Facebook Case Study

1-800-Flowers was the first company who built the free page on Facebook as an advertisement three years ago, and that was the beginning of how Facebook became a major force in advertising which attracted both major brands and local businesses. The aims of Facebook advertising is to be the new way of words-of-mouth to advertise the information by clicking the "like" button on the pages. The action of Facebook users will appears on their friends' pages to make the product or brand connected with its customers and their friends .

This strategy makes the ads from Facebook not annoying anymore and make the users of Facebook become the ads themselves because the information from friends are more credible and convincing. Another advantage is the time spent by users on Facebook is more longer than other major sites, so it is good attention-grabbing kind of advertising. A positive aspect different from search ads is that the users of Facebook could share the feedback and make comments on the ads which makes the ads more effective, and it is also a good way for companies to build their brands well.

For the challenges of Facebook ads, first is the weakness of not influencing immediate purchase and very few clicking on ads. The targeted customers of Facebook advertising are focus on their interests which are not common and broad as the rivals like Google, Yahoo who have distributed ads on thousands of websites. Another weakness is the privacy issue that privacy advocates and users do not want the actions of purchasing or reviewing to be tracked and revealed.

Aiming at these shortages, Facebook learned the lesson and did lots of improvements such as designing the ads less annoying, and giving users more control over how their actions were tracked. These efforts improved the both ads performance and the experience of users.