Facebook increases focus on mobile with 'immersive ads' and Conversion Lift update

After unveiling the idea at Cannes Lions this year, Facebook has started testing a new ‘immersive mobile’ advertising format. The ads look like sponsored posts in the News Feed, but when tapped, they open full screen and allow the viewer to flip and scroll through text, photos, videos and other content. It looks like an alternate version of a brand’s website, but will load more quickly and be more interactive because the content is native to Facebook.

Facebook is testing the format with Gatorade, accessories brand Michael Kors, online retailer Mr Porter and French retailer Carrefour. For now, the ads will only appear on Facebook’s iPhone and iPad apps, state media reports.

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Last week, Facebook began testing the new mobile ad format that offers a blank creative canvas for brands to turn their ads into something closer to an app, similar to the Instant Articles editorial format that Facebook has been testing with publishers like The New York Times and National Geographic.

Facebook has also announced updates to its Conversion Lift measurement tool. In January, the company had launched Conversion Lift to help marketers better understand the additional business their Facebook ads drive.

In a blog post announcement, Facebook said, “advertisers come to Facebook to grow their business and connect with customers, and part of growing your business is advertising smartly. That’s why back in January, we launched Conversion Lift, a measurement tool for Facebook advertising that helps marketers understand the additional business Facebook Ads drive.

“Today, we’re adding new capabilities to Conversion Lift that help marketers understand exactly which of their Facebook ads are driving their ad objective best. The updated Conversion Lift measurement tool helps advertisers make more informed marketing choices, so they can continue to grow their business.”

According to the post, conversion lift studies can now be set up to measure lift across purchase channels, like stores, websites and apps, so advertisers can get a holistic view of their ad performance. Multi-channel measurement shows the advertiser the overall effect their ads contributed and can also be viewed by channel to see how the ads drove sales in store, online or in app.

Internet of 'Sharing' Things should be new focus in 2015

The often-referenced Internet of Things (IoT) movement is expected to make big strides in 2015. For those of us in the marketing world, it is now being referred to as The Internet of “Sharing” Things. That’s an important distinction, as this initiative begins taking its first real steps in the weeks and months directly ahead of us.

We’ve looked at the potential impact the IoT will have on consumers with regard to how the notion of more and more connected devices will enhance their lives, but the real value for marketers comes in how the IoT will change the way consumers share what is happening within their IoT lives. With an infrastructure of 75 billion connected devices by 2020, if you think folks are sharing a lot of info now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“As a marketer you’ll soon have a more complete understanding of the consumers’ ‘buying journey’ and how they feel about a product or brand after purchase,” began Seth Greene, a former consumer tech industry marketer and current blogger on all things IoT. “With so many more connected devices, marketers will have access to a more constant stream of consumer data and the sharing rate of data between consumers will rise exponentially as they spend more hours per week interacting with connected gadgets.”

Think back to the initial emergence of Facebook and how marketers were at first reluctant to target consumers using social media. When you look at the sharing that is typically happening on social media now, it’s still mostly about smartphone uploads of pictures and videos from a “day in the life” of the user. In the coming IoT world, where posts and shares will be regularly generated by the devices themselves, marketers will be preparing for new ways to communicate with entirely new online communities that will develop, centered solely around the users of these particular devices.

“IoT devices in the social media framework will become marketer’s gold,” Greene added. “Countless new and emerging trends will become trackable and the ability to reach customers and social communities that had been previously unreachable will become an entirely new source of their marketing energies.”

If a recent Gartner prediction that the impact of connected smart devices has already added some $1.9 trillion to the global economy in 2014 is accurate, the fast emerging Internet of “Sharing” Things space will surely have the marketing world scrambling in 2015.

Imagine some 75 billion connected devices by 2020 — it’s a difficult number to comprehend, but the one thing that should be easy to understand is the time to start “sharing” your marketing story within the Io(s)T world should start now.

This article is part of Allvoices’ series on ad:tech, the largest, longest-running digital marketing and technology event.

Internet of "Sharing" Things should be new focus in 2015