A lot of new developments at Facebook coming up in the next weeks have been announced. Ads rolling in videos, more localized ads and services, better personalization of ads, to only name a few. Andrew Bosworth, Head of Advertising at Facebook, has recently pointed out what he wants to see and what is on their roadmap for the coming months.
Hyperlocalization
Bosworth wants to hyperlocalize Facebook’s network. Some of those developments are already in place, as Facebook integrates chatbots that help people order things from third-party partners. Others, like soliciting recommending on the social network, have started up organically. Bosworth’s plan is to get rid of those daily annoyances, as he calls them. He wants devices live up to their potential and make those processes better for the user.
Personalization
Personalized ads can be assisted with artificial intelligence and customized media in order to better target consumers that are interested in a specific good or service. Bosworth also points out that Facebook can only do so much with its system and that brands have to come up with better creative and useful audience data.
“At the end of the day, our ability to drive results is only as good as the creative we get and only as good as the audience we’re given to target”, says Andrew Bosworth.
Facebook Videos
Videos have been a huge part of Facebook’s recent strategy. By last year users were already watching 100 million hours of video content per day, showing its potential as a rival to YouTube. But unlike YouTube, Facebook has up until now forbidden “pre-roll” ads. Thus, even though some publishers have been spending significant resources on their Facebook video presence, they have seen no or little ad revenue from their clips. This changed a bit last year, when Facebook allowed creators to publish sponsored video content and tested Ads in Live Videos.
Video ads
Facebook is rumored to announce that it is going to start testing a new ad format. Publishers will get the chance to show ads in their clips after at least 20 seconds. The revenue of those ads will be split between the publisher and Facebook, giving them 55 percent of sales, similar to YouTube’s ad splitting practice. This will be the first way of video publishers to make money off their video content on Facebook. In first reactions publishers seem to be very enthusiastic about those developments. This is all in line with Facebook strategy to help publishers make money.
