Facebook is finally coming to Australia!
“Don’t be silly,” I hear you say. “I’m Australian and I’m on Facebook!”
That you may be, but do you know anyone who works for Facebook in Australia? No, of course not. They’ve never had a single person ‘on the ground’ here. But very soon they will, according to B&T:
The social network giant is currently on an aggressive recruitment drive seeking to fill around six sales roles for immediate appointment. The roles include group sales manager, account executives, account planners and associate account manager. The move is believed to be swift with an office slated for opening next month in Sydney. Facebook regional vice president of sales Paul Borrud is leading the recruitment drive and is expected to announce appointments next week.
Well, this is all very exciting! Not only for us in agency land, who have found it impossible to deal directly with anyone at Facebook, instead relying on their self-service system – which is good up to a point. For agencies like BCM who are utilising Facebook substantially with a great deal of success, it will be nice to have somebody to talk to here.
But really the greatest winner from this will be advertisers themselves, and of course Facebook users. Advertisers will be able to take full advantage of the growing complement of Facebook ad solutions, including engagement ads and polling ads. Hopefully, the Australian office will be savvy enough to help Aussie agencies and advertisers with their Facebook Connect platform, which is going to open up a world of possibilities for integrating brand websites with Facebook.
Facebook users will hopefully get more relevant and more interesting ads than the current Social Ad platform allows for. Facebook have been very good at keeping advertising at a comfortable level, in my opinion, so as long as they keep the saturation to a minimum and crank up the relevance, Facebook Australia should get a good lift from this move – and hopefully some revenue!
