Facebook's Business and Ad Chief Outlines Key Areas of Focus for the Platform Moving Forward

Finding the best strategy for your Facebook Advertising campaigns can feel like a never-ending ebb and flow - and that’s because it is. Social media marketing “best practices” are constantly evolving as consumers’ wants and needs evolve and change. Vice President, Ads & Business Products Dan Levy has outlined the elements that Facebook is looking to maximize as it continues to build for the future. 

As per Levy:

"Businesses are confronting a permanent shift in people’s behavior: a migration to ecommerce that might have taken a decade exploded within a year. This, combined with growing technologies to meet people’s privacy expectations, is a generational opportunity for our industry to innovate once again. We must develop new ways for businesses to reach customers and to give people more control over how their personal information is used in advertising."

Levy says that Facebook's working to develop new 'privacy-enhancing technologies' in order to minimize the amount of personal information that the platform takes in, while still enabling advertisers to focus their promotions with optimal efficiency.

Levy says that Facebook's collaborating with industry partners and organizations to establish key best practices on this front, including the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media (PRAM), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).

Whether that results in comparable targeting capacity remains to be seen, but this will be an important element, as Facebook looks to deliver better solutions for advertisers

In addition to new data challenges, eCommerce is also a key focus for Facebook, with the expansion of its in-stream purchasing tools as it looks to align with rising online shopping behaviors and trends. 

Facebook's also looking to build improved ad placements based on the content users are interacting with. 

"So if you’re watching a travel video, we could show ads for hotels and flights."

Facebook already offers this to a degree via its ad targeting options, but it's looking to get more specific, which could open up new ad opportunities.

Levy says that they're also looking to help boost small businesses specifically, with a new badge that will be displayed on some ads from SMBs.

It has been seen in the past that, when Facebook shifted it’s priorities, it ended up hurting brands that expected a certain level of traffic or business from tools within the app - which is why it’s important to have an understanding of where Facebook plans to shift its focus, and how it’s looking to improve user experience.

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