Social Media Extensions - A New Paradigm In Digital Marketing

Online ads have been always evolving with new features and additions. The new features have been constantly added to them as per the market needs to make them more in line with the changing market dynamics. On the other hand, social media has been at the forefront of marketing efforts for almost the last few years now and it’s strange that no advertisement platform has the option of adding social information to the ads so far.

The businesses have had their presence on online social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and even the more recent ones like Instagram, Snapchat besides at times their online communities to interact with their customers and audiences in general. But no ad platform has so far offered integrated social media extensions/links even though social media has been such an inevitable part of our daily lives.

Even organic searches show social media links and statuses for companies. Google had tie ups with Twitter besides having its own Google+ updates displayed prominently in the SERPs as is evident in the below screenshot. So social media extensions for ads were not very far and surprisingly a smaller player in this space has made the 1st move.

Bing has announced they are testing social extensions starting with the USA and are requesting feedback on this new feature. While it is a smart move they are being super careful before rolling it out for worldwide market. We are sure once this approach is successful, it will be picked up by other ad providers and will become mainstream. However, Bing has taken a great first lead and it might give it a first mover advantage. If you have a look at the picture posted in the official advertise blog on Bing, you can get an idea of how these social media extensions will appear in the ads. Also, once this ad extensions prove successful and popular with the advertisers they might be rolled out worldwide on the Bing Advertising platform.

We will have a close watch on this new development and keep you updated as the new metrics arrive and the advertisers share their experiences about the new feature. As of now, we can just speculate how this will impact the ads and what effect it might have.

The apparent benefits are that the social media is real time and more personal because most people are on social media from their personal devices and most of the time of the day. Companies are already using social media platforms for sharing updates, providing customer service, generating leads and a myriad of marketing and sales purposes. With this additional option of showcasing their social media presence to people, advertisers can choose where to direct the people who contact them and highlight their choice of social media strategy rather than Google choosing them based on its algorithm.

2. Making Their Ads More Interactive

Ads with social media buttons will look more interactive and will add a new dimension for marketers. Social media has established itself as a successful platform for companies with various campaigns, providing updates, customer support and more. If ads can show social media presence of the advertisers, they will get the idea of what’s the most preferred way of their customers to get in touch with them.

One of the most interesting aspects of this social extension is that it will allow accurate tracking and analysis of what platform people most prefer and decide to interact with. If they choose Facebook, twitter or google+ community, the advertisers know where to focus and dedicate more resources to serve their customers better. The analytics and data will help them align their resources in the most optimum manner.

These are the first few impressions of the overall development that is expected due to this new feature. It is definitely a great move and very well thought strategy from Bing. Also the approach of launching it initially in just one market to get feedback and improve it before a gradual rollout to worldwide advertisers must help Bing in streamlining and fast iterating to make suitable changes and adapt to advertisers’ preference while maintaining a layout preferred by the audience.

It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved and solidifies the pervasiveness of Social Media. Are you excited to try out Social media extensions? What are your views on this new development? Please share them in the comments and we would be glad to hear them.