Polygraph Media Blog

Snap Reactions to February 29 Facebook Announcements - Ads & Pages

Some quick snap reactions to the February 29 announcements today at the Facebook Marketing Conference:

• The Timeline for Pages features seem to be a matter of both give and take.  Pages get Timeline functionality, which is now the standard view of both Pages and Profiles.  Users can interact with local businesses, brands, non-profits, and people using the same look & feel.
• This is a huge investment in this new structure... Facebook will be very motivated to (over time) make Timeline the default structure for all Pages & Profiles, whereas it is a choice right now.  It's just easier to manage with a single data & UI structure.
• Default landing pages are no more -- this only impacts pages of 5,000 Fans or more.  But the default view is now the Timeline.  Custom tabs are still available, but only four will be immediately visible on the Page.  A user will have to click to see more custom tabs.  The concept of custom tabs has been on the decline for awhile, and this will only accelerate the trend.
• Fans can send private messages to Pages.  Another step in the homogenizing of the Page/Profile experience.  To my knowledge, it doesn't yet work the other way around.
• Sticky posts on Fan Pages -- you can give your Fans an extra incentive to post to your Wall by making the best posts from your Fans persistent.  This is similar to what happens in Forums and is a very nice new feature for Page Admins.
• Timeline is optimized around your *friends* interactions with a Brand or Company.  So it's a way to see only relevant information to you as it relates to a Page.  This will really force marketers to optimize around good feedback from people -- because that's what their friends will see when they visit the Page.
• Maps will have prominent real estate on the new Pages, which will be a benefit for local businesses.  It will actually bring Facebook local business listings closer to parity with Yelp listings and Google Local Business listings -- and that will be interesting as local/SMB competition intensifies.
• Facebook Offers will be made available to Fans, which in my opinion will revolutionize loyalty.  Facebook has created the largest contributory database in the world, and with it a huge % of the world's population.  Offers to Fans will drive a huge amount of commerce to participating businesses.  In so doing, it will also crush a lot of startups working on this very problem.
• Facebook is introducing Logout Ads to brands, unlocking ad space for the 37 million people per day who actually log out.  It's revolutionary because someone will be forced to see an ad, watch a video, or perform some task before logging out.  Yes, it's a captive audience -- but it's less than 5% of the total Facebook audience.  And it may just annoy people more than it unlocks value.  
• Speaking of, Facebook is now allowing ad units to sit in the News Feed alongside real News Feed stories as a premium ad unit.  I can't help but think this is a short-sighted move -- if the feature is opened up to everyone.  But I'm guessing this will be sold to brands who desperately want News Feed placement -- and will be willing to pay to guarantee it.  Even so, how this is executed will be key.  It's an art, not a science.
• Facebook will allow you to target mobile users -- iPad, iPhone, Android -- and will put these ads in the News Feed.  This is a good development that puts it at parity with Google's Adwords offering.

All told, ads are about to get much more prominent in the Facebook experience.  In the past, Users have briefly complained about major changes but have come to accept them.  We'll see what happens this time.

Some of the moves are IMO justifiable -- Facebook ad CTRs are very low.  Some of these changes are designed to address poor CTR performance.  I'm glad to see they are doing that, although I think this will bring about increased ad costs for advertisers -- sooner rather than later.  Advertisers will get more clicks for their money, however, so it isn't without a tradeoff.

It should be noted that Facebook is doing this at the same time it is preparing for its IPO.  I don't think that's a coincidence. Facebook is under pressure to not just nail their projected ads revenue numbers, but dramatically exceed them.  That's what happens when you get a 20x revenue multiple the day you IPO, and it might end up higher than that.

Unfortunately, the story is not over by any means.  Many of these changes will roll out over the next 2-3 months.  We don't know the full impacts on workflows, costs, and marketing campaigns for awhile.  We also won't know how all of this impacts the type of ads that we see -- whether smaller businesses will be able to effectively use Facebook or if they'll be drowned out by big brands. 

To me, the big question is whether or not Facebook can pull off this ambitious set of changes elegantly.  My hunch is that you'll see Facebook increasingly littered with corporate ads/promotions, and User outcry will be loud.  Will it be enough for people to migrate away?  Zuck's bet is a resounding "no".  We shall see.

The Future of News is Now, and it's Tiger Teams

News media has always been an interest to me going back to my time as sports editor of my high school newspaper, The Northwestern, in 1991.  I was deeply involved, maybe even instrumental, in converting Stratfor from a consulting business to a web publisher in 1999.  And our first go-to-market strategy for Notice Technologies in 2009-2010 was to partner with local newspapers and the families that owned them.  So I have a professional curiousity about local media that I can't quite shake, even if it isn't the best business decision.

The other day, I read an update posted by my friend, Scott McKay, Publisher of The Hayride -- a Louisiana-based conservative blog that covers Louisiana & national politics.  Scott was updating his audience on traffic that The Hayride has earned, relative to its major media competitors in Louisiana.  You can check out his post here... it's fascinating.

Scott has gone from nothing to being the #2 most read media property in Louisiana in just two years.  Let that sink in for a moment.

From nothing to being #2 in his market in two years.

Some of you might say, well... I'm sure some Conservative think tank is funding Scott and his efforts.  Nope, think again.

Growth of The Hayride has been ENTIRELY organic, driven by a small tiger team of people insanely focused on developing content interesting to its audience.  And it really hasn't made significant adjustments to its original editorial voice or content.  They've stuck to it, and in turn developed a large, growing, and apparently loyal voice.

Looking around the media landscape, The Hayride is not at all an anomaly.  This era has been more or less defined by the emergence of either bootstrapped or modestly funded (initially) entities that have grown their audiences.  The Drudge Report was probably the original -- one guy curating content for the world's edification has turned into a profitable powerhouse.  Stratfor was one in the late 1990s and continues to thrive despite its recent hacking attack.  The Huffington Post and Breitbart emerged in the middle of the last decade and continue to roll.  Mashable is doing the job today in the tech/social media space.  Henry Blodget's Business Insider is reporting on business and stock market issues, but with a far smaller staff than say CNBC.  At the local level, we're seeing companies like Culturemap, The Magic City Post (Birmingham), Buffalo Rising, The Texas Tribune, and countless others challenge incumbents.  In traditional media, even the venerable Seattle P-I has moved entirely to a Web model and streamlined their team several years ago.

What's the lesson here?  Traditional media reporting is tough, labor intensive, and expensive. Opinion and analysis, on the other hand, can be a lot more inexpensive.  It doesnt' require travel, developing relationships, covering a "beat", or doing deep investigative reporting in person.  It is, however, very tough to do on a consistent basis.  Those properties who have a supremely talented Publisher/Editor who can pump out 5-7 articles per day *and stick to it* are the future winners.  We've seen it time and time again, and we shouldn't be surprised when it happens again.

And if anything, we're in an era where, counterintuitively, less money provides better outcomes for winning niche markets.  The future is being built from the ground up by tiger teams.  It's a long term play.  But if I were building the media conglomerate of the future, I'd find a way to align with or acquire a network of emergent local and vertical blogs.