Facebook aims to lure television advertisers with a slate of new advertising products that it introduced on Sunday. Many of these new advertising options will be available on Instagram as well, says a report from Reuters.
Targeting video advertisers
Facebook’s new advertising options have been designed to take advantage of Facebook’s strength in mobile. Facebook has the most popular smartphone app in the world that generates more than three-quarters of its $10 billion-plus in annual ad revenue on phones. “Brand awareness” ads are among the new products, and they aim at reaching a large number of audiences to promote the name and brand of a company.
Facebook will be targeting advertisers using video advertising, and trying to convince them that their dollars will be better spent (versus advertising on TV) if they switch to advertising on mobile platforms. They argue this is so, because users, especially millennials, spend more time on their mobile phones rather than watching television.
Social media marketing analyst with eMarketer, Debra Aho Williamson, said, “Facebook is listening to the ad community and giving them what they are looking for. Does Facebook want video ad dollars? Yes.” In February, the social networker had two million active advertisers, and on Sunday, it announced the number has risen to 2.5 million.
Facebook ads offer much more than TVs
For ads on the television, advertisers generally focus on the number of people that can be reached, and the same approach has been adopted by Facebook as well to make the transition between television spending and digital spending easy. At the same time, Facebook offers the ability to target specific audiences with ads such as women in a specific age group who have shopped on a particular site, and this is something that TV cannot do.
“We want to be the single-most important platform for all businesses,” a Facebook exec said.
Facebook’s new product comes just ahead of New York City’s 12th Advertising Week, which is scheduled from Monday to Friday. The world’s largest advertisers are expected to gather at the event. Rapid growth has been seen in digital video advertising spending, and by 2019 the number is expected to swell $15 billion, or growth of 13%, according to eMarketer. For the same period, a growth of 2% will be seen in television ad spending to a total of $78 billion.
