It’s time marketers re-evaluated the way they use Facebook
Brands are shifting ever more spend on to Facebook, so it’s high time they got some hard data about advertising on the site, writes Matt Bell, head of digital strategy at MEC
With brands shifting ever more spend on to Facebook – figures show ad revenues doubled in the first quarter of this year – it, perhaps, seemed inevitable that Facebook is set to overtake Channel 4 and Sky to become the UK’s third-largest media owner, in terms of advertising sales.
This growth is something that’s happening on a global scale too – Facebook has been named as the fastest-growing media owner in the world for the second year running and has been ranked as the fifth-biggest in the world, although the dominance of Google’s parent Alphabet is apparent.
In the UK, it’s an impressive milestone for a media owner that’s barely over a decade old and that only hit profitably in 2009 – one that will make social media pioneers, such as ITV and Sky’s Rupert Murdoch, wince as they remember their respective FriendsReunited and MySpace misadventures. And just last month, Facebook announced that it was planning to compete against Google’s YouTube, too, by allowing brands to create pre-roll ads with videos.
For marketers, these headlines could also act as a clarion call that they should also take note and perhaps re-evaluate the way that they use Facebook, if they are to continue to get the most out of its continued success. Brands are shifting ever more spend on to Facebook, so it’s high time they got some hard data about advertising on the site.
It might be hard to swallow, but a reliance on organic reach to promote brand videos is officially coming to an end. It has long been known that Facebook’s algorithm was making it harder, and some recent MEC research, conducted over 9,000 posts and 1.8 billion impressions from 12 of our highest spending clients, confirms this.
Brands’ organic posts – distributed free from their brand pages without paid advertising – were only seen by 4.2 per cent of their followers in the fourth quarter of 2015, which represents a decline of two-fifths on the previous year. But the number of posts clients have sent organically has only dropped two per cent year on year, revealing a huge disconnect between perception and reality.
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Free organic reach is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. When brands put out a video organically, only nine per cent of impressions will turn into a Facebook view – defined as someone watching it for at least three seconds. Whereas, paid video ads will be viewed by 23 per cent of impressions.
So clearly, paid advertising is the way forward for brands on Facebook. You might expect us to say that as a media agency, but the research findings strongly back up this claim. It is true that brands can drive organic reach by, for instance, running competitions, but we would question whether these are effective at reaching the target audience or adding value to the brand.
While the comparison with Sky and Channel 4 might be accurate in terms of advertising revenue, creatively, Facebook is a very different channel – it’s no good simply sticking up an existing TV ad on Facebook and hoping for the best (although it has been shown to be an effective place to premiere TV ads).
As with their TV counterparts, Facebook campaigns require a high level of original creativity in order to cut through. Videos created specifically for the platform are more likely to hook people in and hold their attention – they have a 21 per cent greater likelihood of being viewed than running old TV ads, and are 44 per cent more likely to be viewed for over 10 seconds.
Importantly, original ads that haven’t been seen before create 21 per cent more engagement from users, in the form of comments, likes and shares.
Within their inherent creativity, there are other subtle, but important, nuances. It was striking to find that only nine per cent of Facebook videos are viewed with the sound on, so a vital skill for agency creatives is to find ways of telling stories without sound.
Facebook is overtaking some of the UK’s leading broadcasters as an important destination for brands. But it’s important that marketers treat the platform in a different way to those same broadcast channels if they are to share in its success.