“High-Roller” Brands Get Exclusive Access to Info on Facebook

Want to know what your customers are really thinking? For the right price, Facebook might be able to help you figure that out.

Facebook is giving select “high-roller” brands exclusive access to information gleaned from its 1.3 billion users to determine what their particular consumers are thinking, discussing, and commenting about; this access program, called Grapevine, is said to be offered to those brands who are spending in the hundred-thousand or million-dollar range in terms of their Facebook ad campaigns, according to industry insiders.

For Facebook, it is another method in which the social network wants to expand its opportunities in the digital marketing field, especially in the recent light of their changes to their News Feed, which brands have had their reservations about in terms of their now limited reach to their desired audiences. For those businesses who can afford to get access to Grapevine, the service allows marketers to measure the pulse of conversation regarding the issues and sentiments surrounding their product or service, which allows them to tailor their ads directly to their audiences’ needs–a great help in the never-ending search to know just what people are thinking.

The benefits of Grapevine are 1) the service gives a context to topics and ads so that brands can better customize their messaging to their audiences. According to Facebook, the data derived from the tool is both qualitative and quantitative; businesses and marketers can see what consumers are saying about a topic and craft ads based on those comments and other social activity (i.e. likes). 2). Unlike Twitter, who uses a “firehose” of public tweets to sift through the information to determine public sentiment about a certain range of issues, Facebook’s data is not public, nor does Facebook license its data to outside parties, which may put marketers and savvy consumers at ease, especially in the light of Facebook’s recent struggles to soothe the privacy worries of its users, both commercial and private.

One of biggest advantage of all for Grapevine in the coming weeks is the advantage for brands to play their holiday campaigns as more metrics will be visible.