Explore creativity with Facebook at Cannes 2017

May 31st, 2017

In June, people from around the world will meet for the 64th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Every year, Cannes hosts a global community of marketers, creators and innovators who spend the week sharing ideas, seeking inspiration and celebrating the past year in marketing.

At Facebook, we believe that great ideas can come from anywhere, and powerful stories can come from anyone. This year, our teams will be at Cannes to connect with our partners, listen to feedback, build new solutions and celebrate creative work. We will host live sessions, take the main stage and have an interactive space at the Palais.

Through our live beach sessions, we'll host the world's most-renowned thought leaders, exploring the idea that connected, we can create anything. If you're at Cannes, please join us at the Facebook beach at the Hôtel Barrière Le Majestic Beach & Pier from 19 to 22 June for Facebook-hosted events. You can find more details about these sessions and access the full schedule on our Cannes event site.

On the main stage, we'll focus on building community through creativity on mobile and on gender equality in advertising.

• On Wednesday, 21 June at the Lumière Theatre at 2 pm, Colleen DeCourcy, Global CCO of Wieden & Kennedy, will moderate a conversation with Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and Jonathan Mildenhall, CMO of Airbnb, discussing how bold creative work on mobile can help brands authentically connect with the right people at the right time to build communities around their mission and products.
• On Thursday, 22 June, at the Lumière Theatre at 1 pm, Marc Pritchard, CBO of Procter & Gamble, Tina Brown, CEO of Tina Brown Live Media, Madonna Badger, CCO of Badger & Winters and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook will discuss how we can use our voices to promote gender equality. This panel will focus on how brands use their creative voices, both for good and for growth.

Also at the Palais, Instagram will unveil its Wander + Wonder experience, where you'll be transported to new worlds designed to awaken your sense of discovery. As you explore the expansive world around you through living dioramas and demos inspired and created by Instagram community members, we hope that you'll find time to reflect and rediscover your own passions. The experience will be open from 17 to 24 June.

Finally, we'll announce the 2017 Facebook Awards winners. This year, we're recognising some of the best creative work on Facebook and Instagram based on how it made people feel and how it helped businesses grow – the work that made our community laugh, cry, love, wow and act.

We want everyone to benefit from Cannes this year and will be sharing all of the action here on the site.

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Video in Stereo: How Planning Facebook and TV Together Produced Greater Sales Returns

May 31st, 2017

Facebook and Kantar Worldpanel have worked together to understand the synergistic effect between advertising on TV and Facebook in the UK.

Introduction

There was a time when measuring the efficacy of advertising was seemingly straight-forward. Print media, which was mainly newspapers and journals, and often regional rather than nationwide, drove the industry. ‘Measurement’ was pre- and post-testing and paired market tests, and the analysis was reasonably simple, covering just the one medium. This stayed broadly stable until the mid-1800s, and since then the fragmentation of media and introduction of a new metric for each channel has led us to a place where the need to measure all channels consistently, in a cross-everything manner, is imperative to help advertisers and agencies understand not just how each channel performs, but which combination of channels is optimal.

We have previously published a meta-analysis with dunnhumby Sales Impact, to show what Facebook added to a media plan and which campaign aspects drove the greatest returns, and with Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR), to understand what cross-over reach advertisers have seen between TV and Facebook, and how much incremental reach might be expected.

Our effort to help bring greater clarity to the industry is reflected in our latest work with Kantar Worldpanel, enhancing their Consumer Mix Model with our advertising exposure data. Kantar Worldpanel is a WPP company that collects purchase data via an in-home barcode scanning panel, as well as a large range of data about the shoppers, including their media exposure, including their media exposure. We commissioned Kantar to anaylse 13 video FMCG campaigns, and then undertook a meta-analysis to help us understand the synergistic effect between TV and Facebook campaigns in the UK.

What return on ad spend do Facebook campaigns help produce?

Kantar Worldpanel first looked at the return on ad spend (ROAS) of each campaign individually. They found that 11 of the 13 campaigns produced positive returns, and 3 of more than doubled the investment put into Facebook. The average ROAS across the campaigns was £1.79, and ranged from £0.59 up to £5.38.

Does the value of reach differ by channel?

Across the campaigns in the study, TV had a 4.7X greater household reach than Facebook. After accounting for campaign spend, Facebook had an average 1.9X cheaper cost of reach. Adding in the sales return linked to exposure through each channel, Kantar Worldpanel found that Facebook had an average 1.8X greater sales uplift on a per household basis.

We saw in our 2016 Nielsen TAR meta-analysis that, across the whole campaign reach, 10.2% of an audience was reached by TV and Facebook and 5.0% was reached by Facebook alone. Kantar Worldpanel layered demographics over reach to show that Facebook was slightly weaker in reaching heavy TV viewers, but stronger in reaching light viewers, and of course non TV viewers. Despite this different TV viewership composition, there was no difference at all in the proportionate make-up of brand or category buyers, meaning that the different audience(s) reached by Facebook were just as valuable to an advertiser as the reach they typically get on TV.

Are people more likely to respond to a campaign when they see TV and Facebook together?

By understanding ROAS and reach by channel, Kantar Worldpanel was able to model likelihood to purchase. Their model showed that, based on the figures from TV only exposure and Facebook only exposure, the expected uplift in likelihood to purchase when exposed to ads on both channels was 22%, but the Kantar model showed the figure was actually 29%, a 1.3X increase on what was expected.

What this means for advertisers and agencies

In the UK, this analysis has for the first time that advertisers who plan campaigns across TV and Facebook may see greater than expected uplifts. Is this unusual? Intuitively it feels right; the power of a recommendation from one person is increased if two people recommend it, especially if they are unrelated recommendations from people in different areas of your life.

From a planning angle, we offer the ability in the UK to target people by the TV viewing weight, which should help maximise the quantity of people reached in the ‘Facebook + TV’ synergistic space. The trade-off, though, would be the reduction of a campaign’s incremental reach, which we have seen is highly effective in its own right. What is right for each campaign will of course vary, but we hope this new information will help advertisers think more about two-channel stereo amplification of their campaign, and plan campaigns designed to achieve greater return on ad spend.

Finally, Kantar Worldpanel Consumer Mix Model is an existing measurement solution from an independent 3rd party. We encourage all advertisers to consider talking to Kantar and any of our other measurement partners about how they can help you design and measure your campaigns to better understand what is effective and how to generate greater returns.

Footnotes

1 Kantar Worldpanel is made up of 30,000 households who scan all FMCG purchases bought into their homes, where they shop, what they buy, where they live and key demographics, alongside their media usage and consumption.

2 ‘Facebook campaigns’ is a broad reference to Facebook’s family of apps and services, including Facebook-only and Facebook + Instagram campaigns.

3 There are a number of different key drivers that can determine which end of this scale a campaign is on. For more information on those, please refer to dunnhumby’s Sales Impact meta-analysis.

4 TV spend data was taken from Ebiquity. Ebiquity calculates TV ad spend by combining BARB data on the numbers of viewers for TV advertising spots with monthly station prices gathered from national broadcasters and agency groups to calculate TV advertising spends. They then calculate prices for each target audience advertisers can buy and apply accordingly.

5 It’s important to remember that CPM typically increases as reach increases, meaning part of this difference could be Facebook benefitting from an efficiency of less reach and a lower CPM.

6 The uplift for TV-only exposed households was 8% (1.08) and the uplift for Facebook-only exposed households was 13% (1.13). The expected level is a factor of these (1.08*1.13=1.22, or 22%).

7 This is available as a Partner Category from Axciom and Experian.

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Here Comes the Sun: How to Get Ready for Summer on Facebook

May 23rd, 2017

As summer approaches, many UK marketers have their eyes on Christmas. But the summer months shouldn’t be overlooked. Brits in search of sunshine will likely have their mobile phone by their side. And with 30 million people visiting Facebook on their mobile every day, it’s the perfect place to tap into summertime conversations.

Read on for simple tips on how you can maximise summer marketing opportunities.

Key Takeaways

• Brits are posting 13.9x more about summer on mobile than they are on Facebook for desktop.

• People’s conversations on Facebook are most likely to revolve around family and friends. The outdoors and food are also popular topics.

• Facebook offers the ultimate flexibility – campaigns can be created in advance, or booked last-minute in response to things like a change in the weather.

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Meet the Change Makers

May 22nd, 2017

Just as the Beat Generation of the 1950s inspired a wave of young revolutionaries, change makers today are challenging the norm by creating their own cultural movements.

Main picture(left to right): Dominic Cools-Lartigue - Street Fast, Fabien Riggal - Secret Cinema, Alex Chinneck - Artist

“If your work doesn’t feel contemporary, you shouldn’t do it, because you have a responsibility to create something new,” sculptor Alex Chinneck argues. His arresting work in public spaces includes a house made from wax bricks that melted in a month, to making a building in Covent Garden appear to float. “We should all be making an original, current and unique comment,” he says. “The most exciting people bring positive change. One thing we’re doing with respect to contemporary possibilities is using very modern manufacturing and engineering techniques. I like the idea that things can only be made now. Sculpture has the power to evolve alongside technology and the new possibilities it brings.”

Fabien Riggall, founder of Secret Cinema, agrees that immersive cinema events are rooted in contemporary life. “We realised there was a new way to show people films in social environments and in places that they wouldn’t expect. We launched during the rise of the internet, and we use social media to get people together physically,” he says.

Dominic Cools-Lartigue is the founder of Street Feast, the night market movement in London. “I discovered the street food revolution – but realised that you could only enjoy it at lunchtime,” he says. “Having seen night markets in places like Zanzibar and Barbados I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to create places to combine the atmosphere of night markets abroad, with the spirit of London.” He is now launching the Modern Assembly, a contemporary cultural institute centred around both art and food. He says that when culture is reviewed, it is boxed into categories, but society is weaving different strands of culture together.

Above: 'Take my Lightning, but Don't Steal my Thunder' installation in Covent Garden

It's time to get disruptive

Cools-Lartigue felt that the food industry was ripe for disruption. “There was an old guard and the industry just hadn’t come to realise food has become one of the great cultural expressions of our time,” he says. “There’s a generation of kids who grew up watching Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson. It was a generation just coming of age.”

Above: Street Feast's Hawker House location

Riggall felt similarly frustrated by the film industry. “Cinema was becoming dominated by multiplex theatres, and films were becoming less interesting.” He hopes that in the future Secret Cinema will fund the making of films itself.

Chinneck shares this exasperation, and feels there is great potential in frustration because it leads to rebellion. “There’s too much power held by basically everyone that isn’t an artist,” he says. “The gallery owners had the power because they have the keys to the gallery; the curators had the power because they chose what went inside the gallery. My work is quite playful and accessible – it’s not overly intellectual – and a lot of curators had an issue with that because it didn’t give them an opportunity to show just how clever they were. I needed to find an outlet and I felt the public realm was the most exciting place to do it. I don’t need a gallery or a curator to allow me to exhibit and I don’t need some ridiculous text that nobody understands next to my work. I don’t feel what I was doing was revolutionary but I like to feel that I’ve contributed to the shift.”

Riggall believes other areas of culture are ripe for reinvention. “I think gallery space could be completely reinvented. Music is ripe for change. Generally, I think everything is up for grabs at the moment: it’s a really exciting opportunity for artists and there’s a really exciting opportunity where art, culture and technology meet.”

Above: An out of this world moment from Secret Cinema's production of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

The power of frustration

Is cultural change happening faster today? While we can never truly know whether we simply live in a time when we hear more about disruption, Chinneck believes there is no progress without risk.

“Cultural experiences come thicker and faster than ever before,” he says. “That initiates a kind of momentum and a pace and a progress. I think there is more disruption and more frustration. Everyone always seems a bit pissed off these days. I think there is something fantastic in that: people saying I’m just not quite happy here. If you’re not happy and you are not satisfied then you need to do something about it, you need to change it. That is positive. The idea everyone has a responsibility to change things.”

He believes that partnerships are laying the foundations of new cultural movements that will emerge over the next decade. “Shared progress through a collaboration on a shared objective and a shared engagement,” he says. “And I think that is going to become the future of cultural activity.” Riggall says we are already seeing signs of this with Amazon, who are financing some of the most exciting films coming out now. Property developers are starting to see the potential, with the placemaking movement – finding a location and working with artists to turn it into a destination – such as King’s Cross and the Greenwich Peninsula. “It creates a sense of place,” Chinneck says.

While culture may already be changing swiftly, growing frustrations in society are only going to accelerate the pace of change. “It’s always been hard to change things,” Riggall says. “But people who try the hardest, fight the hardest. So maybe we just need to keep on fighting. Sometimes I wish it would be just a little bit easier though.”

“But people who try the hardest, fight the hardest. So maybe we just need to keep on fighting. Sometimes I wish it would be just a little bit easier though. ”

- Fabien Riggal, Secret Cinema

Alex Chinneck is a sculptor and artist, who created the appearance of a floating building in Covent Garden piazza, which was shown on news reports in 35 countries. He built a house from wax bricks, that melted in 30 days – but still had to pass building regulations – and the illusion that the entire facade of a house had slid into the garden in Margate, titled From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of my Toes. @alexchinneck

Dominic Cools-Lartigue is the founder of Street Feast, which transformed London’s evening eating scene with night markets. He has taken over car parks, breweries, warehouses, old tube stations and builders merchants to bring people together to eat and drink. This year, he plans to open a cultural venue in East London, The Modern Assembly, combining food and art. @streetfeastldn

Fabien Riggall is the founder of Secret Cinema, which has transformed watching films from a passive experience to an interactive one. He hires venues and actors and invites people into the immersive world of the film being screened. Secret Cinema has staged over 40 productions for over 350,000 people. 80,000 people experienced a living, breathing world for Back to the Future and the last major production was Star Wars, where 100,000 people were transported to a galaxy far, far away. He has collaborated with Laura Marling on Secret Music, presenting a different world for each song on Once I was an Eagle, and with St John restaurant to produce Secret Restaurant. @secretcinema

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Meet the Innovation Spotlight winner for Creativity Around Video

May 16th, 2017

As people use technology in new ways, marketers face new challenges: how to produce great creative work at scale, how to drive measurable results for clients and how to reach people across their many devices.

Innovation Spotlight is our annual showcase for the year's most exciting new marketing technologies built on our API to solve these challenges. These technologies, built by our industry partners, make it easier and more effective for businesses to advertise on Facebook.

Today, we're pleased to name Vidsy the winner in our Creativity Around Video category.

The Creativity Around Video category recognises innovators who help marketers deliver high-quality video at scale, which is a challenge for many companies that struggle with the high costs and complexities of producing video, coupled with the high frequency demanded by mobile.

Vidsy technology allows companies to source and publish video at scale by cutting their dependencies on third parties, handing them the reins for content distribution and giving them a platform to easily run campaigns over and over again. Because Vidsy's videos are shot by contemporary video creators, brands get content that's fresh and on trend. Vidsy is a sustainable, long-term solution for brands who want to create original video for social.

We'd like to salute Vidsy and say thanks to everyone who participated. Learn more about Innovation Spotlight and stay tuned for our next winner in the Omnichannel Offline and Online Sales category, which will recognise a technology or service that helps marketers connect their offline and online sales in an innovative way.

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Reducing Links to Low-Quality Web Page Experiences

May 10th, 2017

We hear from our community that they're disappointed when they click on a link in News Feed that leads to a web page that contains little substantive content, and is covered in disruptive, shocking or malicious ads. People expect their experience after clicking on a post in News Feed to be straightforward and not misleading — whether they click on news about a local event, an article about their favourite band, or information about their new hobby, they want to be informed and not misled.

We have had a policy in place since last year to prevent advertisers with low-quality web page experiences from advertising on our platform. Now, we are increasing enforcement on ads and also taking into account organic posts in News Feed.

You can read the full News Feed FYI blog here.

How to design great experiences

A better web page experience helps businesses form a stronger connection with the people who visit. To make your website experience better and avoid seeing a decline in engagement, referrals or ad delivery, businesses should be careful of the following:

• A disproportionate volume of ads relative to content. This includes advertisements, and not legal obligations such as cookie policies or logins to private content, such as paywalls.
• Featuring sexually suggestive or shocking content. See relevant policies for Sensational Content and Adult Content.
• Pages that contain malicious or deceptive ads which include Prohibited Content as defined in our policies.
• Use of pop-up ads or interstitial ads, which disrupt the user experience.

For more tips on designing great web page experiences, please visit our Help Centre.

Will this impact my page or ad account?

These changes will roll out gradually over the coming months. This update is one of many signals we use to rank News Feed, so impact will vary by publisher. Publishers that do not have the type of low-quality landing page experience referenced may see a small increase in traffic, while publishers who do should expect to see a decline in traffic.

We will continue to ensure that when people consume stories or ads on Facebook that they have a positive experience. We believe that is the key to providing value for both people and businesses.

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Improve customer acquisition with the power of lead adverts and offline conversion

May 8th, 2017

Lead adverts are designed to make mobile sign-ups easy by removing the usual friction of filling in an online form. This saves people time and makes sure that businesses collect information that's important to them.

But it's hard to understand what's working. Acquiring information and intent from interested people is just one step in the path to converting a lead into a customer, and currently, marketers are trying a little bit of everything to move people down the conversion path, including phone calls, in-person visits and in-store transactions. For example, a car make might want to optimise its lead adverts to get people to visit a dealership, a business operating in the field of education might want to optimise its lead adverts to get people to start the application process, or a business services client might want to optimise lead adverts to get people to become qualified in sales. By sharing this information, businesses can attribute success to the right channels and optimise their campaigns accordingly.

Because these events occur in a non-digital space, it's difficult for marketers to attribute these actions to the original campaign and verify the overall efficacy of their spends. We believe that marketers should be able to build campaigns around what drives actual transactions. That's why we've created the offline conversion solution to help marketers overcome this challenge. By allowing businesses to connect their CRM, point-of-sale (POS) or call centre systems to their Facebook advertising campaigns, marketers get the attribution and insights they need to understand the non-digital outcomes of any Facebook campaign, including which lead adverts are more effective at driving real business results.

With the offline conversion solution, businesses can:

• create direct connections between adverts and results – whether a sale in a store, a booking over the phone or an in-person meeting, they can see, measure and adjust their campaigns based on real downstream metrics that matter to their business;
• create campaigns based on offline successes by targeting high-value customers from the prior month using Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences and excluding in-store purchasers to find new, local prospects;
• gain insights and build campaigns based on actual transactions by retargeting buyers of a certain category with the next product or service you'd like them to buy.

Marketo, a software company designed to help marketers master the art and science of digital marketing, used Facebook lead adverts with the offline conversion solution to measure the quality of its leads. This allowed Marketo to concentrate on campaigns that were generating the metrics it valued most while reducing spend on campaigns that were not generating opportunities, which cut its cost per qualified lead by about 15%. Read their story here.

To take advantage of this integration today, you must have a Facebook Business Manager, a Facebook app, a Business Manager system user and access token generated for that system user and an offline event set. Learn more about getting started with the offline conversion solution in the Facebook Advertiser Help Centre.

Getting started

There are three ways you can connect your CRM with the offline conversion solution.

1. Use our native offline event manager and upload the outcome of your leads.

   

   Get started here

2. If you're using Salesforce or Marketo as your CRM provider, then connecting your CRM is even easier, as these partners have already created the connection between offline conversion and lead adverts. Zapier, which allows for seamless connection between an additional 750 CRM systems including MailChimp and Hubspot, is also supported.

   Get started here:

   • Marketo
   • Leadsbridge
   • Zapier
3. Build directly into the Offline Conversion API that will connect your CRM to the solution.

   Get started here.

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Introducing Facebook Ads Manager for Excel

May 5th, 2017

Advertisers frequently rely on Excel to manage their reporting and evaluate campaign performance, but exporting multiple Facebook accounts to an Excel worksheet takes time. To make this process easier, we're releasing a new Excel 2016 add-in designed to simplify data exports and campaign reporting. Starting today, Facebook Ads Manager for Excel (FAME) will allow advertisers to quickly run a single report to download data from multiple ad accounts.

With FAME, advertisers will be able to build their report templates in Excel and download performance data directly into sheets, combining data from multiple Facebook ad accounts without manual integration. Information can be refreshed every 15 minutes to ensure your data is always up to date.

Download FAME for free in the Microsoft Office Store. The FAME add-in seamlessly integrates with Excel 2016 to provide reporting capabilities with no computer science degree required.

It's easy to create and download reports using your Facebook account. Use the pre-designed templates to quickly pull common metrics or customize your reports to get exactly what you need to know.

For more information about FAME, visit the Advertiser Help Center.

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Interested in developing Africa through an innovative business? Join the Diaspora Challenge this Saturday in London

May 5th, 2017

Nigeria’s premier social innovation centre and startup incubator wants you to help connect the UK and Africa.

When Mark Zuckerberg visited Nigeria in August 2016, one of the places he chose to visit was the Co-Creation Hub, the country’s first social tech startup incubator, in Lagos.

Now, the Co-Creation Hub is coming to Facebook’s London headquarters to launch its latest initiative: the Diaspora Challenge. The goal? To harness the entrepreneurial talents and ideas of the diaspora community in the UK to solve social challenges in Africa.

The launch on Saturday the 6th of May will feature talks, Q and As, a cocktail reception, networking and musical performances from Bez, Cobhams Asuquo and singer-songwriter Bumi. Speakers include:

Bosun Tijani – Co-founder and CEO of the Co-Creator Hub.

Iyin Aboyeji – Nigerian entrepreneur, co-founder of digital payments startup Flutterwave, and co-founder of Andela, a startup that raised $24m from the Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan Fund.

Alae Ismail – co-founder of Styled By Africa, an online boutique showcasing contemporary African creativity.

Peter Okwoche – Senior Broadcast Journalist at BBC, regular host of Focus on Africa news magazine programme.

Dr. Nelson Ogunshakin - Civil engineer and construction investment financier. Awarded an OBE in 2010 for services to the construction and engineering industry.

If you’d like to be a part of this new, exciting initiative, please join the Co-Creation Hub this Saturday!

Click to register for an invitation (spaces limited): Diaspora Challenge Registration

Or join the project Live on Facebook at the Co-Creation Hub page from 12pm to 3pm: Diaspora Challenge Live

Date: Saturday 6th May 2017

Time: 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

Livestream time: 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Where: Facebook, 10 Brock Street, Kings Cross London, NW1 3FG

To find out more about the Co-Creation Hub, visit their website here.

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Major Brands Home in on Video for Facebook

May 2nd, 2017

See how Club Med, Volvo, Rexona, Tesco and Huawei have recently used video-based Facebook campaigns to win over consumers across Europe and the Middle East.

Making the most of the winter sun

Club Med (France-Belgium-Switzerland) This international company that specialises in premium all-inclusive holidays for families and active couples used multiple Facebook ad formats and measurement tools to promote its winter sales offer.

Changing car buyers’ perception in Germany

Volvo (Germany) The Swedish automotive brand partnered with Facebook to reach a broad audience in Germany with vertical video, Canvas and carousel ads, which strengthened the users’ perception towards the iconic brand.

Fresh connections

Rexona (Egypt) One of the world’s most popular deodorant brands reached 11 million people in Egypt by promoting its new technology using Facebook and Instagram video ads.

Join the club

Tesco (UK) The UK’s largest retailer combined Facebook and TV to raise immediate awareness of the many benefits of its hugely popular loyalty card scheme.

Sending the right message

Huawei (Poland) This mobile phone manufacturer used Facebook video ads to spread an important Christmas sentiment to its customers in Poland.

To see how Facebook has helped other businesses achieve their goals, browse our Success Stories.

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