Inside Facebook

Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang recently caught up with Facebook’s Director of Monetization Tim Kendall, who spoke about the different ways Facebook is packaging its advertising products for big brands. Tim says that Facebook is focusing on 3 different types of “engagement” ads:

1) Comment Style Ad: Members can now leave comments on these advertisements, much like wall posts. Brands that are focused on entertainment, new product rollouts, autos and apparel are well suited. The ad can show up to 4 comments per object, and the activity spreads to the users newsfeed.

2) Virtual Gifts Style Ad: Brands can now create virtual items that users can share, spread to each other. This wildly popular behavior within applications and Facebook is suitable for consumer products, entertainment, and some media.

3) Fan Style Ad: A play off the Facebook pages, users with a persona affinity for a product (like Apple) can become a fan, triggering a notification to their network, and could then tie on social ads. Will work great for established brands, like guitar hero, passion products, luxury products, or any brand with a rabid customer base.

Tim’s words reflect Facebook’s plans to find ways to monetize user engagement without sending the user outside Facebook. Because Facebook controls the social graph and the distribution channels of social information, Facebook can offer a lot of value to brands hoping to increase their integration with the social graph and prominance within the distribution channels (feeds).

Facebook’s goals are generally true of anyone trying to monetize social media these days: gone are the days when brands buy clicks to micro-sites. Here are the days of viral endorsements, virtual gifts, and comments on your brand made more visible to friends.

Related Inside Facebook Resources:

• Facebook’s New Social Video Ad Unit is an Engagement Magnet