Data-Labor-Technology

Many media buyers have tested mid-roll placements on Facebook Watch, but few truly understand if those ads work well because Facebook doesn’t provide enough stats or work with third-party vendors to quantify performance. In spite of Watch advertising’s existing limitations like lack of direct buys and transparency, advertisers said they would like to spend more on Watch, as Facebook is fixing those problems and buying more sports content.

For starters, buying ads on Watch lacks flexibility at the moment. Watch ads, mostly mid-roll videos that are less than 15 seconds, are only available through Facebook Audience Network, meaning that advertisers can only place audience-based buys instead of direct buys from publishers, according to media agency executives.

For instance, if a brand wants to reach 30- to 50-year-old business professionals in an ad campaign, it can’t specifically buy ads on, say, Entrepreneur’s “Elevator Pitch” episodes on Watch. Instead, the brand can only enter its targeting parameters and select “in-stream video” on its Facebook dashboard, and Facebook will then automatically place ads for the brand wherever it makes sense (which may include Watch) based on the brand’s targeted audience, according Michael Dobson, group director of social media for media agency Crossmedia.

“Hopefully in the near future, Facebook will have sponsorship-type buys available, allowing brands to drive relevant connections to Watch ads that are running,” said Dobson. “Snapchat and Twitter actively allow you to do [sponsorships] currently, so it only makes sense that Facebook would soon allow this type of buy.”

Meanwhile, reporting on Watch ads lacks transparency. Kieley Taylor, managing director and global head of social for GroupM, said Watch is included as part of FAN video performance, so while advertisers can compare whether FAN video ads perform better than Facebook in-feed video ads, they don’t know how much Watch has contributed to overall FAN video performance. This is because FAN video ads may also include mid-rolls on other apps and websites in the FAN network that are outside of Facebook, according to Taylor. (It also allows Facebook to obscure how many videos — a lot — don’t reach the mid-roll break.)

“Facebook’s own reports show that people tend to stay longer in the Watch environment, but advertisers can’t verify that with a third party today,” said Taylor. “Facebook is in the process to add DoubleVerify or Integral Ad Science to validate brand safety, and third-party viewability via Moat and IAS is on the road map for in-stream video.”

Ben Hovaness, executive director and digital activation for Hearts & Science, agreed that advertisers can’t isolate ad performance on Watch, but he thinks that will change if Facebook’s plan is to mimic YouTube and scale pre-roll ads on Watch this year. “Watch will have its own placement with the rollout of pre-roll,” he said. “YouTube provides us with ad performance against each video. If Facebook is looking to mirror an ad product that has YouTube attributes, it should offer advertisers the same level of transparency.”

There are also some highly political shows like The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” on Watch, which may be seen as too controversial for some brands during a time when advertisers are pulling ads from mainstream hard-news sites. While advertisers can exclude certain content categories on Watch, it doesn’t have enough granularity, according to Hovaness and Taylor.

Despite these limitations, media buyers believe ad dollars will still flow into Watch, as Facebook is working to address the drawbacks. And for brands that prioritize ad prices over anything else, Watch could be cost-efficient because the more types of ad placements an advertiser puts into its media deal with Facebook, the cheaper the ad price will be, according to Hovaness. “Dynamic pricing plays a role here,” he said.

Facebook is also increasingly focused on live sports, which may make Watch more enticing for advertisers, said Taylor. Carly Carson, social account supervisor for agency PMG, agreed that content relevancy will be key in making Watch the right fit for advertisers. For instance, Facebook is putting a concerted effort into driving users to engage with relevant content leading up to the Super Bowl with a documentary series “Tom vs. Time,” which features NFL quarterback Tom Brady, according to Carson.

“Timely content series like this will hopefully build frequency and user adoption for Facebook Watch, making this a more high-profile and relevant ad placement for advertisers who can’t opt in to large events like the Super Bowl,” said Carson.

The post Ad buyers want more flexibility and stats for Facebook Watch ads appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook continues to rattle the publishing world, first announcing that it would deprioritize news in its news feed and then saying it would ask users to rank news outlets’ trustworthiness. The news immediately stoked controversy, with critics saying Facebook is again abdicating its responsibility to control what appears in its feed. They’re also questioning the soundness of having users rather than professionals decide what’s legitimate news and what’s not, at a time when people are highly polarized in their views.

“Forty percent of the country hates CNN, and then you have publications like mine that people outside the business don’t know,” said Scott Kleinberg, social media and engagement editor at InvestmentNews, a publication for investors. “Everyone knows The New York Times and BuzzFeed. What happens to smaller places?”

Here’s what to know about how Facebook is ranking publishers in the news feed.

Key numbers

• 4 percent: How much of the news feed that Facebook says will be news after Facebook’s tweak, down from 5 percent
• 67 percent: The amount of U.S. adults who got at least some news on social media as of August 2017, per Pew Research Center, up from 62 percent the year before, with the percentage getting it “often” increasing to 20 percent from 18 percent
• 27 percent: How much external referral traffic comes from Facebook, down from 35 percent in the beginning of the year, per Chartbeat
• 47 percent: How much external referral traffic comes from Google, according to Chartbeat
• 15 percent: The decrease in Facebook referral traffic to publishers in the last three months of 2017, according to Chartbeat
• 9 percent: The increase in Facebook’s stock price the day it announced its intention to prioritize trustworthy news in the news feed
• 42 percent: The amount of people in the U.S. who trust the news media, down from 47 percent in 2017, per Edelman

The Facebook angle
Asking users to help rate the news could be a way for Facebook to score points with the public by showing it cares about its opinion at a time when user time on the platform is declining. Facebook’s stock price jumped the day it made its “trustworthy news” announcement, suggesting investors, at least, bought its story. It also could be another way for Facebook to sidestep the notion that it’s not just a distributor of content but a media company, with editorial judgment and responsibility for what appears in its feed, which critics have long called for it to acknowledge. But relying on surveys could easily backfire, given users helped spread the misinformation that helped get Facebook in trouble in the first place.

The publisher angle
Assuming Facebook has good intentions here, there are a lot of potential unintended consequences for publishers under this scenario. Facebook says that in surveying people, it’ll start with whether users are familiar with a news source. That would seem to bias publications with broad reach that have been around a long time over special-interest or upstart publications that are just as credible but aren’t as well-known. Facebook said it wants to boost posts that drive conversation, which could drive the spread of false or sensational news that tends to be highly engaging. It’s hard to know how Facebook will treat polarizing news outlets like Fox News that are just as trusted as not.

What’s next
Facebook watchers see in these announcements more of the opaqueness and confusion they’ve come to expect from the company. It’s saying little about its methodology or if it’s going to disclose how individual news outlets scored. The company admits it could have been clearer and that it’s open to suggestions, which is unsettling to those whose livelihoods depend on the platform. Some publishers believe they’re already seeing less serious news in their feeds already, while trivial and engagement-bait content is up. Others say it will take a few weeks to understand how the news feed change is affecting their publications. Whatever the case, it’s another sign of how doing the dance with Facebook means publishers spend time trying to catch up to the tech giant that’s better spent trying to build a sustainable business outside it.

“There’s just not a whole lot of transparency,” said Michael Kuntz, president of advertising sales and brand partnerships at the USA Today Network. “That’s a huge source of frustration. It’s hard to react and get upset because the one thing about Facebook is, they’re going to continue to make changes.”

The post Cheatsheet: Facebook’s attempt to rank publishers in the news feed appeared first on Digiday.

As Facebook deprioritizes publisher content and potentially makes brand advertising more important, agency buyers are increasingly pitching Facebook groups to advertisers.

Facebook launched “Groups for Pages” over the summer, which enabled Pages to make groups or simply get them linked. Facebook says about a billion people use groups every month. Groups are attractive to brands because they combine community with “authenticity” — and won’t be punished under the new algorithm changes.

Brands including non-profits like Ellie’s Way, retailers like Fleet Feet, bike brand Peloton and cult kitchen appliance brand Instant Pot have started Facebook Groups. At Peloton, 64,000 people are part of its Group, which is linked to its 334,000-strong Page. There, community managers lead conversations about favorite instructors, biking gear, and fitness goals. The Instant Pot Group, which has 1.2 million members, includes recipes and “commonly asked questions.”

At 360i, there has been more interest from brands — including in categories like retail and auto — to get involved in groups in the wake of the Facebook algorithm change. “Facebook groups present an organic and unique opportunity to drive a deeper level of engagement,” said Alec Piliafas, social marketing director at 360i, which created a Facebook group for its client HBO for television show “Big Little Lies.” “Pages served the role around pushes specifically. But groups can now serve as engagement.”

Groups can work for brands with active communities. For example, fitness company Peloton uses a Peloton Rider group that is linked to its official Peloton page.

For brands, Facebook’s recent move reads as an emphasis on “active” participation over passive engagement like views. That means any active participation by customers and users via comments or creation should theoretically be rewarded.

Another reason brands are drawn to groups, according to Piliafas, is that the analytics within groups can show much more interesting data. On a higher level, group owners can get more information from an audience with real, demonstrated behavior than what Piliafas calls “assumed” psychographic or demographic input. With Group Insights, which shows owners everything from who is active to when users are active, brands can build more of a publishing strategy.

Still, it’s slow going for brands, compared with publishers like Vox, BuzzFeed and The New York Times, which all have been running groups to grow subscriptions and promote articles. One reason, buyers say, is that brands interested in groups are hesitant to pull the trigger because they’re afraid that Facebook will change algorithms or rules — or try to monetize groups as well. “Brands are so wary because of all the changes Facebook keeps rolling out,” said Piliafas. “Before they invest time, money and energy into that realm, we need to take it slow.”

Dana Flax, a director on the social and marketing team at HBO, which was the first “brand” to use groups for “Big Little Lies” about a year ago, said she found that a group was the right venue for people to “interact.” The brand reached out to the media partnerships team at Facebook at the time to ask for its cooperation in building the group. The hardest part, said Flax, was promoting the group outside Facebook and in the news feed; using influencers — or the show cast, in HBO’s case — to make that happen, was key.

Noah Mallin, managing partner at Wavemaker, said his team is actively talking to clients in consumer packaged goods that are interested more in groups in the wake of Facebook’s changes. Pairing influencer marketing, which is one of the winners of the changes, with organic content in groups works well to drive and promote conversation there. “Inevitably, Facebook will see a lot of brands doing this and try to figure out to monetize,” he said.

One side effect has been what is dubbed inside digital and media agencies as a resurgence of community management. Renewed interest in active participation, especially through groups, means it’s time for community managers — who had long been relegated to roles that prized posting and reposting — to shine. At agency AGW, CEO Adam Gorode had a town hall last week to discuss the Facebook news. One big question: How community managers on his team would be affected and what kind of retraining may benefit them the most. The agency, which is working on creating a new group for retail brand ’47, is now looking to give those community managers classes in, for example, screenwriting, to help them promote dialogue.

“Creating a group for a brand, you are inviting people to talk about it,” said Piliafas. “There has been a reason and incentive to go to that group versus creating your own.”

The post With Facebook emphasizing community, marketers are trying out Facebook Groups appeared first on Digiday.

In our new series “Life After Advertising,” we share the stories of past advertisers who endured the long hours in the industry and have emerged in a new career, perhaps a little worn, but mostly unscathed and living new dreams.

Linda Sawyer, 56, spent 27 years working for Deutsch, including 10 years as its CEO and the last two as chairman. Sawyer left Deutsch at the end of 2016 to scratch an entrepreneurial itch.

Last October, Sawyer and her best friend from second grade, Alison Adler Matz, launched Skura Style, an e-commerce company that sells home cleaning supplies. The first product, a sponge made of antimicrobial agents, is sold in a set of four for $12 a month or every other month. 

Digiday spoke to Sawyer about why she set out to be an entrepreneur and what she doesn’t miss about advertising. Answers have been condensed for clarity.

What spurred you to start a cleaning-product brand?
I am a complete cleaning fanatic. One day, I was just chatting with Alison, and I had been bothered by the fact that, if you really think about the kitchen, there are so many aspects of it that are innovative, but then you have the kitchen sponge. I couldn’t understand how the kitchen sponge seemed to be trapped in time. Sponges are really bacteria magnets. Every time you’re using a sponge, you’re wiping bacteria on your countertops, but people are complacent about replacing them. We went on a crusade to figure out how to create a sponge that you could actually love, that is beautiful and highly clean.

Why did you start a company later in your career?
I always had an entrepreneurial bug that was nesting within, and it’s fun to unleash that. Having decades of experience provides a tremendous advantage in terms of wealth of knowledge, perspective, having a vast and diverse network and possessing a strong point of view with declarative confidence in decision-making.

What’s the biggest difference of being a CEO of a company you own versus a big ad agency that’s part of a bigger holding company?
There are more similarities than differences, but being the CEO of an e-commerce company is like owning a store that is open seven days a week, 24/7.

What part of entrepreneurship has surprised you? 
Everything eventually lands on your desk. You can get really distracted by all the details since you have to wear a million hats. It is important to be disciplined and focused on the big picture.

Why choose an e-commerce monthly subscription model over retail?
Part of the reason we’re very committed to that is we’re really trying to change behavior, and that’s frequent replacement. There is an ease of convenience to online shopping. People don’t have to think about it; it just arrives at their door. We wanted an e-commerce brand because we wanted total control over the branding experience, everything from how the brand is encountered to the unboxing experience.

How are you using your past experience in advertising to power your brand?
One of the most important skills in advertising is the ability to leverage deep consumer insights. You can understand what [people’s] practical but also emotional needs are, and then optimize that within a relevant cultural context. When we did our research, consumers admitted their complacency about sponge replacement. If you use your sponge pretty much every day, it will fade within a week. So, our sponge’s surface fades with use and acts as a visual indicator for when it’s time to replace. They also wanted to know how long they should keep their sponges. We send a weekly email with a cleaning tip and a reminder that it’s time to change.

What don’t you miss about advertising?
I was tired of inheriting other people’s business decisions. A lot of times, the creativity, in terms of the strategy that you would develop, was about overcoming certain business decisions that were made way before you even started working with the client. With Skura Style, we’re not in any way mired by any internal politics. We can just do everything with a purity of focus and agenda.

How connected do you feel to the world of advertising?
In many respects, I’m dealing with a lot of the stuff that any marketer is dealing with, in terms of we’re currently relying a lot on PR and social media. Last week, we were on “The View,” and I thought our email was going to blow up. I feel like I’m still experiencing it, but more from a client perspective.

The post Life After Advertising: From Deutsch CEO to cleaning supplies startup founder appeared first on Digiday.

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