Inside Facebook

For social media advertisers looking for a way to reach Facebook users, a new “sponsored gifts” unit is now available on the redesigned Facebook home page. The sponsored gifts ad unit follows Facebook’s new social video ad unit as one of the three new types of “engagement ads” advertisers can use to reach Facebook users more powerfully within the redesigned Facebook.

Here’s how it works: Sponsored gifts are simply virtual gifts that users can send to each other. Facebook has created a virtual gifts store that offers some gifts for sale at $1 and offers some gifts for free (recent estimates put Facebook’s virtual gifts business at over $30 million/year). Gifts can normally be sent either publicly or privately, depending on the preference of the sender.

With sponsored gifts, gifts can be sent directly from the home page (see above) and are always delivered publicly on friends’ Wall feeds (see below). Facebook then gives a lot of News Feed juice to help gifts spread further to the friends of those who get them. For many types of brands, like consumer products and entertainment, sponsored gifts could be an excellent and simple way to engage users in a social and meaningful way.

Many Facebook Platform application developers also offer advertising products much like sponsored gifts. If you’re interested in finding applications that may be able to provide deeper experiences, feel free to let me know your verticals of interest.

Marketers and agencies interested in learning more about the spectrum of channels available inside Facebook should check out our Facebook Marketing Bible.