Raising the bar: Facebook Live

Social media giant Facebook has been encouraging their users to go on live often as heavy marketing and advertising has been observed recently since it was released in April 2016.

Currently there are over 1.8 billion Facebook users all over the world and this massive audience is a great playing field for marketing, advertising and elevating a new way of communicating to the consumer market.

Facebook live is a new mechanism launched by the company for users to view ads once they use the feature thus further increasing sales. It is also thought as a new way for the company to keep their users.

Here’s how it works: when a user goes live on Facebook, his or her friends will get a special notification and everyone who engaged in the live stream will get to see ads which creates an increase in marketing.

According to eMarketer Debra Aho Williamson, for now the idea of ads going on live is challenging however Facebook live will turn out to be a great avenue for marketers to experiment with the platform. The platform also is said to be appealing to the millennial market which is the majority of people present and active in social media.

One example of successful marketing done through Facebook Live is General Motors went live at the 2016 Consumer Electronics show and rolled out the Chevy Bolt EV.

With Facebook live, a certain marketing campaign expands its target audience as it goes out from the traditional methods of advertising such as television and print.

Currently Facebook live is proving itself to be taking communication to the next level as news agents and sites are adapting the platform to bring information in real time. From Trump’s inauguration to the Miss Universe preliminaries, Facebook live provides real time documentation thus further redefining the way people get their news wherever they are and whatever they are doing.

Since its release Facebook’s fourth quarter earnings peaked at $3.56 Billion with a significant increase from $1.56 Billion from the previous quarter and its monthly user base increased to 17 percent.