Facebook makes ads impossible to ignore

Being the platform of choice for more than 4 million advertisers, Facebook is taking their relationship to the next level with new commitments to reinforce this fruitful bond with more reliability and mutual trust.

Transparency, Choice and Accountability are the three things on offer from Facebook, and are aimed at improving the way advertising and marketing takes place on the world’s largest social network.

After encountering errors in their metrics a few months ago, Facebook had addressed the issue with swift action, vowing to usher in more transparency into the process of data collection by working with third party reviewers to further authenticate their collected data and boost its reliability.

Facebook has made good of their promise, and are working with Media Rating Council (MRC) for an audit to verify the data they deliver. The company is also doubling down on their efforts to work with marketers with a greater understanding, involving 24 global third party measurement partners for a wider choice when it comes to marketers to take their pick.

Information will not only be accurate and verified, but also detailed as Facebook plans to delve deeper into impressions on Facebook and Instagram, with enhanced duration data for display ads, such as :

1. Milliseconds that an ad was on the screen

2. Milliseconds that 50% of the ad was on the screen

3. Milliseconds that 100% of the ad was on the screen

Further, Facebook realizes that not all brands and businesses have similar marketing and campaign objectives and thus require flexibility when it comes to media buying. Marketers will now have three new options to buy video ads across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network.

Completed View Buying : Marketers can now choose to pay for video ads that have been viewed to the end for videos up to 10 seconds.

The other two options are announced by Facebook are,

Two-second buying : compliant with the MRC video standard, where at least 50% of an ad’s pixels are in-view for two continuous seconds or longer

Sound-on buying : advertisers will have the ability to buy sound-on video ads.

Facebook ads are about to get much more complex, crisp and engaging; not to mention much more difficult to avoid for Facebook users in the months to come as marketers learn to make the most of the slew of new capabilities from the social network.