View Spruce Media’s report here.

Facebook made some hugely innovative changes to the way it connects its ad publishing technology, brands who want to reach high quality customers, and the social network’s diverse user base in 2012. It’s looking as if 2013 will be just as promising as Facebook moves more deeply into search marketing, mobile advertising, targeting based on big data, and more innovative ways to include brand’s pages, especially for local.

As our small business clients start to consider changes to their budgets for advertising, we wanted to provide Spruce Meida’s outlook on the state of Facebook advertising in 2013. Spruce Media is one of the largest ad-buying platform clients for Facebook, providing a network of tools for companies like ours use to buy large, convenient chunks of Facebook ad space in a variety of forms.

Here’s some of the most fascinating information we found in their report:

• Goals in Facebook advertising for brands are transitioning from fan acquisiton (new likes) to engagement (views, likes of individual pieces of content, shares, comments, etc…)
• The final quarter of 2012 demonstrated continued improvements to the Facebook ad algorithm. ”Facebook is doing a great job of making sure that ads are shown to people who are most likely to be interested in them.”
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  Here’s Spruce Media’s expert “Facebook Marketing Cycle” techniques.

  The most engaging place to serve ads continued to be the desktop-displayed newsfeed as opposed to mobile.

•  42% of all enagement that occurs after people see a brand’s Facebook Ads are photo views and 10% in video views. This further demonstrates the value that Facebook sees in Instagram, and the long term value that they’re going to leverage from this recent aquisition.
• The New Facebook Ad Network: ads off of Facebook on other websites
  • These ads will expand Facebook’s reach of ad impressions into third-party websites and publishers.
  • Testing has been delayed further into later 2013
  • This network will create head-to-head competition with Google, fighting for publisher placement and opening themselves up to multiply revenues by as much as 3 times!
• Graph Search: Facebook’s new search tool
  • The first version of Graph Search focuses on four main areas: people, photos, places, and interests.
  • Content posted by brands will be discoverable in search results similarly to how brand’s page content is currently showing up in the news feed, making future integration into Facebook search marketing seamless.
• Facebook is by far the ad platform with the greatest amount of targeting data, making advertisements more productive.
• The introduction of Graph Search demonstrates just one more reason that brands need to employ smart paid social media strategies and continue in investing on Facebook.
• “We’ve reached a world in digital advertising where we aren’t just talking about impressions, clicks and conversions, and we can speak about people, reaching them and exactly what they are doing.”

We’re certainly interested in the ad network war that Facebook is about to start with Google and that Business Insider commented on with regard’s to Spruce’s report earlier this month as well. Who will rise as the #1 internet advertising giant?

Contact us at your convenience to discuss more about Facebook-based marketing, and how a combination of “paid” advertising and nontraditional “free” marketing on Facebook might drive more revenue for your business.