Facebook desperate to prove Return on Investment

Measuring Return on Investment (ROI) from advertising expenditure has always been notoriously difficult; quite simply there are so many variables at play it's often impossible to isolate and measure what's working for you. I remember, as a young ad agency 'suit' getting told off by my MD; he pulled me to one side after a client meeting in which I'd talked about generating sales from a TV, poster and press campaign. "We don't generate sales Philip", he said crossly, "all we can do is create awareness!". 


And that's they way it was, Clients spending ad budgets and not quite knowing which bit was working, whilst tracking brand awareness as some sort of measure of reassurance.


So it brings a wry smile to my face when I hear about brands being obsessed with the level of ROI from Facebook and GM pulling their Facebook ad budget last week because they didn't feel they were getting an adequate return.


Facebook are naturally equally concerned with providing brands with ROI data and it has been reported today they are preparing to launch a system to measure the impact of advertising on their platform - we look forward to further details. They also for the first time will allow brands to buy premium ad slots in someone's newsfeed, which will also be seen on mobile devices. 


Increasingly, mobile is the way Facebook is being accessed by consumers and the company has been criticised for not having an adequate mobile ad solution - one would guess these newsfeed ads may go some way to assuage their critics but I think there will be user backlash - it will be intrusive.


It's going to be fascinating to see what the Facebook ROI solution is but it's still not going to be easy to do that measuring. For example: you're a brand which has a great dialogue with your Likers on Facebook, you create interesting and engaging content, you run exciting promotions, you also measure online sentiment analysis through someone like They Say or Buzzmetrics, yet making that link with purchase of your product remains incredibly tricky and elusive.