Facebook takes on TV advertising with new ad tools

The world’s largest social network is taking on television advertising with new ad tools that allow advertisers to create a campaign that spans across TV and Facebook.

The plans were announced in a Facebook blog post yesterday evening, ahead of Advertising Week, which also revealed the company had seen the number of active advertisers on Facebook grow by 25% since February to 2.5 million.

The new tool will allows advertisers to use Target Rating Points similar to those used in television ratings to plan and measure campaigns. Working with Nielsen’s new Target Ad Ratings system, companies can verify the total ratings point delivery for Facebook and TV combined.

 

Empirical evidence

Nielsen research commissioned by Facebook revealed some interesting insights into advertising results with combined campaigns:

• Reach: With a combined Facebook and TV campaign,  advertisers saw a 19 per cent increase in targeted reach versus TV alone. Results improved when millennials were targeted, with incremental reach increased to 37 per cent.
• Efficiency: In the same sample as above, Facebook impressions were two-times more likely to hit their target audience than TV impressions, meaning advertisers spent less to reach their target audiences.
• Effectiveness: A study by Nielsen of seven recent campaigns showed that, compared to people who saw TV alone, people exposed to both TV and Facebook demonstrated a 3.2 percentage point increase in ad memorability, 11.5 percentage point increase in brand linkage and a 22.7 percentage point increase in likeability linkage.

 

‘TV and Facebook complement each other’

Commenting on the new development, the Facebook post says: “Knowing that TV and Facebook complement each other, we’re introducing a way for advertisers to plan, buy and measure Facebook video ads using total rating point (TRP) as the metric.

“Marketers can plan a campaign across TV and Facebook with a total TRP target in mind, and they can buy a share of those TRPs directly with Facebook.

“Then, Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings measurement system can verify Facebook’s in-target TRP delivery, and Nielsen’s Total Ad Ratings system can verify the TRP delivery for Facebook and television combined.”