It isn’t surprising to hear that Facebook has over 1.65 billion monthly active users.
What is surprising is that about 893 million, or over 50%, of them (source: Facebook Q4 2015 Results) are active only on their mobile phones.
The pattern has been there for all to see – people are accessing the Internet over mobile devices much more than before.
Ad-Exchange will be Mobile Centric
Facebook Exchange was a retargeting tool aimed primarily at desktop users.
More importantly, features like the Dynamic Ads for Carousels or custom audience retargeting are features that the old Ad Exchange did not support.
Companies that are still using Facebook Exchange are being moved to newer products and the entire change is expected to be complete by the 1st of November 2016.
Mobile advertising, on Yahoo, already has Dynamic Ads running on it – which isn’t very different from Facebook Exchange.
The result: a smooth transition from one platform to another.
Facebook tries to make Videos Interesting
We’ve all been there – someone tells us to watch this really cool video and we keep waiting and waiting for the ‘cool’ bit to come on, and it’s the last 5-seconds on a 20-minute video.
Facebook Live, on their video timelines, now indicates the instance when someone expressed a particular emotion related to the video.
So, if you were watching a 5-minute long video and liked the video at around the 3:01 mark, that’s what it will show on the video timeline.
This concept will work for all emoticons available as part of Facebook now – but only on Facebook Live!
Some Issues with this Feature
Here’s the problem with this concept: First, you’d have to assume that people would like or emote on a video the moment they saw something they liked.
User behaviour on video-viewing suggests that they are more likely to step out of the entire video, having watched it completely, and then given a judgement.
This, of course, depends on them having watched the entire video – leaving in the middle doesn’t count.
Judging a video while watching it is a rare occurrence, so we are not sure if this will really be accurate.
Secondly, there’s the whole issue of letting people know where the cool bits are.
Spoiler Alert anyone??!
The whole thing that makes a video cool is the build-up followed by the climax on the Punchline.
This would be like a stand-up comedian telling the Punchline first and then explaining why its funny.
Not sure Facebook really thought that one through but the good thing about it is – it’s not a disruptive update.
It does not replace a better feature and nor does it change anything, so you might not have to worry about it so much.
Whether the feature changes later is something we’ll have to wait and see.