From Reactions To Better Targeting?

Facebook introduced new icons that show different emotions instead of only “Like it”. That’s for sure nice for users. There were also a lot of confusion when someone posted something about someone’s else death, and some people clicked “Like it” while other commented that there’s nothing to like. So now you can use a different option to show that some news is sad for you.

So what kind of reaction we can demonstrate on Facebook now? There is still “Like” and brand new ones: Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad, Angry. This variety of emotions gives users full spectrum.

And what it offers to Facebook and advertisers?

Let’s be honest, a lot. Sure, people from Facebook are quiet and don’t say anything about how this reaction will influence on advertisements, but it’s almost sure that it will. It’s hard to believe that in the times of more and more specific ads targeting one of the biggest players introducing something that can say more about people reactions and won’t benefit from that.

The easiest what it might bring is a change in the content everyone sees in News Feed. But I can’t believe Facebook stops here. It’s most probable that Facebook already started to build up the models of behavior that fits into the particular segments of people. And when it’s ready better targeting should be available to advertisers. Will advertisers pay even more for better targeting? Well, the answer is more than obvious.

Basing on knowledge what people like, dislike what made them happy or sad you know what to offer to whom. But if you add social demography profiles it becomes even more valuable. Having this kind of data we can quickly create a campaign that excluding everyone who doesn’t like our previous campaign but – who knows – maybe also the similar campaign of our competitors. This is, of course, the first what came up to the mind, but I believe that Facebook engineers are ready to prepare more sophisticated algorithms that will be able to define how you react on certain offer analysis not only your reactions to advertisements but also to your reactions in publishers content and your friends posts.

It looks like that nice looking emoticon might become another feature that makes Facebook stronger in battle on advertisers money. And it’s easy to predict what emoticon publishers would choose if they can to use it under this article. I believe they are far away from Wow now.