Month: October 2018

Snapchat is bringing more TV-like content to the U.K., with 17 media partners launching 25 Snapchat Shows in the coming weeks, and publishers hope the revenue-share model is more sustainable than other platform-publisher arrangements that came before.

The Shows will run three to seven minutes in length and come from new publishers to Snapchat include the Guardian, Channel 4 and Culture Trip, as well as existing Discover partners like Sky News, Vice, and PinkNews. The content is non-exclusive to the platform and monetized through six-second unskippable ads, with the publisher and platform sharing the revenue. (Snapchat doesn’t comment on the split.)

“It’s valuable to us,” said Alan Strange, output editor for digital at Sky News, speaking at Snap’s event in London this week. “Lots of publishers have been burned from receiving funding for content, and then the funding runs out. Then you’re left with a team you’ve built around this: The classic pivot to video, Facebook Lives. There’s an apocalyptic wasteland out there with all the things people have tried.”

Another selling point is that the investment required by the publishers for Shows is lighter than for daily Discover editions, which require teams of at least six people. The news that Condé Nast is shuttering some Snapchat Discover edition teams indicates not all publishers are seeing a return.

Copa90’s pop-up Discover channel during the World Cup took a team of seven. Tom Brandhorst, editorial director at Copa90, said it should be able to do its forthcoming “Copa90’s World of Football,” a weekly show covering top football stories and moments, with three to five people.

Publishers also hope getting noticed on Discover will be easier than it is in the Facebook news feed. “The way the algorithm works, more content will help discoverability,” said Benjamin Cohen, CEO and editor-in-chief of PinkNews, which will have a weekly Show called “Ask the Aunties” where presenters respond to audience questions.

The Show pages and autoplay features in Discover are designed to make it easy for people to tune in and binge watch. Cohen pointed out that there’s no easy way to combine subscribers of Discover channels with Show audience, so publishers like PinkNews that have duplicated audiences could face issues with advertisers. Snapchat has said it’s working to fix this.

Snapchat Shows launched in the U.S. two years ago. Since then, the platform has seen localized content improve engagement in the U.K., France and Germany and time spent in Shows has more than tripled since the beginning of the year, according to the platform.

“We’ve been able to become more global by being more local,” said Olly Osborne, marketing director for EMEA at Vice, which was a launch partner on Discover and has five Shows launching in the coming weeks. Vice is now publishing in local languages in France, Germany, U.K. and U.S., and has grown monthly active users across those four channels to 35 million, he said. Daily active users across those channels are 4 million.

Buyers debate reach, cost
For all the publisher excitement about the Snapchat Shows, advertisers are still mixed on the platform.

Snapchat said advertisers can reach five million people monthly in the U.K., which agencies say is reputable but which will be brought down by any targeting they do. EMarketer estimated that Snap controls just 0.5 percent of the U.K. digital ad market while Google and Facebook together control 60.8 percent.

Jason Cotrina-Vasquez, paid social business director at Mindshare, estimates that Snapchat is on around 20 percent of the agencies’ media plans, compared to 5 percent a year ago, due to improvements in the product and addition of local content and formats. “We’re getting very cost-effective reach. It’s an audience that’s hard to reach on other platforms; that’s the key selling point,” he said.

The CPMs are higher for shows than Discover edition ads because the ads are unskippable. Sources say CPMs in Discover are around £3 ($3.81).

“We aren’t particularly interested in this proposition this early,” said one ad buyer requesting anonymity. “I find the flat CPM costs for these placements to be high. We generally will only buy Discover inventory in the auction, and to the best of my knowledge, this will not be available in auction, at least in Q4.”

While Snapchat will never match the scale of Instagram, with the power of Facebook behind it, it’s impressed others with its ability to drive sales and direct response campaigns.

Deborah King, head of paid social at Essence, said the agency is increasing the number of mid-roll ad tests it’s running for clients on Snapchat after seeing them work.

“Direct response has been surprisingly efficient because the audience is so engaged,” she said. “Snap is underestimated in the industry and with clients. They are quick to listen to feedback and make changes.”

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Facebook says it wants Facebook Watch programming that’s unique to its platform — with big names and built-in distribution, if possible. That excludes the short-form, unscripted, lifestyle programming that’s ubiquitous on the web and that Facebook bought in droves when it first commissioned shows for Facebook Watch.

Facebook entertainment video executives, including Ricky Van Veen, the company’s head of global creative strategy, have been telling potential production partners that they’re interested in funding Watch shows that can get off to a “hot start” on Facebook. Sources described “hot start” shows as shows that star or are made by high-profile creators who already have a big Facebook following. They include “Red Table Talk,” an interview series hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith (who has more than 7.9 million Facebook fans) and “The Real Word” reboot with Bunim-Murray Productions (which also makes “Ball in the Family” for Facebook Watch) and MTV (which has more than 46 million followers on Facebook).

“They’re not buying anything else — everything apart from news and sports is talent based,” said one publishing source that has produced multiple shows for Facebook Watch in the past year and recently pitched Facebook on a few projects.

Facebook declined to comment on the record for this story.

When Facebook Watch launched in late August of 2018, the section featured short-form, original “spotlight” programs from more than 30 partners including Attn, Mashable and Refinery29. These unscripted, lifestyle programs were funded by Facebook and typically ran for 10 minutes or less an episode and included “The Great Cheese Hunt” (Insider), “Wiki What?” (Hearst) and “DIY Costume Squad” (Mashable). Over time, the spotlight moniker and shows went away as Facebook encouraged producers to make longer shows with bigger budgets.

Two sources said that Facebook executives recently described Facebook video on a spectrum, with the aforementioned high-profile “hot start” shows that Facebook is willing to fund on one end and on the other, short videos that still thrive in the news feed but which Facebook is no longer funding. In the middle of the spectrum? Those early spotlight shows — a majority of which were made by digital publishers — that found no real audience on Facebook. “Shows for nobody,” as Van Veen has been telling some partners, describing what Facebook learned in funding and distributing the shows, according to sources.

The trouble for digital lifestyle publishers who produced many of the early Facebook Watch shows don’t have the capacity for TV-level productions with big stars. This has prompted some publishers to stop pitching Facebook altogether — “We don’t think about Facebook anymore as a buyer,” said one publishing source — or hold out hope that a pitch resonates with Facebook executives to get the green light.

Some early Facebook Watch partners such as Attn and Insider have an opportunity with Facebook Watch news shows, for which Facebook has set aside a separate budget.

Facebook isn’t ruling out any specific genre, format or type of project in terms of which shows it will fund, said sources familiar with Facebook’s thinking. Facebook has been public about commissioning formats that are unique to its platform. For instance, “Skam: Austin,” based on a popular Norwegian series, is a scripted series that is designed to fit how people use Facebook, by consisting of short videos that are paired with photos and other posts from the show’s characters, culminating in a longer “full episode” available on weekends.  

In other instances, Facebook is prioritizing formats that are interactive or use other Facebook products and features such as Facebook Groups. “Red Table Talk” and the scripted drama “Sorry for Your Loss” — which stars Oscar nominee Elizabeth Olsen — are designed to drive conversations among viewers. Meanwhile, “Confetti” is an interactive HQ Trivia-style game show produced by Insider for Watch.

Facebook also recently expanded Watch to Europe, which opens up more opportunities for funded programming and new formats, sources said. And in the U.K., Facebook is still funding short-form projects such as Barcroft Media’s “Most Interesting Homes” and ZigZag Productions’ “Troy the Magician.”

But for some U.S. publishers, Facebook still has no direction for Watch. “There just doesn’t seem to be a clear vision there,” said another publishing source that has produced Watch shows in the U.S.

“They are never going to say no; they always want to see and hear the pitch,” said a publishing source that pitched Facebook recently. “But there’s no clear answer on what they’re going to be doing next year.”

Meanwhile, Facebook is still encouraging digital publishers to self-fund programming for Watch, sources said. In instances where Facebook won’t put up production dollars, Facebook reps have offered free on-platform marketing. According to one source, a Facebook rep offered between $40,000 and $80,000 worth of Facebook promotion for their self-funded Watch shows.

“It’s their way of getting publishers to create content that they don’t have to pay for,” said this source. “They call it marketing, but all it really is is kicking it up in the algorithm.”

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Tell me if you’ve heard this story before: A tech company offers a product it claims will help a media company reach new audiences — and make more money. Media companies buy in, happy to get the assistance of the benevolent tech giant. Then the tech giant changes the rules, and media companies are left to scramble. That story is repeating itself with Amazon Prime Video Channels program.

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About a year ago, alcohol brands said they were reluctant to spend money on Snapchat because they could not verify ads were only being served to people of legal drinking age. The issue came to a head in January, when Diageo pulled all spend from Snapchat when its ads were being seen by kids and teenagers.

Since then, several alcohol companies – including beer company Heineken, owner of 250 brands, and spirits companies Mast-Jägermeister and Campari Group, maker of 50 brands like Campari, Aperol and SKYY Vodka – are bringing their ad dollars back to Snapchat, citing progress Snapchat has made in guaranteeing their ads won’t be shown to minors. The progress has been attributed to Snapchat’s move away from age-gating ads purely off of users’ self-declared ages and, instead, factoring in things such as how long someone has been on the platform, the age of their closest friends and the type of content they view. If a user declares themselves as 25, for example, but their closest friends are all 13, that person will no longer be targeted with alcohol ads, according to Frank Amorese, media director at Heineken.

“Snapchat has had the most challenges with [age-gating] so they are taking this really seriously,” said Amorese. It’s a different tune than the company took just this past August when it skipped Snapchat to promote its non-alcoholic beer. Amorese said the company’s advances with age-gating has led Heineken to increase ad spend on the platform “significantly,” although he would not reveal exact numbers.

A Snapchat spokesperson said the platform has been aggressive in enhancing its age-gating over the past year, first introducing new signals to age-gate content in late 2017. Snapchat has had age-gating since 2013, when it required users to enter their birthdays when creating accounts. With this, brands could limit targeting ads to people 21 and over, but users could still lie about their age. Coupled with the assumption that Snapchat attracted mostly a young audience, alcohol brands were spooked and stayed away.

“We really felt like the capabilities and the advancements Snapchat has brought to their platform led us to bring a better experience to our target this year,” said Heather Kozera, vp of integrated marketing at Mast-Jägermeister, which has doubled its spend on the platform for its Jägermeister product for a Halloween push this year.

Snapchat said it no longer serves age-restricted ads to users with improbable birthdates that would barely qualify someone as either 18-years-old or 21-years-old, depending on the country. A Snapchat spokesperson also said that the platform has used Nielsen data to verify 180 Snapchat campaigns over the past three months, and found they were targeted to the correct demographic with 94 percent average accuracy.

According to Snapchat Ads Manager, 54 million U.S. Snapchat users are over 21 years old out of 87 million total, a number previously withheld from marketers before the introduction of Snapchat Ads Manager a year ago.

Devin Quinn, digital strategy manager of Campari, also said Snapchat has improved. The company worked with Snapchat this year to run a branded lens for its SKYY vodka brand. “There is much less of a chance that ads will be accidentally served to someone outside the desired age range,” said Quinn.

Besides Snapchat, advertisers say Facebook and YouTube have been the most proactive, enhancing the way they go about targeting to ensure ads are only viewed by adults 21 and older. Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube and 11 alcohol companies signed a vague pledge to improve age targeting in September. Several advertisers agreed that Twitter has not been proactive around targeting so far.

“We have been pretty limited in the past but, over the past year, [platforms] are really making sure spirits brands can play safety,” said Kozera. “We never call anymore and they say no, or you can’t do that. I think they realize the equity and space spirits brands can bring.”

Spirits brands spent $406.2 million on advertising in 2017, according to Statista, while beer companies spent $1.6 billion on advertising in 2016.

Heineken is seeing a strong effort from YouTube, which has endured its fair share of brand-safety crises this year. Amorese said he sat down with YouTube two weeks ago, and the platform is looking at new signals when co-viewing is concerned. If a YouTube account watches sports highlights for half the time and kids programming for the other half, it’s clear two different people are using that same account. So YouTube will not target the account with alcohol ads.

Devin Quinn, digital strategy manager of Campari, said Facebook has also been working closer with the spirits company when it comes to targeting. Quinn said that in the first quarter of 2018, Facebook promised to target people based on people it absolutely knows are over 21, based on self-submitted ages, rather than just their activity. Campari would not say whether the company has increased its spend on Facebook.

“The last thing [platforms] want is to deal with another PR crisis as far as targeting and privacy goes, so they are being extra careful about this kind of thing,” said Amorese.

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It’s the season for revenue misses — and belt-tightening. Facing a 5 percent shortfall in revenue, Refinery29 laid off 40, or 10 percent of its workforce. Verizon reported Oath was looking at flat revenue this year and would miss its lofty 2020 goal. Condé Nast made another round of layoffs as part of a sales reorganization as the company tries to cut its losses, reported at $120 million last year.

The media boogeymen are numerous and familiar to legacy and digital publishers. On the ad side, the duopoly are sucking up two-thirds of digital ad spending. Traditional media sellers have failed to replace their declining legacy businesses with digital dollars and digital ones have struggled to reduce their reliance on advertising. There’s a glut of media properties for sale, including Gizmodo Media Group and former Time Inc. and Conde Nast magazines, but ad-supported media is out of favor these days.

“The reality has set in firmly that growth is not going to be exponential unless you’re a new property,” said Tom Morrissy, president of media agency Noble People and a former publisher. “How are you going to monetize that growth and with new revenue lines? There aren’t any easy answers. The barrier to entry to starting a conference business is high and the margins are low. I remember when I could run an ad upside down and get them a make good. It’s so much more complicated than it used to be.”

Whether it’s recession jitters, political uncertainty or other factors, this year has also been tough for ad sellers, which means a more intense fourth-quarter scramble than usual. “Q3, according to everyone I talked to, was the worst ever,” one digital seller said. The signs of struggle are evident in public high-level departures and at the negotiation table with agencies.

“There’s a hunger out there,” said Ben Kunz, evp of marketing & content at Mediassociates. “We’ve had a lot more attention from some very major pubs for a mid-sized agency that we didn’t used to get. That’s indicative of a company or platform under pressure.”

“They’re being aggressive,” said John Wagner, group director of published media at PHD. “They’re being a little more fluid on negotiation and pricing or there’s a lot of heartbreak. We get a lot of phone calls with people asking, ‘Where did we fall short?’ There’s a lot more rationale that has to be provided if they don’t win the RFP.”

In the case of digital media, the argument is that these are still good businesses but that their VC backers set unrealistic expectations for growth. A classic example was onetime digital darling Mashable that sold for $50 million, a fifth of its value.

“It’s all of our collective fault for relying on the VC and whatever social media network you rely on,” lamented a sales exec who’s a veteran of VC-backed media. “Everyone thought you could get rich on content.”

Reality has set in there, too. Venture capital funding going into media has held fairly steady over the past few years (reaching $1.3 billion in 2018 as of Sept. 30, versus $1.7 billion in all of 2017, according to PitchBook’s Venture Monitor report for 3Q 2018. Media operators say VCs’ patience is running out.

Another veteran of a VC-funded media company said the leash is shorter, as that company found this year when it tried to raise money while still unprofitable and found doors were closed. The company ended up laying off staff to get to profitability.

“Investors want to see you on a path of profitability,” this person said. “Five years ago it was about your growth. There is definitely more rigor. There’s no raising money without a real valuation.”

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Puma is rethinking how it buys media so that its buying power is no longer defined just by the amount of ads it buys but by relationships with media owners. Consequently, the advertiser is moving its $120 million media budget Publicis to Havas.

Puma isn’t an “enormous global media buyer,” said its global director for brand and marketing, Adam Petrick, so the buying power of a media agency isn’t as important to the business as it once was. Instead, the advertiser wants ad buyers who have established, long-term ties to media owners who are more likely to find the right content for Puma and maximize its budget in the process.

Havas owner Vivendi also owns Universal Music Group, YouTube rival Dailymotion, video games company Gamesloft and French TV channel and movie producer Canal+ Group. And despite the potential of conflicts of interests an ad buyer who owns the media, content and agency businesses might face, Petrick said he was “satisfied” with how open the agency is prepared to be with what it does with Puma’s money. Having guaranteed program sponsorships on the Canal+ channels that could feed into opportunities with Lady Gaga on Dailymotion, for example, could help the brand stand out.

“Havas is a unique group in that it has lots of partnerships through Vivendi that could be interesting for us, whether that’s through music publishers or content creators,” said Petrick.

Like most global advertisers, Puma has concerns over how much its partners are making on the side, but those suspicions aren’t enough for it to do its media buying internally, said Petrick. The costs of building an internal team don’t chime with the value it would be bring, said Petrick. Programmatic, for example, is a growing part of the business but isn’t a large enough part of a media plan for the business to even consider it.

“We don’t just want to focus on buying power, so there’s a lot of emphasis now on strategic thinking where we look at the processes and personnel management to ensure we get access to that expertise, said Petrick. Performance models like this can backfire as agencies can feel like the rewards aren’t worth the risks, ad executives have previously said. Petrick said he would work with Puma’s ad buyers to develop the right model.

“It means there will be some remuneration in the form of project fees moving forward, while we’re also exploring other ways we can ensure good work is done by our partners.

E-commerce is a big priority for Puma — so much so that executives from its global e-commerce team had some input on the outcome of the brand’s latest media pitch, which doesn’t usually happen. But rather than focus solely on building its own online store, the advertiser’s immediate efforts are focused on using its own audience data to broker better deals with retailers like Footlocker. For a business like Puma, which is reliant on retailers, being a better partner to those sellers is a way to secure better listings.

“We’re excited about what could be achieved if we’re able to take our own geographical data modeling on sales in certain cities or even neighborhoods to retailers with a proposition that we can backup with data — that’s going to make us a better partner to our wholesale partners,” said Petrick.

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Walmart and Target are getting holiday ready using the biggest asset that Amazon doesn’t have to drive sales during the shopping season: large store networks.

The investments in improving in-store technology and delivery and pick-up capabilities are, in some ways, short-term attempts to boost holiday performance. But they could have a long-term halo effect on the health of the stores, an increasingly important battleground for retail as physical locations double as online fulfillment centers and customer expectations change.

Walmart announced on Tuesday its plans to improve the holiday shopping experience, including two in-store features: Check Out With Me, which will equip store employees with portable payment systems, so they can ring customers up faster in crowded departments like toys and electronics. And in the Walmart app, new searchable store maps can help direct customers to the items they’re looking for, while corresponding in-store signage will make it easier for them to navigate the aisles.

Target is similarly promoting its stores as order facilitators during the holidays, pushing customers’ options to get same-day delivery from Shipt, offering same-day pick-up in store orders, expanding its curbside order pick-up service to 1,000 stores and rolling out deliver-to-home capabilities from stores to locations in five cities.

For the holiday season specifically, Target is also opening up free two-day shipping on all orders, some of which are shipped from stores.

It’s a pile on, as pressures mount leading up to the retailers’ last chance to hit sales targets for the year. According to National Retail Federation data, holiday sales are expected to increase between 4 and 5 percent from 2017, a total of $718 billion to $721 billion. Online sales, meanwhile, are expected to grow by 15 percent to $97 billion, according to digital agency NetElixer. Of those sales, Amazon is expected to take 40 percent customer dollars.

But unlike Black Friday promotions and day-after-Christmas deals, the blitz to improve store functionalities and convenience can have lasting positive effects for retailers like Walmart and Target, which are sitting on top of sprawling store networks that need regular updating.

“Holidays are an important season, but these companies are potentially setting themselves up for long term success,” said Bill Alberti, the chief client officer at consultancy firm C Space. “Retailers are smartening up to the idea that you’re never going to beat Amazon on functionality, but that convenience and customer service in stores can create an emotional connection that can set you apart from the competition.”

Walmart and Target reps declined to comment on whether or not holiday-specific customer benefits and delivery capabilities might be extended beyond December, but Target rep Eddie Baeb recently told Digiday that, for the holidays, stores hubs are seen as its key differentiator. Some perks make sense as a seasonal push, like Walmart’s employee mobile POS systems, which relies on both a surge in holiday staff and crowded stores, said Tom Gehani, director of client strategy and research at Gartner L2. But others have legs: Walmart store maps integrate seamlessly into its app, for example. In fact, Target’s in-app store maps started last November as a tool to help customers locate Black Friday “doorbuster” deals more quickly. It also added the Target Red Card to the mobile wallet ahead of the holidays at the same time last year for easy accessibility. Both functions stuck around long term.

“The technology that retailers launch at this time can be high-stakes, to the point that up until a few years ago, retailers used to freeze digital, in-store activations and not add anything new for the rest of the year,” said Gehani. “Now, they’re investing in more technologies around this time because you have to take risks. The biggest risk a retailer can take this time of year is letting people walk out the door, because they have so many other options.”

That option includes Amazon. Gehani said customers are always price-comparing, but in-store convenience also dictates where customers choose to buy, and nailing that experience is critical. And if capabilities like same-day delivery can be pulled off when a high volume of customers will be going in and out of the doors, they’re essentially a safe bet for the rest of the year.

There’s another reason to use the holiday shopping season as a lens for year-round roll outs: Customers may be in gifting mode, but they’re spending more on themselves during this time period than before. According to the NRF, customer spend on self-gifting during the holidays increased by 44 percent in 2017.

“People’s shopping habits can be wildly different when gifting, so retailers compartmentalize that behavior. But when people are using these tools when they’re in stores shopping for themselves, that has a long-term halo effect,” said Gehani.

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AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by StackAdapt. On the podcast this week, Unruly Media CEO Norm Johnston talks about the evolution of video ads – how they’re bought, how they’re sold and who gets to sell them. Unruly’s value proposition is to provide high-quality audiences… Continue reading »

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For the second consecutive quarter, Facebook’s growth has stalled in the U.S. and Canada and it’s lost active users in Europe. Facebook might not be able to add many more users in the U.S. and Canada, but it’s making more money from those already on the service. Last quarter, Facebook’s average revenue per user was $25.91 in the U.S. and Canada compared to $5.97 worldwide. This quarter, Facebook’s average revenue per user was $27.61 in the U.S. and Canada compared to $6.09 worldwide. That’s the highest it’s been for North America.

But unlike July, Facebook saw a nice bump in its stock price as it beat estimates on earnings and only slightly missed revenue estimates. That slipped to below 4 percent over the call. To lessen the blow of declining growth, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is emphasizing the billions across his network of services.

Here’s what you need to know:

The key numbers:

• 2.3 billion monthly active users and 1.5  billion daily active users (up 10 percent and 9 percent from the previous year, respectively)
• 2.6 billion monthly active users across Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger and more than 2 billion use at least one of those services every day
• Lost 1 million daily active users and 1 million monthly active users in Europe
• Added 20 million daily active users compared to the previous quarter (down from the 22 million Facebook added between Q1 and Q2)
• $13.7 billion in quarterly revenue (up 33 percent from the previous year)
• Profit was $5.78 billion (up 13 percent from the previous year)
• 92 percent of its ad revenue came from mobile (compared to 88 percent in the previous year and 91 percent in the previous quarter)
• Average revenue per user is $27.61 in the U.S. and Canada compared to $6.09 worldwide

What Wall Street wanted: 
Facebook missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations, reporting $13.7 billion this quarter versus $13.8 billion predicted. The company attributed the miss to currency headwinds. The stock dropped 5 percent after the report’s release but rose to just under 1 percent within the next 30 minutes.

GDPR fallout continues
Facebook is still bleeding users in Europe. From the last quarter, it saw 1 million fewer monthly active users and 1 million fewer daily active users in Europe. Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst, attributed that decline to the “continuation of the fallout of GDPR we saw last quarter.” But despite that drop, she said, “given all the challenges Facebook has faced this year, this is a decent earnings report.”

Instagram remains shiny for advertisers
Facebook just isn’t a story about the power of the News Feed anymore. Last quarter, the company shared a new statistic to describe its scale across its family of apps: more than 2.5 billion people use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp every month. This quarter, Facebook said that number is up to more than 2.6 billion and also added that more than 2 billion people use at least one of those services every day.

“We believe it’s a better way to measure the community over time because so many people use more than one of our apps,” Zuckerberg said on the call.

On the call, Zuckerberg said there’s an opportunity to introduce ads in the Explore section of Instagram, which suggests content to users.

Facebook is “following the playbook” with Stories
The majority of revenue made on Facebook comes from Facebook’s News Feed and Instagram’s feed, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg said on the call. But that may change. Facebook is shifting from a feed focus to being Stories-first, Zuckerberg said. Facebook has already opened up Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories to ads, but he suggested that there’s a lot more to be done. Facebook also plans to introduce ads in WhatsApp Status, its Stories-like feature.

“We’re following our normal playbook here on building the best product first … before ramping up ads,” Zuckerberg said.

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Even the mighty miss on revenue – but Facebook is still raking it in per user and Stories monetization across platforms is just getting started. Facebook reported $13.73 billion in revenue for the third quarter on Tuesday, $40 million less than what analysts expected. It’s Facebook’s second earnings miss in a row. But Facebook now… Continue reading »

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