There is no doubt that Facebook, with more than 750 million members available to target, is of great interest to marketing professionals.  Indeed, emarketer recently predicted that this year would witness ad revenues rising 104% to $3.8 billion – not bad going for a company which claims to have made all its changes to date for the benefit of its users…not its advertisers. 

So when we were told that Facebook’s Gail Power – Director of Online Sales Operations – was to be speaking at ad:tech London on the 22^nd September, we were anticipating something great.  We hoped to gain an insight (within reason!) into what the company planned to do next.  Instead, we got a basic – albeit fairly interesting and informative – run through of what Facebook currently offers to businesses wishing to reach out to consumers on the world’s largest social network.  A shared desire for concrete statistics was left unsatisfied by hazy claims, whilst mumblings about the threat of Google+ remained awkwardly unanswered.

Entitled ‘Social by Design’, Power’s talk emphasised the strength of word-of-mouth advertising – a form of marketing which Facebook, as a widely used social media platform, is able to utilise.  She attempted to demonstrate the strength of peer influence in directing action by showing us two slides; one featured a screenshot of the Facebook game Cityville, the other showed a car from Gran Turismo.  The graphics of Cityville were non-descript – comparing poorly to those of the latter.  However, apparently this did not stop it attracting an astonishing 100 million users in its first 43 days – the secret to its success allegedly being its social component.  According to Power, it is an effective illustration of peer influence; users receive notifications informing them that their friends are playing the game, so this encourages them to join in also.

Of course, the same principles can be applied to marketing.  According to a Facebook-Nielsen study, users are four times more likely to buy a product or use a service that their friends have ‘liked’.   As ‘likes’ can quickly disappear down busy newsfeeds, companies can pay to have them extracted and displayed in the advertising column on the right hand side of the home page – these are sponsored stories.  Power named this ‘word-of-mouth marketing at scale’ as one ‘like’ is visible to all of a user’s friends – with the average Facebooker having 130.  And as users are often friends with others with the same hobbies, of the same age, or from the same hometown, advertisers can target a specific group…without even really trying. 

Disappointingly, Power could not provide us with statistics regarding the success of the sponsored stories venture – though a study by TBG Digital in May found that they get 46% higher click-through than standard display ads.  We were also led to believe that it was a recent innovation, but it’s actually been around since January.  Of course we can understand Facebook’s unwillingness to divulge their plans for the immediate future, particularly as F8 was due to commence just as Power was switching off her microphone.  However, I think it’s fairly safe to say that we had all envisaged something a little more exciting.  Looks like we will have to wait until next year to see the impact of some of the changes announced at F8 (one of these being Timeline, which will see even more information being shared by users as they add to their profile the bits of their life that are missing).  Should’ve nipped off for that powernap instead…

Katherine Sola also contributed to this post.