Using Facebook to support FMCG mobile brand strategies
Boasting one billion active daily users, Facebook is unrivalled as the world’s number one social media platform, due largely to their continued innovation and they are showing no signs of slowing down with the recent announcement of their latest and most innovative advertising platform: Canvas. Facebook has revealed that users are now using the mobile app more frequently than their desktop version and have also recently revealed that 85.6% of their 2015 advertising revenue came from mobile alone. Brands are seriously turning their attentions to the mobile advertising opportunities that Facebook has to offer, pumping billions of dollars into mobile advertising campaigns with the leading social media site. In fact, Emarketer predicts that by 2019, mobile advertising will account for $65.49 billion, nearly 70% of total digital advertisement spending.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Canvas is an exclusively mobile landing page. Canvas allows users to scroll through ‘stories’; that is, photos, videos, carousels and calls to action. No software is required to build a canvas and it can be set up absolutely free of charge, which means that newer FMCG names can now have access to the same opportunities to engage with their target customers as globally established brands. Coca-Cola trialled the platform last year before it became widely available, building a Canvas page that featured their new aluminium bottles. Here are their sample pages:
As you can see, Canvas allows viewers to “pan” wider photos back and forth, meaning that Coca-Cola were able to show off these simple and slick wide-angle photos.
The advert reached nearly 16 million people and it had an average viewing time of 18 seconds. During the testing period some companies even reported that users were spending between two and three minutes on average looking at the adverts. Facebook have clearly mastered the art of mobile advertising optimisation in recognition of the fact that social media is becoming increasingly central to a brand’s marketing strategy and revenue stream. However, since these full-screen mobile ads will load as soon as someone clicks on a news feed ad, one of the biggest challenges that both Facebook and their advertisers will face will be to understand how to take advantage of this new advertising platform without irritating or ‘spamming’ the user. Receiving these ‘take-over’ messages could certainly be seen as intrusive and may irritate Facebook users.
What are your thoughts on this? – Is it pitched just right or is it too intrusive?
Would you feel that you’d been spammed if you received Coca-Cola’s advert through Facebook?
If you’d like to raise these questions to Facebook, then don’t miss the opportunity to join us at the upcoming Online & Digital Grocery Summit (24th May 2016, Hilton Tower Bridge London) where Caroline Gabor and Emma Fudge, Client Solution Managers at Facebook will be presenting on ‘The power of Mobile to drive sales in the Digital Age’. Caroline and Emma will also be joined by Nick Bamber, Head of Digital Marketing and Digital Creative at Asda and Glenn Ticehurt, Ecommerce Media Manager at Waitrose who will be presenting on how to optimise your brand’s e-commerce advertising opportunities on their retail platforms. For more information about the event, request your copy of the brochure here or get in touch with me directly on sarah@mydigitalshelf.co.uk
