Facebook Dark Posts Come into the Light – Finally!
Peter Claridge
June 29, 2018 • 2 min read
Updated on June 29, 2018
Facebook just announced that the social network will now be bringing about a new level of ad transparency and clarity. In light of political ads and invasive ad targeting, this is a big move to give the audience more information about the content that they see. Facebook users will now be able to see ads labeled and segregated under a new ‘View Ads’ feature.
Facebook started testing its ‘View Ads’ feature in Canada last December and has now rolled it out globally. The feature will allow users to see the ads a Page is running — even if the ads are not in the user’s News Feed. This applies to all businesses and advertiser Pages on Facebook — not just Pages running political ads.
What it Means for Brands
While dark posts gave advertisers laser focused targeting, this new change means brands will have better clarity on what content their competitors are putting money behind. Unmetric has always worked to provide clients with competitive insights on paid branded content. Unmetric’s Paid Post detection already provides marketers with a breakdown of any brand’s paid vs. organic Facebook content with 96 percent accuracy, and the power to observe and compare audience engagement from post to post. This new change would allow us to give our clients a deeper insight in to the promoted side of social media content.
Back in December, when it was announced that Facebook would finally be shining light on dark posts, we were one of the first companies to welcome the move. Although it may result in some short term pain, especially for advertisers that haven’t been as ethical as they should be with their targeted ads, in the long term, this will only be good for the industry.
Greater transparency on knowing what your competitors are doing in terms of advertising will give the social ads industry renewed impetus to ensure that they are not left behind in terms of share of voice.
How Unmetric Addresses Facebook Dark Posts
Unmetric is uniquely placed to help brands capitalize on this new data set, both in terms of analytics and insights to help them benchmark performance and plan for the future.
Here’s what our CEO had to say about the news:
“The end of Dark Posts and opening of View Ads for all brand Facebook Pages is great for the industry both in terms of increased transparency and a potential catalyst for growth in social advertising as true share of voice becomes available and brands are driven to advertise more to keep pace with their competitors,” said Lux Narayan, CEO of Unmetric. “Ever since Facebook announced it was testing View Ads for brands in Canada, we have been following the available data closely. With the expansion of View Ads to all Brand Pages, we are exploring this new data and look forward to helping our clients make even better content and campaign decisions.”
Want to see what your competitors are putting money behind? Sign up for demo and we’ll show you.
