Instagram, Twitter or Facebook Advertising – Which Is Best for Brands?

With last week’s announcement that Instagram advertising is coming in the near future (first through a limited test among U.S. users), brand marketers have taken notice. There will soon be a new way to reach the 150 million Instagram user audience. Ads will roll out with a small number of brands on both the Instagram website and mobile app with a focus on enhancing the user experience with ads.

An Instagram blog post explained the upcoming advertising launch to users as follows:

“Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands. We want these ads to be enjoyable and creative in much the same way you see engaging, high-quality ads when you flip through your favorite magazine.”

Instagram users will also be able to hide ads they don’t like and provide feedback on those ads.  Let’s hope that the Instagram team will take many of the lessons its parent, Facebook, has learned about advertising to deliver a strong offering to advertisers that its user audience accepts.

Not only is Instagram joining Facebook in building an advertising platform that will generate revenue, but the announcement comes at the same time news of Twitter’s initial public offering hit the streets. In the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing from Twitter, the company revealed that it has 218 million monthly active users. Yoree Koh and Suzanne Vranica of The Wall Street Journal explain that this is significantly less than the 1.5 billion active monthly users that Facebook boasts. That 218 million Twitter user audience represents 22% of U.S. Internet users according to Forrester Research, but that’s very small compared to the 72% of U.S. Internet users who check Facebook at least once per month.

Koh and Vranica also explained in their article that Twitter advertisers don’t believe an audience of 218 million users is big enough to invest in Twitter advertising. Today, Twitter usage peaks during big events, and the rest of the time, it’s dominated by a small group of power users. Many advertisers are waiting for Twitter to find better ways to increase engagement among wider audiences and to encourage them to log in more frequently.

These shortcomings make most consumer brands choose Facebook first. Of course, Facebook advertising has its own long list of problems, but today, it’s the social network that most brands prioritize. Is it truly the right place for those brands to invest ad dollars or do they just think they have to be there because the Facebook user audience is so big and the site is so popular? For brand marketers, the problem becomes trying to explain why they’re not advertising on Facebook to executives.

So which is best for brands—Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook? The answer is, there is no single answer. Every brand is different, but advertising on Facebook because that’s where 1 billion people are doesn’t mean the investment will drive a positive return. The Super Bowl gets massive viewership each year, but that doesn’t mean every brand should advertise during the big game. If you can create a highly relevant offer and release it at the right time and to the right audience on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, then invest. However, as with all marketing investments, if you can’t generate the needed ROI, it doesn’t matter if there are 1 billion users, 218 million users, or 100 users. 

Facebook Fan Pages Spam Is a $200 Million Business

Spreading spam on Facebook Pages is a booming business of at least $200 million a year. And a single post that contains a spam link is worth from $13 to $58, depending on how many likes the Facebook page has, according to researchers.

Independent researchers found 30,000 Facebook Pages (which used to be called "Fan Pages") advertised on underground spam forums. Then they analyzed the Pages, looking for posts that contained keywords like "click here," "free," "wow," or "join," followed by shortened links.

In two days in July, using two servers, the group of Italian researchers, led by Andrea Stroppa, Carlo De Micheli, and Danny Di Stefano, went through almost 700,000 posts and found out that almost 37,000 of those were spam.

"We've seen that every day there are at least 20,000 posts of wild spam pointing to e-commerce, fake news, affiliations, porn and often scams," Stroppa told Mashable.

The six researchers, who months ago shined a light on the fake Twitter followers business, studied various underground spam forums and found that for Facebook Pages with less than 30,000 likes, spam posts can be sold for as much as $20 and as low as $8 (the average is the aforementioned $13). For pages with more than 100,000 Likes, posts can cost as much as $100 dollars, and in some instances, for pages with millions of fans, the price is more than $200.

Facebook bans Pages administrators from posting advertisements. In fact, according to Facebook's Pages terms of service, "third-party advertisements on Pages are prohibited without our prior permission."

Facebook spam, while not as pervasive as email spam, is a growing problem, according to experts. Facebook said in 2012 that only 4% of the content shared on its network is spam, according to The Wall Street Journal, while more than 70% of email is spam, as recently reported by Mashable.

"Social media spam isn't yet quite seen on the same level as email spam." said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky Labs. "The problem will continue on growing until there's a bigger crackdown on businesses that are offering services to spam Facebook."

If spam keeps spreading on the social network, it could eventually hurt its business, not only because there are people that effectively advertise on Facebook without paying the company, but because users might be annoyed by spam and leave the network.

"There's a financial incentive for Facebook to address the spam problem. For one, people may stop using the service if the spam problem is too severe," explained Schouwenberg. "Secondly, as Facebook is looking into further ways to better monetize the platform they'll want to have the least amount of spam possible. Otherwise users will start grouping the legitimate ads together with the spammed ads, which will reduce the value of the legitimate ads."

Stroppa and the other researchers included a statement from a Facebook spammer they spoke to on Skype who explained how he's benefited from Facebook spam without ever being caught. (Stroppa declined to identify the spammer.)

"Facebook doesn’t ban us simply because we generate the content on Facebook itself. Everyday I materialize funny and interesting content full of phrases and so forth that is shared and liked by thousands of users," he or she reportedly said, according to the researchers. "Without the Fan Pages Facebook would be an empty place. Tell me, how many links do you see shared by your friends on your timeline everyday? You see? The answer is simple."

According to Stroppa, though, Facebook isn't doing enough in fighting this problem and might actually be turning a blind eye to it because, in the end, it might not bother them that much.

"Facebook doesn't have a couple of 100 Euro servers like the ones we have, and can monitor in real time. Facebook could fight these if it wanted," he said.

Facebook declined to comment on the research, simply sending the following statement:

"Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam is a top priority for us. We have developed a number of systems to identify spam and stop it from spreading, and we have mechanisms in place to quickly shut down Pages, accounts, and applications that are found to be in violation of our terms of service. We also offer tools for people to report Pages and posts that might be spam. We will continue to improve our spam-fighting systems so we can to ensure that the overall level of spam on Facebook remains low."

Facebook Is Simplifying Facebook Ads

On Thursday, Facebook announced that the Facebook ads experience for marketers was being simplified and streamlined, making it easier for businesses to identify which ad products will help them the best achieve their intended goals.

Facebook has been gathering feedback from advertisers over the past year, figuring out what adverts work best for which advertisers. However, Facebook has now realised that by creating so many ad units, 27 in all, they have created some products which accomplish the same goals as others, hence making them obsolete.

Facebook plans to get rid of over half of the 27 current ad models, streamlining the advertising process for marketers. In the announcement post, Facebook employee Fidji Simo reveals what the proposed changes to the ads experience will eventually achieve:

When we work with a marketer, we always start with their business goals, and we are going to do the same thing with our ad products. Our vision is that over time, an advertiser can come to Facebook and tell us what they are trying to achieve, and our ads tools will automatically suggest the right combination of products to help them achieve it. 

Simo also mentions some of the streamlining process’ early casualties: Facebook will remove the Questions product for Pages, as advertisers can simply ask a question instead; the Offer page post will also be removed as a marketing option, because advertisers are using Page post link ads and achieving the same results to a greater efficacy. These two changes will come into effect in July.

In Autumn, Facebook is updating page post photo ads so that they contain social context (“John Smith liked company’s post” or “Jane White commented on company’s post”), meaning advertisers won’t have to purchase sponsored stories as well to get the benefits of this type of effective word-of-mouth marketing.

The soonest changes will occur later this month: Facebook will reduce the number of ad formats so that advertising is more consistent across the site, making “the ad creation process much simpler for advertisers”.

In the coming weeks and months, marketers will start to see these streamlined changes to our ads solutions. We think these updates will make it easier for them to do what they do best: reach the right groups of people with the right message and drive the results they care most about. 

The proposed changes will mostly likely help small businesses by simplifying and streamlining the ad creation process, and saving them time and money. However, if Facebook achieve the vision they have for Facebook ads, all businesses could benefit.

What do you think of Facebook’s proposed changes to ads?