Facebook strikes ad deal with IBM

The saying that you can never have too much data is certainly proving apposite at Facebook following a new deal with IBM to boost its personalised marketing programme targeting retail brands.
The move follows a similar deal with Acxiom, struck earlier this year, and will see IBM combine retail data, including purchase history or items viewed, with Facebook’s own user data, to create more finely personalised campaigns.
Whether users will be as chuffed remains to be seen; a study released after Facebook started plastering news feeds with ads claimed that only 3% of the site’s users like the ads they see.
By tying Facebook’s advertising platform directly into its own, IBM hopes to make ad campaigns easier to create and more effective. “These new capabilities will allow Facebook to deliver more relevant, more personalised experiences,” said Jay Henderson, a director of strategy for IBM commerce.
Henderson said that Facebook’s dominance in social media made it a natural partner for IBM’s own marketing ambitions. Despite the rise of sites like Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook remains the most popular social network in the world even among teens.
IBM has been ploughing millions of pounds into analytics and marketing tools and services it offers retailers and in one felll swoop it invested $1bn into a cloud version of its artificial intelligence platform Watson.

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