The Tides Are Turning
by Mike Graves
Actually the tides started turning about 4 years ago with the advent of Facebook’s monster marketing machine, Facebook Business Manager.
The brilliance of Facebook cannot be denied. Let’s take a look at this for a moment. For as long as can be remembered in online marketing and advertising Direct Response advertising has been the name of the game with Google and Amazon being the 500 pound gorillas on the block.
Not that you can’t use Facebook for Direct Response advertising, but that’s not their main strength. That would be Interruption Advertising, but we will get to that in a moment.
Direct Response is akin to how most men shop. Well…the stereotypical way men shop.
Man walks outside and is cold. Says to himself “I need a coat.” He then goes directly to the coat store and looks for, or asks for, a coat. The shop sells him a coat.
Direct Response. A response to his request for a coat. Simple enough right?
Well that is where Google kills it. Google is so ubiquitous that their name is a verb. Looking for something? ‘Google’ it. Need a coat? Google it. A multitude of links will pop up of online shops where one could easily buy a coat…including Amazon.
And statistically speaking $.50 of every dollar spent online is spent on Amazon. Amazon is nothing BUT direct response advertising and sales. And they have built walls around their user data, algorithms, and policies the ancient Greeks would have been envious of.
Meanwhile, Facebook goes merrily along adding user after user until Q2 of 2018 when they reached 2.3 BILLION users. How? By concentrating on UE (User Experience) through entertainment, education, and information. And behind the scenes they are collecting and hoarding user information.
Ages, phone numbers, email address, interests, jobs, groups, experiences, locations (in real time), and most importantly interactions. I’ll explain why that is important in a moment.
2.3 Billion people world wide. 230 Million in the US alone.
But instead of building walls around the information, Facebook opened the doors to that mountain of user information, completely transparent to any advertiser willing to step up and buy a ticket.
Thus heralding the change of tide.
Interruption advertising is not new. Anyone who has ever watched TV and seen a commercial has been subjected to it. You were being entertained, educated, or informed and your program was interrupted with an ad.
Same thing…sort of…with Facebook. You’re going along watching cat videos and catching up on the latest memes and an ad slides into view interrupting your feed. Same thing, but not really.
The difference is Facebook’s massive engine utilizing the massive amount of user information and..this is key…user interaction.
Facebook’s main priority is UE. They want to make sure you are seeing things you are interested in. So they use all the information they have gathered to make sure you are presented with and stay happy with your content. And of course stay on Facebook.
That way you aren’t so annoyed by the ad interruption. Chances are it’s probably something that catches your eye because it is something your information and actions have told Facebook you might fancy.
See the difference? Old school Interruption Advertising is a shotgun blast to anyone and everyone that might be listening or watching. Facebook is a sniper in this example. Gather information. Observe actions and movements. Discover patterns and predict. Then…fire the ad that will find it’s target.
But how is this a true change in tide? People still Google stuff. Half of all online shopping is done on Amazon. So how is Facebook relevant here? I’m sure you can already see most of the picture. But let me fill in the rest with this tidbit and then I will leave you to ponder the fallacy of not advertising on Facebook before now.
90% of all online traffic is on a mobile device.
50% of all time spent online is spent on social media platforms. The remainder of that time is spread between phone calls, text, other apps (like playing video games or online searching)
The top social media platform is obviously Facebook. That leaves the other top players, Instagram, Messenger, and Whatsapp. Guess what? Facebook owns all of those.
Isn’t it interesting that you can advertise on all of them?
In the meantime, here is very unique way we are leveraging the power of Business Manager and Facebook advertising.
