Facebook F8 2017 – What Marketers Need to Know

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Facebook’s F8 conferences have earned the reputation of being one of the most innovative and fascinating tech events of the year.

While F8 is known as the “Facebook Developer Conference”, it doesn’t mean there’s only news about high-tech gadgets. In fact, there are also many insights and ideas that social media marketers can use.

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If you missed the F8 conference live broadcast, it’s not too late to read about all the announcements.

We worked hard for you, and gathered together the most important announcements about Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Workplace, Oculus, and other Facebook’s apps.

During his (most waited) speech at F8 Mark Zuckerberg said:

We are building the technology to give anyone the power to share anything they want with anyone else.”

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Mark Zuckerberg on the stage of F8 at Fort Mason (San Francisco)

And we better believe him.

Zooming on Facebook’s 10-year roadmap reveals (as if we didn’t know!) that the company’s moving towards connecting more and more people, communities, and technologies.

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Courtesy of Business Insiders

Here are the most important announcements from F8 in 2017 that will be shaping the marketing industry in the upcoming months:

  1. Advanced engagement analytics
  2. AI-powered audience insights
  3. Omni-channel Custom Audiences
  4. Custom Facebook Analytics dashboards
  5. Facebook launched a new Camera Effects Platform
  6. Facebook launched the Frame Studio
  7. Messenger platform 2.0 with more and better bots
  8. Updated Multi-product Dynamic Ads
  9. Facebook Workplace is growing up
  10. Facebook introduced the AR Studio
  11. New VR app Facebook Spaces
  12. Surround 360 technology

Let’s examine them all!


1. Advanced marketing analytics for engagement and reactions

As Facebook’s Engineering manager Amit Finkelstein put it: “We’ve been busy building the future of analytics.”

Perhaps one of the biggest updates is adding the Facebook Page interactions, such as post reactions and shares to be included in the omnichannel analytics for websites, applications, services, and bots.

For example, an e-commerce business can measure if people who comment on an item featured in their Page post go on to view that item on their website or purchase it in their app. This insight could help you optimize your ad campaigns to increase user engagement and translate it to sales.

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Facebook’s also improving their offline conversion analytics to show how people’s online interactions translate to in-store purchases.

For advertisers, this updates means new insights to their Facebook audience’s engagement level and purchase behaviours. For instance, you could discover that people who give your ad or post a Love reaction are also the most likely to make a purchase.


2. AI-powered marketing insights

Facebook’s been applying machine learning to build a better audience insights tool.

With this new feature, you’ll see insights such as changes in purchases for a new version of your app, or variations in engagement across people in different cities.

With all this new data, you’ll be able to create new Facebook audiences and target the people who are most interested in your offers.

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In AdEspresso, we predict that this update will become especially beneficial to large advertisers working with multiple ad types and target audiences.


3. Omni-channel Custom Audiences

While this update was only mentioned only as a bullet point in Facebook’s announcement, we’re more than excited to see this new feature in action.

The new omni-channel audiences mean that you can create Facebook Custom Audiences based on people’s behavior across your app, website, and bots.

For example, you can specifically:

  • Target the people who viewed an item on both your e-commerce store and your native shopping app
  • Exclude from your e-commerce visitors’ audience the people who took specific action in your app

We couldn’t see the new targeting option in the Ads Manager just yet, so it may take some time for this feature to be rolled out to all advertisers.

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Facebook also made it possible to use additional segmentation criteria based on things you know, such as a customer’s frequent flyer status. They’ll be extending support for user properties from apps to websites, and bringing this feature out of beta.


4. Custom Facebook Analytics dashboards

At the F8 conference, Facebook also announced that advertisers can now create custom analytics dashboards to share with team members.

You can use custom dashboards to quickly access your most important reports in one place, so that you and your team can keep an eye on all important campaign results.

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How to create a custom Facebook Analytics dashboard:

First, you need to set up a dashboard:

  • Click “Dashboards” in the left menu and select “Create Dashboard”
  • Enter your dashboard’s name. If you’d like other people on your team to see this dashboard, click “Dashboard Visibility”
  • Click on “Get Started”

Next, you can add new charts on your dashboard:

  • Go to the Activity section and find a chart to add to your dashboard
  • Click on the pin icon
  • Select “Add to an Existing Dashboard” or “Add to New Dashboard”
  • Choose an existing dashboard or name your new dashboard
  • Enter a name for your chart
  • Click “Add to Dashboard”

Keep checking our blog: We’re planning to publish a new in-depth guide to help you set up your first Facebook Analytics dashboards.

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5. Facebook launched a new Camera Effects Platform

As you might have noticed when reading about the latest Facebook updates, the social media network has put a lot of energy and resources into image and video sharing.

In the past months, Facebook launched Instagram Stories and Messenger Day to compete with Snapchat. This far, they seem to be doing quite well.

Now, Facebook launched the Camera Effects Platform that will turn smartphone cameras into the first AR platform, providing an opportunity for artists and developers to create unique effects for the Facebook camera.

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The new platform will give both Facebook users and advertisers the creative freedom to create anything from new custom frames to full AI experiences.


6. Facebook launched the Frame Studio

As part of the Camera Effects Platform launch, Facebook also introduced the Frame Studio – a web-based tool that allows anyone with a profile or Page to design frames for use on profile pictures or in the new Facebook camera.

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Here’s how the Frame Studio works:

The frames that are made in Frame Studio will appear in the cameras of your friends or Page fans.

The frame will also feature the creator’s name alongside the effect in the camera as well as in the final posts in News Feed. This means that as you create an awesome branded Facebook frame, your Page fans can use it across their images and videos.

Note that all your frames must follow Facebook’s guidelines and cannot include logos or trademarks unless pre-approved by Facebook.


7. Messenger platform 2.0 with more and better bots

With more than 1.2 billion monthly users and over 100,000 monthly active bots, Facebook understands the huge potential of Messenger bots.

That’s why they introduced Messenger Platform 2.0 – a new suite of tools that makes it easier to discover the best Messenger bots and enhance the conversations inside Facebook Messenger.

The new features in Messenger 2.0 include:
  • A new surface helping people intuitively browse and find the best bots, places, and businesses in Messenger
  • Chat Extensions allow people to contextually bring a bot into a conversation and enable collaboration within a single bot session
  • Businesses can now generate multiple Messenger Codes for their bots and see which ones are being scanned the most
  • Smart Replies: Facebook Page admins can now turn on automatic replies powered by artificial intelligence

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Brands can use the new features to build a seamless mobile customer experience right inside the Facebook Messenger. Brands like Spotify, Swelly and many more already offer these experiences.

Here’s another interesting way of selling in Facebook Messenger:

Messenger’s AI assistant, M, now offers the ability to order food through delivery.com. If you’re chatting with your friends about what to grab for dinner, M will suggest placing an order. The whole experience can be completed in Messenger, including group ordering and payment.

Moreover, if you have an app and a Messenger bot, Facebook made it simpler to connect with the same person using both. Their new API allows brands to track between a Facebook Login ID and a Messenger ID, so you can serve your customers smoothly across both experiences.

You can read even more about the Messenger 2.0 update in this article by Marketing Land.


8. Updated Multi-product Dynamic Ads

Facebook Dynamic Ads let advertisers display remarketing ads based on the person’s browsing history on a website.

For example, if you’re selling coffee in your e-store, you could retarget a person with an ad of the exact coffee type they clicked on and read about.

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Now, you can highlight up to 20 images from a catalog to represent a single item the carousel format used with Dynamic Ads. This enables you to show a single item such as a piece of clothing, recipe, hotel or destination with multiple images.

See our guide to Dynamic Product Ads

And… there’s more!

Here are more news from the F8 conference that may not be as important from the marketing perspective. However, take a look to be aware of all the latest updates.


9. Facebook Workplace is growing up

As reported by AdWeek, more than 400,000 groups have been created on the platform with customers such as Starbucks, Viacom, and Discovery Communications.

Facebook announced Integrations with enterprise services from Microsoft, Salesforce, Quip and Box to make it easier for Workplace users to access and complete their work. Workplace Standard, a free version, will soon be available to companies and organizations.

10. Facebook introduced the AR Studio

AR Studio, an augmented reality experience authoring tool, is now open for beta application. The AR Studio can be used to create masks, scripted effects, animated frames and other AR technologies that react to movement, the environment or interactions during Live videos.

Here’s an example of AR effects from a project GIPHY Live:

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11. New VR app Facebook Spaces

Facebook Spaces is a new VR app where you hang out with friends in a fun, interactive virtual environment as if you were in the same room. Facebook Spaces lets you easily phone a friend in the real world with Messenger video calling, so you can bring even more people into your VR space. They can answer your call on their phone to instantly open a window into your virtual world. The app is launched as a beta for Oculus Rift.


12. Surround 360 technology

Facebook introduced the new Surround 360 technology that allows people to produce amazing high-quality videos for VR.

With the new cameras made by Facebook, users will be able to capture 8K-sized video with 6DOF. In the VR universe, 6DOF (6-degrees of freedom) means you’re able to move in 3D space in whatever VR environment you’re exploring. That’s moving forward, back, right, left, down, and up in a virtual environment.

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Chief Technology Officer Mike Shroepfer delivers a keynote address at F8 on April 19, 2017

As reported by Wired, the gear is highly expensive (the previous Facebook Surround 360 reached up to 5-digit costs), it will make more sense for advertisers to rent one for a production than actually buy one. Facebook is working with partners to offer buy/rent options.

Quick recap:

Here’s a quick overview of all the important updates we covered in this article:

  1. Advanced engagement analytics
  2. AI-powered audience insights
  3. Omni-channel Custom Audiences
  4. Custom Facebook Analytics dashboards
  5. Facebook launched a new Camera Effects Platform
  6. Facebook launched the Frame Studio
  7. Messenger platform 2.0 with more and better bots
  8. Updated Multi-product Dynamic Ads
  9. Facebook Workplace is growing up
  10. Facebook introduced the AR Studio
  11. New VR app Facebook Spaces
  12. Surround 360 technology

Did you notice more F8 announcements relevant to social media marketers? In this case, let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure to update the article with your tips and ideas.

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