• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, March 8, 2013

For those looking to take advantage of real-time marketing on Facebook's newphoto-centric news feed, quality has never been more important. Online Media Daily wrote yesterday that according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "…the redesign was guided by three factors: letting people tell richer 'stories,' providing a choice of feeds, and offering a consistent look and feel across platforms."

But Zuckerberg left out a fourth factor, which AdAge was able to pinpoint in a headline: "Facebook news feed redesign gives marketers what they've pined for: bigger ads." The pictures (and ads) will fit right into the news feed's stream, where the majority of user engagement takes place on Facebook.

In order to use the extra real-estate space to better engage users, the picture associated with a post could be just as important as the content itself. For a marketer looking to act in real-time, this could be challenging.

"Real-time" is much more than just RTB or programmatic buying. As we've learned recently, it's also about marketers seizing a moment. However, everything could backfire if marketers try to seize every moment; especially if a big, irrelevant pictures end up at the top of someone's news feed.

Online Media Daily wrote that Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital, a Facebook ad partner, noted that the bigger advertisements will also be competing with posts from users' friends. “Standing out will be harder for brands as a result, but it’s probably a better user experience,” he said. 

Marketers and brands will ultimately figure out how to use the new news feed, but getting relevant images in real-time won't be easy. There are already entire websites solely dedicated to pictures that missed the mark, and I'm sure brands would hate to see a rushed attempt of theirs end up alongside those images.

None of this is exactly new - quality always has and always will be important. It's just bigger, which means the stakes have been raised for real-time marketers.