At the recent Facebook F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Facebook's 10 year plan which clearly laid out how Facebook's own properties and acquisitions are going to be steered in the coming months and years.
Instead of competing with each other as they are today, Facebooks' Family of Apps will each be fulfilling their own unique purpose in the larger Facebook ecosystem:
* WhatsApp: One to One
* Messenger: Small Groups
* Facebook: Friends
* Groups: Community
* Instagram: World
The evolution of Native
So why does it matter that Facebook will soon have different purposes for each of its platforms?
Consider Snapchat today. Unlike traditional display advertising, one can't simply take an existing ad, resize it to account for different ad specs then post it on Snapchat. Snapchat ads are native.
And not just native spec. Brands that want to advertise on Snapchat really need to understand the medium, how users engage with it, then tailor ads specifically for Snapchat.
The same can also be said for Instagram advertising today – one can't simply take a Display Network ad then post it on Instagram.
In 2015, Native meant customised ad specs per platform. Today, Native means customised ad strategy per platform.
Moving forward, marketers can be sure that as Facebook starts slotting each platform into place, the algorithm for each platform will inevitably favour ad content designed specifically for that platform and heavily penalise anything else.
On each platform, 'the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer'.
Choose your beachhead
Even though the digital landscape is getting exponentially more complicated, marketers still have one constraint that remains constant: time.
It is inevitable that we will not be able to come up with a Native Ad Strategy on every platform for every campaign we want to execute.
In such an environment, it would be wise for brands to begin planning choose one, maybe two, 'beachheads' within Facebook's Ecosystem and then win that platform.
* Are you a brand best shared with friends? Then win Facebook.
* Are you more personal and one-to-one? Win WhatsApp.
* Or are you more geared towards specific online tribes and communities? Win Groups.
Now, more than ever, we as marketers will have to get better and better at moving away from being a jack of all trades to becoming a master of few, if not, one.
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