Within about an hour of its release yesterday the Facebook S-1 IPO filing had been dissected and analyzed extensively. You can read that coverage here.
There’s a great deal of discussion about mobile in the filing. However I find it strange that there’s almost nothing about local, deals or Facebook’s SMB opportunity. Various surveys I and others have done put the number of SMBs on Facebook at between 45% and 70% of the addressable SMB-advertiser market.
The one discussion of “small business” in the S-1 is a case study about Amex’s promotion of “Small Business Saturday,” used to illustrate Facebook’s capacity to attract brand advertisers that would otherwise use traditional media:
American Express purchased ads on Facebook and put its Facebook Page at the center of its advertising campaign in November 2010 to introduce and promote “Small Business Saturday,” a new local initiative designed to encourage shopping at small businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The ads reached 84 million Facebook users over the three week campaign. American Express continued the campaign in 2011. The campaign reached 91 million people, including 74 million who were shown an ad that featured a connection with their Facebook friends, successfully leveraging social context at scale. We believe that advertising on Facebook contributed to the successful results of the Small Business Saturday campaign; in 2011 public awareness of Small Business Saturday rose to 65% from 37% in 2010. Additionally, American Express saw a 23% increase in Cardmember transactions at small business merchants on Small Business Saturday.
February 3rd, 2012 at 4:36 pm
[...] search functionality by offer category, location, and price.Facebook S-1: The Local Angle (Screenwerk) There’s a great deal of discussion about mobile in the filing. However I find it strange that [...]
February 8th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
[...] AdAge article about Facebook this morning focuses on its local and mobile opportunities. However, as I said before, the S-1 said almost nothing about local or small business. It also didn’t talk about the national-local opportunity for Facebook. It [...]