Not very much is happening in the social media sphere other than finding ways to improvise the existing while brainstorming how to get more money.
The same goes for Facebook. After announcing that Facebook Stories ads were coming in July, the social media giant said that all businesses can advertise their brand straight within Facebook Stories, with Messenger Stories ad coming around the corner.
As explained by Facebook:
Facebook merged Facebook Stories and Messenger Stories in November 2017. One of the reasons was because Facebook Stories were just too dull. With the many features the core Facebook has, there weren't that many people who want to keep up with others' ephemeral posts.
But Facebook then realized that merging the two features doesn't make sense, as Facebook and the Messenger app are two different platform. So it makes sense that ad placement in each platform remains separate, too.
Facebook's Stories ads support everything Instagram Stories ads support, including reach, brand awareness, video views, app install, conversion, traffic and lead generation. But not just limited to that, as Facebook aims to leverage its suite of targeting and measuring abilities to make Stories ads cross platform.
Announcing the news, Facebook also published some statistics regarding the potential of Stories ads, based on a survey by Ipsos:
- 68 percent of people say they use stories on at least three apps regularly, and 63 percent plan to use stories more in the future.
- 38 percent of people said that after seeing a product or service in a story they talked to someone about it, and 34 percent said they went to a store to look for it.
"As people mostly post photos and videos, Stories is the way they’re going to want to do it," once said Facebook Camera product manager Connor Hayes, noting Facebook’s shift away from text status updates. "Obviously we’ve seen this doing very well in other apps. Snapchat has really pioneered this."
Clearly here, Facebook wants to continue to pursuit what Mark Zuckerberg once said:
This can be explained using Facebook's usage data that indicates a shifting trend from News Feed sharing and consumption, towards Stories. This is one main reason why Facebook continues to push Facebook Stories, despite comparatively low usage.
How low?
Facebook said that Facebook and Messenger Stories are seeing a combined 300 million daily active users. That's quite proportional knowing that when the two are combined, they are having a staggering 3.5 billion active users. However, less than 10 percent of users use Stories in the two apps, despite their prominent placement at the top of the feed.