Facebook asking users about Facebook Home campaign, educate on product

Some Facebook users are seeing sponsored research polls about the company’s most recent Facebook Home campaign.

The poll asks users which companies they most associate with “putting your friends at the heart of your phone” and provides related companies and social networks. The marketing campaign included news feed advertisements and the company’s first produced television commercials.

In response to the poor reception of Home including AT&T’s discontinuation of Home’s flagship phone, the HTC First, Facebook looks interested in learning more about how these ads can be improved for future campaigns. The company has also recently updated the application for better stability and make improvements to the experience.

Earlier this week, Facebook reminded users that they could turn off Facebook Home and use their phone normally as they see fit. The company seems to be making a continued effort in to educate their users on the product and how it can be used. By researching through polls and learning more about how users understand it, Facebook can try to correct on oversights for future campaigns of Home.

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Facebook Launches New Feature Asking Users How Often They Want to Discover New Games

Facebook is testing a new version of the Discover New Games sidebar module introduced last month. Along with showing friends who play a certain game, this version asks users if they want to hear about games more or less often.

How much game content to serve to non-gamers and how to determine who is a gamer have been two long standing questions for Facebook. Now the site looks to be asking users directly, rather than deduce the answer from their behavior.

At a press event in September 2010, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained the issue presented by the rift between gamers and non-gamers. “One of the biggest drivers of negative experiences has been games. There’s all these people who want to play games, and all these people who don’t want to play, who view it as spam. Two hundred million people or more are playing games on the site. When you poll users, one of the top 5 things they like is games, and one of the top 5 things they don’t like is games.”

Up until then stories generated by the in-game actions of friends had clogged the news feeds of people who didn’t play games. Facebook then altered the feed such that users would only see App Discovery stories about friends installing games, and stories from friends about in-game actions of games they’ve already installed. This significantly reduced the virality of many games to the dismay of developers.

Some developers complained that there was no way to acquire new users without paying for advertisements, so Facebook introduced the Discover New Games module. However, those who’ve never or only occasionally installed a game might find the module useless.

This tested interface asks “How often would you like to see ‘Discover New Games’?” with buttons to respond “More Often” or “Less Often”. This allows users to inform Facebook of their preference so it can show them different modules such as “Friends’ Photo Albums” or “Unread Messages“.

> Continue reading on Inside Facebook.

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Facebook Tests Ad Surveys Asking Users Which Ads They Prefer

Facebook is testing a new format for the sponsored ads section of the site’s right sidebar. Users experiencing the test are shown two ads, and then a survey question asking “which of the two ads above would you prefer to see more of in the future?” Facebook may be using the collected to data to weight its ad targeting parameters, for instance showing a user more ads that target them based on location than their Likes and Interests or level of education.

So far, we’ve only received reports of these ads appearing to users in Israel. Advertisers don’t seem to have any choice of whether to show the surveys, nor receive their results.

Facebook has opened up several other new options to advertisers in the last few months, though. Sponsored Stories ads help Pages, apps, and Places convert user content that mentions them into ads. Facebook Ads for Applications and social context ads display which of a user’s friends have also installed or Liked an application or Page. Most recently, advertisers can select a specific landing tab of a Page as an ad’s destination.

When advertisers apply targeting parameters to an ad, it may appear to anyone who falls within those parameters. Unless advertisers run their campaigns for a long period of time with a high budget, or only target a small number of users, not everyone with the parameters will see the ad. Since advertisers usually choose to pay per click, it’s in Facebook’s interest to show the ads to those within the parameters that will be most likely to click.

Therefore, it’s important for Facebook to determine which targeting parameters make an ad the most relevant to users as a whole, as well as specific users. For instance, I live in San Francisco and have a college degree, but I may be more prefer to see ads that target me based on my location than on my education level.

These surveys could determine this, informing Facebook that users as whole may find location-targeted ads more relevant than education-targeted ads. Facebook could also know that in the future it should show me ads that target me based on location instead of those that target me based on the education when it has a choice.

This data could help advertisers receive more clicks for their ads, generating more revenue for Facebook.

[Thanks to Amit Lavi for the tip.]

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