Facebook Datamines Real-Time Conversations for Ad Targeting

Last month Facebook started to profile real-time conversations to target ads using a worldwide test sample of 1%, which gives them a sample size of over 6 million people.

While advertisers can already use Facebook to reach users based on profile data such as age, gender, location, keywords, interests and preferences through "likes", this recent addition provides real-time processing of data from status updates and new wall posts so that users are served with corresponding advertising messages that are relevant their current conversations.

For example: Users who update their status with "Hey mate, let’s go out for a beer tonight” could get an ad from the local Irish pub, a new boutique beer or the latest drink alcohol responsibly message by the South Australian government (see video below).



While Facebook is not the first website to serve targeted ads (Google started back in 2009 with behavioural advertising program called Adsense) this latest immediate attempt to reach the consumer with a marketing message during a conversation is a major breakthrough.

With real-time delivery of advertisements, any online discussion taking place in our lives such as getting engaged, planning a holiday, organising a dinner with friends turns has become a new marketplace for brands to raise awareness or gain top of mind at the time when people are ready to purchase their product.

This immediacy is even further enhanced if combined with GeoTargeting technology which would put brands directly in front of a potential buyer when they are activily out shopping.

If 57% of people talk more online than they do in real life as the following video suggest, then digital marketers have a great opportunity of tapping into the online conversation.

The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

Foundry works the pitch

Last night on the Gruen Transfer the lawyers at the ABC banned half of the pitch segment in which two ad agencies compete to attempt to sell the unsellable, in this particular challenge it was meant to be about obesity. However the Sydney based agency, The Foundry, was found to be 'racist and discriminatory', and was not allowed to air their contraversial pitch on the show.



The Foundry's pitch was deemed to infrine ABC editorial guidelines. It proposed the concept of "fat pride" by positioning that if it was offensive to make jokes about "race, homosexuality and religion" then it should not be acceptable to make jokes about "weight. Gruen Transfer presenter Wil Anderson directed people to visit a dedicated website http://www.antiprejudicead.net/ to see the ad banned from TV.

I suggest the Foundry is doing exactly what good ad agencies do best, getting media cut through and generating a huge volume of free publicity bigger than the pitch and Gruen itself. By deliberately submitting a controversial treatment for the show it has given them a chance to stretch their credentials without having the repercussion of alienating a client. If you are the marketing team of a social cause with a small budget who are you going to call? Surely one that generates a lively discussion such as this?. The strategy is just brilliant and Aunty was simply used as part of the process to advertise the Foundry.



Some of the website comments included,

"I can definitely understand why it wasn't shown on TV. People have a right not to be confronted with offensive material - even if properly used - in their homes."

"An ad? I don't think so. It's just biased and bigoted trash,"

"I literally choked on that laugh, beer went everywhere and I had an epiphany about shape discrimination starting with laughing at a fat chick joke."

"Sure, in the abstract, 'discrimination is discrimination' but the difference in degree is so huge that the point is lost and members of the groups who have suffered real discrimination are very likely to be offended by the comparison."

At last count the comments on the site were well over the 1500 postings mark

Tasmania the Movie

Tourism Tasmania has used Leo Burnett to produce a tongue-in-cheek website, tasmaniathemovie.com. The website was intended as a spoof on the movie Australia, which used promotional material featuring a map that initially omitted Tasmania.

From December 4 until Christmas 2008, a spoof movie trailer boasting Tasmania's natural wonders screened in Australia at selected cinemas in Sydney and Melbourne. “Our intention was to take advantage of the excitement created by the movie with humour and cheeky Aussie wit said Tasmanian Minister for Tourism, Michelle O’Byrne.“

We also wanted to remind the world that Tasmania is still part of Australia and one of the country’s most appealing tourism destinations." Ms O’Byrne said.

Tasmania, the Movie campaign generated all the publicity normally seen for a new film, with press ads in entertainment pages, outdoor advertising, a special FaceBook page as a viral social networking campaign, with a total budget of $100,000. According to Nielsen Media Research, Tourism Tasmania spent $2m in main media between November 2007 and December 2008, which was down from $4.6m the previous year.

Below is an image of the Tasmania the Movie Facebook Page.



Here is also a link to the story in the newspaper Sydney Morning Herald