Facebook tests page post ads in News Feed to reach users beyond fans and friends
Facebook is testing a News Feed version of its page post ad format, which will allow advertisers to reach a broader audience than their own fans and friends of fans, a company spokesperson tells us.
This ad unit will look just like a post from a page that a user is a fan of, except it will include a “Like Page” button in the top right corner and the word “sponsored” at the bottom, according to a screenshot provided by Facebook. Previously, a page could only advertise in News Feed if users already Liked it or if they had a friend who did. This latest test, along with the mobile app ad unit announced last week, show Facebook is no longer limiting News Feed inventory to entities that users have already connected to.
Early tests of Sponsored Stories in the feed show much higher clickthrough rates than ads in the sidebar. However, because these ads don’t necessarily have social context, they could confuse or frustrate users. Facebook says News Feed page post ads are a very small test for now, and the social network will gauge performance and user sentiment to determine whether this will roll out wider.
Facebook experimented with ads in News Feed as early as 2006, when users who joined sponsored groups would be notified when friends interacted with the same page. When Beacon launched in 2007, Facebook also gave advertisers the option to put messages in the feed. When the company introduced News Feed Sponsored Stories earlier this year, it seemed to be taking a more conservative approach by only allowing brands to sponsor content that could otherwise appear in their feeds organically.
Advertisers, however, want to reach new audiences and they want their ads to be as effective as possible. News Feed page post ads could be ideal for advertisers as long as they don’t turn off users who look to their News Feed for updates from family and friends, not brands. At the same time, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets model inserts brand content into the feed without requiring a user to be connected to an advertiser in any way, and the company does not seem to have suffered any backlash.
August 14th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
[...] the faith of investors. On Tuesday, sister blog Inside Facebook reported that the social network will start allowing a select few pages to promote ads beyond their fanbase. The ads encourage users to like the page, allowing advertisers to reach more than just their [...]
August 14th, 2012 at 4:45 pm
[...] the faith of investors. On Tuesday, sister blog Inside Facebook reported that the social network will start allowing a select few pages to promote ads beyond their fan base. The ads encourage users to like the page, allowing advertisers to reach more than just their [...]
August 15th, 2012 at 2:24 am
[...] Unser Screenshot von insidefacebook.com zeigt ein solches Beispiel. Auf den ersten Blick unterscheidet sich der Beitrag nicht von einem normalen Newsfeedbeitrag, wie wir ihn kennen.Nur zwei Hinweise verraten, dass hier etwas anders ist: [...]
August 16th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
[...] some of the reaction to Facebook’s new ad testing from around the [...]
August 17th, 2012 at 8:51 am
[...] Facebook Tests Page Posts Ads in News Feed [...]
August 20th, 2012 at 3:40 am
[...] – nuova versione – mostrano anche il tasto “Like Page” nella parte alta (da Inside Facebook), per invitare l’utente, quello che nulla c’entra, a diventare un seguace.Noterete [...]
August 24th, 2012 at 8:50 am
[...] to offer their advertisers. Sponsored stories are an example, as are the recently announced news feed ads that can be targeted to non-fans. FBX is another step in this [...]
November 22nd, 2012 at 1:00 am
[...] times more engagement than its ads located on the right hand side of the page. Page Post Ads is a recently introduced way to help advertisers to reach a broader audience than their own fans and friends of [...]
November 23rd, 2012 at 6:48 am
[...] was my first encounter with Facebook’s new Suggested Posts. Facebook began testing Page Post Ads in August. These are the first ads you will see that are not directly connected to a Page you [...]