How 7 Top Brands Are Using Facebook’s New Ad Tools

On Leap Day 2012, Facebook gathered all its marketing executives in New York City for a coming-out party of sorts for a slew of new ad products. To people outside the industry, the promise of new initiatives might appear a bit on the dull side. But for advertisers, anything that Facebook does for advertising is of interest.

Among the products Facebook introduced were Premium on Facebook, Reach Generator, Offers and Logged Out ads. The company also asked brands to embrace a paradigm shift from advertising to “Stories,” Facebook’s preferred term for brand-related messages. Since that time, a few big brands have experimented with the new tools.

Here are a few examples or, if you prefer, Stories. Is there a standout brand campaign that you enjoy? Let us know in the comments.

1. Premium Ads: Tide

The Procter & Gamble detergent brand Tide turned a PR event into advertising in March. The program started when officials used Tide to clean up the chemical residue on a racetrack after a big fire at a NASCAR course in March. Tide’s program, which included outreach on Twitter, public relations and search, also leaned heavily on Facebook’s Premium ad products. Tide used the format to draw attention to the brand’s role in the incident. As with other Premium ads, the status update went out across the network, but it was especially focused on Tide fans and friends of Tide fans. If you or your friend interacted with the Tide brand page, then you might have seen it in your News Feed.

Tide’s initial post was a link to a Business Insider article about the event, which included photos of people hauling boxes of Tide to the scene. Tide used Premium on Facebook to blast the post and further boosted engagement with a post asking fans to fill in a caption for a photo of workers cleaning up the mess.

Facebook says that the NASCAR ad had a 62% higher engagement rate than previous ads the brand has run. The premium buy also got the post in front of 1 million people, more than doubling the usual reach of a Tide post. (Tide has close to 2.8 million fans, but only a portion see a post at any given time.) Sarah Pasquinucci, external relations manager for North American fabric at P&G, says the brand has experimented with other premium posts but can’t say how they perform versus standard Facebook ads. “We’re always looking to reach consumers in the right place at the right time in the right way,” she adds.

2. Premium and Logged Out Ads: Subway

Subway used the new Premium and Logged Out ads on Facebook to highlight spokesman Blake Griffin. The sandwich chain ran an update that featured a video with fun outtakes of Blake on the log-out screen and used the Page ad unit to promote it. People interacted nearly 1 million times with the ads and video, which hit nearly 500,000 plays. As a result, Subway’s reach during the week-long campaign increased tenfold.

Tony Pace, the SVP and CMO of the Subway Franchisee Advertising Trust Fund, says the brand takes a “test and learn” approach to Facebook advertising and jumped at the opportunity to do something different. Pace says the Stories, in this case, performed better than his expectations and were a good way to reward fans without alienating consumers.

“People who are really into our brand are surprisingly happy to get lots of content from us,” he says. “This was a good way of rewarding folks that want to see a lot from us.”

Pace says the Logged Out ad did well because the content was compelling. “If people are logging out, they probably don’t want to spend more time there unless it’s something really interesting,” he says.

3. Reach Generator: Ben & Jerry’s and Dr Pepper

The Unilever-owned ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s took advantage of Reach Generator to make sure all its fans got the latest updates. Reach Generator is designed to expose fans to updates they might not otherwise see. As Facebook noted back in February, the typical post on a brand site only reaches 16% of fans. With Reach Generator, Ben & Jerry’s hit 98% of fans during a 28-day period and saw twice as much engagement. Another early adopter of Reach Generator, Dr Pepper, hit 83% of its 8 million U.S. fans over a 28-day period and saw a 140% jump in “People Talking About This” (PTAT) with the tool.

4. Offers: Einstein Bros. Bagels and Chili’s

Einstein Bros. availed itself of another new Facebook ad product, Offers, with a buy-one-get-one offer from Feb. 29 through March 4. Some 32,000 people (out of 690,000 fans) took the chain up on its offer, and Einstein Bros. logged a “significant” spike in PTAT during that time.

Offers is an evolution of “Check-in Deals,” a mobile-only Facebook product. With Offers, consumers can redeem the deals on their desktop or mobile, since they live on a Brand Page.

Meanwhile, Chili’s ran an Offers promotion offering a free appetizer or dessert with an entree purchase for three days. The chain, which has 1.9 million Facebook fans, saw 433,773 people claim the offer — around 20% of whom were on Facebook. About 30% of redemptions also came from Facebook, which is about three times higher than average.

5. Logged Out Ads: Ford

Ford tried its hand at a Logged Out ad on March 20. The video, a Mustang commercial, got more than 1 million plays and boosted Ford’s PTAT that day by 180%. Thomais Zaremba, digital marketing manager at Ford, says she wasn’t sure that people would stick around to watch an ad when they were logging out, but many did. “I was surprised,” she says, noting that the number of people who log out every day — 40 million — was way more than she thought.

Zaremba hasn’t tried another Logged Out ad since, but plans to. Says Zaremba: “We’re always interested in testing new spaces.”












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