As many of you likely know, Polygraph Media began working in programmatic social advertising over a year ago after listening to our friends in different brands and agencies. We pretty consistently heard feedback that our work in data and analytics was interesting, but marketers really crave things that are actionable. Marketing staffs in large companies around the world are all stretched thin. And brands are shifting ad dollars from traditional advertising and web display to “non-traditional” advertising such as mobile, native social, etc. All these realities made us refocus our efforts in the intersection of data and advertising.

And after all, we’ve run digital ad campaigns for ourselves & clients going back to 1998. Back to the days *before* Google Adwords and when Yahoo was not just Overture but GoTo. So why not bring together all the things that we know for a comprehensive social advertising solution for brands and the agencies that serve them.

It has been a very busy year as we’ve had hundreds of conversations with consumer brands of all types: retail, restaurant, health, consumer packaged goods (CPG), entertainment, automotive, etc. You name it. Our client roster has grown significantly over the last 12 months and just about every client has increased their investments with us during that time. Business is looking good but more importantly we are getting smarter about how to best help brands and what their problems really are.

For that reason, I’m going to spend some time over coming months sharing some of what we’ve learned. I have a *long* list of topics to cover from state of the market to strategy to tactics to measurement and analytics.

Today’s post is a quick state of the market — 5 things that I typically have to explain to new clients or stakeholders about Facebook. Most of our programmatic ad platform is built on top of the Facebook Ads API currently, although we intend to support others programmatically soon.

1. Facebook commands VAST market share in social — Facebook to date has been the “winner take all” in social. eMarketer projects that Facebook will earn approximately 2/3 of all social advertising revenue worldwide in 2015. 28% of time online is spent on social media, and among that Facebook enjoys a 3 to 1 advantage over 2nd place, Twitter. So Facebook is winning big — it is the Coca Cola of social media. Facebook enjoys a commanding and unrelenting lead in social market share, which is even more relevant because…
2. Time spent “online” is eating into time spent on “traditional” media channels — The collective work of services such as Facebook, Netflix, etc. are doing a number on “traditional” media. People are moving from TV, radio, and print media to what can be consumed easily on mobile devices. Facebook is a major player in this growing market because…
3. Facebook’s strategy is about diversifying platforms — As an agency friend said to me the other day “Facebook is Viacom. They are in the business of capturing your attention whether you’re on MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, etc. So true. Facebook has a lot of smart people, and they realize that they need a network of properties to map to use cases that evolve over time. They’re largely demographic. So when youngsters started migrating to Instagram, they bought it. Same for What’s App. Facebook is the hub — the place where 1.5 billion people have accounts and that trend is not reversing, in part because Facebook successfully became a mobile-first platform. Which is why the alarmists who have said now for 3+ years that people are leaving Facebook are (if not wrong) analyzing the situation incorrectly…
4. Millennials are not leaving as much as their behavior is *evolving*, and that’s actually a good thing — If Facebook were irrelevant to millennials, you’d see the monthly active users metric suffer. That simply isn’t happening. It’s entirely feasible that people in certain market segments are more *ambient* — i.e. they’re possibly lurking more than they are participating. But even if that is the case, that’s EXCELLENT news for brand advertisers. There is no better way to target people at a relatively low CPM, and audiences are at minimum ambient which means they’re impressionable in a lot of different ways, which is good because…
5. Facebook advertising affords a lot more options for advertisers than Facebook engagement metrics — A lot of people believe that Facebook advertising is all about growing your Fans or doing Post Engagement, and those activities are no longer meaningful. I don’t necessarily agree with that analysis for a variety of reasons, but that’s another argument for another day. Facebook has ten main advertising options through the self-serve platform that are available. I particularly like using Facebook to drive traffic to offers or coupons, and landing pages that support bigger marketing campaigns, lead generation activities, etc. And Facebook is an excellent proxy for mobile advertising as well with the Audience Network. But the greater point is that there are a lot of different choices available, many of which map really well to a lot of brand KPIs.

For a vast majority of brands, investing in real execution with paid Facebook would dramatically improve results and would dollar-cost average down cross-channel advertising investments, and with far less complexity than trying to execute across a much larger number of paid social platforms that carry relatively small market share. More to come on strategy & ad investments later.

My next post will cover some of the things that I would do, ask, and be educated on if I were a brand ad buyer — or if I were in charge of my agency relationship. Everyone, have a great day!