Facebook last week announced a pilot of “Reactions,” a new response mechanism that allows users to respond to posts on its network in more ways than just clicking “Like” or adding a comment. The new feature, currently being tested in Spain and Ireland, is a reaction bar that grew from users’ expressed interest to having a “dislike” button. Besides “like,” uses can now choose emoji (expressive ideograms/smileys) symbols to express several other sentiments by hovering over or pressing down on the reaction bar. Available emotions are: Like, Love, HaHa, Yay, Sad and Angry.

An added benefit to the “Reactions” feature may allow Facebook to help detect Internet bullying before it escalates. Theoretically, Facebook is able to monitor reactions to posts and can step in if they notice a sharp uptick in negative reactions to a particular user’s posts. 

A Win for Online Advertisers

With the addition of “Reactions," Facebook’s ad platform is becoming an even more useful online marketing tool.

Facebook ads are already proven to be the most accurate and cost effective online advertising vehicle in use today. “Reactions” has the potential to make targeting a specific market segment even more precise, improving accuracy to any advertising campaign and making Facebook the industry leader in measuring a digital campaigns effectiveness.

It's a big win for advertisers and social visualization platforms like Postano, which can now factor in the mood of current and potential customers, in gauging how best to market to them. For example a person who “loves” something is likely to be a hotter prospect than someone who just “likes” it. And if an ad is making users angry, it might be a good indicator to rethink the ad campaign.

One of the greatest challenges for marketers is to find ways to connect with current and potential customers in more meaningful ways. Creating a successful online or traditional advertising and marketing campaign has always been difficult. So, the added interactions and feedback services such as Facebook  will be able to provide to advertisers is very exciting.

Not only will the customer data be more precise, it will be available real time to allow advertisers to test different approaches and make adjustments at minimal cost for maximum impact.

Pedro Pérez is a founding partner of Nuevo Advertising Group and an adjunct professor of Global Brand Strategies at Ringling College of Art and Design. For over 17 years Pedro has offered clients his knowledge and expertise. Pedro has always demonstrated a keen analytical sense combined with a good dose of common sense in crafting digital and online marketing strategies as part of an integrated marketing plan.