The social network has now unveiled some new immersive components to its marketing strategy.
Chris Cox, the chief product officer at Facebook, spoke at the Cannes Lions ad festival and provided a great deal of insight into the future of how mobile advertising will appear on the social network.
Cox explained to advertising execs that he has heard their requests and is basing Facebook’s strategy on those needs.
While on stage, he made it clear that he had been paying attention to what the mobile advertising firms wanted when it came to the tools and features that were available to them. He explained that Facebook social media marketing is now headed toward a direction that will provide more creative tools that will allow for more immersive ads. He explained that this would arrive in the form of an entirely new mobile format. The purpose will be to provide marketers with capabilities for developing rich media that will seamlessly combine with the videos that users are enjoying to an increasing degree within their news feeds.
This way, mobile advertising on Facebook will become interactive to a degree that it never has been, before.
The concept, which was demonstrated on a Michael Kors watch, behind this new type of social media marketing is that video will be combined with still images, information, and animated images. In this way, the ads will be different and more interactive for smartphone, tablet, and smartwatch users. The user can manipulate the mobile ad in order to obtain the experience that he or she wants. For instance to turn the watch around, to zoom in to see a closer view, or to obtain more details, all that is needed is a swipe across the screen.
Cox also pointed out that Facebook has been focusing on a way to ensure that load times are shortened, as well. It has been developing a new format that is meant to fit snugly into two massive trends that have already been pushing Facebook’s growth forward over the last year and, hopefully, into the future. Those two trends are video and mobile advertising.
This recent addition by the giant network is shining a light on the failures marketers have made in connecting with smartphone users.
A recent addition to the Facebook social media marketing offerings is a new ad format that provides brands with the opportunity to engage with smartphone users once again when they have already previously installed their apps onto their mobile devices.
This also points out a number of flawed ideas that have developed regarding with mobile communications by marketers.
This new step has drawn attention to some of the flaws that have come up in the ways that Facebook social media marketing has been adopted by marketers in order to communicate with their audiences over mobile channels. The new format was designed to help to compensate for the failings in the way that the social network has been used in the past by advertisers.
There remain considerable weaknesses in the use of Facebook social media marketing, particularly over mobile.
The new ad format is designed to help to overcome that problem by giving brands a way to develop a call to action for customers that have already downloaded the brand’s app from within the social network’s own application, but have then stopped using the brand’s app. As there will be a number of different formats available, it will be possible for marketers to direct mobile users on the social network to check out specific features and content from within their own apps.
The point of these new formats is to give brands the chance to obtain a new “second chance” in which they can engage with smartphone users once again after having encouraged them to download their app, but then having failed to keep them interested. This could provide advertisers with a considerable opportunity to communicate with users, or it may simply offer yet another way in which they will miss the point and generate only temporary interest in a brand.
The entire premise behind the Facebook social media marketing attempt is that if it is there, people will come to get it. Though this has many quite excited, there has been considerable skepticism expressed, as well. Only time will tell.
