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Facebook lets marketers analyze user posts to guide ad strategies (FB)
BI Intelligence
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Facebook is testing a new ad insights tool that will let marketers analyze public user posts and comments, which could help with ad targeting and creative ad strategies, according to Ad Age. The identity of users whose posts are being analyzed will be withheld.
Previously, it wasn’t possible for advertisers to mine users' posts for information. Select ad agencies and media companies are part of the testing, and the tool isn’t expected to be more widely available until 2018.
The new ad tool can allow advertisers to analyze Facebook user posts more similarly to how they analyze Twitter posts. It will be easier for advertisers to scour Facebook for public opinions on a certain product or release, which was previously difficult because many users on Facebook tend to have their profiles and commentary set to private. This is in contrast to Twitter, where it is largely easier to access public tweets through the search bar than via users’ feeds.
Here are some two key reasons Facebook’s new tool is important for advertisers:
It may allow brands to reach more of their target audience. Brands will be more easily able to see that users are discussing a certain product or service favorably on a public post, which could lead to better ad targeting opportunities. A shoe brand, for example, could compile an audience group of thousands of users discussing their preference for boots over sneakers on public posts, and then serve those users with targeted ads for boots.
It can help guide brand's creative strategies. If an automaker released a new car and used Facebook’s new tool to see that many users creating public posts saying the car looks unsafe, the car company could tailor its next ad campaign on the car to focus on its safety features and ratings, for example. Brands may begin to focus more on creating separate ads, like a Facebook Live product launch campaign, for Facebook users that may be expressing opinions the brand looks to address, as opposed to repurposing TV creative for Facebook.
However, the attractiveness of Facebook’s new insights tool may lessen if user engagement on the platform continues to decline. Posting of original and personal content — as opposed to reposting a popular article or video — from personal profiles on Facebook decreased by over 29% in 2016, according to Mavrck, per Social Media Today. Should this decline in the number of user posts continue, the tool may become less useful to advertisers, even as its overall user base grows past 2 billion monthly users.
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