More ads anyone?

Remember the days when Facebook used to be this user-centric social network whose sole purpose was to connect you with your friends rather than selling your personal information to the big soulless companies who could then flood you with ads persuading you to buy their products, the purchase of which will have no less of an effect on your social and personal life than a princess’s kiss on an enchanted frog? No? Nor do I.

One of the reasons why might be the recent explosion in advertising developments within the social network, which appear to be kicking in at a steady rate of many-per-month.
Recent developments include, but are not limited to, mobile ads, sponsored stories, behavioural targeting, lookalike profiling, newsfeed re-targeting, and now – video.
The most recent of the above – video ads – is going to be rolled out this summer and according to some sources will allow advertisers to broadcast 15s ads to their target audiences, by also limiting individual users’  ad exposure to content from one advertiser a day only to maximise brand exposure and impact. The ads will start automatically, allowing people to choose whether they want to activate audio and restart the ad.

Estimates show that the new video format could help boost Facebook’s ad-generated income by around $1.4m a day, which would be a more than welcome new revenue stream for the company that is still trying to make up for its nearly disastrous stock market listing last year.
Facebook’s move to video ads is somehow natural and expected, given that the company has access to one of the richest and most thorough databases of personal information, which it would be crazy not to feed into an opportunity to tap into the ever-growing online video advertising market.
Furthermore, despite many online marketeers’ concerns of the new video ads being too disruptive, the social network has been quite good at subtly introducing new ad formats. (Remember how your friends’ news feeds and photos suddenly  got bigger and tidier with the introduction of the latest interface update? Did you pay as much attention to the slightly more prominent sponsored stories that appeared along as well? Didn’t think so.) This suggests that whether the new video format drives people away or not is totally dependent on execution and how Facebook rolls it out to the wider public, which we can assume (and hope) is only going to happen after a good amount of field testing.

Finally, it would be more than interesting to see how the most socially engaged online space handles one of the most engaging ad formats and what results this would produce. So while from a user’s  point of view I am slightly frustrated with yet another addition to Facebook’s advertising portfolio, the digital planner in me is interested to see whether this new development might help us find a new digital golden goose laying the golden eggs of social engagement.
I’ll keep my doubts for the time being, but only time will tell I guess…

Written by Slavina Racheva, Digital planner/buyer