1. Facebook will add event RSVPs as an ad targeting option.
Facebook plans to let advertisers send targeted ads to RSVPers of Facebook events.
This event-based targeting works by creating a Facebook Custom Audience of everyone who RSVP’d to an event created by the brand’s Facebook Page. Using the Custom Audience feature, brands can send a targeted campaign to the list of RSVPers and use the RSVP list to create a Facebook Lookalike audience of similar users.
With this RSVP targeting feature, brands will be able to include users who RSVP’d as “going,” users who RSVP’d as “interested,” or include both groups in their Custom Audience list.
Facebook events were already an easy way for companies to promote their brand, but with this new RSVP ad targeting option, Facebook events will be an even better platform for building brand interest.
2. Faster-loading links will be placed higher on mobile News Feeds.
Facebook announced that they will prioritize links that load faster on mobile News Feeds, causing these stories to appear more frequently at the top of the feed and slower stories to appear less often.
Users’ network connection, Wi-Fi capability, and device usage will be taken into consideration to estimate link load times and which News Feed content should be prioritized.
Facebook will roll out this update slowly in the coming months. And if you’re worried about this update decreasing your webpage shares, check out Facebook’s guidelines for improving mobile site load time.
3. Facebook has removed their apps Lifestage and Groups.
Facebook has shut down two of their stand-alone apps: Lifestage and Groups.
Introduced one year ago, Lifestage was designed for teens to connect with others at their school by creating personalized video profiles. Users could also view videos made by others at their school.
The Facebook app Groups was a bit older than Lifestage, launching in November 2014. The app served as a space for users to access all of their Facebook groups in one place. Users could also create new Facebook Groups from the app.
With these app shutdowns, Facebook is honing in on their main Facebook app. In their responses to these app removals, the company explained that they’re focusing more on Groups in the main Facebook app, and plan to incorporate their learnings from Lifestage into the main Facebook app.
4. Facebook is updating their clicks and ad impression reporting.
To give companies a clearer understanding of their ad performance, Facebook has updated its reporting on clicks and ad impressions.
Facebook will no longer be counting unintentional clicks in campaign metrics and will not be charging for unintentional clicks in Audience Network, its platform for Facebook to run ads in other apps. Explaining this update, Facebook Product Marketing Manager Brett Vogel noted that, “unintentional clicks end up delivering really poor experiences for people and advertisers.”
To determine if a click is unintentional, Facebook measures the “drop off rate” — the time a user spends on an ad’s landing page. Facebook identifies spending less than two seconds on an ad as an unintentional click.
Facebook has also updated their ad impression reporting to give businesses more clarity on their total number of ad impressions with two new metrics:
- Gross impressions: this metric now measures both billable and non-billable ad impressions. Non-billable impressions include ads delivered after a company’s budget was spent, ads served to the same user in a short time, and ad delivery due to detectable fraud.
- Auto-refresh impressions: this metric indicates the number of ad impressions due to a browser refresh. Ads that are placed on the right-hand side of a user’s desktop News Feed automatically refresh with new ads after a set period of time.
With these new metrics, Facebook is offering more transparency about ad delivery, allowing users to feel confident about the value of their ad impressions.
5. Facebook is updating video re-share metrics to give creators better insights.
After gathering user feedback, Facebook learned that video creators wanted more metrics on re-shares of their content as well as limitations on the amount of metrics video re-sharers could see. In response, Facebook made some updates to video re-share metrics:
- Only video creators will be able to see the following metrics: retention graph, average watch time, 30 Seconds Views and detailed breakdown of views (autoplay/click to play, unique/repeat). Minutes viewed, 10 Seconds Views and sound metrics will soon only be available to creators as well.
- Page owners who re-share videos will be allowed to see the following metrics: aggregated information about the demographics, general location of the people who are viewing that video, daily views of the re-shared video, and additional breakdowns on paid versus organic video activity.
- Facebook will be adding insights for video creators on which Pages are re-sharing their video, though they have not specified the insights yet.
With these re-share metric updates, users will be able to form stronger insights about their posting strategy and content creation.
6. Facebook announced their 2nd Quarter 2017 results.
Facebook reported strong second quarter results with sales growth that surpassed analysts’ estimates. The positive report can be attributed to the increasing demand for Facebook’s mobile ads and Facebook’s success in consistently bringing on new users through its suite of apps.
Here are a few key Q2 stats:
- Revenue rose 45% to $9.32 billion from $6.43 billion in last year’s second quarter.
- Mobile ad revenue represented 87% of total ad sales, up from 84% in the same period last year.
- Profits increased 71% to $3.89 billion from last year’s second quarter profit of $2.28 billion.
- Daily active users were 1.32 billion on average and monthly active users were 2 billion on average — both metrics showed a 17% year-over-year increase.
Facebook stated that “ad load” (the number of ads Facebook shows users) will become less of a revenue growth source this year. For future revenue growth sources, analysts predict that Facebook’s long-term investments in messaging and virtual reality will become substantial revenue streams.
7. Facebook is testing “going live” features from Facebook Camera.
To make it easier for users to go live with video and audio, Facebook is releasing a test version of Facebook Video that includes the abilities to record live audio and video, and to make GIFs.
With this new test version of Facebook Video, the functions “Live,” “Normal,” and “GIF” will appear as tabs across the top of the screen.
On the “Live” tab, you can tap on a video camera icon to live stream video or a microphone icon to live stream audio.
Plus, you’ll now be able to choose whether you want to go live in just your Facebook Stories, as a regular Facebook post, or both.
For now, these Facebook Video live features are only being tested and have not been fully rolled out to users.
8. Facebook is testing adding Stories to the desktop site.
As a test, Facebook Stories will now be available on the desktop site to some users on the right side of the News Feed.
Emulating Snapchat, Facebook Stories is a feed of friends’ pictures and videos from the last 24 hours.
Facebook had already included Stories in their main mobile app, but so far the feature hasn’t received too much attention. In April, Facebook Stories tried to encourage users to add to their story more by greying out icons of users who weren’t using the feature, but Facebook Stories still hasn’t quite caught on.
Facebook hasn’t confirmed the percentage of users that are seeing Stories on their desktop for this test, so it’s unclear for now as to whether adding Facebook Stories to desktop will increase its usage.
9. Facebook is rolling out more Messenger ads globally.
After running limited tests that introduced ads to Facebook Messenger’s home tab, Facebook has announced that it’s expanding a test of home tab ads in the Messenger app globally.
Facebook has stated that they will gradually increase the number of consumers who will be able to see the ads in the Messenger home tab.
Once clicked on, the new Messenger home tab ads will either lead users to a website or work like the older Click to Message ads, which start a message thread between the user and the company when clicked.
Ads represent a major chunk of Facebook’s revenue, so it makes sense that Facebook is adding Messenger home tab ads (there’s only so much News Feed ad space). Users may find the ads alongside their personal messages on the Messenger home tab too intrusive, but if so they will be given the option to hide ads by clicking on the ad’s bottom right downward arrow.
10. Facebook is introducing two new video platforms, Watch and Show Pages.
Facebook is replacing its old Video tab with a new platform called Watch, a space for Facebook users to watch shows. Shows on Facebook are published video series of episodes, live or recorded.
Watch will have a Watchlist feature to help users keep track of the shows that they follow, plus Watch will organize shows into personalized sections, like “What Friends are Watching,” to help users discover new shows. Users will also be able to connect with other viewers by commenting and reacting to shows or by joining dedicated Facebook Groups for shows.
Watch is currently only available to a limited group of people in the US on mobile, desktop, and Facebook TV apps, but will be released to more people in the US in the coming weeks.
As a complement to Watch, Facebook is also releasing Show Pages, which are Pages for users to publish new show episodes, information about the show, and related videos.
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