First, you build a great consumer experience... that helps people share in a new way that is important. Then, after that, you can start to introduce organic ways that people can interact with businesses... Only once you have that ramped up to a good scale can you really start dialling up advertising, having that feel good and be a good part of the experience.
These points are even more important today, as platforms such as Messenger and Oculus, and products such as 360 Video and Live video gain traction. Therefore, as our advertising partners wonder when new opportunities will be available on our platforms, it is worth sharing more on our philosophy for building ad products.
In short, our focus is on value - value for people and value for businesses. We have learned that when we create value for people, we create value for businesses. Our ads team’s mission is to create meaningful connections between people and businesses,and we try to do that by making people’s interactions with businesses additive to their experience on the platform.
This is how we develop advertising solutions:
2. Study people’s behaviours on the platform
3. Help businesses connect with people organically
Steps 4 through 98? Those are pivots, backtracks, failures and big leaps forward. They are focus groups with people and conversations with advertisers. They are A/B tests, polls and studies to determine if the product is delivering business value for different advertisers, with different goals in different verticals in every corner of the world.
Only after we have proven to ourselves and our partners that the new ad product improves people’s experiences rather than hinders them, do we introduce that product.
Then there is figuring out how to offer the right ads to the right people at the right time. When ads are highly relevant, they are not only more effective for businesses but they are also more valuable to the people who see them. Therefore, we do not just invest in building ad solutions that are both suitable to the platform and the way people use it. We invest in building the technology that powers ad relevance too.
This philosophy guides us through every platform and product we build. We launched News Feed in 2006 but did not introduce ads in News Feed until 2012. We launched ads on Instagram slowly and methodically, taking the time to gauge people’s responses and the effect for advertisers. We made auto-play video available to advertisers only after product usage and survey responses told us that people enjoyed the auto-play experience. Overall, we choose sustainability over immediacy, and both the people who use our services and the marketers who advertise in them have better experiences because of that choice. Moreover, we are never really “done” with a product, because we are always working to make them better for people and for advertisers.
This is not the fastest way to build products nor is it the best way to maximise revenue in the short term. However, with over 1.59 billion people using Facebook every month, we think it is worth the investment.
