Facebook Announces 4 New Updates to its Advertising Tools

Facebook made some exciting announcements today at New York’s 12^th Advertising Week, which gathers the world’s largest advertisers and companies. Facebook said that it now has 2.5 million advertisers on the site and total active advertisers are up 25% since February 2015.

In addition to the milestone, Facebook also announced some four new updates to its advertising platform.  The updates are aimed at increasing the reach and attention for brands due to increased mobile connections.

The updates include:

1. Targeted Rating Points

Facebook commissioned Nielsen to do research and found that “boosting TV campaigns with Facebook video ads drives incremental reach, increases efficiency and improves effectiveness.”  (Facebook for Business)  Thus Facebook will introduce TRP, Targeted Rating Points, which provides the ability for advertisers to purchase video ads by planning their total target and buying a portion of that from Facebook.  This will allow advertisers to complement their TV campaigns with Facebook video ads to extend the reach and effectiveness.

“What we made a decision to do was to build a bridge between the old, traditional medium of how TV is bought and Facebook mobile video to try to offer opportunities for marketers to reach very specific audiences at highly efficient pricing”, said Carolyn Everson, VP of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook.

2. Brand Awareness Optimization

This update is designed to help advertisers find audiences that will remember their ads by using attention and reach.  Facebook found through its research that it doesn’t matter how many people you reach with your ads isn’t the only important factor, it is also important to earn people’s attention.  “This is a tool that allows advertisers to optimize reach and attention by the time users spend viewing a video ad and how many people remember the ad.

“By analyzing hundreds of brand campaigns we found that the longer someone spends with an ad, the more likely they are to remember what they’ve seen.”  (Facebook for Business)

Facebook will begin rolling this feature out, in limited release, in October and to all in the coming months.

3. Mobile Polling

Earlier this year Facebook launched mobile polling with Nielsen.  “Today we’re announcing that we’re also partnering with Millward Brown Digital on brand lift insights for Facebook and Instagram, allowing advertisers to conduct mobile polling on both platforms.” (Facebook for Business)

Mobile polling allows advertisers to measure the effectiveness in a campaign in the same place the messages are being delivered. This makes the measurements “more representative and accurate.”

4. Carousel Video Ads

Carousel Ads were launched last year, giving advertisers more “real estate” in the News Feed to showcase products.  Carousel Ads have been effective for brand marketers, so Facebook has announced that the carousel format will now include the ability to add video.  “Pairing video with the carousel format gives marketers more options for compelling storytelling in News Feed. “ (Facebook for Business)

Facebook gave three examples where carousel video ads would be effective:

• An auto dealership can use a nationally branded video for a new car model followed by regional car promotions
• A retailer can show a video promoting a new line of sportswear followed by images of featured products
• A CPG company can use a nationally branded video for a new food item, followed by images of various meal preparations

All of these new updates will be rolling out in the coming months.  For more information about these exciting new features see Facebook for Business.