This evening Facebook has rolled out a number of significant upgrades to the company’s self-serve advertising system which will benefit those marketing their Facebook Pages as well as advertisers in general.
Sponsored Stories
The most obvious change is the ability of self-serve advertisers to publish the new sponsored stories ad format that we’ve previously covered. There are two types of sponsored stories for Facebook page administrators: “Like Stories” and “Page Post Stories,” both of which are pictured in the image below. Both are definitely interesting and I’m sure page administrators will be split testing these types of ads for campaigns beginning immediately in an effort to decrease their fan acquisition costs.
Landing Tab Selection
The other major upgrade is the ability of page administrators to select which tab they’d like visitors to land on when they click on the ad (pictured below). This is yet another thing for page administrators to split test in an effort to decrease the effective cost of each new fan.
Facebook’s Recirculation Of Users
The most incredible aspect of these upgrades, outside of the fact that advertisers get to split test their ads more effectively, is that Facebook is charging advertisers to recirculate users within its own site. It’s an absolutely genius system that we have discussed many times before, and it’s one that I personally have never seen executed so effectively by any large online property. Not even Yahoo, a company with one of the most impressions on the Internet, has figured out a way to charge advertisers for driving traffic to the search engine’s own properties.
It’s pretty straightforward: the more Facebook advertisers spend, the more impressions the social network gets on its site, and the more revenue the company generates. While the integration of off-site open graph objects, a topic I covered in a previous article, makes a lot of sense in the long run, Facebook should take advantage of the system they’ve devised for as long as possible.
So what do you think? Do you feel like spending some money on Facebook fan acquisition? Sounds like a great idea to me! Let us know what price you’ve been paying for fans in the comments below.
Yes, spending money on fan acquisition is a great idea because I feel it is a one time investment. These fans are your social assets, they be with you forever (if you're doing engaging stuff).
Comment by @isomesh — February 9, 2011 @ 12:20 am
Ah ! Thats good to hear.. Btw now Facebook users can easily select ALL Friends when Suggesting Page/ group to other =D Check it out here – http://www.crazyinter.net/easily-send-facebook-pa...
Comment by Benipal — February 9, 2011 @ 12:22 am
Nick, great write up. I agree with you in regards to FB genius around advertising. It's certainly innovative!
Comment by Nathan — February 9, 2011 @ 12:56 am
I'm going to be split testing this asap. It's an interesting system and I'm gonna see exactly how it works. Any tips would be greatly appreciated – http://www.Facebook.com/LakersNation – 138k Strong!
Comment by @LakersNation — February 9, 2011 @ 12:57 am
I never spend a penny at FB,
after reading your post–maybe nextime I'll put some ads there.
it's seems better place to market
Comment by iip albanjary — February 9, 2011 @ 3:07 am
They're missing a VERY BIG ONE though, and it's going to make Google cry. So obvious, I dare not mention it. OK I will. Start a Facebook version of AdSense and let me deploy Facebook Ads on my own website. This will make you billions of dollars all over again, Facebook. I'm sure you figured that out already? I can already deploy Likes and Comments…. so close !
Comment by @tinyvox — February 9, 2011 @ 3:47 am
Thanks for the update.
I just noticed this new system change this morning and I'm really excited to try out these ad formats.
I've just built a page up to 110K fans for about $0.04 CPF. Another client is at 60K with slightly lower CPF.
I wonder if these new ads can help me lower that even more.
Comment by Aaron Zakowski — February 9, 2011 @ 4:43 am
This is fantastic. Just redirected all advertising to my custom tab instead of my wall, and my conversion rate has increased by 50%! – http://www.facebook.com/asiaparent
Comment by Rosh — February 9, 2011 @ 9:11 am
What kind of fan pages were these?
Comment by Kev — February 9, 2011 @ 10:00 am
Suggesting pages hasn't been working for me all week. what's going on?
Comment by Ron — February 9, 2011 @ 10:22 am
Great article. I am not really sure why facebook hasn't incorporated the last upgrade sooner. Guess it took time to develop. This would be great for the company and seems to be a win-win for the advertisers and consumers.
Comment by efanpage — February 9, 2011 @ 11:40 am
Nice! I have found that optimizing welcome tabs at least for Males and Females has had a HUGE effect on Action rates. Colors and first impressions are everything when it comes to a successful landing tab.
Still looking for a few things from Facebook though:
- Automatically generated ads based on set variables
- Day of the week budgeting
- Uploading ads via Excel table
Comment by Mario — February 9, 2011 @ 12:15 pm
This has been a long time coming and will drastically improve ROI for advertisers (assuming CPC stays stable). Curious to see retargeting elements that FB will add.
Comment by @tresnik — February 9, 2011 @ 1:43 pm
One other change that I just noticed. They removed the option of targeting the Friends of Friends that used to be with the other Facebook Connections targeting options. I had tried using that option in December and it opened up a big universe of impressions. CTR was not very good.
Comment by Stuart — February 9, 2011 @ 2:58 pm
I spoke too soon. The various connections options now change based on the type of ad you are running. When promoting your fan page as opposed to a URL address, a wide range of connection targeting options appear.
Comment by Stuart — February 9, 2011 @ 3:50 pm
This function was going to be removed a while back. It might be down already
Comment by Viviana — February 10, 2011 @ 11:19 am
Is this live?
Comment by Simon — February 10, 2011 @ 12:19 pm