The Wall Street Journal
By Reed Albergotti, Wall Street Journal
A video ad on Facebook will cost advertisers about $1 million a day, but the social network won’t accept a check from just anyone.
Watch the video below to see how the Wall Street Journal describes “The Science of Facebook Video Ads”.
(Excerpt. Full article can be viewed at the Wall Street Journal online. In spring 2013, Facebook began working with Ace Metrix, a Mountain View, Calif., company that uses online surveys to test ads for effectiveness. Its survey questions range from whether the ad made viewers want to buy the product to how it made them feel. Respondents can also add their own comments.
The Facebook team initially felt it understood the types of ads users would want to see. Their favorites included an iPad ad and another for Adidas starring Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III. By contrast, the Facebook team said it probably wouldn’t accept ads for something more mundane—like laundry detergent.
Then Ace Metrix CEO Peter Daboll showed a TV ad for Tide on his computer. It was part of Tide’s “Loads of Hope,” campaign, which offers free laundry services to people in disaster areas. Facebook’s team loved the ad. The incident convinced Facebook it needed an objective, quantifiable way to judge ads.
Ace Metrix created a Facebook-specific rating for ads. In addition to its usual metrics like “desire” and “watchability,” Ace Metrix added a factor called “meaningfulness.”
For a high “meaningfulness” score, an ad must inspire “emotion” and “verbosity”—a measure of how much users write in their comments. Those factors, plus humor, contribute to the Facebook-specific “fAce Score.”
Ace Metrix, which has tested 32,000 ads, can usually determine a fAce Score in 24 hours. Facebook said it hasn’t decided on the scores it will accept.
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