How Facebook Could Change the World of Advertising

Facebook has come a long way since it’s first ad placements: banner ads called Facebook Flyers that allowed advertisers to target college students with a specific school’s .edu email address. What’s happened since mirrors the marketing developments we’ve seen across the web. Technology has led to more effective advertising as well as improved tracking and retargeting. But Facebook, with its vast trove of personal information, is now stepping into relatively unknown territory as it introduces a vital improvement to its Custom Audiences ad tool, and paves the way to offline sales attribution. This could change the world of advertising. Custom Audience Measurement works like this: businesses collect email addresses of their customers. The businesses then submit the email list in an encrypted, privacy-enabled manner, and advertise to those people on Facebook. When a customer makes a purchase at the advertiser’s store location and swipes a credit card, loyalty card, or provides their email address again, the businesses can match purchases to email addresses. The data is then compared (again, encrypted to protect privacy) and Facebook reports the information to the businesses, comparing advertising exposure, clicks, and sales numbers.  In a preliminary use of the tool, Bud Light teamed up with Datalogix to uncover a 3.3% sales lift during a 4-week Facebook-only marketing campaign. While this functionality has been available to advertisers, such as Bud Light, who were working with a Facebook measurement partner, the feature is now being expanded to anyone using Custom Audiences. Any businesses who can link their transaction data with Facebook users can now see whether their ads are working—really working. For most marketers, linking sales information with views and clicks is the holy grail of attribution, and it’s likely that Custom Audience Measurement will be extremely popular for Facebook marketers who have the capacity to implement it. We think this tool will be a landmark development for not just Facebook, but social media as a whole. Brands have been investing their time and money into online communities and interactions with their fans online; now it’s time to see how social impacts sales. How do you feel about Custom Audience Measurement? Is it something your business will utilize?