Facebook Exchange Integrates Search Data With Ad Targeting

Chris-Sukornyk

Chango will roll out a programmatic advertising platform for Facebook using search data pulled from Google, Bing, Yahoo and other engines to support ad targeting inside the social network.

An agreement with Facebook gives Chango direct access to real-time bidding requests from the FBX. The integration brings large-scale search intent data to the Facebook Exchange. The requests feed through its Programmatic FBX Advertising platform.

Chango handles billions of impression requests daily by FBX to its platform; it combines the data management options with the buying capability from a demand side platform.

Chango captures about 6 billion search events monthly in North America, according to Chris Sukornyk, CEO and founder at Chango, which builds a real-time profile of actual searches on engines. The company works with brands like Bloomingdale's.

On Monday, Facebook announced updates to Nearby in Facebook for Apple iOS and Android apps that make it easier to discover new places that friends like.

Ads serve up based on what the Facebook user searches. "Most of the campaigns we support have hundreds of thousands of keywords," he said. "Often times, they are too expensive for search engine marketing, but perfectly affordable for social ad targeting."

Pixels are placed on thousand of publisher sites. The technology analyzes inbound traffic by dropping a cookie in the browser the moment someone leaves Google and goes to a publisher's page. Data from the cookie anonymously remembers the source and search conducted. The data is stored for two weeks, but the company can keep the data longer.

Facebook inventory performs well at lower costs, Sukornyk said. Aside from following programmatic buying rules, which he points to as one benefit, many advertisers do not have creative ad units formatted to FBX's ad size. The Chango platform will convert their IAB units into the Facebook format.

5 comments about "Facebook Exchange Integrates Search Data With Ad Targeting ".
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  1. Chris Zaharias from Campanja, December 19, 2012 at 1:52 p.m.

    Since June, Triggit (where I work) has been applying to FBX *the most powerful* form of search data = the advertiser's own search campaign data.

    Here's how it works:
    1. User searches for 'Boston flights', then visits [Triggit] travel customer's website and books a flight to Boston;
    2. Triggit's Custom Targeting Language takes the search query data that was passed in the URL, and associates it with that user in our data store;
    3. Then, when the user's on Facebook, we see an opportunity to buy an ad impression via FBX & do so, knowing they'd searched for 'Boston flights'. BUT - and this is crucial relative to Chango's approach - because we know they already booked the flight but have not yet taken the outbound leg, we bid based on the probability they convert on the Boston *hotel* ad we'll show them. This is working like gangbusters in retail, travel and other categories, whether in the U.S., LatAm, Europe or Asia - we're even launching such campaigns in Nigeria!

    Near-term FBX ROI data here: http://bit.ly/URudwW

    Recycling search data to help advertisers do upper funnel targeting via FBX holds promise, & we are hopeful. That said, because we & our clients live & die by hard, unyielding ROI metrics, we've been largely disappointed to date with the efficacy of such data. Typically the consumer intent is too diluted & mismatched to be worth paying for. Imagine, for example, being a retailer in the luxury womens shoes category and wanting to target women who'd search for 'pumps', with display ads on FB (via FBX). While it *might* work if it was actually a woman who had been looking for that type of *shoe*, it certainly won't work if it was a man looking for a replacement sump pump, an aquarium pump, or a bike pump. You get the idea. Yet that 'broad match gone wild' is what we usually see when we try such data.

    There is the promise of search data, & the reality. We hope the data soon gets refined to the point where it's worth paying for given client ROI constraints. Until then, what *does* work, today, at scale on Facebook Exchange, is retargeting users based on 1st party cookie data and layering the 1st party SEM/SEO campaign data that oftentimes drives the initial visit. Big direct response advertisers need to quickly pluck that low-hanging fruit from the direct response tree, but while we've launched advertisers with over 500M aggregate monthly visitors, there are about 100X more advertisers that are still sitting on the sidelines of a new channel that promises to be the biggest since paid search in 2001.

  2. Andre Szykier from maps capital management, December 19, 2012 at 2 p.m.

    Chango is just one player among many. The cookie method is a very weak link that more browsers are going to prevent from being "baked".

    Flash cookies were a sinister workaround but that will no longer play a role in mobile OS as Flash will not be supported in the future.

  3. Stuart Meyler from Beeby Clark + Meyler, December 19, 2012 at 5:01 p.m.

    Totally agree with Chris. 3rd party search intent data is not granular enough in most cases to be that good/worth the cost. 1st party is gold.

  4. kevin lee from Didit / eMarketing Association / Giving Forward, December 19, 2012 at 5:18 p.m.

    Nothing beats first party data and the larger advertisers can even segment their own visitors based on intent, customer vs non-customer and even based on PII gathered for customers. Often third party data lacks the punch and recency in particular can be an issue for many categories where people are not in-market for long.

  5. Herb Lair from CUO,Inc., December 21, 2012 at 8:48 a.m.

    Time shifted & IPTV/streaming on demand TV programming could provide ways to target ads-should be ways to have ads offset content costs - Behavioral Based Social Media System for the Cable TV Market Cable has long history of failing to develop 1-1 target marketing. Canoe Ventures (MSO venture) was touted as the Holy Grail of targeted advertising and was less than a success.

    http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/03/the-56-billion-ad-question/

    Excerpt from above link on January, 2011 Fortune.com –
    “Advertisers will spend $56 billion putting ads on TV this year...The cable industry thought it would be a big opportunity too. short.http://www.businessinsider.com/jason-kilar-here-are-my-thoughts-on-hulu-and-the-future-of-tv-2011-2

    Excerpt from above link on February, 2011 Business Insider
    Identifies advertising market being missed by Cable TV operators
    Advertisers are increasingly expecting to present their advertising messages to just their desired audience…and not to anyone else. For over 60 years, video advertising could only be bought via a TV show’s projected audience, which served as a blunt proxy for a certain target audience. In the near future, advertisers will demand the ability to target their messages to people.”

    The obvious alternative, with the least cost to implement is an independent Cloud CRM solution designed to cross index cable subscriber households with their corresponding social network interests. The current regulatory and privacy issues experienced by cable TV operators gathering unauthorized data from set-top boxes could be minimized, by validating subscriber and even eliminated by essentially having an opt-in plan (provided conveniently by the social media). Access along with profile and interests of households would be controlled by the subscriber’s social media platform of choice. Facebook has high consumer acceptance and could be used for household profiles, product interests, social interests, and viewing entertainment interests. There would be incentives to the subscribers to opt-in including notification and reminder of viewing favorites, Groupon type ads, and specific ads matching interests with infomercial type group discounts and urgency to buy.

    The current design of target marketing advertising ventures is fundamentally flawed. They focus on demographics, and fail to identify the individual behavioral current and future household interests.

    Project would involve developing a bidirectional Cloud interface program using a CRM application between the social media and MSO subscriber records and communicating behavioral marketing - business advertising, discounts, specific videos/groups, family albums – providing subscriber awareness of TV programming -- movies, products, etc. similar to Amazon and Groupon. This would make subscriber stickier and substantially reduce turnover.

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