A Fresh Approach For Facebook

Facebook users in Asia may have noticed that ads on the social network are far less obtrusive than they used to be.

What’s missing, but unlikely to be missed, are skyscraper ads – long perpendicular ads that used to run down the side of a page, which have been gradually phased out since January.

Facebook executives, who have had their share of missteps trying to commercialize the site, decided to stop selling skyscraper ads outside the US, after an ad sales deal with Microsoft expired, on the grounds that they worsened the user experience.

In their place, the social network is offering what it calls engagement ads, smaller executions more in keeping with the social ambience of the site, including video ads that incorporate user commentary and fan-page ads that invite people to sign up to pages run by specific brands.

Advertising becomes more social
The decision may frustrate some advertisers, who found Facebook’s massive reach useful for getting ad campaigns in front of potential customers.

The move, however, also reflects a wider shift in thinking about the relative importance of reach and engagement for online marketing. Many brands are exploring a fresh approach to not only social media, but to interactive media as a whole, investing more money in branded destinations that people will actively seek out, and less on trying to intercept people who are busy doing something else.

“As much as many marketers would like to think so, people are not going to Facebook, to join up with marketing efforts,” says Lee Smith, Asia-Pacific digital CEO for media agency network Omnicom Media Group.

“People are going to Facebook with a set expectation. If you as a marketer are there to enhance that expectation, you will win in that space. You must think about the conduit and experience first, and the marketing message second.”

Interest from local and MNC brands
Local and international brands as diverse as Chocolatos and Yamaha Motors in Indonesia, Century Tuna in the Philippines and Revive and Puma in Malaysia, have already attracted thousands of fans to their Facebook pages, points out George Foo, COO of iHub Media, an online sales house which sells home-page engagement ads for Facebook in Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

“An increasing number of clients are willing to put resources onto Facebook to come up with more targeted strategies this year,” Foo says. By comparison social media strategies tended to be more ad hoc in 2009, he adds.

Fan-page ads may also be on their way out, according to reports at press-time, to be replaced with the option to like something, after the company found that Facebook users are twice as likely to use the site's like button than become a fan of something.

“These lighter-weight actions mean people will make more connections across the site, including with your branded Facebook pages,” the company wrote in a letter to ad agencies published on AllThingsD, a specialist website.

This is an edited extract from a feature published in the Q1 2010 edition of The Asia Media Journal.