Facebook has been looking at how people connect with moments that matter to them to help marketers make use of them. The insights gained have been put together into a 50-page white paper, aptly titled “Moments that Matter”.

The research is broken down into four types of moments:

“We are marketers participating in arguably the most important medium shift in marketing since the first television ad for Bulova watches in 1941,” the paper’s intro says. “Mobile has delivered us from a mass media world to a personally relevant one—from a world in which marketers would buy TV, magazine and radio ads as a way to reach people based purely on context to a world in which marketers can reach individuals based not just on demographics but also on passions, behaviors, interests and so on. It’s driven the shift from a world of appointment-driven media ruled by rigid 15-, 30- and 60-second frameworks to a world of anytime/anywhere media.”

“And thanks to mobile, we’re moving from fewer bigger, longer moments manufactured by the media and marketing industry—moments like soap operas, the ‘Seinfeld’ finale and pivotal sports games—to a time when people are manufacturing and consuming their own and each other’s moments en masse—every minute, every day, 365 days a year,” it continues. “From meals to memes, from first steps to first jobs and from moving on to moving up, millions of people go on Facebook and Instagram to share—and share in—these types of moments every day.”

The paper has a ton of information that marketers should find useful. Even at a glance there’s a lot of interesting materials and stats that jump out, so if you don’t have time to read the entire thing, it’s still worth a perusal.

To accompany the paper, Facebook also provides a conversation between to “thought leaders” from its Global Consumer Insights team about moments and takeaways from the findings.

Images via Facebook