Neworld, Great relationships build great brands

Recently the cost of advertising on the network has been under scrutiny where the cost and click through rates has been identified as being higher than other websites. The ad’s might be less effective in their current format, but advertising avoidance is a rife in any medium, where people subconsciously switch off. While advertising effectiveness on Facebook might be decreasing, a way to combat it is to introduce new ad formats that keep the communications fresh. New types of ad’s might surprise the viewer for so long, but keeping adverts compelling is the job of the advertiser and poor click through rates may reflect lazy copy or an increase in smaller businesses using Facebook who may not be well versed in online advertising.

1. Sponsored Stories

Sponsored Stories have been making an appearance on Facebook for the last number of weeks. Having been launched with some key brands, all advertisers can draw on this new format using the self service tools. This is harnessing a brands network of fans to promote the brand, either through showing the viewer what friends like the brand, or through using a newsfeed item that the viewer might have seen already, as demonstrated below.

2. What Tab to land On

The landing tab for Facebook pages is a useful feature to send non-fans of your page to a specifically designed tab to encourage them to become fans, just check out some examples here. Now advertisers can choose what tab they wish to direct advertising traffic to. It can be any tab on the Facebook page the wall, info, photo’s or any application you may have attached to the page. This also enables brands to launch multiple campaigns directing traffic to different tabs based on the criteria of the campaign. You could have one campaign targeting one set of customers and a second targeting another, each with their own tab on your profile. This might be useful for brands with multiple products or for brands looking to differentiate their marketing further.

3. Advertising on the Photo’s App

Facebook have been rolling out a new format for displaying photo’s which has been greeted with mixed reviews. Just this morning AllFacebook.com report the new layout  also comes with a new ad format, which you can see in the image below. There’s a couple of strange things about this, first it reduces the amount of advertising on the photo display page, and second, the advert in the example below ties in with the content of the photograph. Is this a new type of ad format we are seeing? Facebook have been testing facial recognition software for tag suggestions for sometime so could this be an extension of it? If it is it’s another clever way of using our Facebook content to influence the advertising. Where sponsored stories uses our likes, or even or words, using our photo’s to deliver targeted ad positioning is the next step in that progression. Although it could be a coincidence!