Much has been made of the symbiotic relationship between TV and Twitter and the company's recent activity to attract both broadcasters and marketers to the platform.  Now a new paper from social advertising platform, CitizenNet, looks at how Facebook activity correlates with TV-viewing habits. For the study, CitizenNet looked the two weeks of Facebook Page Insights data leading up to the premieres of 77 TV shows from both broadcast and cable networks from 2011 and 2012. They then looked at whether the Facebook Insights metrics would correlate with Nielsen viewership for the premier episod [...]

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In my last column, I discussed strategies for testing content on your Facebook page. I also talked about how important it is, even when testing, to retain the character of your brand in all your content. Your Facebook page should have an identity to it, and you should strive to hold that identity constant. Part of holding this identity constant is making sure that your advertising is aligned with your Page content. That means keeping the style and character of your ads consistent with the status updates, photos and videos you’re posting on your Page. This principle is not just limited to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook Marketing Column | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Pages

Facebook is hard at work to deliver and prove value to advertisers. Its recent announcements about third-party data integration in ad targeting and offline conversion tracking are all part of that. And today, Facebook is introducing a new way to bid for ads on the site, on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis. Eventually, though the timing isn't yet certain, all Facebook ad units will be available via CPA. However, the company is introducing the new option in selected ad categories for the present. CPA bidding (on a global basis) is available today through its ads API. CPA will make its way t [...]

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Did you know that Facebook offers the capability to create unpublished posts on your Facebook Page? Such “dark posts” have actually been around for over six months, but it was only recently that Facebook has allowed them to appear in the Newsfeed. With Newsfeed being by far the most engaging placement on site, it’s not a surprise that more and more advertisers are expressing a renewed interest in unpublished posts. The primary (and most exciting) use case for creating unpublished posts is message testing. Before “dark posts,” Pages that wanted to test post content would have to bl [...]

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Mark Zuckerberg told Marketing Land at the Facebook Home announcement today that ads will not be served on the new Cover Feed at the launch. Zuckerberg confirmed that they are planning ad units, but they won't roll out for some time. More Facebook Home Coverage Facebook Launches 'Home' – A New Android Home Screen Experience Hands On With Facebook Home Cover Feed And Chat Heads While "Facebook Home" Keeps Google, Search Is Harder To Reach Live Blog: The Facebook Android "Home" Phone Event [...]

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Finding offline customers online is one of the Holy Grails of online marketing, and that's what Facebook’s “Custom Audiences” advertising product is designed to do. As Facebook puts it, “Custom audiences let marketers find their offline audiences among Facebook users.” The feature allows you to match phone numbers, email address, or user IDs gathered offline to actual Facebook users. That contact information might come from customer loyalty programs, applications on Facebook, prospective customers or elsewhere. Any contact list that you have is usable. Custom Audiences is the s [...]

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[caption id="attachment_32500" align="alignright" width="300"] image from Stock.XCHNG[/caption] This month marks the nine year anniversary of when Facebook (then known as TheFacebook.com) was first conceived and created by Mark Zuckerberg. Since then, Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds, currently supporting over one billion active users (as of December 2012) and over 618 million active daily users. Facebook's capabilities and layouts have undergone the most obvious changes over the last nine years, and the way that marketers have learned to connect with users has grown, as well. [...]

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The Baltimore Ravens just beat the San Francisco 49ers to win Super Bowl XLVII in a game that came down to the final seconds. But online, the social network showdown belonged to Twitter in a dominating win over Facebook, Google+ and all other social networks. According to my count, Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 national TV commercials -- that's 50 percent of the spots that aired during CBS' game coverage. Facebook was mentioned in only four of those commercials -- about eight percent. Google+, which is reportedly the No. 2 social network in the world, wasn't mentioned at all. YouTube [...]

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About six months ago, Facebook introduced yet another type of ad for advertisers to try: the Sponsored Result. Marketers can serve Facebook users searching for Pages, Applications, and such with ads in the Search bar. As Facebook says, the goal of Sponsored Results is “... help [Facebook users] better find and discover the brands, products, and experiences relevant to them.” For advertisers, it’s a great way to increase exposure and to send more people on to your Page or Application.   The Details Sponsored Results ads do require some creative. While the image, title, an [...]

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Social media isn't solely about direct social results. There are many places on your website where social media may improve your search engine optimization (SEO) while helping your business grow its online presence. No SEO strategy can guarantee results, but these tips can help ensure that you have all the bases covered to take full advantage of the available opportunities. Alt Tags For Icons Alt tags for images are sometimes overlooked by website marketing managers, who are so focused on meta tags or the content of the site, that they forget the benefit other meta tags can bring. Adding [...]

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We’ve talked at length about the importance of engaging your Facebook community beyond simply acquiring fans. Page Post ads are a great way to encourage this interaction. If you're a retailer, consider Facebook Offers, a relatively new type of Page Post that allows brand pages to create coupons and share them exclusively on Facebook. Offers can be beneficial to businesses both on and off Facebook. On Facebook, you can spread the word about your product or service to your fans, as well as to their friends. At the same time, you’re driving traffic off Facebook to your store or website and [...]

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We all know that content on websites is important, but what about content on social media sites? There are countless companies that have amazing, well-written websites, but when it comes to content strategy on social media... they fall a bit short. Simply posting the link and letting the link preview on Facebook do all the work isn't always working anymore. Social media users are getting smarter and know how to decipher and sift through the content that company pages have posted on Facebook. This is especially true with the introduction of promoted posts and sponsored stories on Facebook [...]

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Back in April Facebook's "Preferred Developer Consultants" were renamed "Preferred Marketing Developers." Now, all PMD's will be included in the new Preferred Marketing Developer Center. This will help folks find the right developers for their Facebook apps and enterprise tools. Some of the main features of the new PMD center include the addition of company profile pages that can include case studies, white papers, advanced details and more. All PMDs will be able to include a specialty list to more adequately display their core expertise. The center will also spotlight certain news and [...]

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[caption id="attachment_27385" align="alignright" width="257"] Everson's profile photo on Facebook[/caption] Despite being a public company with billions in revenue, there's still a lot of doubt about Facebook advertising. The company's Global Marketing Solutions VP Carolyn Everson is trying to dispel that doubt, reportedly sharing at a conference this week that Samsung -- though "sophisticated" targeting and other techniques -- brought in $129 million in sales of its Galaxy S III solely by spending $10 million over three weeks on Facebook. That's a considerable return on ad spend in any [...]

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So, you’ve chosen your ad types, written creative, ran and optimized your campaign. What’s next? Evaluating Success It’s a fairly straightforward process to decide if your campaign was successful. Did you get fans? Conversions? Sign ups? Did you fulfill your campaign’s original goals? That should be easy to measure. The optimization strategies outlined in my previous column should have allowed you to make the most of the dollars you spent on Facebook. You’ve (hopefully) come away feeling satisfied that it was money well spent. Don’t forget about the less tangible successes [...]

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To get the most out of your Facebook campaigns, you need to devote time to evaluating their performance -- not just after they’ve finished running, but while they are still active. You aren't best served by creating ads, running them for several weeks, and then checking them after they have finished spending. You will see much better results if you’re willing to optimize on a regular basis during the lifetime of the campaign. Determining Your KPIs So what is optimization? As we mentioned before, optimization is a term for improving performance of a given key performance indicator (K [...]

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Facebook announced they have hit a billion active users and to celebrate they released a TV ad. The TV ad goes through the events, life cycles and routines people go through on a daily basis and explores those emotions conveying how Facebook is there to help you keep track of the things that connect you. The TV ad is named "The Things That Connect Us." Here is the ad: Facebook explains that chairs, doorbells, bridges, and airplanes. "These are things that people use to get together and connect. Facebook is also something that over a billion people around the world use to connect w [...]

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More than any other element, targeting is what sets Facebook advertising apart from other channels. Anything that a user inputs into his or her Facebook profile is targetable: age, gender, relationship status, location, interests, level of education, and more. These capabilities allow you to reach customers at a much deeper and more customized level. Instead of waiting for your customers to come to you, you can bring highly relevant content to them. Don't Oversimplify Overlooking or oversimplifying your targeting approach limits the kind of success you can have. The abundance of targe [...]

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It’s easy to dismiss creative as a lesser element of Facebook advertising. But it really does matter! In the many campaigns SocialCode has run, we've seen massive variance in performance across different text elements.  Here is an opportunity to showcase what your brand or product is about, to distinguish yourselves from other ads or potential competitors, and to capture even more data. Again, Facebook is a unique platform and as such requires unique creative. Not all ad types allow for creative input, but the most widely used Standard Click and Like Ads do offer creative control, a [...]

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An Achilles heel of pay-per-click internet advertising is the risk that someone will click on an ad they're not the least bit interested in. To the extent that unqualified clicks are limited to a few over-caffeinated users who click wildly, this isn't really a big concern -- especially to advertisers accustomed to the targeting constraints of traditional media. Yet click fraud, usually called invalid clicks by advertising platforms, has been a real concern over the years. Click fraud comes in many forms. Paid to read schemes target ads which compensate the hosting site with a percenta [...]

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