Roundup of recent changes on Facebook

Posted on by Marie Page

Facebook’s been busy with a bunch of updates recently and some are really quite significant. The biggest from an advertiser perspective is the launch of Lead Ads but the one that will get the most media coverage is the so-called Dislike or “Emotion” buttons. Local business verification is also an important one for many brands.

Here’s a quick roundup with links to articles that explain the topic in more depth.

Facebook Lead Ads

Lead Ads are like any other ads except that when you hit the call-to-action button you stay on Facebook with a Facebook form collecting the customer data. This is particularly useful on mobile as it reduces the load time an external page is likely to suffer and enables Facebook to auto-fill many of the fields on the form.

Early results are positive with beta testers reporting far lower CPA costs.

Currently not many eCRM systems are set up to auto-integrate those leads – you need to manually import them via csv. But automation will come and a number of Facebook’s ad partners are already geared up for it. You’ll need to use Power Editor to access Lead Ads at least for now.

More information here.

Facebook Reactions: the “Dislike” button

Mark Zuckerberg created quite a hoo har recently announcing an apparent “Dislike” button that wasn’t really a dislike button at all but would enable people express something other than “Like”. Cue lots of concern about online bullying. Yesterday was the big reveal and rather than a single button, users will now have a a set of emojis to choose from.

fbreactions

Ireland and Spain get the roll out first.

There’s a video about it here.

For us one of the key points to note is that every emoji click is read by Facebook as a “Like”. So you’ll be teaching the algorithm that you like the news that you’ve just clicked on (cue more harrowing updates in your newsfeed). For more on how Facebook uses data from your click history see this blog post I wrote on Ad Preferences.

Round-up of recent changes on Facebook for marketers

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Instagram ads

Lots of opportunities now for advertisers on Instagram. Carlton is writing a blog post on some of the features which we’ll share with you next week. There’s no new platform to learn as you create the ads via Facebook’s Ads Manager or Power Editor. And it’s a fantastic way of finally getting your url to surface on the platform somewhere other than your About text.

Local business verification: finally here

It’s long been a frustration of brands that are very active on Facebook that they’ve been unable to access the coveted verification tick (the Business one will be grey – see the Jasper’s Market screen grab below) to differentiate from the blue Profile one). Celebrities and public figures have had it for a long time, but brands have had to sit on the sidelines, often amidst fake profiles passing off as themselves with no way to prove legitimacy of which Page is the official one.

facebook-local-verification

To get verified go to your Admin settings and confirm your identity by using your business’ publicly listed phone number or uploading an official document like a phone bill.

More information here and here.

100% in-view impressions

Another new ad unit gives advertisers the option to purchase ad impressions where the entire ad—from top to bottom—has passed through a person’s screen in News Feed. This new buying option will be available for every type of ad delivered in News Feed, including text, photo, link and video ads.

It looks as if these buying options will inevitably be at a premium but could arguably work for long-form ad types and brands wanting to avoid paying for viewers who are merely “tyre kickers” with no deep interest in the topic.

More information here.

Videos instead of photos in Facebook profiles

This is quite a fun new feature for profiles. You will be able to upload a short looping video clip instead of a photo as your Facebook profile. No word yet on when this might be rolled out to brands.

More information here.
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Marie Page

About Marie Page

Marie Page is one of the UK’s leading Facebook marketing experts. She is a founding partner of digital marketing consultancy The Digiterati and the Digiterati Academy e-learning portal for marketers and entrepreneurs. Her award-winning Master's Dissertation was the culmination of three years' academic research into Facebook that resulted in a book (and companion online course) 'Winning at Facebook Marketing with Zero Budget' that became an Amazon bestseller. Marie's work on the Facebook News Feed algorithm was featured in The Huffington Post. A recognised thought leader on social media, Marie is often approached by journalists for comment in articles such as this Telegraph article. She was also interviewed for ITV's Tonight show on Facebook privacy issues in relation to advertising. Marie is a regular guest on digital marketing blogs and podcasts including Social Media Examiner and Smart Insights. In 2018 she is speaking at Brighton SEO, Europe's biggest search and marketing conference. Marie is also author of two Smart Insights books: 'Smarter Guide to Facebook Marketing', now in its fourth edition, and 'Facebook Ads Guide', both edited by Dr Dave Chaffey. Marie is also a part time yoga teacher.

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