Facebook Advertising Trends 2018

What does Facebook have in store for advertisers in 2018? Facebook advertising has seen massive growth and change in the past year. Facebook acquired three million new advertisers in 2017 alone, bringing the total number to six million. Increased competition means higher ad prices. Facebook ad prices have risen 35%. As we enter 2018, Facebook will continue to evolve new features. Understanding the trends and updates for Facebook's Advertising platform is important. I am expecting this year to be an eventful and exciting one for advertisers. Let's explore what is to be expected in the coming year for marketers on Facebook.

News Feed

Facebook announced in January that they will start tweaking the algorithm to favor authentic connections between people. On the other hand, this will devalue posts by publishers and brands, with the former taking a bigger hit as the advertising ecosystem will remain intact.

As organic reach decreases, companies will have to invest more in paid News Feed visibility. This will likely rise prices for News Feed placement as the competition increases.

Facebook has been aggressively diversifying its ad format portfolio. The News Feed change will drive the adoption of the more new ad placements including the various Messenger placements, Instagram Stories etc.

User experience is likely to improve with this change. With less clutter and Facebook's advanced targeting capabilities, the ads users do see are likely to be of higher quality as relevance score impacts which ads are winning the auctions and likely to appear in News feed.

Advertisers can take advantage of features like Audience Optimization that allows to drill down content based on some targeting options to optimize who sees the content organically.

Facebook Loves Videos

On average, organic videos get 135% more reach than organic image posts. This shows video should be major part of content marketing strategy for 2018 on Facebook and Instagram.

One thing to consider in particular: Video ads within Instagram Stories. The feature had +300 million active users in late 2017 – and growing.

The engagement and performance of videos on Facebook has proven to be effective. Facebook offers tools and features to create videos.

Offline Conversions

Facebook is quickly becoming an increasingly viable channel for brick and mortar: Businesses such as supermarket chains, pharmacies, and convenience stores will move their ad money from traditional channels like local print and TV to Facebook as its offline measurement and solutions for localized ads become more refined.

In 2017 Facebook rolled out multiple ad formats that recreate the storefront experience online by combining discovery and sales, for example Canvas and Collection ads, these formats are similar to traditional circulars and weekly offers that are targeted to a local audience near the physical store.

Offline conversion measurement capabilities allow advertisers to track when transactions occur in their physical business location after people see or engage with the Facebook ads. Advertisers can also measure store visits from their Facebook campaigns.

Messenger Advertising

Facebook’s Messenger solutions for businesses continue to diversify: Advertisers can target users with the Messenger placement that is shown between chats in the Messenger app or advertise on WhatsApp.

Another technology to consider is powering customer service or even marketing campaigns with chatbots. 100,000 chatbots are in use on Facebook alone and the number is climbing. Customers today expect instant service and according to Facebook, 53% of people are more likely to shop with a business they can message directly.

These messaging solutions will be useful for brands in the service, travel and E-Commerce industries in particular.

Other Features

• Campaign budget optimization is a new feature that will allow advertisers to spread a campaign budget across multiple ad sets, allowing Facebook to automatically adjust ad spends to give a stronger push to better performing ad sets.
• Creative Split test is a another new feature that helps advertisers to A/B test different ad sets based on creative, placement, audience and delivery optimization strategies.

Facebook keeps on rolling new updates. Marketers should be prepared to understand new features and implement them. Advertisers on Facebook and Instagram are increasing exponentially, thereby increasing ad prices. Definite marketing strategy for advertising on Facebook and Instagram is essential. Hope this article helps :)