Facebook has admitted that it needs to do a better job to prove to advertisers why they should be spending more than $3bn (£1.86bn) on digital campaigns on its site per year.
The social networking giant, which is approaching 700 million users worldwide and is reported to be planning a flotation early next year that could value it at up to $100bn, is launching a client council, including senior Interpublic Group (IPG) and Coca-Cola executives, who will attend confidential meetings to help build better relationships with advertisers.
Facebook's vice-president of global ad sales, Carolyn Everson made an impassioned pitch to agencies and advertisers outlining its ad sales strategy at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity on Wednesday.
Despite Facebook's breakneck growth – Enders Analysis forecasts it will make about $3.5bn in ad revenue this year, up from $1.8bn in 2010 – the company has come in for some criticism over its approach to ad sales and lack of measurement analytics for social media campaigns.
"We have created a platform to reach an unprecedented number of people but each of you have the opportunity to design the creative idea that truly gets people excited," said Everson, a former Disney, MTV and Microsoft executive who joined Facebook earlier this year.
"I think that it's fair to say that we all must think about the way we approach creativity, the way we market products and how we create meaningful experiences in a new way," she added.
Everson said Facebook intends to launch a 12-member client council that will give the most senior advertisers and clients a sneak preview of products and input into its advertising and marketing strategy.
The invitation-only group will attend confidential meetings about four times a year, with the membership rotated annually, with the goal of putting "people at the centre of our business".
Client council meetings will take place at industry events and the company's Palo Alto HQ in California. Everson said that over the next few years the aim is to have all its major advertising clients and the global marketing services companies – such as IPG, Omnicom and WPP – as members.
"We need a way for the clients to have a formal mechanism to give us input," she added. "So we can learn from them and so they can get a glimpse of what we're doing ahead of the general public."
The company intends to finalise the details of the client council by the end of summer, but the first two members have already been named: Nick Brien, chief executive of IPG's McCann Worldgroup, and Wendy Clark, Coca-Cola's head of integrated marketing and communications.
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