Last week Facebook has announced Q2 Results and the revenue tells a compelling story that whatever Facebook is doing for brands is definitely working in its favor.
We all know Facebook’s revenue is solely dependent on Brand’s advertising on the platform and these revenues fuel sky-high valuations of over USD 300 billion and acquisition of tech companies like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus Rift.
During a usual day managing client’s social media pages, Digital Agency Team Pumpkin noticed a major change in the Facebook business page layout design. The Important point to note that much of stupendous valuation and recently announced earth-shattering revenue of Facebook comes from these Brands who are present on this powerful social network, each having at least one Brand page hosted on the platform.
Over the years Facebook has been experimenting with page design almost on a yearly basis. Back in 2008-09, the very first-page layout for brands was not “like” oriented as today but it asked people to become a fan and people joined in droves.
After 2010, Facebook changed its business page layout more frequently. First to surface on the layout was Page Like feature and then custom landing tabs, cover image, 2 column timeline, various other design changes to represent brand profile. Till about 3 years back Facebook even gave the option to page managers of Like-gating before fan accessed content.
Circa 2016, Swati Nathani – Our Chief Business Officer Says that during a normal internal review process, she noticed something unusual about the client’s Facebook pages that Team Pumpkin manages. What disappeared was the integrated cover page, Profile Picture, Tabs and what appeared on the screen was something very similar to Facebook’s design earlier in the decade with, of course, much more sophistication. After closely comparing the current page layout and what is coming in the future, which Team Pumpkin got a glimpse, there are 4 major changes noted in the user interface. Agencies and Brands, please read on carefully
The key question here is that in current layout fans can see the ads on the right side of the page but in upcoming layout, there is no space given for ads to appear unless Facebook does further tweaking in design.
The lesson for Brands in these changes is to be ready with new design elements in execution and brainstorm with internal teams and agencies on how to leverage this fresh set of changes in Brand’s Favor. As Swati Nathani puts it – It’s always better to stay ahead of the curve and understand inherent reasons why Facebook and other digital platform bring changes in order to react in time with the right strategy and superlative execution or be left behind in the ever-changing landscape of social media.