‘We are a mobile company’ – these words were spoken by Mark Zuckerberg at Techcrunch disrupt in back in September. Does anyone know what happened yesterday?Yesterday (as usual!) he was proved correct as mobile daily active users exceeded web daily active users for the first time in the companies history.Facebook has over680 million users who access the social network via mobile every day. At the end of Q3 Facebook announced that 14% of their ad revenue came from mobile, with that figure rising to 23% at the end of Q4. Now that’s a very significant amount and rapid growth considering Facebook even have a single mobile ad format at the turn of the year. As users shift to mobile, brands like you, and advertisers like us must adapt. Marc has just taken you through why you need to have a social mobile strategy and now I’m going to take you through some of the ad formats, optimizations, segmentation strategies that we think are crucial to achieving success on Facebook
Sponsored Stories, Page Post Ads, Mobile App Install Ads
How many people have seen these on their mobile device? Around half of you? And how any of you realise they are ads? That’s native advertising ladies and gentlemen and partially explains why they are so effective!Fan acquisition, while now executed in smarter ways than the ‘we want a million fans’ campaigns of days gone by, is still a crucial part of Facebook strategy. For fan acquisition campaigns making use of the Mobile Page Like Sponsored Story is now crucial to success. On average using these ads we see CTR 12-15 times and CPLs 30-45% lower than regular Sponsored Story formats.
Another way to use Sponsored Stories on mobile is via Action Spec Sponsored Stories to promote custom actions that take place within the App. This is a great way of fostering engagement and acquiring new app users. The auto generation of ads from actions within the app also keeps the content fresh and relevant to users. We saw 25% lower CPA using then desktop formats for a leading travel brand.
Page post ads on mobile take up a serious amount of real estate – as you can see in this image it takes up the almost the whole of the screen. These are really effective for both engagement or direct response goals and work best with high quality video or image content that is sized correctly to maximise impact on the users screen.When running these ads its key to keep copy short and punchy with strong calls to action. Many users flick through the newsfeed very quickly and when their attention is captured by an image they need to be able to digest the content and relevant action quickly too.Another tip is to make use of Facebook’s optional URL tags to differentiate paid and natural content so you can correctly attribute sales to the right place.
For leading retailer Play.com we used highly engaging images to distribute promotions via page post ads placed in the newsfeed.As well as triple digit sales uplift and high ROI they saw significant social engagement with some of the content getting shared over 1000 times. This is an example of the earned media Facebook can give you.Interestingly across the board we see 20-30% more engagement from users on mobile devices.
The mobile Page Post Offer Ad is another of our favourite units. Now I’m not sure if everyone is aware what Facebook Offers are, but they essentially provide a viral mechanism, whereby claiming the offer leads to a story being published to the users newsfeed and timeline, whereby it can then seen by their friends. Running Page Post Ads and Sponsored Stories in conjunction in the mobile feed is one of the best ways to promote these offers with 40% lowercost per offer claim on Mobile for a leading travel brand compared to RHS and a leading gambling brand sees a CPA of up to 1/10 of compared to other Facebook Ads from using these ads as part of their Facebook strategy.
How many brands here have a iphone or android app? Facebook mobile app install ads are probably the most effective ads unit to gain app installs with 20% of iOS’s top 100 grossing developers using them regularly. If you are promoting an app and not using these now your missing a trick.They are large and have an extremely high CTR, sometimes as high as 50%, as a result they have a low cost per install, with many of our clients finding they have the lowest cost per install of any channel.In addition, due to the sheer numbers of mobile users on Facebook they also have 10 to 20x the potential reach of many of those other channels.
So why are they so effective? Well firstly we have the ability to layer any ofexisting Facebook targeting on, demographic, likes and interests and the countless combinations of these targeting options that are possible.Facebook also provides demographic data on the Facebook members who install your app. Mobile app install ad buyers can now break out new installs by age, gender, language and country and then customize their ad units with images and descriptions specific totheir target audiences.
What's more, by developing your app in line with Facebook’s SDK and you can even install the apps without ever leaving Facebook, minimising friction to the user and therefore providing a conversion rate uplift
Those are the main mobile ad formats covered off. Using the right ads formats is part of the picture but not the whole story. Many of Facebook’s ads can run across multiple placements on the network (All Facebook, Desktop Only, News Feed, Dekstop Newsfeed and Mobile). Ensure that your ads that are running across multiple placements are segmented out into individual ads or campaigns. The are a couple of reasons for this:Facebook does not currently offer mobile specific reporting functionality so this lets you evaluate the performance of your ads in different areas of the site.This then also enable you to set the appropriate bid and budget for each of these segments.By using this technique for Play.com we were able to see that the Newsfeed Placements far outperformed the other placements and that the mobile newsfeed experienced one of the highest CTRs and lowest CPCs.
Do you remember at the start of the presentation I mentioned that at the beginning of the year Facebook didn’t even have a single mobile ad format?! I think this slide really demonstrates the pace of mobile development on Facebook and how seriously they are taking it.InAugust,October,December. This also shows how much effort and hard work it is to keep up to date and why you really need to eat, sleep and breathe Facebook to stay ahead. If you manage to do this as mentioned the rewards are great…but imagine if you are still running the October version while you competitors are all using Decembers?!
As well as segmenting by placement you can also segment your ads by device. Don’t forget Android – there are now more Facebook users on Android with 192 million monthly active users thanon iPhone which has only has 147 million.Targeting iPad can lead to significantly higher conversion rates and average order values, especially in retail and fashion. I don’t have an ipad myself but I can picture how large some of these ads are on an iPad screen and how attention grabbing they are.
Now this is really cool and one of my favourite techniques. Custom Audiences were launched around the same time but haven’t received anyway near as much coverage in the press as Facebook Exchange, but they are an extremely powerful way to leverage existing CRM data and just as important as FBX in the marketing mix. In case people aren’t aware custom audiences allow you to upload data such as email addresses, phone numbers or user ids into Facebook for targeting.These are some of the most popular ways we leverage this data. Use Custom Audiences to exclude existing customers. This prevents wastage and is extremely popular with brands in the gambling or finance sectors who are focused on customer acquisition.Use Custom Audiences to retarget users on their mobile devices. For example you could target users who may have show some interest but not gone the final step and converted, or to target existing customers to encourage repeat purchasing. Converting existing customers to fans cheaply using Mobile Sponsored Stories while posting and promoting great content through the newsfeed is a great way to encourage brand loyalty and guarentee returning customers.Essentially anyway you can organise and segment your CRM data, is another way to precisely target users on their mobile devices.
So we’ve talked about Facebook mobile today, but what's on the horizon? Lookalike Audiences are a new Facebook feature that is now available as a beta. It’s currently in the US only but we expect it to roll out globally shortly. Essentially, it lets you take your CRM data, upload it as a custom audience, then Facebook will analyse those users, look at their likes and interests, the content they engage with, and then model a similar look-a-like audience - extending your reach.The next few weeks will also see the roll out of RHS page like ads and Dark Posts in the mobile feed. This is exciting at it will increase the number of ads we can use on mobile and dark posts will enable far great creative optimisations to take place as they do not need organic distribution which can get in the way of your posting strategy.Now for the speculation. Just as a disclaimer, these are my personal views, Facebook have not mentioned any of these to us so they could all not happen. However, I have known to have been right in the past so….With the success of Facebook offers I’m predicting the return of Facebook deals in graph search or Facebook nearby, these ads would be shown on mobile depending on a users location or intent. I also think that with Facebook prematurely ending the test of its mobile ad network it may be redirecting resources to opening up mobile to FBX. It’s a massiveopportunity because mobile devices don’t store cookies that are needed for traditionalretargeting, but Facebook’s cross-device identity system of unique user ids would let it show people mobile ads based on their web browsing habits.Finally as Facebook is currently encouraging top spending brands to develop instragram strategies, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a native instagram format similar to the Facebook page post ad, or sponsored story as toward the end of the year.
So what are the key takeaways from today?I want everyone to become aware of what the Facebook mobile ad formats look like so you are aware of how other brands are leveraging them. You don’t have to do what I do and screenshot everyone you see but you need to be aware of the different options available on the platform.When you go back to your office today check to see if your ads are segmented by placement and your making use of both the mobile and desktop newsfeeds. If not do it. Facebook is now a mobile company and puts mobile first. If you don’t do the same then how can you expect to succeed there?
Supported networks today (pursuing Twitter)FacebookLinkedInFull Facebook ParitySupported ad typesAll marketplace adsFBX (standard ad with a special flag)Premium in marketplace (coming Jan – Feb 2013)TrackingView-through and click-through, where ad units permitDynamic substitution in URLOptional FB parameters, where ad units permit
As user behavior and time spent on mobile has increased, Facebook has responded by shifting to mobile first outlook. Brands and advertisers must also make similar shifts in their Facebook advertising strategies to take advantage of these new solutions and avoid being left behind. By combing existing best practice with specific Mobile techniques and strategy, brands and advertisers can ensure they are well placed to capitalize on this shift, now just in the present but also in the months to come.