Facebook’s importance for music and music marketing is well established, as are some of the arguments around how it distributes artists’ Page posts, how effective its ads are for musicians, and other ways the social network is being used to connect artists with fans.
With that in mind, there are three separate stories today around Facebook that all have implications for music, so we thought we’d bundle them together. First, those ads. A study by online advertising firm AdRoll suggests that Facebook’s News Feed ads are performing pretty well.
Based on a study of 1bn ad impressions, it claims Facebook News Feed ads have click-through rates 21 times those of existing web retargeting ads and 49 times right-hand sidebar ads on the social network.
“A year ago we were having the discussion that Facebook doesn’t work, and GM is pulling its ads. Now we’re having the conversation on whether this rivals Google,” AdRoll’s Adam Berke tells VentureBeat.
Second, something interesting on the commerce side. Facebook has been offering free digital ‘stickers’ for a while now within its Facebook Messenger apps on iOS and Android. But it’s just started offering the first branded stickers pack for Universal Pictures’ latest animated movie ‘Despicable Me 2’.
As Facebook expands this, there’s potential for music stickers too: Snoop Dogg, PSY and Trey Songz have already been experimenting with the idea in other apps. Facebook might even be able to sell stickers, given the money being made elsewhere by messaging apps like Line.
Third, Facebook is testing a new feature called Host Chat, according to TechCrunch. It’ll let Facebook users (including Page owners, you’d think) create temporary chat rooms on their profiles, and set the privacy options to dictate who’s able to join.
Music isn’t a direct feature here – as it is for something like Soundrop with its ‘social listening’ rooms – but there’s still some potential if artists can start hosting their own chats within their Pages on Facebook.
Clearly the ad performance is the main story here, but the stickers and Host Chat stories show Facebook’s determination to find new ways to keep its users engaged, which could be beneficial for musicians too.
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