His latest innovation is the first advertising tool designed specifically for human beings, says the CEO of a company associated with an owl (which makes one wonder for whom its earlier tools were designed). But it’s Ryan Holmes (above) of Hootsuite, the social marketing tool aimed at both enterprises and everyman, so it makes sense. “Our vision is to make advertising so simple that anyone can create high-performing ads without training.”
Today’s introduction of Hootsuite Ads is a natural stepchild of Facebook ads and the resultant decline in the dissemination of organic posts by the social network. It automatically scans all of a brand’s posts to see which are generating the most traffic and then suggests how to promote them to the utmost on a specific budget.
“It’s an AIDA funnel concept that any content marketer will appreciate,” says Greg Gunn, VP of new product development for Hootsuite. “It tells the user, ‘Here’s what you should pick to promote, here’s the audience, and here’s the budget.’ It takes the the anxiety out of creating social ads. There are 13 steps to go through on Facebook. We pare that down.”
Hootsuite Ads uses automated targeting and bidding algorithms to create and quickly execute focused ads that can be tracked and tweaked on a single dashboard. Gunn stopped short of calling his new baby “Social Media Advertising for Dummies,” but it’s clear that’s the realm it’s shooting for.
“People have a tendency to want to promote their worst-performing content,” Gunn says. “This tool informs them it’s a better idea to promote your best-performing content.”
