FB stock could be boosted as Facebook (FB) rolls out more video ads — a move that aims to take a swipe at YouTube (GOOG) and surge ahead as Twitter (TWTR) nips at its heels.
Facebook is looking to improve its ad targeting and has moved forward with a plan that could even beat the reach of TV and YouTube.
In a leaked presentation made available on TechCrunch, Facebook teaches its marketers to help shift ad revenue to the social networking giant as advertisers increasingly look online to find ways to best target consumers.
The move is set to begin in the first few months of 2014, when FB marketers will begin a strong push for video ads, according to the leaked presentation (via TechCrunch):
It doesn’t take long for Facebook to start bluntly insulting the stalwart advertising medium. “Gone are the days when a family gathered around their TV on Sunday night to connect with the outside world. Television is no longer a guaranteed way to reach and engage your target audience,” Facebook writes. It cites an eMarketer studying saying time spent on digital will surpass TV in 2013, and notes people open their phone 100 times a day and Facebook 10-15 times a day.
Facebook is banking on not only its reach — with hundreds of millions of users — but the time those users spend on Facebook, which outpaces time spent on other site. As the document notes, besides Google, there are few online companies that have that reach. The presentation adds that “a lot of time is spent by people on mobile with Google properties, YouTube, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Twitter and Pinterest…And more total time is spent on mobile on Facebook and Instagram than all of those combined.”
As global advertisers see people making the online move, putting more ad dollars into Facebook would not only hit consumers, but boost FB stock as well.
As InvestorPlace reported last week, a new ad concept by Twitter aims to show users ads on mobile and desktop devices that are specifically tailored to them based on their cookies — basically areas that they’ve surfed and ads that may dovetail to their interests. (In contrast, FB only has taken advantage of targeting ads to users who has visited that advertiser’s particular site.)
In other words, Facebook’s slow march has allowed Twitter — Google is doing it as well — to gain some traction against the still-unbroken FB social media dominance.
Facebook is now under increasing pressure to build an external ad network — with this new push into video targeting something that could give FB just the momentum it needs.
But it’s still going to be a battle against an already dominant YouTube in the ad realm, TechCrunch notes:
So by next year, Facebook’s video ad insights will be a better match for YouTube, but until then, partners are supposed to cite metrics about likes and comments, larger ad images, and a more “streamlined” post-click experience. The fact is that Television is the status quo for advertisers, and YouTube’s roadblock ads (even if you can skip them after five seconds) work similarly to traditional TV commercials. That means Facebook still has an uphill climb in selling its video ads.
FB stock is up 27% year to date.
