I Miss the Old Facebook (Part 2)
Facebook is going to create their own content, and that’ll be a nice new venture. What excites me about the prospect of Facebook getting into television is the monetization potential which isn’t exactly defined yet. You could make it a standard paid service, use mid-stream ad breaks for live video, or get deep into personalized, interactive commercial breaks — the latter would be pretty cool.
TV commercial breaks have sucked for as long as I can remember. A standard 30-second commercial break is a parade of consumer facing products and half of them are irrelevant to viewers, especially on general channels. But even if Spalding advertised on ESPN at 8PM during the NBA Finals, it’s nothing more than a quick few words on a new product and that’s it. What’s more, for the advertiser, it’s tough to tell if the ad led to sales. It’s no surprise why TV ad spend loses against the internet.
I’m thinking that Facebook can make my 30-second commercial break on a TV show customized to what I like, rather than inferring what I like based on what I’m watching. Imagine being able to save that ad, watch it later, or directly purchase the product in the ad you’re watching through a direct link to Amazon or Shopify? That solves actual pain points that viewers experience with ads, unless ads are the pain themselves. Facebook could make a personally tailored commercial break experience, targeted perfectly, with seamless tracing on if they works.
It’d be a total game changer. Commercial time is no longer 30-seconds, but 30-seconds for every viewer, and that democratizes the advertiser’s world. Prices for ads drop given the newfound space to place an ad, and people get to see niche ads that are relevant to them. This makes sense if I’m watching a TV show on my own, but what about during the Superbowl? I might watch on my own, but chances are I’ll watch with my friends in a bar or in the living room with many people. Now we get into the fundamental problem of sharing screens.
Now, people in shared spaces instinctively look at their phones when ads come on. Maybe there’s nothing on the big screen, but your Facebook app shows 30 seconds of ads the next time you turn it on if you’re tuned in. But to be honest I’d prefer if Facebook gifted me VR goggles, that’s a personalized screen right? Problem solved.
