Facebook is coming up with ever more inventive ways to keep users on Facebook for longer. In their latest effort, Facebook has announced a new ad feature called 'Lead Ads' which they're currently testing in various markets. Lead ads simplify the process of getting people to sign-up for a newsletter or submit information to a business by enabling Facebook to auto-fill the required fields with their existing Facebook profile data.
The move seems like a logical one, particularly on mobile, where manually clicking on each field and filling in details via the touchscreen keyboard can be a pain. But despite it's obvious utility, auto-filling user details in this way is something companies have struggled to perfect, mostly due to privacy concerns. Facebook's system is a two-step process, where users will have to click on the call-to-action button in the ad ('Subscribe' in the example above), check the information they're willing to submit to the company, then press 'Submit'. In this way, Facebook is giving users full control over what data they hand over to advertisers. From the official announcement:
"Like our other ad formats, we've built this ad type with privacy in mind. People can edit their contact information, and information isn't sent to the business until a person clicks the "submit" button. Advertisers may only use this information in accordance with their privacy policies, which we make available in the lead ad before people click submit. Advertisers are also restricted from re-selling lead information to third parties."
Time Lords
By streamlining the sign-in process - which will no doubt be of significant benefit to brands, making it much easier to gather customer data - Facebook is also looking to reduce the amount of time people spend not using Facebook. As part of Facebook's recent announcement of their 'Instant Articles' product, one of the points of focus was the expedited load time of Instant Articles content. Facebook says the average load time of an external link is around eight seconds, which is nothing much in the scheme of things, but when you multiply that eight seconds by the average number of Facebook users - 936 million active users every day - that downtime adds up. Assuming each one of those users loads just one external link per day, that equates to more than two million total hours people are waiting, each day - time they could be spending doing other things on Facebook.
While there are other motivations, behind Instant Articles, and indeed with Lead Ads, that downtime is something Facebook is keen to attack. Less time waiting means a better user experience, but more importantly, more time to spend on Facebook engaging with other elements. Filling in a few details may only take a couple of minutes (more if you're taken to an external sign-up site), but those minutes add up, and the more Facebook can eliminate that time away from the process, the more likely you'll stay on-platform and engage with more Facebook content.
Building Connections
From a brand perspective, the benefits are obvious. Anything that makes it easier to gather audience data is a bonus, and through Lead Ads, Facebook will be able to auto-fill forms with details like name, e-mail, address, phone number, state, country - a whole range of fields already populated in people's Facebook profile records. In some ways, it's surprising Facebook is looking to better enable users to build their own e-mail lists in this way, as it'll help brands establish off-platform relationships - Facebook's generally opposed to any activities that take attention away from Facebook. Nonetheless, the benefits of building your own e-mail list are significant, particularly as platforms like Facebook keep changing the landscape. The more you can establish connections via your owned properties, like e-mail lists, the better - Lead Ads will better facilitate just that.
Lead-ads are currently being tested with a 'small group of businesses around the world' with a view to a wider roll-out in future. The options seems like a solid addition to the overall Facebook advertising landscape, and it'll be interesting to see what the data shows from the initial tests, and if/when the feature is rolled out to everyone.
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