Facebook already allows advertisers to track Facebook users' behavior when it comes to advertisements, but the social network goes one more step further by allowing advertisers to monitor shopping behavior across multiple devices.
In a blog post written on Thursday, Facebook announced that it is adding cross-device reporting for its Facebook ads, which allows advertisers to follow users' behavior when switching from one device to another.
"Imagine seeing an ad for a product on your mobile phone while in line at the bank. Do you immediately make a purchase on your phone?" asks Facebook in its blog post. "Probably not. But perhaps you go back to your office later that day and buy on your desktop computer."
Over the past several weeks, Facebook has been conducting studies with the Altimeter Group and found that 32 percent of users who showed interest in a Facebook ad on a mobile device purchased the product or service being promoted in the advertisement using their desktop computers within 28 days. Facebook also says that users who showed interest in a mobile ad were more likely to convert into sales on a desktop.
Altimeter further claims that more than half of all adult Facebook users in the U.S. go on Facebook every day using at least two different devices. Just a little less than half of these users initiate an activity, such as shopping for instance, and finish it using the other. Rebecca Lieb, analyst for Altimeter, says the addition of cross-platform tracking for Facebook advertisers is a potential "game changer."
"The IAB released new numbers today indicating that mobile spend has jumped 120 percent worldwide in just the last year," she says. "If advertisers are shifting that many dollars they're going to want to know if their dollars are making a difference."
TellApart, one of Facebook's preferred marketing developers who test and develop marketing strategies on Facebook, claims that Facebook's new reporting tool has helped the company significantly improve its marketing services for clients such as Neiman Marcus and Sur La Table.
The cross-device reporting tool compiles behavioral data from the Facebook Conversion Pixel for desktop tracking and the mobile Facebook SDK, then brings this information to advertisers through Facebook Ad Reports.
Advertisers are pouring praises over Facebook's new analytics tool. Ben Winkler, chief digital officer of media buying firm OMD, says Facebook's cross-platform reporting "sticks a form in the argument that Facebook can't be used to track growth." SocialCode's senior vice president Max Kalehoff goes further and explains that Facebook lets advertisers become more effective because it gives them "control over the frequency and placement of messaging to individual people using different devices."
However, the move could further raise privacy concerns, as advocates challenge Facebook's philosophy of tracking its users' every move supposedly in the spirit of customization of services.
