This story is the capstone to our series “The Making of the Social Brand,” which examines how marketers are building the socially connected brand. It is brought to you by Turn, the cloud marketing platform that transforms the way leading advertising agencies and marketers make decisions. Jonathan Penn is global director of social for Turn.
Facebook Exchange, the social network’s retargeting platform, has migrated from the smaller Marketplace ad column on users’ pages and is now occupying center stage in the News Feed. While the new hot spot for FBX ads comes with some obvious opportunities, it’s clear that the news feed means more than just a bigger canvas for marketers’ messages.
To get the most out of Facebook ads in general, marketers should use FBX for both Marketplace and the News Feed in concert. We’ve outlined a few key aspects of what a balanced approach to FBX in the News Feed and Marketplace could mean for your Facebook ad strategies:
Use the Marketplace for direct response
Right off the bat, marketers will be amazed at how News Feed ads will complement what they’ve been used to from a conversion, retargeting and prospecting standpoint. Advertisers can now serve call-to-action placements directly in the News Feed, which is the heart of the social network.
But FBX’s Marketplace ads are still best-suited for clients with direct-response goals. So expect the Marketplace to remain mainly the province of lower-funnel advertising. This gives media buyers clear choices in what they do with their Facebook marketing dollars. Advertisers could use the Marketplace as a start, then see how favorable the targeting campaign results are. If it hits the pre-determined benchmarks, they could raise their ad spending with FBX News Feed placements that emphasize and hybridize brand awareness and a call-to-action.
Use News Feed to scale your native advertising
Facebook executives have always talked up native advertising: marketing messages that fit into the natural flow of content on a page. Other sites that revolve around earned media, like Twitter and Tumblr, as well as more overt editorial outlets like BuzzFeed, have driven the conversation around native ads.
One of the problems native ads have faced is that in most cases, they’re simply not scalable, thanks to a customized nature that tailors them for single sites. Facebook’s over 1 billion users equals unparalleled scale, thereby solving that problem, particularly when it comes to the use of first- and third-party data and the ability to retarget against News Feed ads via FBX.
Use the right KPI for the right feed
Traditionally, when you ran social campaigns, you had to provide separate KPIs from your other advertising programs, because a medium like Facebook didn’t really perform as well as traditional display or search.
Things have changed thanks to the introduction of first- and third-party targeting in the Marketplace and now in the News Feed. Advertisers can now insert engaging, call-to-action imagery into the News Feed, utilizing the available targeting capabilities in front of prospective customers, who can comment on these targeted ads and even share them.
Targeting is one of the most basic things you can do with Facebook advertising. And it can easily encompass branding as well as direct response. Retargeting has worked very well for marketers that have lower-funnel, direct-response objectives. But the varied options presented for targeting and retargeting within the News Feed and the Marketplace demands a different set of marching orders and expectations.
The best way to build in mutual support between FBX News Feed and Marketplace campaigns starts with separating out line items for targeting, retargeting and prospecting/lead generation campaigns. At the end of the day, marketers should be able to clearly determine what’s providing the best KPIs and performance.
With those ready insights, spending can be adjusted more effectively and precisely.
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