Facebook tools give more data on users
Tracking across devices valuable for advertisers
Facebook may be mired in controversy for its role in manipulating the news stories people see, but its position as one of the most valuable online tools for marketers is indisputable.
The social media company reached a milestone this week with 4 million advertisers and said Wednesday it will add tools to help outside developers understand who users are and how they behave, with the help of Facebook’s far-reaching demographic data and tracking across devices.
The new developer tools were introduced as part of Facebook’s free-to-use Analytics for Apps, which the company started during its F8 conference last year. Analytics for Apps allows companies to track user behav-
ior, trends, interests and demographics by crossreferencing a company’s data with Facebook’s bevy of user information.
The new version will move away from a focus on mobile behavior to tracking users as they switch between devices. This, said Facebook Analytics Product Manager Josh Twist, will give developers insights about consumer behavior such as how users may use their smartphones to browse but are more likely to purchase something on a computer.
“On the shuttle on the way to work this morning, I used three devices,” Twist said. “It’s very important to use user behavior if you’re going to make smart business decisions. You have to think in terms of people, not devices.”
The new tools also include ways to track customers’ emotions by charting user feedback to ads, articles or content by collecting data from Facebook’s new tool that allows users to express a range of feelings beyond the familiar “like.”
Facebook has faced criticism for the extent of its data collection. On Tuesday, a German regulator in Hamburg ordered Facebook’s WhatsApp subsidiary to stop collecting and sharing data. The company said it complied with European data-privacy rules.
While Facebook users can opt out of some ad targeting, they can’t control Facebook sharing their demographic information — beyond not providing it in the first place. If you don’t list your relationship status, for example, Facebook and its advertisers won’t know if you’re single or married.
Though the analytics tool is available to any business, whether it advertises with Facebook or not, there’s probably significant crossover, as the number of advertisers on Facebook continues to climb.
Facebook attributed this week’s announcement that it hit 4 million advertisers — an increase of 33 percent in the past seven months — to a rise in small-business advertising and Facebook’s ability to turn a simple Facebook post into an ad with so-called boosted posts and promoted pages that increase exposure for a fee.
“Users spend a lot more time on Facebook, and they are extremely engaged,” said Optimal.com CEO Rob Leathern, a board member of the nonprofit ChangeAdvertising.org. “They interact with a lot of different types of content and spend a lot more time doing that than users on other social networks do.”
Facebook recorded $6.4 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter, almost all of it from advertising. It has a long way to go in matching Google’s tens of billions in ad sales. Yet Facebook is skyrocketing past other social media companies, like Twitter, Leathern said.
Twitter, by contrast, missed Wall Street projections on revenue last quarter and has struggled to attract new users and customers.
This, Leathern said, is partially because neither Twitter nor any other social media network has the depth of user demographic data that Facebook does.
“Most people are truthful about basic demographic information on Facebook, which makes it not only reliable but thorough,” he said. “For example, gender. Most people are truthful about their gender on Facebook. So the best way to target women online has really become through Facebook.”
Twitter, whose main lure has been its capacity to quickly broadcast reactions to live events and breaking news, does not require users to provide their real names, much less other identifying information. That limits its ability to share insights with advertisers about who they’re reaching on the platform, Leathern said.
Facebook, meanwhile, has implemented a realname policy and actively solicits other identifying information and statuses, including users’ location, gender, relationship status, work information and so on. Facebook has been using these insights to offer developers demographic information on their users via the Analytics for Apps tool for more than a year.
Twist said the company protects individual privacy and will not disclose information about a company’s customer base if it is smaller than 100 people so as to ensure no individuals can be singled out.
But data across large sets of customers on relationship status, lifestyle and family size have helped organizations evaluate how best to serve them.
“It lets you really see who this product is resonating with,” Twist said. “People will do that zoomin having a notion of the product they were building, then see who is actually using the product and have to re-evaluate. We’ve seen products targeted toward families that take off with single people. Why?”
By increasing Facebook’s capacity to show companies how users move seamlessly from mobile device to computer and back again may help corporations understand where they’re losing customers’ interest — or wallets — along the way.
Facebook’s insights also include information on how users arrive at a certain page or product and allow businesses to send users mobile reminders when they have left a task unfinished.
The Analytics for Apps expansion will also offer other new insights including the ability to filter customers based on tier or status — such as premium subscribers or gold-level customers — to better understand who they are and how they behave both on- and offline.
For media companies and content producers, Facebook has rolled out an update that provides insight on how users share items, which will show developers trends and demographics about how — and why — something is being shared or going viral on the social media site.
It allows companies to see in real time when a link is being shared, what quotes are being cited and what the reactions seem to be.
“It helps you really see the complete picture, the complete customer journey,” Twist said. “It’s exciting to help businesses see that and take them along the way.”