by Elizabeth Johnson

Facebook now has 2 billion users, which means it’s a pretty powerful tool for event marketers. In recent weeks Facebook has been busy making changes to a number of areas that affect organizations using its business functions—as many as 12 in June alone, by some accounts. Here’s a look at two of those changes and how they could make you an event marketing superhero.

Cover Photos are No Longer Just Photos—Facebook is rolling out a feature that allows marketers to use a video in place of the static cover photo on business pages. The videos can be 20-90 seconds and will automatically play when a user visits the page. Users can choose to unmute the sound.

According to Facebook’s statement, “By making cover video available, we want to help you create more engaging interaction and drive more rich experience for your audience by letting you spotlight your creative content in one of the most prominent spaces: your Page cover.”

For events, what better first impression to grab prospective attendee’s attention than with a robust video showcasing the highlights of the event?

Ad Block Lists are Here—Facebook is giving advertisers more control over where their ads are placed on the audience network. As background, advertiser control of ad placement has become a big issue across the digital advertising landscape as advertisers big and small seek to protect their brands. A number of factors complicate this issue and ad networks are working hard on a solution. Facebook is the latest network to respond to the dilemma, announcing a new feature that will allow advertisers to build lists of sites or types of sites where they do not want their ads shown.

You can choose to block sensitive industries as a whole or build a custom list of up to 1,000 website domains and apps. Remember, this applies to the audience network placements which you can opt out of altogether if desired.

This is an important development for event marketers using Facebook paid ads—and I hope most are using Facebook ads—to take advantage of so that they can maintain their brand safety—aligning digital advertising placements with the event brand’s values.

Aside from these big ones, event marketers should catch up on some of the other changes Facebook has made such as the new ad formats available; how it is attempting to improve transparency in ad results; page post targeting options; and the new opportunity for users to comment on posts using Gifs which could open up a new world of engagement with event participants.

Elizabeth Johnson is director of content marketing at Frost Miller. Opinions are her own. She can be reached at ejohnson@frostmiller.com.