We’ve talked at length about the importance of engaging your Facebook community beyond simply acquiring fans. Page Post ads are a great way to encourage this interaction. If you're a retailer, consider Facebook Offers, a relatively new type of Page Post that allows brand pages to create coupons and share them exclusively on Facebook. Offers can be beneficial to businesses both on and off Facebook. On Facebook, you can spread the word about your product or service to your fans, as well as to their friends. At the same time, you’re driving traffic off Facebook to your store or website and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Facebook Marketing Column | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Offers

Just two days after a social media storm erupted over Instagram's proposed new terms of service, the Facebook-owned company -- as promised -- has come up with revisions, in an effort to "communicate our intentions clearly." Rather than say the company's plans themselves led to the controversy, co-founder Kevin Systrom has painted it all as a misunderstanding, where poor wording in its terms caused confusion among users -- many of whom said publicly that they were deleting their accounts over the changes. The first section that people were up in arms about referred to a "non-exclusive, fu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Instagram | Facebook: Legal | Features & Analysis | Top News

Facebook has started a "small experiment" in the U.S. that will let some individual users pay to make sure their messages reach other users' Inboxes. It's part of several changes to how Facebook Messages are sent between users. Facebook is positioning the pay-for-delivery system as a way to reduce spam and other unwanted messages from reaching users' Inboxes. Today we're starting a small experiment to test the usefulness of economic signals to determine relevance. This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other fo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Top News

Those of you looking forward to Facebook rolling out the mobile ad network it's been testing can just keep looking forward for now. Though the test is wrapping up at the end of the year, the social media firm has no plans to expand it anytime soon, as first reported by AllThingsD and confirmed by Marketing Land. "We are pausing our mobile ads test off of Facebook," reads a statement from a Facebook spokesperson. "While the results we have seen and the feedback from partners has been positive, our focus is on scaling ads in mobile news feed before ads off of Facebook. We have learned a lot [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Mobile | Top News

So far, 2012 has been the year of the ad for Facebook. Just this year we've seen the convergence of related ads in the newsfeed, unreleated ads in the newsfeed, conversion tracking with ads, ads on mobile, ads in the search results, retargeting, even paid exposure on organic content. Whew. What does that leave for next year? AdAge is reporting that in 2013 a new video-ad product will be launched in an effort to swing TV dollars over to Facebook. The reported launch date for video ads is "April at the latest" according to AdAge. The ad formats will allegedly be capped at 15 seconds, whi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising

Citing accelerating mobile revenue growth at Facebook and Google, eMarketer has raised its 2012 US full-year mobile ad forecast significantly: from just over $2.6 billion to more than $4 billion. The forecast includes tablet advertising; however eMarketer does not break that out as a separate category or indicate its percentage contribution. I believe the new $4 billion eMarketer figure is probably aggressive. However it directionally it reflects the rapid growth of the mobile market. A few months ago, the IAB found that 1H 2012 mobile ad revenue was approximately $1.2 billion, suggestin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Mobile | Statistics: Spend Projections

If you go by my Facebook and Twitter feeds, you'd think Instagram is finished -- users are packing their bags (downloading their photos using services like Instaport) and migrating to other services like Snapchat or even the venerable Flickr. This because the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service announced changes in its terms of service due to take effect in January, with some of those changes designed to allow advertisers access to the audience. Is everyone leaving Instagram before marketers get a chance to engage with them? Not likely. Since this latest Facebook-related-change panic (FR [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: Acquisitions | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Instagram | Features & Analysis | Mobile Marketing | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr | Yahoo: Mobile

This morning Facebook rolled out a new, simpler way to get more Page likes. It's aimed chiefly though not exclusively at small businesses (SMBs) with fewer than 10,000 fans. That undoubtedly includes the overwhelming majority of SMBs with a presence on Facebook. The tools to create the simpler ad unit are in the Page admin console making it more accessible for SMBs who may be less familiar with Facebook's ad creation flow. Indeed, this is a kind of companion to Promoted Posts, which is a simplified way for SMBs to advertise on Facebook. All the content and daily budget are suggested. Her [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Mobile | Facebook: Pages

Simply put, Facebook is big for small & medium businesses. At  this week's BIA/Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media show, Facebook's Director Of Global SMB Markets, Dan Levy, released update numbers around Facebook Page & ad adoption. The numbers showed explosive growth in the SMB field. Included in the numbers was the confirmation that Facebook has eclipsed the 13 million Page mark globally. One of the main drivers appears to be local adoption. Since January active local pages have increased over 40%. Additionally, 150 million people visit Facebook Pages everyday with nearly [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Pages | Top News

Facebook is constantly rolling out new products and capabilities for advertisers. This makes the platform extremely dynamic, but it can also be hard to keep up with all the changes! One of the most major announcements in recent months is the introduction of placement targeting. Previously, marketplace ads were only shown in the right rail. Now, advertisers can choose to serve their ads to specific placements, like Desktop and Mobile Newsfeed. Obviously, this allows advertisers to collect a great deal more data, and, more importantly, permits campaign-specific placement targeting. That [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook Marketing Column | Facebook: Advertising

[caption id="attachment_27385" align="alignright" width="257"] Everson's profile photo on Facebook[/caption] Despite being a public company with billions in revenue, there's still a lot of doubt about Facebook advertising. The company's Global Marketing Solutions VP Carolyn Everson is trying to dispel that doubt, reportedly sharing at a conference this week that Samsung -- though "sophisticated" targeting and other techniques -- brought in $129 million in sales of its Galaxy S III solely by spending $10 million over three weeks on Facebook. That's a considerable return on ad spend in any [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Top News

One of the toughest tasks that most marketers face is tracking social media efforts.  Facebook is making it easier to do so with a new advertising tool. The new tool will allow advertisers to track the number of all web-based transactions that occur. This will work similarly to most traditional paid search offerings. Users will be given a snippet of code to place on checkout success pages, thank you pages and registration pages that will attribute the specific keyword/ad to the conversion. The conversion data will then be shown within Ads Manager alongside the traditional Facebook data. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Top News

So, you’ve chosen your ad types, written creative, ran and optimized your campaign. What’s next? Evaluating Success It’s a fairly straightforward process to decide if your campaign was successful. Did you get fans? Conversions? Sign ups? Did you fulfill your campaign’s original goals? That should be easy to measure. The optimization strategies outlined in my previous column should have allowed you to make the most of the dollars you spent on Facebook. You’ve (hopefully) come away feeling satisfied that it was money well spent. Don’t forget about the less tangible successes [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook Marketing Column | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising

App developers rejoice! Facebook has unleashed new targeting options that allow advertisers to target specific mobile operating systems and devices. This is very important to companies and developers who make platform specific applications. Advertisers can now push different ads to specific sets of mobile users. The mobile operating systems available to target are iOS, Android and the devices which can be targeted are iPhone, iPad and iPod. This targeting is now available in the Power Editor and Ad API.   [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Mobile | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising

As Facebook's continued quest for revenue continues, the News Feed relevance appears to be declining. Under immense pressure to generate meaningful ad revenue, Facebook has begun sponsoring stories and pages and, most recently, suggesting posts. The key? These new ad units have been intrinsically social -- promoting a Facebook post or page. Now InsideFacebook reports that Facebook is testing the placement of traditional non-social ad units in the News Feed. Traditionally, Facebook ads and News Feed content have been a separation of church and state as ads have always been placed to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News

By now, we've all seen Sponsored Stories popping up in our news feed, and a new ad unit may increase the overall number of posts. New "suggested posts" will allow companies to display posts directly in users' feeds, no connections required. Facebook's popular Sponsored Stories ad type shows posts from pages but must come from one of the user's connection. This new "Suggested Post" ad type would allow brands to advertise a specific post to users who have no interactions or connections with a brand. This ad unit makes quite a bit of sense for Facebook. The traditional ads on the sideb [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News

Call it a "relief rally." After Facebook's Q3 yesterday ($1.26 billion) beat consensus revenue estimates financial analysts changed their outlook on the company, with many shifting recommendations from "neutral" or "hold" to "buy." As a result Facebook saw its shares gain nearly 20 percent by the close of trading on the NASDAQ today. The big sigh of relief that could be heard all over Wall Street was about Facebook's mobile revenues and metrics. There were 604 million monthly active mobile users in Q3 according to the company, representing a steady month over month gain but a big 61 per [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Business Issues | Social Media Marketing

Facebook has released its Q3 financials and there are some solid numbers in the all-important advertising category. Overall, revenue was up to $1.26 billion for the quarter, a 32 percent gain over Q3 2011 and the third consecutive quarter of higher revenues. The company is reporting $1.09 billion in ad revenue for the quarter, a 36 percent increase year-over-year. That sum represents 86 percent of Facebook's total revenue. Perhaps most importantly, Facebook says that 14 percent of its ad revenue came from mobile. That's been something of an achilles heel for the company and it's i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Business Issues | Facebook: Mobile | Social Media Marketing | Top News

By now we've all heard the doubts on whether or not Facebook Ads work to drive meaningful business. Today Facebook will be unveiling data that counters the traditional ideology that clicks are king for brand advertisers. The new data shows that brand advertisers should focus on impressions, reach and frequency. Facebook teamed up with Datalogix, a data mining firm, to crunch stats on ad effectiveness. The study concluded that less than 1 percent of in-store sales are tied to brand advertising campaigns where a user clicked on an ad. Brad Smallwood, Facebook's head of measurement and insigh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Top News

More than any other element, targeting is what sets Facebook advertising apart from other channels. Anything that a user inputs into his or her Facebook profile is targetable: age, gender, relationship status, location, interests, level of education, and more. These capabilities allow you to reach customers at a much deeper and more customized level. Instead of waiting for your customers to come to you, you can bring highly relevant content to them. Don't Oversimplify Overlooking or oversimplifying your targeting approach limits the kind of success you can have. The abundance of targe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook Marketing Column | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising