Facebook’s Ad Refresh
Saiesha Munuri
Marketing Writer
Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on the last week of October that the corporate company has rebranded to “Meta” that perpetuates its vision of creating the metaverse. In addition to Meta announcing this new vision, the social media platform Facebook has tweaked its format and function. Facebook stated on the first week of November that it will be releasing a new application specifically devoted to the managing of advertisements. The application is known as Ads Manager. This app gives advertisers centralized access to Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. It is meant to be an all-in-one tool for publishing ads. The app allows advertisers to select where and when the ads will be run and keeps track of the campaign’s performance statistics. With this app companies can monitor campaigns, manage ad budgets, schedules, and create or edit content on the go. This broadened access helps make the ad process more efficient and allows greater control over which news feeds the ad appears in. The reason why this is so valuable is that now marketers have a greater ability to avoid the spread of misinformation, hate speech and other content that is deemed unsafe for a brand. Some of this excludable content can include news and politics, tragedy and conflict, and debated social issues. This advancement is part of an elaborate effort by Facebook to aid advertisers in avoiding such undesirable content on its platform. Another reason why Facebook took this action is due to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who called out Mark Zuckerberg for allowing misinformation arguing that both Zuckerberg and his company “bear partial responsibility” for the January 6th pro-Trump riot at the nation’s capital.
Facebook is also testing a function that allows advertisers to select topics that are irrelevant to the company’s brand. Once the advertiser selects these irrelevant interests Facebook does not show the brand’s ad to people who engage with these interests. This method helps advertisers better avoid consumers who may already be unreceptive to an ad based off their alignment with these undesirable content areas. This solution is said to have better control over where the ad runs and what content it sits next to on a user’s news feed. “We see this product as a bridge between what we can offer today and where we hope to go — content-based controls,” the social media platform stated. Not only is this application making it easier for advertisers to manage where the ad shows up, but also which viewers see an ad. In a way it is customizing the ads that users see by using their viewing history and resulting areas of interest.
Contact Saiesha at munurisa@shu.edu