ARCHIVES: This is legacy content from before Marketing Dive acquired Mobile Marketer in early 2017. Some information, such as publication dates, may not have migrated over. Check out the new Marketing Dive site for the latest marketing news.

Brands get liked on Facebook 1M times per day: ad:tech keynote

NEW YORK ? For anyone who has ever felt as if there is no room for brands on Facebook, an executive from the company disputed this point at ad:tech, backing his claim with numbers.

On the contrary, Facebook was built on the premise that all will be included in the social graph. People are twice as likely to remember an ad that a friend is associated with and are four times as likely to buy something when it recommended by someone they know. 

?Brands are not intruders on Facebook,? said David Fischer, vice president of advertising and global operations at Facebook, Palo Alto, CA. ?Our vision for Facebook is that everything is included. 

?People want to connect with businesses on Facebook,? he said. ?And brands need to engage with this audience, with the people who care about you. People are telling us by their actions that they want this ongoing connection and opportunity for two-way dialog. 

"The opportunity is when you reach people, you are also reaching their friends. The social graph?s power lies in the pace it grows.?

The opportunity
Mr. Fischer talked about today being an amazing time for us as marketers and as people. 

The opportunities we are living through is an evolution in the way we connect with one another and live our lives. 

This notion of an evolution is going from the information Web to the social Web. This is true for both online and mobile. 

David Fischer, vice president of advertising and global operations at Facebook

?How many people remember the New Yorker cartoon from 1993: ?On the Internet no one knows you?re a dog,?? Mr. Fischer said. ?What is interesting about the cartoon is that it really captured the experience on the Internet in those days. 

?The fact is that everything was anonymous and we liked it that way,? he said. ?It did not matter who you are, the experience was going to be the same. Even today a lot of experiences online are sill that way. 

?But that is changing as we move to a Web that is built around people and Facebook is at the center with a social graph personalized to you and who you are: the people you care about and the brands your care about.?

Copyright Image from New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner

Mr. Fischer then announced the evolution of the timeline. Basically it will change the whole feel of a person?s profile, taking visitors back in time. 

Currently, Facebook has 800 million people worldwide and 160 million in the United States using its service. 

In September, the social media destination experienced half a billion people accessing the site in just one day. 

What?s more is the type of engagement and the amount of engagement on Facebook. The average Facebook user spends about 7.5 hours on the site per month. That is more than the time spent on any other site.

The amount of sharing and engagement is only going to grow. In fact, Facebook sharing has doubled year over year. 

?This type of sharing makes the experience more personalized,? Mr. Fischer said. ?Now it?s not just about how we relate to our friends, but also to institutions and to government. 

?The same movement that is making things more personalized, makes an opportunity for marketers to make marketing better,? he said. ?Business is better in a connected world.

?If I share something with my friends and then they share with their friends and so on it spreads really quickly, like wild fire,? he said. ?Things go viral. 

?When you reach out to the friends of your fans you get 81 times the distribution.? 

Case studies
Burberry has seen quite some success with its use of Facebook. When the company first launched its fragrance business, it gave a quarter of a million people on Facebook free fragrance samples.  

Christopher Bailey invites Burberry Facebook fans to sample Burberry Body, the new fragrance for women, exclusively on Facebook http://on.fb.me/BodySample

Wine and spirits brand Diageo did an advertising test for five of its brands on Facebook. It saw a 20 percent lift in sales as a result and 1:5 return on investment. 

Deodorant brand Secret?s Mean Stinks campaign was built around a problem teenage girls face: bullying. The goal was to fight bullying and promote Secret at the same time. 

Secret built a graffiti app where girls could apologize for bullying. The brand saw a 9 percent increase in sales, 32,000 positive messages posted and a 10 percent lift in brand favorability. 

Local businesses have also seen success with Facebook. Milford Nissan spent $5,000 for ads, which it turned into $500,000 in gross profit.

Applebee?s saw a 3:1 ROI from its Facebook ads.

Another interesting case study that Mr. Fischer talked about was Huggies Hong Kong. Huggies came up with this idea to engage parents around their babies. The whole premise was to get parents to share photos of their children, which they love to do. 

The 60 photos that got the most likes were printed on the side of a bus in Hong Kong and all of the pictures posted were made into a collage and placed in a busy train station. 

The Huggies bus in Hong Kong

After this campaign, Huggies posted record sales in Hong Kong and grew marketshare by 4.2 percent. The Huggies Hong Kong Facebook page collected 113,386 likes. 

?People are 68 percent more likely to remember an ad with social context,? Mr. Fischer said. ?Take whatever you are working on and sprinkle some social on top. 

?It is better to have it there than not,? he said.