Facebook Ad Transparency

Facebook made ad transparency open to the public in May 2018. The Ad Library is a searchable database of all ads that are currently running on Facebook and Instagram. The Ad Library allows anyone to see the ads that are being run by businesses, organizations, and individuals, as well as the targeting information that is being used to reach those ads.

The Ad Library was created in response to concerns about the use of social media for political advertising. In the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election, there were concerns that foreign actors were using social media to spread misinformation and propaganda. The Ad Library was intended to help people understand who is paying for political ads on Facebook and Instagram, and how those ads are being targeted.

The Ad Library has been praised by some for its transparency, but it has also been criticized for its limitations. For example, the Ad Library does not include ads that are run by political campaigns, and it does not include ads that are run by foreign actors. Additionally, the Ad Library only includes ads that are currently running, so it does not include ads that have been run in the past.

Despite its limitations, the Ad Library is a valuable tool for understanding the use of social media for advertising. It is important for people to be aware of the ads that are being run on social media, and the Ad Library can help people to make informed decisions about the ads that they see.

Here is an example when searching on the keyword phrase "environmentally friendly sunscreen":

Example of ad in Facebook's Ad Library

Interactive Interstitials

Just like GIF ads have made a remarkable comeback, so have interstitials. 

In this instance, Fox.com is experimenting with in-video clickable ads. It doesn't seem like much but it's a baby step in what will be a long evolution of how end users are able to interact with brands. At the moment, advertorial interaction is optional -- to go beyond just clicking once on the ad space with your mobile video player.

Fox.com Interactive Ad

Fox.com's video player allows viewers to view ads in one of two formats:
1. Watch and interact with a 30-second commercial; or
2. Do nothing and view the video with regular commercial breaks, about 2.5 minutes of ads


However, given the number of commercial breaks, the viewer isn't saving that much time away from the streaming content. So far, I've only seen Fox.com with interactive ads. There are ads of a similar nature on Hulu.com; but these direct you away from the site when you click on them.

Here's an example of Walgreen's interactive ad. Even after watching the ad several times, I have no idea what it's about. But it features two women talking about something. The interactivity asks you if you want to view the ad in Spanish or English. Having been raised by the public school system in California, Spanish is a second language. If you click onto "Spanish", only the text at the top changes to Spanish and the video plays in English with no Spanish subtitles, speakers, or dubbing. It was a very disappointing feature. Or, perhaps streaming video technology switching isn't quite there yet for on-demand custom video plays.

Fox.com Walgreen's Ad - part 1

If a user clicks "English" play the default ad; if a user clicks "Spanish" play the Spanish speaking ad. One would hope user engagement would be as simple as that.

The Walgreen's ad falls short of the basics.

Fox.com Walgreen's Ad - part 2

In retrospect, I'm not sure how viewers are expected to leap from a Black woman eating something on the kitchen floor with a skateboard in the background to a couple of Caucasian millennials out walking. What was the point of the ad??

Banner Blindness

Banner blindness was first coined by Benway and Lane of Rice University in a 1998 study on website usability. The study looked at external ad banners and internal navigational ad banners; and found that users skipped over the ads when scrolling through a page and that the traditional method of making large, flashy ads did little to impact interaction by a web user. I should also note that there were only six participants in this study and it was done 17 years ago. If marketers are aware of such an impact, why are so few ads being seen by humans? You'd think that we would have engineered a way for ads to seem more relevant than the web content on a page.

I responded to a Twitter survey earlier today and one of the questions asked if I had seen a tweet or ad about Batman v. Superman, and I hadn't, even though I use Twitter on multiple devices. In fact, I really do have a hard time remembering advertising on Twitter, if it even happens at all.

And, it's not just me.

In a 2013 study about banner blindness, nearly 85% of consumers reported not remembering the last banner ad they saw; and those that did, a mere 2.8% thought they saw something relevant to them.

If I speculate about how the desktop-to-mobile experience is evolving, I'd say that banner blindness will significantly affect how Facebook's news feed works with consumers just skimming over content. Brands and advertisers don't just have to contend with the quirks of Facebook promoted content now they also have to worry about not reaching their intended targets.

Bad Ad Copy, or Just Bad Proofing?

The Swash product has a decent offering; and the company's monopoly or revenue stream is likely to be from the cartridge refills for the "refreshed" scent. For the convenience it offers, it will probably save you a lot more over time versus sending clothes out to be professionally dry cleaned. Although, the ad doesn't say that the product actually cleans; so a consumer might think they're refreshing it and thousands of dead skin cells still clinging to it.

2014-10-03, Swash ad on NBC.com

Talk about ad copy #fail.  This is the first that I've seen in quite a while where the ad copy proofreaders failed to see this one. The product reviews feed looks like it is specific to that ad. Gotta love default text, except when it is shown like this to a national audience.

Target Ad Audience and Branding

I don't follow football, or much of sports for that matter except for the Olympics. The only time to tune in for Superbowl Sunday is to watch the cacophony of ads. At $4 million per 30 second slot, this is all the more reason to make whatever message your company wants to convey really count. Instead of harping on the truly terribly ads, I thought I might point out ones that really captured my attention. Movie previews are excluded. I looked at things like:

• Core (corporate) message or product brand easily understood?
• Speaks value to the right audiences?
• Feel good? Wacky? Clever?
• Did the end of the ad drive another campaign action?

Worth Mentioning to Others:

Budweiser: Clydesdales "Brotherhood" - 9.3 million views on YouTube (budweiser)
Jeep: Whole Again with Oprah narration - 1.3 million views (thejeepchannel)
Skechers: Man vs Cheetah - 335k views (skechersperformance)
Audi: Prom - 9.2 million views (audiofamerica)

These ads had multichannel flair, presumably to drive the audience from TV to social media. 

Oreo: Whisper Fight - 1.1 million views (oreo); Choose you side at Instagram (2200 followers before ad aired, post-Sunday almost 50k followers); would have a higher impact if the Instagram purl was advertised

Budweiser: Clydesdales "Brotherhood" - Name the baby Clydesdale (Hope and Stan), tweet name using #clydesdales @budweiser

Speed Stick:Unattended Laundry - 1.1 million views (speedstick); Tweet your #handleit moment

Promote a post, only $7 on Facebook

Well, that was weird. I was just doing a shout-out to all my Seattle friends on Facebook and was notified that I could 'promote' the post.

Out of curiosity I clicked 'promote' and Facebook wants $7 for opportunity. Well, here's the thing. I don't represent the business that I'm promoting, just spreading the word about their special customer offer to other consumers.

Companies should be paying me to promote their posts; not the other way around. What do you think?

Flash Mob: Som Sabadell

This well executed video is actually an advertisement for the Som Sabadell, banking group in Spain.

O mein Gott! Es gibt ein axt im meine kopf.

Ahh finally, the end of the month. I can post something silly.

When you catch tv episodes online, you often get to watch the same ad over and over again. The AXE ads that have been playing during the commercial breaks for MasterChef are pretty amusing, even with multiple views. The meat poncho ad is darn hilarious too. Looking deeper, the ads are well executed and memorable. 

The first impression before the actual product shot had two other brands come to mind: the Energizer bunny and Victoria Secrets. The former had a history of ads in the 80s that looked believable enough but totally threw you off when the Energizer bunny skated by. The latter used the angel theme before; though the style of the ad isn't what they typically promote.

How to Validate Advertising

Like most curious gardeners, I really wanted to believe there was such a thing as a "zooms to an amazing 8' tall in just 3 months" tree tomato (as seen in the pre-spring coupon clipper embedded with the weekly flyer and brochure ads). I've seen a lot of crazy advertisements of some true and not so true products over the years. I only found out about columnar apple trees at last year's Portland Home & Garden show. If an heirloom or hybrid tomato plant did exist and could be easily procured for a mere $6.58 + $2.50 s/h, then why wasn't it sold en masse at gardening shops and nurseries like Home Dept, Lowes, or the Portland nursery?

When validating product advertising, the first thing to check is the source at the very top level. For a savings and loan bank, browsing through the FDIC's database to see if they're legit is a good starting place. For an apparel or automotive manufacturer, there's the manufacturer's website. Many of us just do a quick Google/Bing/Yahoo search and take whatever we can find in the first page of hits. There is a lot of misinformation out there too and websites that don't quite answer the question. Is this product real (and here's the written proof)? Where does the product come from?

Even for marketing or SaaS services, I'd still like to know who is running the company and why I should choose their products over others. Now, I'm a pretty good Internet sleuth. Most people (and companies) who want to be found can be found on the Internet. There are ways to drop off the grid, so to speak, but that is a post for another day.

Key Attributes to Think About:

• Who runs the company that markets product x or service y
• Is the product (or service) relevant to your needs, and can it deliver on its claims
• Are there competing products of a similar flavor
• What is the next best alternative
• What documentation does it have (e.g., scientific studies, promotionary adverts in its own industry journal/newsletter/magazine, product literature and/or datasheets, client reference list, product reviews, etc.)

I can't imagine in the thousands of years that tomatoes have been cultivated that this one company operating a mail order and affiliate marketing system out of Hartford, Michigan, could be the sole propagation source of the giant tomato tree. The ad is filled with tons of consumer hot buttons and very little else. How the product is marketed exceeds my bs meter. I'll just make due with the cherry tomatoes I started from seed and hope that this summer isn't as wet and cold as last year.

OPB Advertising

If you reside in the Portland metro area and wake up to the radio tuned to an OPB station, you may have noticed that it's pledge week where the radio station tries to encourage passive listeners to convert into active subscribers. Have you ever wondered if the minimum $5 donation actually does anything? Well, by itself it doesn't. Collectively with tens of thousands subscribers it could; though not as much as partner (business) sponsorships bring in.

OPB's media kit states that "OPB Radio dedicates no more than 3 minutes per hour to sponsorship spots, while commercial radio airs eight to 15 minutes (or more) of commercials per hour." Just in today's 6-7am time slot, I heard sponsorship messages from 13 advertisers. This roughly translates to $455/3 minutes per hour in revenue. That set of ad sponsors generates about $9k/month if only advertising on weekdays for the month. It's still relatively inexpensive, though, advertisers like Angie's List need to book weeks or months of radio time to gain the mindshare and exposure that established partner advertisers already have, such as Fred Meyer, Visa, or Microsoft.com/cloud.

Now, take into consideration that primetime radio is a lot like primetime television with a scaling ad rate based on what shows are on and when. In the morning's broadcast, during one of the pledge interruptions, OPB said that the three most expensive programs that are syndicated by NPR (costing roughly $1 million per year in broadcasting fees), are the Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and the Weekend Edition slots; which are KBBI's most expensive ad slots. One could surmise that the advertising model is about the same from one public radio station to the next. It's a model that works, why fix it?

Anyhow. Ad slots for the aformentioned slots range from $20 to $35 per mention. There are only a couple slots where advertising is not allowed: BBC World Service and PRI's The World.

Related:

OPB Media Kit
OPB Auditor Report 2010-2009
KBBI Alaska Public Radio

Groupon: Local Area Advertising

If you were already willing to discount your products and/or services by half, and of the remaining half of the expected revenues, only take in 25%, then maybe Groupon might be a decent advertising channel for local area advertising. But, if you think that 75% of an expected sale is way too high of an acquisition cost of new customers, you may just be among those who believe that Groupon is bad for business.

Like any advertising strategy, you should weigh the pros and cons of using the service, as well as the ROI and costs involved. For example:

Pros:

• Can bring in robust traffic to a storefront in a short period of time
• Consumers love Groupon and can't wait to tell their friends about it
• Customer pays for the opportunity of using a voucher instead of receiving a comparable offer in the mail for free

Cons:

• Groupon voucher offer language must be carefully constructed
• Groupon vouchers apply to one person only and cannot be redeemed for the benefit of the group; Customers have to read the fine print to see what they are really getting
• No lasting relationship with Groupon (no business directory listing, no customer reviews)
• Customers become Pavlovian in response to deep discounts for your products/services, meaning, they will only shop with you if a coupon or reward is involved
• Very high cost of acquisition of new customers who must have an extraordinary experience in order to become a repeat customer or spend more (without coupons) with your store
• Overuse of coupons can cause brand erosion, loss of operating margin, and decreased long-term profits
• Your business, existing employees, and in-store technology may not be able to handle the immediate influx of new customers (e.g., your hidden costs will rise because of this; adding new employees, training them on how to redeem Groupon coupons, increased staffing management issues) and quality of customer service or first-time customer experiences could suffer as a result
• You may, as a business owner, feel fleeced from the whole Groupon experience
• And, there's no unique technology nor business model that separates Groupon from its competitors

Alternatives:

• Entertainment Book, RelyLocal, PayBack Book, Goldstar Events, the "blue envelope" local coupon mailer
• Start your own customer email list and offer a monthly newsletter; Constant Contact starts at about $15/month; Vertical Response offers pretty decent rates and does postcards too
• If you're a professional services business owner, after hours business mixers, Chamber of Commerce events, and local/regional networking events through Meetup.com are excellent places to meet new customers

In-flight Advertising

On a recent trip from Seattle to LAX, I noticed two notable avenues to the way passengers are exposed to advertising. The first was listening to a co-branded message between Alaska airlines and VISA credit cards, broadcasted by the pilot. It didn't seem to evoke much interest among the coach passengers. I'd say that it's more like we were too tired to care about another credit card offer. The second was a $20 coupon of a restaurant I'd never heard of which was handed out by a stewardess.

It's not surprising though. The Nov 2005 press release from UK-based Ink Publishing (ink-publishing.com) notes that "global inflight advertising revenues are predicted to grow from US $685 million in 2004 to US $832 million this year and will exceed US $1,010 million in 2006, with increased general advertising spending plus the opening of niche markets by point-to-point airlines taking credit for the growth." These sales figures are based on their own portfolio data of inflight titles they publish. You can imagine how tremendously large this market really is.

What is surprising is how late-to-market some airlines are with capturing their share of this revenue stream.