Major Facebook Ad Changes Released
Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 21st, 2008 9:59 AMYesterday I suggested that the Social Ads have apparently disappeared. It appears that they just weren’t displaying immediately. Facebook reached out to me with details on how the new advertisements will be displayed. All advertisements have moved from the left hand side of the site to the right hand side of the site. From a user interface perspective, I would imagine right hand side placement will result in a lower click-thru rate. Just a hunch though!
New Homepage Advertisements
One interesting change is that it appears that advertisements displayed on the homepage will no longer be directly from Social Ads flyer campaigns. In stead the advertisements on the right hand side of the page will be “Facebook Ads sold through the direct sales team.” This is a significant change. Currently the only advertisements showing in this location are ads for Facebook features. I’m guessing that we will see this change over the coming weeks.
Newsfeed SocialAds Become Exclusive
Facebook will no longer have newsfeed advertisements automatically display via user-created Social Ads campaigns. Instead, all newsfeed advertisements will be available exclusively to advertisers through the direct sales team. This means that Facebook now controls the price of newsfeed advertisements, not their Social Ads system. Additionally, it means one less advertisement location for those that integrate Social Ads campaigns with branded pages.
Facebook Advertises on Applications
Previously Facebook was displaying Social Ads flyers on the left hand side of applications but there wasn’t a significant advertising presence. With the new redesign, Facebook has made a much more significant statement by placing advertisements practically front and center. In addition to flyers, Facebook will now be able to advertise 300 x 250 advertisements as well as 300 x 600 ads, which also happen to be the best performing ad unit on the web.
This new form of advertising is a direct shot at internal Facebook ad networks which currently cannot place large advertisements on applications due to canvas page size restrictions. Facebook’s new sales pitch? “Why go with those other Facebook application ad networks when we can give you 300 x 250 and 300 x 600 advertisements?”
Three Types of Advertisements on Right-Hand Side
There will now be three types of advertisements that Facebook displays on the right-hand side. One style will be to display two Facebook Social Ads running together. The second method is the display of one Facebook Ad and one industry-standard banner ad. Finally, in some instances Facebook will just run banner ads on the right-hand side and no Facebook Social Ads flyers.
Conclusion
Facebook’s new redesign has a new found emphasis on applications and profiles: advertisements. Facebook needs a way to boost their revenue and this redesign will surely help significantly. The most significant change is on applications where Facebook will now compete head-to-head with existing social advertising networks. As of now, there are no signs that Facebook plans on sharing application ad revenue with developers. Facebook has clearly been working to optimize make the site design cleaner while increasing their space for advertisements.
Update
I have spoken with Facebook and there will be no changes in the size of ads placed on the site for now. It will be the same banners that were previously served by Microsoft. Speculation about the new banner sizes are completely inaccurate according to Facebook.
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July 21st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Are you sure about the 300×250 and 300×600 adds being added to applications? Is the total canvas width is going to 960 and the application canvas takes up 760 of this, how does an ad measuring 300px wide fit in a 200px space?
July 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Nick,
Quick heads up. You say they will offer 300×250 ads, etc. they actually won’t be able to on most apps if the apps check off the option “Use entire canvas width” which gives them a 760px canvas vs a 646px before.
But the thingwill be, does the new interface reduce ad CTR or improve them? Multiple ads there could be detrimental.
July 21st, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Are you sure about the 300×250 and 300×600 adds being added to applications? Is the total canvas width is going to 960 and the application canvas takes up 760 of this, how does an ad measuring 300px wide fit in a 200px space?
July 21st, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Nick,
Quick heads up. You say they will offer 300×250 ads, etc. they actually won’t be able to on most apps if the apps check off the option “Use entire canvas width” which gives them a 760px canvas vs a 646px before.
But the thingwill be, does the new interface reduce ad CTR or improve them? Multiple ads there could be detrimental.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Facebook’s success, in part, is owed to the developers who have spent countless hours creating fun, addictive applications which have the users coming back for more. For many of us, the incentive for creating the apps is monetary. By putting Social Ads in such a prominent position on apps and not sharing any of the revenue, developers are getting screwed. Increasingly, there is less and less reason to develop on Facebook knowing how little they care about developers and how hard they make it for us to generate a buck.
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Facebook’s success, in part, is owed to the developers who have spent countless hours creating fun, addictive applications which have the users coming back for more. For many of us, the incentive for creating the apps is monetary. By putting Social Ads in such a prominent position on apps and not sharing any of the revenue, developers are getting screwed. Increasingly, there is less and less reason to develop on Facebook knowing how little they care about developers and how hard they make it for us to generate a buck.