Like, Love or Angry Face: Is Facebook Really A Valid Replacement For Television?

While buzzwords like “VR” and the ongoing War of the Metrics most definitely dominated this year’s upfronts and NewFronts, references to data and audiences were not far behind. Targeting ads at specific consumers is the specialty of the house for digital publishers, and the television industry wants to follow suit.“Want” being the operative word here.Right now they can’t, and that gives Facebook video ads a huge opening to go in and steal their thunder. Not to mention a whole lot of their budget.The reason the networks can’t sell addressable advertising—where different households are served up different ads during the same show—is that the networks have no way to deliver it.There’s a burgeoning addressable market in TV today, but it’s all being done via the MVPDs. They own the set top boxes and the customer lists and so they are the ones who are able to deliver true addressability. MVPDs like Cablevision, Dish and AT&T have built a nice business selling addressable TV commercials to a wide range of advertisers, both national and local.All well and good, but the MVPDs only control about two to three minutes of every hour. All the rest is owned by the networks and they can’t deliver addressable ads unless they’re willing to sit down with the MVPDs and work out a deal.Enter Facebook.They’ve got the ability to use their Facebook Audience Network to deliver very targeted video ads to a wide-ranging audience. And then provide those advertisers with detailed information about the people viewing the ad.But those Facebook video ads also come with a lot of asterisks. To begin with, the ads being served on third-party sites suffer from the same issues that all other digital ads face, namely the unholy trio of fraud, viewability and ad blockers.There’s also context. Ads seen on a Facebook stream are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are not interruptive and so don’t ruin anyone’s user experience.On the other hand, they exist in a vacuum. Interruptive ads on television may often seem like unwanted guests, but they benefit from the environment they run in, the halo effect they get from being associated with the viewer’s favorite shows, the fact that they are most likely watched on a large screen TV with multiple people watching.That means brands now face an interesting dilemma:  double down on Facebook with its greater targeting abilities or on television with it’s deeper engagement.And what’s most interesting to us is that both sides have the ability to change that equation.For television, it’s as easy as the networks sitting down with the MVPDs and reaching an agreement on how to open up their inventory for addressable. Given their often fractious relationship, whoever brokers that deal may wind up with the Nobel Peace Prize, but it’s doable and we’d even say imperative for the television industry’s long-term survival.For Facebook, the challenge lies in making greater use of #CreatedWith content, so that brand messages don’t feel like out-of-place TV commercials that accidentally got rerouted to the user’s News Feed. Making use of YouTube and other social media Creators in their advertising can make the spots feel more natural, more contextual and can provide the same halo effect TV commercials get from being on a popular show. Suddenly it’s not just a Honda commercial, it’s a #Creator episode featuring Honda.Will either side change? It’s hard to know. Both have strong “if it’s not broke, why fix it?” instincts, though Facebook has proven to be more open to change.If change does come, the ultimate winner will be consumers, who’ll get to see more interesting ads for things that interest them. That’s a win/win all around and we’re hoping the industry will get there.Both sides of it.