Pitch deck: How Facebook is courting new agency partners

By Kerry Flynn • May 16, 2019 •

Last October, Facebook announced plans to expand its Facebook Marketing Partners program, which offers agencies and other tech platforms certification and access to official resources. That’s now official, with Facebook reps reaching out to more agencies to invite them into the new program, according to five buyers Digiday spoke with.

Digiday obtained the pitch deck that Facebook representatives are using to explain the program to potential agency partners. The program categorizes agencies into three tiers: account, preferred partner and premium partner. Preferred and premium tiers offer agencies additional benefits such as one-to-one technical support, creative consultation and training resources like events. Services like chat support are useful given the lack of reliability with Facebook’s ad platform, which comes as Facebook touts having 7 million active advertisers.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to elaborate on the program, citing the company’s October announcement.

One slide of the deck outlines how a partner could achieve a higher status, which includes a particular amount of media investment. Facebook declined to share what the specific amount is, said one agency exec.

“I interpreted this as a supplement or advancement of the current program. In June, we’ll sign up through Business Manager and find out what tier we’re in. It kind of feels like the Facebook version of the sorting hat,” the agency executive said.

The deck is below.