Facebook to Roll Out New Ways Marketers Can Build their Brands

Facebook has been in the news for more reasons than one and they have been one of the most adored social media platforms since it offers options to share content and media in most forms. However, they have been the talk of the digital media world more so after their keen developments in making marketers’ and brands-builders’ jobs easy and chalked out.

While the platform continues to demystify and unlock new secrets they also continue to overwhelm social media enthusiasts.

In the coming weeks Facebook plans to roll out Expanded Video Capabilities along with Expanded Reach and Frequency Capabilities. At a first glance, both the offerings sound exciting.

Expanded Video Capabilities

For marketers who seek to market their brand or offerings purely based on views they are adding a new feature to the Ads Create Tool, Power Editor and API (Application Program Interface) called ‘video views’

Facebook sources say that these videos will be automatically opitmised to be shared with consumers who are most likely to view videos across the range of devices and target audiences.

In addition to this, ‘Video Views’ will offer 2 other features. If a marketer is working in association with a Facebook Account Representative then a marketer can choose to collate the audiences who have already watched the video, thus giving the brand an opportunity to move them from awareness to affinity and eventually consideration.

To make matters engaging, a marketer can also choose to add a button that links to an online property of the marketer’s choice as seen in the image below

According to Facebook product manager Fidji Simo, “Advertisers have already been seeing great success with our video ads on Facebook, both with our regular video ads as well as Premium video ads. With these new enhancements, marketers can take people on an even deeper journey with their brand, by encouraging people to take an action right after they’ve watched a video, and sending them a targeted brand message later on.”

Expanded Reach and Frequency Capabilities

Facebook has also announced that advertisers that work with Facebook Account Representatives will now be able to predicatably reach a significant number of people and control the message frequency. However, any regular Facebook marketer is aware that reach and frequency can be defined for all kinds of ad campaigns created on the platform.

Kevin Lange, SVP, Social Media, Starcom MediaVest Group, says “We are excited by the capability to precisely align Facebook media delivery with the reach and frequency levels that deliver business results for our clients. We look forward to continued partnership with Facebook to make buying easier and more effective; reach-based planning is an important piece of this.”

From the quote above and the ambiguity surrounding the so-called new offering makes us wonder if this is just an extended effort on Facebook’s part to monetise the already available features by streamlining business’ to work with their team.

How much of it is truly rewarding and how much will continue to perplex marketers will be a fact that will reveal itself in the coming weeks.