Dubai: No two ways about it — Facebook is out to own the news feed. And it’s already made a good deal of headway.

By becoming the space where just about everybody on the planet — or at least those with a computer or a smartphone — will spend time in to get their fill of whatever media content they want at any particular moment within a day. And string together those moments together across all of its users, Facebook becomes central to any talk of media consumption… and media consolidation.

For Brad Smallwood, global Head of Measurement and Insights at Facebook, it all boils down to that moment of choice for the user. “People want choice — they want control over what media they want to consume over being told what to watch.

“In the Facebook environment, that means the feed. When somebody goes through a feed, look at every story and make a cognitive choice either to go deeper into it or skip it.

“It’s becoming more and more about experiences. The consumer expectation — and it’s not just in digital — is a choice model. They get choice in the content they want to consume.

That cognitive choice — to get in or skip — creates value for that moment. Marketers have an opportunity to create value, every day, to get a message across.

“Our job is when someone sees that message, to make it relevant enough to want them stay on for more. And make it worth stopping more and help them figure how to do that.”

While Facebook inserts itself ever deeper as the first point-of-contact with the user for news or getting a glimpse of lifestyle trends, advertisers are only too willing to embed themselves just as deep in this experience. This is the part that advertising agencies dread the most, because there could come a time when they are cut out that interaction altogether.

But Smallwood believes agencies have no need to get worked up. “The pressure comes because this is such a new platform — it’s challenging because it’s still so new,” he added. “The platform is not easy for marketers or agencies.

“This definitely creates something of a little bit of discomfort. We need to figure not just how to help advertisers, but agencies, media agencies, the creatives in this new media.

“Do we feel the pressure? Yes… pressure is driven by the fact that there are massive amounts of media consumption happening in digital in general, on mobile and, obviously, on Facebook.

“I definitely do hear the angst. That is driven by this being something new and how to build marketing into it. This is where measurement will come in. My team’s job is to help do that not just through the people on the platform, but help people to figure out how get creative on this platform, how to plan and buy across all of digital.

“And agencies are the way that’s going to happen. We do work directly with advertisers in some cases, but the agencies are the ones that kind of take the ideas and push them out. We need to work with them more.”

But isn’t there a possibility that Facebook could — at some point — use its clout to rewrite how it set the rates for advertising on it? Even ask for more?

“TV operates on rate cards and discounted rate cards… that’s not the way we operate,” said Smallwood. “That’s a different way of thinking about marketing.

“I believe the auction is the fairer system. And the reason is it takes into account a whole set of variables. The price is just one small part of it.

“More important is how relevant that piece of content is to that consumer, whether they are likely to spend more time with it, whether they are clicking on it. That allows us to manage the advertiser experience with the consumer experience and bring them together.”

One creative for all will not do

Advertisers cannot keep flogging the same creative on all media platforms. And certainly not on digital.

“The easiest thing to make money move from one platform to another is to have the same creative, to do everything that makes it look like, say, television,” said Brad Smallwood. “That would be the easiest thing to do for an advertiser.

“But that’s not the answer... because people wouldn’t pay attention to that creative.

“Our job is to help people advertise in the new medium — and not to do that in a disruptive way. When someone sees a message, we want to make it relevant enough for that person to stop and see that. Our job is to help them do that.”