Facebook rolled out Reactions globally today. Reactions are an extension of the Like button and will allow you to choose either Like, Love, HaHa, Wow, Sad or Angry image options, expanding how users can respond and interact with a post. Reactions are available on all organic content as well as paid advertising posts.
If you are on a desktop, navigate to Facebook and hover over the like button on any post in your News Feed to see the new Reactions options. If you are on a mobile device, you may have to delete Facebook from your phone and re-download in order to see Reactions on posts in your News Feed.
What does this mean for brands who advertise on Facebook?
As reported from Facebook, all Reactions will be treated as a Like. Facebook plans to learn and iterate and may incorporate Reactions signals into News Feed Ranking in the future.
Reactions are visible in Page Insights for all page admins. Page Insights for Reactions will show the total number of Reactions, broken out by type, that a specific post received.
For Ad Insights, Post Like metric data will also include Reactions. However, these won’t be broken out as individual Reactions. For example, if an ad got 100 Post Likes, 50 Loves and 50 Haha’s, the Post Like metric will show 200 Likes. Facebook reports it is still determining how they will display in ad insights.
But, if an advertiser creates a post and then boosts that post, then the post’s Reactions will be broken out in Page Insights even though the post is sponsored. Ads Insights will count Reactions for the sponsored content as Likes in Ad Insights.
In regard to ad optimization, advertisers cannot choose to optimize an ad for certain Reactions, only post engagement as they’ve been doing to date. Advertisers can’t target (or exclude) people who have engaged with brand posts using certain Reactions.
Lastly, as of now, Ad Insights APIs and Page insights APIs will not support Reaction insights. However, Facebook is planning on supporting these breakdowns as soon as possible.