifestyle; pages below; the location and language; the technology used to connect and frequency or buying habits.Faced with the first criticisms of the invasion of user privacy, it has already announced that it will focus on the study of clusters without attributing data to specific users with full name.
Facebook Audience Network (FAN), meanwhile, is specifically targeted to mobile advertisers and developers. This is a new technology designed also to target ads and applications based on user interests and their biographical data. Its main objective is to optimize the ROI of mobile applications on Facebook.
With these measures, Facebook intends to continue leading the monetization of advertising on Social Media, despite data indicating a leak of active users, especially among teenagers. Facebook remains the social network leader with 83% of users who use it , but the trend is downward and has experienced a decline in activity of its users (not brands) of 3% in 2013, according to the Observatory of Social Networks.
However, in terms of advertising, Facebook got revenues during the last quarter of 2013 individual reached $ 1,500 million, higher your benefit so far. In addition, 53% of this income got them through mobile advertising (hence its efforts on technology FAN). With these measures, aimed at improving the quality and not the quantity of ads on the platform, Zuckerberg seeks to strengthen the confidence of shareholders. Not to forget the sharp fall experienced in 2012 after entering the stock exchange, where its benefits fell 1,000 million (2011) to 53.
A recent report by BIA / Kelsey indicates that Social Media advertising will triple in the next five years, from 5.1 million US dollars in 2013 to 18,000 million. Half of these revenues are expected to be achieved through mobile devices and a local segmentation based on user location.
In conclusion can be drawn that everything indicates that Facebook will continue to increase their economic through advertising benefits through highly segmented formats and a high cost, in order to limit the number of advertisers and optimize both the ROI and the user experience. Since the trend is that payment publications replace the organic positioning, what will happen to SMEs that can not compete with these prices? Presumably, the big brands will stay on Facebook, while small and medium enterprises will have to conduct a remodeling your Social Media strategy and seek other similar platforms to their target with a more affordable cost.
