Facebook is confident that it can eat into Google's revenues and that traditional media owners may not be the only losers as it makes a grab for ad dollars. Australia could be one of the first markets to see the tide turn.
Carolyn Everson, VP of global marketing solutions told AdNews that as marketers move away from last click attribution, search budgets would follow.
“Last click is over-credited,” she said. “Search discounts everything else.” That will change, she says, and Facebook's work with partner developers was “making better progress [in Australia] than almost anywhere else.”
While acknowledging the importance of search, which is again predicted to outperform by media agency bosses in 2014, Everson said that “Other media will get the credit they deserve. Budgets will shift. Search is important but other [components] are not yet receiving their deserved credit.”
Everson said that Facebook's ad revenue would also siphon off dollars from other segments, including TV.
“In most markets, the pie is not growing. In some markets the dollars are coming rapidly out of print and radio, in others TV. But it depends on what the consumer is doing. Budgets will grow if consumers are spending time there.”
While mobile ad dollars represented just under one per cent of total marketing budgets in Australia last year, Everson said the shift would “dramatically accelerate” this year, while not committing to a percentage.
Facebook ad prices increased 92% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2012. Everson said that the market set the price and demand remained high. But she said that smart marketers could still grab a bargain.
“Typically prices go down during the first few days of the month [because some marketers take a few days to analyse the results of their spend]. Smart marketers, the more savvy e-commerce companies, are taking advantage of that.”
While Facebook's plans for video have been well trailed, the full rollout has stalled over turning customers off. The company is now trialling video for users. Everson said that once that development is fine tuned and fully rolled out, Facebook video for advertisers “will follow very shortly.”
She said the groundwork being laid in the US meant that in Australia, “there would be a smaller gap” between the user video rollout, and Facebook video for marketers.
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