Search, PPC, Performance, Social, Turkey

Facebook ads: the missing features

We marketers all know Facebook ads well already. As the online ad spending in Turkey is still growing with 50+% a year, ads are really cheap either if they are priced on a CPM or CPC base.

This is the main reason why the globally set CPMs for Facebook proved to be way too expensive here forcing all advertisers to use PPC ads. And they were suprising for many of the advertisers with really low prices.

Some reasons why I miss some features from Facebook ads. Some new features:

• can make agencies’ life much easier,
• can make much more money to Facebook,
• can help advertisers to target their ads more precisely,
• can help users to get rid of annoying unrelevant ads.

All parties in. Some of the features missing are so basic I can hardly believe they don’t have a priority. OK, let’s see them:

Agency work:

• bulk uploader for ads
• campaigns separated by advertisers (it’s really annoying to crawl thru hundreds of campaigns to find one…)
• bulk managing keywords (interests, sry)
• a way better keyword finder
• keyword targeting based on not just interests but wall posts and/or websites given in personal data
• keyword reports
• conversion costs for engagement ads
• ad placement reports (like ad positions)
• better charting (and of course no 2 day delay in charts…)
• description of new features (This one bulletpoint would deserve a whole post as I often see some nice enhancements on features and/or usability - and find no information in help as the new feature is rolled out without updates in the help section. Pffff.)

More money to Facebook (in addition to the above):

• better placements for PPC ads (as CPM is not going well)
• country based pricing for CPM ads
• broadening keyword targeting (pls. see above)
• Frequency capping (I know Facebook tells that there is no frequency cap as they would like to push advertisers towards CPM ads - where frequency capping is available. But this initiative is about to fail anyway. Frequency capping helps higher CTRs so higher income from the same inventory for Facebook.)

Advertisers (in addition to the above):

• Opportunity to change ad title for engagement ads
• More options to see the possible inventory and estimated campaign outcome for campaigns.

Users: of course all the above helps them to receive more targeted, so more compelling ads.

And today we are not talking about that how many unnecessary features are in the Facebook ad system. A lot…:-)

The real battle between Google and Facebook is for what?

Some parts of a recent blogpost from a Hungarian online marketing blogger created buzz on the web and another Hungarian search aficionado just reacted on this saying ‘We can’t make our living from just Liking’. The ominous saying from the first blogger just looked like this: ‘Within 1-2 years Facebook will launch an advertising system for the content network (…) that will place ads based on the clicking and Like-ing behaviour of the users.’

Take a look on the trends: Google launched Google Buzz. YouTube has recently launched a bunch of new social features. Google’s just recently launched its remarketing tool. What are these news about? They mean two focus points: connecting users with each other to create a personal network and a focus on content network to enhance effectiveness of campaigns.

But take an even broader view. Facebook has a unique network of personal relationships and profiles, but they don’t have an outlook on the web. Google has a unique database about the whole web but lacking user profiles and personal networks. (The first problem will be solved by a recently announced Like button, for the latter I mentioned some of Google’s efforts above.)

And let’s talk about a third phenomena, which is the world of statistitians and mathematicians: the recommendation systems. Recommendation systems are based on huge contextual databases of people - and their taste, choices and behaviour. For example if we have enough data about a movie: what kind of people like it and what kind of people dislike, a recommendation system can predict whether a person who has never seen that will like it or not.

We need to have two kinds of data for this: extended personal profiles with a lot of like (and dislike) data, plus a wide range of data about similar products.

You got the point? Google is very good in the second one and tries to collect the first, Facebook has the first and tries to collect the second.

But why? Of course for the advertising dollars. The company that succeeds in building up the largest database of these two can predict advertising effectiveness better. Meaning it can spend advertising dollars more effectively. As well meaning that the company will rule the online advertising world.

TechCrunch’s just recently published a guest article analyzing the same thing, the potential in Facebook as a gatekeeper of the world’s identity, even saying Google can become he next Microsoft. :-)

This battle has not started yet, as Facebook is yet having an advertising network product. But this will come.

If this theory is true it makes easy to predict some future happenings:

• Facebook will need a dislike button. I’m pretty sure they will have it soon.
• Facebook will buy a web analytics company. If I were them, I would go for Adobe’s Omniture.
• Facebook will need an adserving company as well. Hard to break DoubleClick’s domination but why not try?

And additionally - or being absolutely inline with the above idea - Facebook’s now have a real chance to move the whole web (and no question to that Open Graph will add a measurably large chunk of the web) towards a more semantic world.

Finally here’s a nice video from Kate Ray - with a lot of interviews from the web’s masterminds about being semantic.

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

Does Facebook change the way we use the web?

After watching Facebook’s F8 conference keynote live on the web on April 21, I had the very same thoughts that I had when there were a lot of discussions about the Google IPO back in 2004.
Those thouths included two basic things: one was that this is the time to invest; the second that this is the time to apply for a job there.
(Unfortunately I did neither in 2004. :-))

New concept is coming
Facebook’s concept is nothing new. Instead of relying on shady algorhythms to classify the web it uses people to do that. With a simple click of a button.
Opening up the “Like” phenomena to the whole web offers a win-win business for website owners, users and Facebook. This win-win concept is the one Google did a very good job in - and life proved that they were right.
This gives FB a new horizon on the web.

Let’s have a quick overview on the new items that were just announced:

• Like button for the whole web - any website can put the Facebook like button on - Likes will appear in the Facebook news feed.
• Activity feed - this plugin will show the users their friends activity on that particular website.
• Comments plugin - this will enable users to comment on any item on the website.
• Live stream - show user feedbacks during a live event.
• Recommendations plugin - It provides the users with recommended content on the given website.
• Facebook Connect - this is not new, although it’s a powerful tool to replace subscription and login mechanisms on the website. Not to mention that Facebook’s just get rid of the rule that user data cannot be stored locally for more than 24 hours.

What’s missing from the FB concept?
I see a major logical fault in this concept. Having hundreds of Facebook friends I really miss the opportunity to classify them. On my news feed there’s been a recommendation system working in behind for a long time. If I don’t react to news coming from one of my friend, his news will tend to disappear from my feed.
This could be okay. But people keep on posting in very different topics - the system may miss some interesting pieces of news from that specific friend.
And on the other hand as Facebook’s Like concept now being open for the whole web news feed will contain much more items per day.
So I really appreciate Facebook’s efforts to build the semantic web and bring that closer by personal recommendations - but I think that not just the web needs classifying, but also friends.

Another big missing thing is being local. Google’s been working on local tools for a while and the mobile era of local web services are just coming. Wondering who will be the one buying Foursquare. :-)

End of the Google era?
The war has not ended yet, but quite a few battles has been won by FB, and some were lost by Google recently.
But definitely this is the time when we’ll see the war intensifying. IMHO the world would be a much better place if they could cooperate - Google seach on Facebook, Google’s ranking system supporting FB recommendations, Google Maps integrated, Google Places to be liked on FB…
This could be a very long list but makes no sense to continue as it won’t happen.
Google surely will grow as fast as it did before - AdWords can’t be beaten. And search can’t be beaten either.
On the contrary. As Facebook’s Open Graph concept will spread Google will have to somehow incorporate it to the search results.
The new “tagging” raid is on the way. The web will be more semantic than ever before - and search results will be more accurate using that.
Let’s see Google’s reaction.

Will this kill Twitter?
In some conversations with professionals I just occasionally said that opening up the Like buttons and the Activity Feed plugin toghether will kill Twitter.
Seeing the weird reactions made me think twice. And now I truly believe this will happen. Twitter is a channel that failed to integrate with the web. Outside the US it is still a playtool of the geeks. Twitter is about to fail on monetization as well. And money is needed gain more attention, more users.

Poor FriendFeed
Although I’m quite a beginner user of FF but I think that their concept has just been incorporated into Facebook. They will also have to come up with something very new and powerful to survive.

So I believe that recent announcements from Facebook will trigger a flow of new product features from competitors like Google or Twitter. Time will tell how much this concept will change the way we use the web but I think that this is a beginning of something powerful.
Facebook wants to sit on top of the web and they do it quite well. If they can go local - nothing will stop them.