Facebook is rolling out "Reactions" which will allow users to express emotions beyond just "liking" a post. The new reactions will include options to express love, haha, wow, sad, and angry. Facebook hopes this will provide a better way for users to engage with different types of content and stories that matter most to them. The additional data collected from reactions could provide advertisers with new insights into how audiences respond emotionally to different ads and content. This represents an opportunity for advertisers to better understand sentiment and create more relevant and effective advertising on Facebook.

1. iProspect.com
Copyright 2015 © iProspect, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
+ Andrew Jude Rajanathan | 8th February 2016
Facebook Reactions: New
Emotional Signals For The
Mobile Age

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Copyright 2015 © iProspect, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
+ Facebook Reactions: New Emotional Signals For The Emotional
Age
Facebook Reactions
The way you "like" things on Facebook will soon change.
Last week, the social network announced it will roll out Reactions, allowing you to
express your feelings in a more nuanced fashion. The new panel of Reaction buttons
(which look like a set of emoji icons) will allow users to express a wider range of
emotions in response to newsfeed content, wherever the “like” button previously
appeared. Facebook will give users the options of "love", "haha", "wow", "sad" and
"angry”.
We can expect the new reaction buttons to accompany the famous thumb “like” logo on
our screens in the coming weeks. During a recent analyst call Chief Executive, Mark
Zuckerberg declared "When you only have a like button, if you share a sad piece of
content or something that makes you angry, people may not have the tool to react to it."
The Power of Emotions and Reactions as a Signal
Many will note the selection of Reactions is heavily weighted towards more positive
expression, something many have responded to as restrictive. Last year, the team
behind the Disney Pixar Movie: Inside Out grappled with the same issue of how to

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+ Facebook Reactions: New Emotional Signals For The Emotional
Age
personify the core emotions of a young girl. The film paired a number of positive and
negative emotions covering: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger. While the Pixar
production appears to be balanced, it contrasts clearly with the options Facebook will
likely roll out to its global user base of 1 billion plus members in the coming months.
Facebook’s goal is to publicly keep the platform positive (hence no dislike button) and
provide us with the optimal Newsfeed experience. By giving its user base the power to
express a broader range of emotions, the platform hopes it can still remain an unbiased
force for the good of its community. This will also go some way to help consumers see
the stories that matter to them most by focusing on the positive more so than the
negative.
This move has come from a number of trends the social network has noticed. First,
users are careful about how they curate their image online and how they respond to
content. Second, using a keyboard on a mobile device isn’t always easy, and the like
button does not allow self-expression in an elegant way. The hope is the new panel of
reactions enables this from an engagement perspective.
A New Opportunity for Advertisers
Interestingly, for brands and advertising agencies, the subsequent data collected from
user behaviour will most likely end up in the Facebook advertising dashboard. The Big
Blue App still remains the company’s principal business, andthe animated reaction
images will let users more accurately respond to posts, which may also provide
Facebook with more data on what people like, love and hate. Such data could be a
goldmine for Facebook's advertising business.

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+ Facebook Reactions: New Emotional Signals For The Emotional
Age
For advertisers, if this new system of recognising and measuring emotions can be
proved accurate, it represents an enormous opportunity. The ability to use Reactions to
assess sentiment around content, creative or broader campaign strategy and tactics can
lead to more responsive and relevant campaigns. For example, if a well-known sports
brand produces a new campaign that makes a significant change to its core product, this
is likely to elicit polarising responses. Advertisers would then be able to produce tailor-
made content to users who respond differently. This will lead to users only seeing
sponsored content that is contextually relevant based on their behavioural signals.
Other opportunities include using exclusion functions within the Facebook Ads Manager
for poorly performing campaigns that generate more “anger” or “sad” responses, and
up-weighting media investment towards campaigns or specific posts that generate
more responses around “love” or the effusive like button. The ability to tactically
respond to user behaviour will lead to more effective advertising and strong quality
scores, resulting in a long-term positive effect on media investment for advertisers
using the Facebook Advertising suite of products.
TheAdvertisers Opportunity
There are several big questions that will be on the lips of advertisers: Why these
Reactions specifically? How accurate will they be? Will we be able to tell if users are
being honest? Will users welcome the change or see it as a way to glean personal
information?
Many in the industry have viewed the rise of ad blocking software as a threat to digital
advertising. Facebook has recently updated its 10-K filing to investors to inform them

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+ Facebook Reactions: New Emotional Signals For The Emotional
Age
about the potential threat of ad blocking software. However, the recent release of ad
blockers into both the iOS and Android stores has not seen these apps breach the top
100 most downloaded apps; meaning the future of Facebook's advertising business
remains safe.
The release of Reactions proves that demand for people’s attention is increasing.
Furthermore, it only increases the sheer scale of emotional data that will soon be
accessible to not just advertisers but for all to analyse like never before. This represents
a unique opportunity to translate the emotional behaviour and response of millions of
users on the platform, giving Facebook a huge opportunity to build a robust universal
vocabulary to understand consumer behaviour on a global scale.