Connecting Brands with Consumers

I think it's very important for scholars to read texts like Funk's chapter 5, to really understand the motivations and "shop talk," of the media environments they are studying. Funk does an excellent job of laying out Facebook's advertising ecosystem as well as best practices for brands to reach potential audiences (of course this is a bit dated as Jina pointed out). Here's a few things that stood out to me: 

1.) Funk makes an important point that it isn't good enough for brands to just dump money in to a Facebook ad campaign and expect it to work. There is so much nuance and many layers to actually achieving something with your campaign. A 2 year old company with 1000 likes to their fan page approach Facebook advertising much different than a Fortune 500 company. 

2.) It was fascinating to read that 90% of people who like a fan page never actually return and thus brands have to pump out messages through their newsfeed. I found it interesting that Facebook doesn't actually let all those messages go through, but plays the role of gatekeeper to ensure roughly 16% of those messages get to its users. This is with good reason of course. If users feel like they are just getting bombarded with ads there is more incentive to leave the platform because the user experience is getting bad. Then everyone essentially loses. Facebook as we've seen in recent years has gotten backlash several times in recent years for policy changes, though it's important to note that people have never left in droves. 

3.) This chapter also made me reflect on the complete disconnect I have with the digital brands I purchase goods from. I often care about one thing: Am I getting the best deal? However, brands are trying to use spaces like Facebook to tell me their story and why they are important to my life. Facebook limits the amount of text they can use, how many times they can connect with me, and also these brands are charged just to interact with me. Essentially the brands are playing baseball with broken bats in hopes of hitting a home run. I do not go to a brand's website from Facebook. Generally speaking, I go to Retailmenot or some other coupon site to find a coupon, find the good on the brand's site, apply the coupon, and then check out. 

Reflecting on the iab. document, what stood out to me was the metrics being used to track audiences (pages 8-10). All of the measures are  quantitative with exception to social listening. I understand psychological and advertising research are largely predicated on quantitative research, but I think it is important to observe peoples' behaviors while they are making decisions regarding brands.