The 10 companies shortlisted for Media Player of the Year in Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue were at the top of their game in 2012. We’ll be featuring each one online as a lead-up to our January 2013 issue, where you’ll find out which media company will reign supreme.
Despite pressure from Wall Street, the billion-user network is sticking to its guns
Mark Zuckerberg updated his status on Oct. 4. “If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you,” he wrote, confirming a landmark he’d long dreamt of: one billion users. The announcement came, fittingly, on his Facebook page.
It was another proof point of Facebook’s most undeniable asset: scale. Marketers may debate the value of Facebook’s ad offerings, but none can deny it’s a titan in the social space – especially in Canada (more on that later).
On Wall Street, though, scale is not enough. Since Facebook’s $104-billion IPO in May, the company’s stock dipped from its initial $38 pricing down to around $20, where it hovered as of press time. With the pressure to deliver strong quarterly results, it would be easy to give advertisers whatever they ask for to drive revenue and shore up the stock price. Homepage takeovers. Big banner ads. Bright, shiny, steroid real estate.
Instead, Facebook dug in its heels and stuck to its guns. It continued to talk up its scale and ability to target. But it also showed an ability to morph and innovate. In 2012, Facebook released new ad offerings, like Sponsored Stories and logout page ads, as well as brand Timelines. Instead of making drastic changes to user experience for the benefi t of advertisers, Facebook slowly tweaked the site, hacking new ad o erings and revenue streams along the way.
Jordan Banks
At the same time, it beefed up branding efforts. Facebook released its first video spot (apparently “chairs are like Facebook”) along with its one billion users announcement and spent the fall on a nine-country marketing tour, presenting marketers and agencies with successful case studies and new data about their local markets. The tour hit Toronto in October for Facebook Summit, a day-long event that culminated with a Q&A between Facebook Canada president Jordan Banks and Liberal leadership hopeful Justin Trudeau.
The company also released new data in collaboration with comScore in October which showcased its reach. Half of Canadians and four out of five Canadian internet users are on the network – and they spend more time on Facebook than any other site.
Speaking to The Globe and Mail this August, Banks noted Canadians also over-index in terms of engagement, another key ad metric. “It gives our brand partners in Canada almost a leg up because there’s so much critical mass on the user side to take advantage of,” Banks said.
This omnipresence makes it top of mind for brands. As David Bradfield, director of marketing and social strategy at SapientNitro, explains, “When most clients think of social media, they inherently start talking about Facebook. It’s incredibly prominent. And that’s largely because of the scale at he network has achieved.”
Of course, not all marketers are pleased. Some, including Bradfield, say it’s still difficult to get Facebook reps to sit down at the strategy table, but the network is clearly working to please its advertisers and their agencies.
“The IPO was a good gut-check and reality heck for Facebook,” says Bradfield. “When you’re no longer independent and you’re judged by the street, you realize the other influences in the sector you’re playing in.”
Facebook meets with some Canadian agencies on a regular basis. It has, for example, office hours with Mindshare every two months and does brand audits for some of its clients. “Working with larger brands, we do get spoiled with the amount of attention Facebook gives us. They are constantly coming in and giving us education, both to us to our clients,” says James MacRae, director of invention and digital at Mindshare.
For agencies not getting in-person sessions, there is Studio Edge, a series of learning modules aimed at agencies that launched in August. At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Facebook
also announced its Creative Council, a group of creative executives who will o er industry insight on a regular basis.
In April, Facebook purchased mobile darling Instagram in one of the year’s most talked about acquisitions. Though Instagram has yet to prove a revenue stream, it quickly built a huge user base and demonstrated mobile browsing can be captivating, simple and elegant. Acquiring Instagram’s team is also sure to help with Facebook’s own mobile products, including a location-based ad product the
company is working on.
But the most defi nitive sign of Facebook-to come is not its mobile strategy or ad o ffering, but the way it celebrated its IPO. In lieu of a champagne rager, Facebook held an all-night hackathon to build new products. It was a clear signal that Facebook isn’t about to lose the ethos that built a network that’s one billion strong.
So clear, in fact, that it was written in all caps block letters on the shirts programmers wore that night.
“Stay Focused. Keep Hacking.”
To read more about the companies that made the Media Players of the Year and Marketers of the Year shortlists, check out Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue, which is on newsstands now.
