28/9/2009
Facebook & Nielsen
Facebook & Nielsen
Proving Facebook’s Brand Value

28/9/2009
Facebook & Nielsen
Overview
Facebook has announced a partnership with Nielsen, which will see the research company serve
polls to Facebook users. The move, following fresh on Facebook’s announcement that it now has
300 million users and is ‘cash flow positive’, shows that the young social networking site is
determined to grow up.
Evaluation
Many commentators have expressed doubts that social networking sites would ever be able to find
viable business models. MySpace initially seemed like a canny purchase by Rupert Murdoch, but as
its advertising deal with Google nears its end, a source of replacement revenue is yet to be found.
Likewise Google has spent a significant amount of time searching for a way to monetise YouTube.
Both of these sites have spent much of their time trying to bring big-value brand advertisers on
board; in contrast to this, Facebook’s success appears to be built on a model closer to that of
Google’s AdWords, allowing a multitude of small advertisers to run their own campaigns. According
to analysis by Business Insider, $200 million of Facebook’s revenues are from its self-service ads:
these are often very basic, and carry direct response messages. However the deal with Nielsen
suggests that, like Google, it now wants to start bringing on board companies more interested in
building brands rather than driving cheap clicks.
The partnership between Facebook and Nielsen, named Brand Lift, mirrors existing services
including Dynamic Logic (a WPP company) that strive to prove that digital marketing can build brand
awareness and shift consumer perceptions. Whilst many strive to position digital marketing as the
young dynamic up-start of advertising compared to the tired old man of TV, most websites would
love to be able to sell multi-million dollar ad-slots without ever having to show how many clicks it
drove.
Facebook’s Nielsen partnership is another step on the road to proving digital can do the same job
that offline has long claimed as its own.
Mindshare’s POV/Policy
If Facebook’s Nielsen partnership can prove that digital marketing really does shift consumer
perception and can improve brand affinity, it will mean that it can start to take advertiser budgets
that at present would end up in TV or more traditional formats, rather than fighting with Google
over direct response funds. In addition advertisers will be able to get invaluable insight into the
effectiveness of highly efficient digital campaigns.
For More Information:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-became-cash-flow-positive-a-year-ahead-of-
schedule-2009-9
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2009/09/21/daily24.html
Author(s): Ciarán Norris, Head of Social Marketing: Mindshare Worldwide (London)