An important tool that Facebook offers small business is personalized advertising. Personalized advertising is an affordable, easy to use way for millions of small businesses to target and find customers. But this tool is under threat, which threatens the livelihood of small businesses who rely on personalized ads to reach their people. To contextualize this threat, a Facebook study showed that without personalized ads powered by their own data, small businesses could see a cut of over 60% of website sales from ads.

The problem is that consumers don’t know of the benefits personalized ads bring to both consumers and small businesses. But worse yet, they don’t care about personalized advertising.

Our objective was to get consumers to care about a seemingly boring, irrelevant topic and develop a positive understanding of the benefits personalized ads provide.

Our film depicts personalized ads as a ‘catwalk show for ideas’, with each business idea presented as its own arresting tableau. We worked with a range of real brands to re-imagine their art direction in the most exciting way possible, as well as re-surfacing some failed business ideas (Gerbil Vests, Drone Umbrellas) in all their visual glory.

We discovered that consumers find the topic of personalized advertising boring and irrelevant. At the same time, they were passionate about supporting small businesses any way they can. Our approach to get people to care about personalized advertising was to reframe personalized advertising - show them how Facebook personalized ads are actually the connection point for great ideas and the people who need them. No matter who they are, where they are, or how niche the idea. Personalized ads help unlock endless opportunities for small businesses to thrive and make our life a little bit brighter.

The campaign launched on February 25 and rolled out in three phases: establishing, understanding, and experiencing. The establishing phase leveraged mass-reach channels (TVC, OLV/FEP, audio, social) to build an emotional connection with our audience by celebrating how personalized ads help small businesses with great ideas reach people who share their passions. Once hooked, we re-targeted viewers across OLV, audio, and social platforms with stories of how six businesses found success through personalized ads. In our final phase we leveraged Facebook’s strong organic presence to reach our audience by demonstrating the benefits of personalized ads, telling stories of consumers who used them to find products they love. We featured 10 small businesses throughout, eight appeared in our national TVC buy which aired in 57 placements across networks and programs. Six small businesses had their own bespoke assets that lived in targeted social placements, building on our TVC with engagement-driving formats.

Though the campaign is still running, preliminary results indicate a high level of engagement and interest. So far there have been 60% more people reached compared to our brand average. On digital direct video there has been a 6% higher completion rate compared to our brand average and a 200% higher click through rate compared to our brand average.