The head of Facebook’s new Australian office says he will be targeting SMEs to help boost the site’s Australian advertising revenues.
Paul Borrud, whose official title is regional manager of sales, has left Silicon Valley to set up the new office. He says the company will pitch its offering around Facebook’s ability to allow advertisers to target potential customers based on their Facebook profile.
“As we’ve grown with users, agencies have been asking more and more questions along the way about what type of relationship will they have with our customers.”
Borrud says the site has slowly adapted its advertising model from a click-based model to an “engagement” model based on profile marketing.
He says the site wants to focus on advertisements “where you can have a relationship with your customer as well as build a presence on the site”.
Borrud says companies can now target their ads based on a user’s “news feed”, a content aggregator that shows what a user’s online friends are doing and what groups they are associated with.
“Say you and I are friends, and I became a fan of the ‘Coca-Cola Surf School’ group on the site. You might see that in your news feed. My influence of what I do suddenly is in front of you.”
Borrud also says advertisements will also be associated with individual profiles, in which users list their interests and hobbies. A user who has their relationship status listed as “engaged”, for example, will see advertisements for wedding related businesses such as photographers.
But Borrud says the site isn’t focusing on any group of businesses in particular, and suggests the wide range of user’s interests should make Facebook’s advertising offering appealing to a variety of SMEs.
“Users update their profiles on a regular basis, and that identifies them as their own person. The opportunity for an advertiser is great,” he says.
“The things we offer go beyond any sort of level a usual advertiser can get. We build our site on authenticity with real people and real profiles, sharing their interests and common activities. That allows advertisers to have a one-on-one conversation based on users’ keywords,” he says.
“I think the value we drive is unique and different.”
Facebook security concerns
Meanwhile, Facebook has been fighting off attacks from internet cyber-criminals launching “phishing” attacks on the site.
The attacks leave messages in a user’s inbox that contains a link, sending them to a Facebook phishing page that looks nearly identical to the real site. If a user then logs in, a hacker can steal their details to send that user’s Facebook friends other phishing messages.
The attacks have continued for the last few days, but Facebook security has said on the site that users should remain cautious.
“Remember never to click on links in suspicious emails or messages and to only log in from legitimate pages with the Facebook.com domain,” a security post on the site said.
“You should make sure that your Facebook password is different from the passwords you use for other online accounts.”
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Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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