Facebook has overhauled its ad buying platform and is moving away from 'likes' and into hard conversions. It has launched a well-trailed slimline ad offering that means marketers can choose their objective and let Facebook's tech do the rest.
Marketers have long questioned the value of a 'like'. From now on, the Facebook ad buying process will start with advertisers being asked, 'What's your advertising objective?' Facebook will recommend an appropriate ad, although advertisers can still be able tailor placement if that's what they want to do.
The move was first flagged by the company in June. Last month it stepped up its efforts to woo Australian brands, bringing together some of the country's biggest advertisers, and its global tech partners, to explain how things are going to be around here.
Since IPO in May last year Facebook has made major leaps in monetising the eyeballs of its billion-plus users. Its Q3 earnings results are due at the end of October and will indicate whether furgher progress has been made. Earlier this month it stepped up preparatory work for search ads, and in September Facebook rolled out a trial of autoplay video.
"Today's updates, which we call objective-based ad buying and reporting, are part of our ongoing efforts to make advertising on Facebook as simple as possible," Facebook said in the announcement. "Businesses told us that when creating an ad, they didn't want to choose an ad unit – they wanted to meet an objective. We spoke with marketers of all types and sizes to uncover the objectives that matter most to them."
The eight objectives Facebook is touting are: clicks to website; website conversions; page post engagement; page likes; app installs; app engagement; in-store offer claims; and event responses. Facebook has also updated its Ads Manager analytics tool to reflect the new approach. It will now show the objective, the number of times the objective was met, and the cost per stated objective.
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