This evening Facebook announced a new form of Facebook advertisements that are customized for pages and events, enabling users to interact with the content without leaving the page. Rather than visiting a specific page, a user can instantly become a fan or RSVP to an event. If the user desires to continue engaging with the event or page, they can visit it directly. It’s a feature that premium homepage advertisements already had but it has now been extended to all general Facebook Ads.

Advertisers will be billed for the new advertisements on the standard rates that they bid. If you bid on “CPC” you will be charged for that user becoming a fan or RSVPing for the event. I’m not sure if it makes sense for Facebook to group these two actions together. Ultimately what the advertiser is paying for is an action (becoming a fan or RSVPing for an event). If the user visits the page but doesn’t RSVP, is that really the same value as an individual RSVPing and not visiting the event page?

One benefit of these new advertisements is that the actions will generate a new feed story within the user’s profile. There are definitely some positive aspects of this new advertisement but I’d say that the location a user clicks should produce a different value. Ultimately advertisers want to have better conversion metrics so they can split test their ads. While this may be in Facebook’s product roadmap, other items are currently ahead of improving advertising metrics.

I’ve regularly argued that improving the metrics will increase revenue but there are many other things that Facebook is currently focusing on, including their payment platform which began rolling out last week. Do you think that clicks on “Become a Fan” or “RSVP to this Event” should be valued at the same rate as a user clicking on your ad to the page?