Preventing Negative Brand Publicity for Your Brand on Facebook

Being a widely used social media platform, Facebook is a core internet marketing company tool that boosts global product awareness. But, with about 2 billion active monthly users, Facebook is home to all types of people and organizations some of which thriving by driving negative messages and public influence. Hence, the need to ensure brand safety when advertising on social media platforms.

Brand safety I never a major concern for people who advertise on Facebook because they believe that their adverts only appear on Facebook which is not the case. To expand their ad revenue and prevent saturation, Facebook relies on other inventory sources beside their newsfeed column. Its alternative source inventories are;

Facebook audience network: This handy network was effected in 2014. It allows Facebook adverts to appear on mobile apps and sites. This means that, your adverts not only appear on the newsfeed column but also on other mobile sites and apps as a way of boosting awareness and traffic goals.

Instant articles: Just like Facebook audience network, instant articles are unique mobile web formats that trigger news articles on Facebook to load more quickly. This is a feature that attracted sharp criticism from publishers who felt like Facebook was taking away their valuable ad revenue. Criticism depicts instant articles’ effectiveness.

Negative Brand Publicity for Your Brand on Facebook

In-stream video: In-stream video is designed to allow quick delivery of 5 to 15 seconds long video adverts within other non-live and live videos. Within the 5 to 15 seconds, a prospective customer will have gathered enough information to encourage them research more on your brand or invest in it.

The introduction of these three advert placements by Facebook was received positively by advertisers because it meant more reach and more business for them. Unfortunately, the alternative source inventories create equal damage as benefit. This is because, as much as you are allowed to select whether to use the advert placements methods or not, you do not have control over where your adverts appear. Your adverts can be served to Facebook users interested in dodgy or extremist content. Though this may be a rare occurrence, it happens and it can detrimental to any organizations or global brand. All it takes is a screenshot of your advert running alongside anextremist video or message and you are labelled an extremism supporter.

The only sure way to avoid such controversies is choosing not to target these advert placements. Facebook adverts that appear on newsfeeds column only tend to be safe. Though your adverts still reach a substantial number of people, you limit your brand’s reach and you miss out on cost effective inventory by omitting the placements methods. So, before choosing not to utilize these advert placement methods, consider that in-stream videos drive more views because you advert appears when someone is watching a video they chose. They must watch the video to resume watching the content they had selected. Though the interruption may be irritating to the viewer, you will garner a substantial following from the numerous views.

Protecting your brand

Since its inception, FAN operated as a blind marketing and product awareness network that did not allow advertisers to choose where their ads would appear. Hence, an uproar that led Facebook to provide more control to the advertisers. Facebook upgraded the platform to provide advertisers with the ability to block certain placement categories on FAN such as gambling and dating and to upload an unwanted placement block list. So, you still cannot see where your brand is displayed but at least you are sure that your brand will not be displayed on unpopular sites and stir up controversy. However, this feature does not eliminate the possibility of Facebook adverts ending up in the wrong places entirely. Therefore, Facebook later announced that they would gradually roll out more brand control measures such as;

Pre-campaign transparency: This feature is available for use to some advertisers. It allows you to see where your brand advert will appear. You are provided with a list of where your advert is likely to appear across in-stream ads, Instant articles and Facebook audience network. This way, if you are dissatisfied with the advert potential locations, you either file a complaint or choose not to use the three advert placements.

Blocking at account level: Previously, advertisers applied placement block list to specific advert sets. Now, Facebook is will make the process much easier based on account level blocking and brand safety levels as follows;high brand safety allows you to eliminate audience network, in-stream videos and instant articles completely. Your adverts only appear on instagram and Facebook newsfeed columns. Medium brand safety allows you to apply account block lists and category omissions to the audience network, in-stream videos and instant articles. Low brand safety allows adverts to run on in-stream videos, instant articles and audience network without any category or block lists.

Most advertisers and organizations alike will prefer to use medium brand safety level because it offers significant brand protection and maximum possible customer reach. It is never advisable to use low brand safety level because you can expose your brand to detrimental controversies. Diligence is required to ensure that your brand awareness campaign gets to as many target audiences as possible by appearing against the right and quality inventory.

The high brand safety level is recommended for brands that are highly concerned about their probable placements because they have been caught up in the wrong controversy before. Though this safety level depicts caution, it can be equally as effective because it focuses on targeted placements. Therefore, it is ideal for big brands that are already well-known but are looking to keep their brand relevant. A good example is Coca Cola. Coca Cola is known globally and it thrives because of its reputation. So, it would readily embrace high safety level for Facebook adverts to prevent branding disasters.

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Amit Mishra

Amit Mishra, the co-founder of Media Search Group, loves to pen down about marketing and designing. Be it search engine optimization(SEO) tips and strategies, Social Media Optimization, Increasing Engagement, and Traffic Score, Web Design and Development, Mobile Applications, Conversion/Sales, he covers it all. Been in the business for a long time, Amit Mishra knows some of the best strategies on how to expand and grow a Business Online.

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