How many of you like to finish projects before taking a holiday break?

Many of us put in a great flurry of work to complete and publish key items prior to taking some time out of the office, and that seems to be the case each year at Facebook as well!

Facebook announced three significant items this week that Facebook marketers should take note of!  The two biggest changes are the DONATE button for non-profits and the release on December 19 of auto-play video ads in the News Feed.  One other development was the further enhancement of Custom Audiences in the Ads Manager, giving retailers a way to measure “sales lift” from ads beyond simply click analytics.  This ability to measure “off-line conversions” is important!

So let’s dive into What You Need To Know:

Video Review of Donate and Auto-Play Video Ads:

Non-Profit Donate Button

• Currently in beta testing with 19 partners
• Donate Button will appear beside posts in the News Feed and at the top of non-profit Facebook Pages participating
• 100% of the donation will go to the nonprofit, and users that donate will have the option to share that action with their friends.
• Organizations can now accept donations in a pop-up window right on Facebook.
• Users can choose how much they want to give and either enter payment details or use ones already stored with Facebook.
• The Donate Now button also gives people an easy way to share the call for donations with friends, helping giving to go viral.
• Facebook is not charging a fee to process credit card donations (Facebook itself is paying the fee) 

When can your non-profit start using it?

For now Facebook is partnering with a limited number of nonprofits but will make this feature available to more nonprofits as time goes on.

If you’re interested in being considered for this program fill out form in the Facebook help Center.    The full Facebook press release is in the Facebook Newsroom.

 Auto-Play Video Ads in the News Feed

• Set for December 19, 2013, this is the long-awaited debut of a feature announced earlier in 2013
• The Video Ads will play automatically in users’ News Feeds
• Ads will play on both Web and mobile (smartphones)
• Video Adswill play automatically but without sound, as they come into view
• In order to hear sound, users will have to click or tap on the video and play it in full screen mode.
• At the end of the video, other suggested clips will appear.
• To make the video go away, users will simply have to scroll past it. Facebook says that videos will only play on mobile devices after having been downloaded when the device was connected to a Wi-Fi network.
• This could help Facebook capture a share of the $66.4 billion advertisers are expected to spend on U.S. television this year.
• This is still in testing and rolled out to a few select partners.

 For full details, the embedded post below links to the official Facebook news release.

Custom Audience Changes Enable Measuring Offline Sales

Ad clicks are a measurement of interest but there was a gap in understanding the link between Facebook ads and offline sales.  Now Facebook is enabling retailers to measure offline sales driven by their Custom Audiences campaigns.

Previously, offline conversion measurement was available only to advertisers who worked with a Facebook measurement partner. Now Facebook has expanded this capability to even more retailers who advertise on Facebook and no third party partner is needed.

How to use Custom Audiences to measure offline sales lift:

• Marketers upload hashed data, including emails, phone numbers and addresses, as well as encrypted transaction information
• Facebook matches the retailer’s hashed data to hashed data from Facebook’s own databases
• Facebook then provides a report that compares, on an aggregate basis, the purchase behavior of customers who saw an ad on Facebook with customers who did not

It involves a few steps but has great potential!

See the full Facebook Press Release here >>

More to come on user experience and our perspective in the days ahead!  For now, what are your thoughts on these new features?  Comment below…