David Emery Online

Hi there, I’m David. This is my website. I work in music for Apple. You can find out a bit more about me here. On occasion I’ve been known to write a thing or two. Please drop me a line and say hello. Views mine not my employers.

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Music / Advertising

6 November 2007

We now know why Google rushed the OpenSocial announcement out the door – Facebook have finally revealed their new Facebook Ads system. Now, a simple ads system wouldn’t really be worthy of much comment, and certainly wouldn’t have Google running scared, but Facebook Ads is so much more then just advertisements.

The key new part that the new system revolves around is the new ability for brands, businesses and artists to create pages on Facebook. These pages act like a cross between a traditional Facebook profile page and a MySpace profile page; they share the normal Facebook components like a Mini-Feed, Wall, Information and a profile picture but then add ‘Fans’ – which are the equivalent of friends – and a discussion board. They are in essence a combination of a profile page and a group.

To set up they are very simple – just head over to the ads home page and hit the big green button. I set up one for myself very easily (what? Are you trying to deny my celebrity status?). After you’ve set up a page, which can seemingly be linked to an existing account or be standalone, you get a new app in your sidebar called ‘Page Manager’ which lets you manage your pages, and interestingly see a whole load of stats about them including Page Views, Unique Views, Fans over time, Photos viewed and more. This is also where you can set up ads, which mirrors the existing flyer ads experience with the edition of the ability to add so-called “Social Actions”, which seem to be “Your friend Amy bought tickets from this ad!” style notices next to the ads where relevant.

This last part seems to link in to the rumoured ‘Project Beacon’ which allows advertisers to post things (if you allow them) into your news feed and profile. I’ve seen eBay being mentioned as the first one onboard with this, with the idea being that if you buy something on eBay you can hit a button and something like “David Emery just bought a Canon Camera Case off eBay” appears in your news feed viewable by your friends. It’s kind of nifty, but obviously has some slightly icky privacy issues – I’m sure some people aren’t going to be too happy about corporations invading their social space.

I’m not massively excited about the advertising aspects of this announcement, to be honest – it seems all round like a pretty good idea for Facebook to be doing, as they going to be able to target ads so well using this kind of system that the CPM is going to be very high. The whole social recommendation aspect is a very powerful concept – “Your friend just bought tickets to see The White Stripes – click here to buy some before they sell out!” – and I’m sure this is what Google is scared about. It’s a genuine competitor on their home turf that they currently simply can’t compete against, having no popular social network of their own.

The most interesting aspect for me (of course) is the new possibilities this opens up for bands and musicians. So far on Facebook no-one has really know what to do if you’re a band – do you set up a group, do you set up a profile or maybe just try and use iLike? – and this conclusively answers that question. It could also be the final nail in MySpace’s coffin. Take a look at 50 Cent’s Facebook page – it looks for all the world like a cleaned up, sanitised MySpace page, complete with gigs, a music player, comments and friends.

They take it one step further however, by allowing things like a discography section and a discussion board and the whole thing is topped off by heavy integration into the existing Facebook functions, like a one-click “Add to my music” button. Interestingly, the music player they’re using for 50cent links straight though to iTunes with “Buy Now” buttons, but I’m not sure if this is an official Facebook app or not.

Facebook have certainly made a very good stab and integrating as much MySpace functionality as they can, and I think it’s very successful. The only thing that I can see is lacking is any form if discoverability – there’s no way to browse pages that I can see (only search for them) but I’m sure they’ll change that in time. It’ll be interesting to see whether this can (finally) get people away from MySpace or not – here’s hoping…

Further reading:

Mashable: Facebook Announces Ad Network Plans
Facebook Ads Launches with 12 Landmark Partners
MySpace and Facebook launch new Advertising products, why Hyper Targeting, Social Ads and rise of the “Fan-Sumer” matter to brands
Facebook Unveils Ad Strategy – Users Become Marketers
iLike vs. Facebook: The Battle For The Music Artist