Facebook Outlines 4 Areas of Business Strategy on Personalized Experiences

Facebook vice president of ads and business products Dan Levy shared several updates Wednesday on the social network’s business strategy. He wrote, “Now, as parts of the world reopen, businesses are confronting a permanent shift in people’s behavior: a migration to ecommerce that might have taken a decade exploded within a year. This, combined with growing technologies to meet people’s privacy expectations, is a generational opportunity for our industry to innovate once again. We must develop new ways for businesses to reach customers and to give people more control over how their personal information is used in advertising. To make this opportunity a reality, we’re focused on product innovations in four areas:” Privacy is the first area, and Levy said the social network is developing technologies that will minimize the amount of personal information processed by Facebook, yet still enable it to show relevant ads to people and measure the effectiveness of those ads. He pointed out Facebook’s participation in privacy focused collaborations including the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media, the World Federation of Advertisers and the World Wide Web Consortium, writing, “These technologies will be an essential foundation for digital advertising in the future, much like the microchip is for computer processing. But in order for these technologies to work and benefit all businesses, it will require collaboration across the industry, as will other privacy standards and practices.” The second area Levy focused on was product and business discovery, and he said 200 million businesses are using free tools such as Facebook pages and Instagram accounts to share updates, while 10 million pay for advertising. As previously reported, Facebook is testing a new experience in News Feed that enables people to tap to browse content from businesses by topics including beauty, clothing and fitness. The social network is also using context to make smarter recommendations about which ads to show, offering as an example that someone watching a travel video may see ads for flights and hotels. And Facebook is making it easier for people to build communities around businesses that align with their values. Levy said more than 3.5 million people in the U.S. have joined new groups supporting Black-owned small and midsized businesses, and it will begin a limited test in the U.S. of placing small business badges on ads. In the area of commerce, Levy noted that one out of three shoppers worldwide plan to spend less time in stores even after the pandemic ends, and nearly three-quarters get shopping ideas from Facebook, Instagram, Messenger From Facebook or WhatsApp. More than 1 billion people are visiting ecommerce destination Facebook Marketplace every month, and Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops are seeing over 300 million monthly visitors, prompting last month’s move to extend Shops to Marketplace in the U.S. and WhatsApp in select countries. The social network is also developing augmented reality ads that enable people to try on products. Levy wrote, “In short, Facebook and Instagram are fast becoming a destination to buy and sell and, over the coming years, we are building a modern commerce system to meet that demand across ads, community tools, messaging, Shops and payments. It is all in service of creating a personalized, seamless customer journey, in which it is easier to discover a product, learn about it, decide to buy it, pay for it and find it on your doorstep.” Finally, Levy addressed business tools beyond marketing, saying that the company continues to develop products and tools to give businesses what they need while requiring fewer clicks and choices and less day-to-day management. Facebook is helping businesses easily operate across its family of applications via Facebook Business Suite and developing time-saving tools to help them get ideas for, manage and plan ads, posts and Stories. The social network is also enhancing the capabilities of its unified inbox, enabling businesses to message customers across its family of apps from a single interface, and expanding its Messenger API (application-programming interface) for Instagram to account for people relying more on messaging and less on phone calls. Levy concluded, “Although our products are changing to meet fast evolving needs, the mission is the same: Building meaningful connections between people and businesses. We’re building a new era of personalized experiences in which people have more control, choice and transparency over their identifiable data than ever before and people, businesses and creators have new opportunities and ways to connect, grow and prosper.”

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Facebook Outlines 4 Areas of Business Strategy on Personalized Experiences

Privacy, product/business discovery, commerce, tools beyond marketing

David Cohen

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David Cohen