Facebook pits itself against Google in direct-response pitch

By John McDermott • May 11, 2014 • 2 min read •

Facebook is taking two diametrically opposed tacks when it comes to pitching advertisers. While the social network is expanding the metrics for tracking its video ads — so as to lure brand dollars away from TV and digital competitors like YouTube — it’s also emphasizing how effective it is for lower-funnel direct-response campaigns.

Digiday obtained a pitch deck Facebook has recently been circulating to clients and its preferred marketing developers. Titled “Facebook for Direct Response,” the presentation highlights Facebook’s ability to drive conversions, especially across devices. It’s clear from the language and images included in the pitch deck that Facebook is directly pitting itself against Google in a play for ad dollars.

The presentation was distributed with a list of talking points, both of which are available below.

Highlights:

Slides 2-4: Facebook emphasizes how revolutionary the impact mobile Internet has been on media-consumption habits and how much more complicated the “path-to-purchase” is as a result.
Slides 7-8: Taking a swipe at Google, Facebook downplays the importance of search in gauging purchase intent.
Slides 9-10: Facebook says its “high-quality reach” on mobile is 180 million monthly active users (MAUs), although it’s unclear if that figure includes users on Instagram (which Facebook owns). Still, Facebook is touting Instagram’s value to advertisers as it continues working with Omnicom to develop its ad strategy for the photo-sharing app.
Slides 11-12: Facebook’s differentiates itself from other direct-response channels by showcasing its robust data set: marketers can combine their own customer data with Facebook’s user data and data from Facebook’s third-party partners Axciom, Datalogix and Epsilon. That makes Facebook campaigns more than twice as accurate than other online channels for DR, it claims.
Slides 13-17: Facebook illustrates how these data sets can be configured to target different consumer niches.
Slides 19-23: Again taking a swipe at Google, Facebook shows its news feed alongside an image of a Google search results page. Facebook also illustrates how much more engaging its in-stream ads are, and shows off its call-to-action button for those ads.
Slides 25-27: Using Facebook’s tracking pixels, marketers can measure the effectiveness of their campaign across devices.