Facebook boosts marketing developers’ profiles
Facebook has formed a “strategic preferred marketing developer” group of the most valuable third party companies that use its software to offer services to marketers as it looks to speed up the roll out of mobile ad formats and measurement services.
“Strategic PMDs” form a new elite tier above the initial PMD group it established earlier this year. It has been created to make it easier for marketers to find the largest and best partners that use Facebook’s ecosystem for marketing and analytics products.
Companies in the new group – which include Salesforce, Adobe and Glow – will sit on an executive council with Facebook to work on the co-development of its marketing product strategy. They and their brand customers will also get early access to alpha and beta project trials.
David Fischer, Facebook’s vice president of advertising and global operations told delegates at Dreamforce in San Francisco, where he launched the programme: “We want to make sure we get these things to market quickly. We have an important role to move forward quickly and market effectively.”
Strategic PMDs will be allowed to advertise their status with Facebook with a badge on their Facebook pages and own marketing materials.
A Facebook blog post says: “The Strategic PMD title is the highest distinction of excellence we have ever offered to our marketing developers and signifies our interest in building a relationship forged in the true spirit of collaboration and mutual value creation. The goal of this initiative is to strengthen Facebook’s ability to meet client needs and accelerate the transition of marketing on mobile devices.”
Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg asserted earlier this month that mobile is key to his company’s future. He claimed that iPhone users browsing Facebook on its dedicated iOS app are viewing “double” the amount of content than other users, which could make its advertising proposition more appealing to brands.
