Why Being Social on Facebook Isn't Enough for Travel Brands

What do travel marketers need to know about Facebook's operations in 2014 and what the social network is focusing on in 2015? One of the things that clearly emerged from Facebook's fourth quarter and full-year 2014 earnings call with analysts last week is that being social is no longer enough, and that Facebook is investing in advertising technology, mobile, and video to make marketing through Facebook more effective for partners and to increase its own monetization. Coming just a few weeks before Facebook's 11th birthday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg talked about these investments and it became apparent that Facebook's audience growth is plateauing -- excluding Instagram and WhatsApp -- but at the same time, it's becoming a more sophisticated marketplace and storytelling platform. Sandberg called out Thomas Cook and the sales-driven approach the tour operator used on Facebook to reach existing and potential customers in Belgium. Sandberg used the Thomas Cook example to tout the investments Facebook has made in advertising technology to enable such digital-marketing initiatives. Thomas Cook used Custom Audiences to increase online sales and to reach 27 percent of the Belgian population on Facebook in one day. A cute snap of a little girl wearing scuba goggles with her thumbs up at the beach and a link to a discount and achieved a 3.85 times return on investment. [caption id="attachment_147199" align="alignnone" width="458"] Source: Thomas Cook, Facebook.[/caption] "Results like these are attracting more marketers of all kinds to our platform," Sandberg said. "Finally, we made great progress improving ad relevance and measurements. To do this, we made significant investments in both our core measurement and targeting tools as well as ad-tech." The Underlying Technology Behind Conversions The effecti