Dive Brief:
- On Tuesday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told an auditorium full of marketers, publishers and media insiders at Advertising Week that "the shift to mobile is here."
- Playing up the company's recent push to lure big brands to shift their TV dollars to Facebook, Sandberg said marketers are still spending nine times more on traditional media like print and television than mobile.
- The social network also announced it has plans to roll out new advertising options on Instagram, such as self-service buying using Facebook targeting, in the coming weeks.
Dive Insight:
"What people are starting to understand is that what we offer is really broad reach — we have a Super Bowl on mobile every day," the social network's COO said during a discussion with Bloomberg's Chief Content Officer Josh Tyrangiel.
Of the top handful of apps that dominate use among U.S. smartphone owners, Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram account for one in five minutes of time people spend on mobile, according to Sandberg. Those numbers are eye-opening despite the social apps’ strong user bases: Facebook has 1.5 billion users, while Instagram recently said it has 400 million.
Facebook now also boasts 2.5 million advertisers, already up half a million from February. In the second quarter, Facebook disclosed mobile advertising accounts for 76% of its total ad revenue. As part of the announcement, the company revealed in a blog post a series of updates to its ad products including a new type of TRP buying option, video in carousel ads, and measurement tools for mobile.
Sandberg touched on these updates during Ad Week, saying that "as always with our ad products, we follow consumer behavior," making Facebook a natural environment for advertisers to market.
"If you look at most big campaigns, what you'll see is that [brands] do Facebook, Instagram, TV—a lot of them still do outdoor and print," she said. "But all of these things really work together if you tailor your message and the right audience."
The Silicon Valley executive said Facebook’s data shows if advertisers use TV in addition to Facebook, they can extend reach by 18% and more than double that when it comes to millennials. Using the example of Kellogg’s iconic “L’eggo my Eggo” campaign, Sandberg said that Eggo sales rose by 2% when the company brought it back last year as part of a broader campaign that included a targeted video ad on Facebook.
Sandberg said people fundamentally like targeted ads -- provided they deliver the right message and are served at the right time.
Still, she said, “the number one complaint we get from consumers is, ‘Why aren’t the ads better?’”
This echoed the sentiment espoused by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer on Monday at Ad Week. Speaking about the ad blocking challenge for marketers and publishers, Mayer said the solution was to serve consumers better ads.
