Want to make sure that all of your friends know you bought that car, got that job or are doing fine in your relationship? Well, thanks to an expanded test, you may be able to ensure that your friends see your most important posts -- for a price. Kristel Cuenta of Kairay Media spotted the expanded test in the wild that prompted her to promote a recent image to all of her connections. The promotion language states: "Now you can promote posts and bump your important news, links and photo higher in news feed" If the test has expanded to your profile, you will see either a call-out, or a "pr [...]

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

The much-rumored Facebook ad network is taking another step closer to reality. The social network has confirmed that it is testing a mobile ad network that utilizes Facebook's data to target ads to users when they use mobile apps or visit certain mobile web sites. The mobile ad network test builds upon what Facebook has been doing with partner Zynga on its web site and it allows Facebook to monetize a key asset -- its data -- without compromising the user experience on the social network site itself. "We are working on a small test in which we’ll be showing mobile ads in apps off of Fa [...]

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

Promoted posts for pages are coming to a mobile device near you, thanks to the new feature added to the Facebook Pages Manager app. Administrators will now be able to do more than just update, as posts can be promoted and analyzed directly from latest version. When using the Pages Manager app, users will now see a "Promote" link next to recent posts: Upon clicking, administrators will have the ability to purchase promoted posts directly in the app. By using a slider, the admin can select the dollar amount and promote: Once the post has been promoted, administrators can use the app to [...]

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

After a beta period lasting a couple of months, the doors are open on the new Facebook Ad Exchange (FBX), which makes the social networking giant's inventory available to real-time bidding (RTB) and retargeting. Facebook is working with the exchanges of a generous number of partners, including AdRoll, AppNexus, Brandscreen, Criteo, DataXu, MediaMath, Nanigans, Kenshoo, Optimal, RocketFuel, Tellapart, TheTradeDesk, Triggit, Turn, Xaxis, and X+1. The company says that through these partners, advertisers can access capabilities like multi-touch attribution, view-through conversions, global fre [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Facebook Exchange | Features & Analysis | Top News

Sure, Facebook has been experimenting with integrating its ads more into people's news feeds. But for the most part, they remain tucked off to the right. Expect that to change in mobile, says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Asked if "mobile is a strength or weakness" for Facebook by Mike Arrington, who interviewed Zuckerberg on stage today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Zuckerberg said that there's plenty of engagement with mobile and that better monetization will follow, especially in that ads won't be separated out. "We're not going to have ads in a separate column. There's no [...]

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

Market research firm eMarketer has lowered its revenue estimate for Facebook due to "underperformance" so far in 2012 and "questions about the effectiveness of some of the site’s ad products." The firm previously pegged Facebook's 2012 revenues at $5 billion, but is now lowering that estimate to $4.23 billion -- still about 34 percent higher than 2011 revenue. Emarketer says Facebook ad revenue will continue to grow, just not at the rate that it has in the past. The firm estimates Facebook's ad revenue will grow to $5.48 billion next year and $6.81 billion in 2014. Facebook has [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Business Issues

One of the most longstanding complaints about Facebook's advertising opportunities is that one couldn't find existing customers, or visitors to their web site, to retarget them while they're on the mammoth social networking site. Besides participating in ad exchanges, Facebook appears to be attempting to address this concern in another way. According to a report in Inside Facebook, the company is testing opportunities for targeting Facebook users by email, user ID and phone number. According to the report, some users of Facebook's Power Editor temporarily saw a new "Custom Audiences" tab ne [...]

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

In a new report, market research firm eMarketer estimates that 88 percent of U.S. companies will be marketing on Facebook by 2014. That's more than double the estimated 43 percent that were using Facebook in 2009, and would be up from the 83 percent that are estimated to be marketing on Facebook this year. (And significantly higher than the 17 percent of marketers using or planning to use Pinterest that we reported earlier today.) Here's the eMarketer growth estimate for Facebook marketing adoption: Facebook has been offering free Pages for businesses since 2007, but needing to i [...]

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

Last month Facebook began testing a "Sponsored Search" ad unit geared towards those searching on Facebook. Today it has been released to advertisers.  The new ad unit operates very similarly to traditional Facebook advertising as they can leverage demographics, location, connections and interests/likes. A Facebook rep stated the following about the new ad unit: "We have launched a feature that surfaces sponsored results along with the organic results when people are looking for things on Facebook. We try to show people apps and pages they'll be most interested in." Sponsored Sea [...]

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

It’s easy to dismiss creative as a lesser element of Facebook advertising. But it really does matter! In the many campaigns SocialCode has run, we've seen massive variance in performance across different text elements.  Here is an opportunity to showcase what your brand or product is about, to distinguish yourselves from other ads or potential competitors, and to capture even more data. Again, Facebook is a unique platform and as such requires unique creative. Not all ad types allow for creative input, but the most widely used Standard Click and Like Ads do offer creative control, a [...]

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

Last December, Facebook began testing page post ads which would display ads directly in users news feeds. The posts look very organic, with the only discerning factor being  a "sponsored" link in the corner. These ads would only be available to those users who were fans (liked a page), or friends of fans ... until today. InsideFacebook reported that Facebook is now testing the ability for page post ads to reach users with no connection to the page. The ad units will also have the ability for users to like the page directly within the post, not just the post itself. The mobile app ad [...]

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

An Achilles heel of pay-per-click internet advertising is the risk that someone will click on an ad they're not the least bit interested in. To the extent that unqualified clicks are limited to a few over-caffeinated users who click wildly, this isn't really a big concern -- especially to advertisers accustomed to the targeting constraints of traditional media. Yet click fraud, usually called invalid clicks by advertising platforms, has been a real concern over the years. Click fraud comes in many forms. Paid to read schemes target ads which compensate the hosting site with a percenta [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook Marketing Column | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Pages | Facebook: Statistics | Statistics: Online Advertising

Facebook now claims 543 million monthly active mobile users. The good news for Facebook is that mobile users are "more active" than PC users. The bad news is that mobile users are much harder for the social site to make money from. This challenge has been widely discussed and was the subject of several questions on the recent Q2 Facebook earnings call. Facebook executives repeated several times during the call that they were being cautious about monetizing mobile so as to not disrupt the user experience. Source: Facebook Facebook is going to need to do something different with its [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Mobile | Facebook: Statistics | Facebook: User Interface | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

E-commerce store builder Limited Run isn't happy with the results on recent Facebook ad tests, so upset they are planning on deleting their Facebook page entirely. The firm is claiming that only 20% of the clicks purchased could be verified. When analyzing the ad clicks Limited Run claimed that a whopping 80% of clicks that they were being charged for came from users who didn't have JavaScript turned on. As of late 2010 the number of users who did not have JavaScript turned on in the US was only 2%. Seeing this information, Limited Run allegedly built their own analytics software that found [...]

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

Facebook's Q2 revenues are out. In the run up to the earnings announcement there was critical speculation about the company's prospects. In terms of top-line revenues, Facebook beat analyst consensus estimates. Quarterly revenues were $1.184 billion vs. $895 million last year. However the company also reported a net loss of $157 million. Immediately after the release there was a mixed reaction in the financial community, with some arguing analyst expectations were managed to be artificially low. There was general disappointment among many with these results; however some are taking a "wait [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Business Issues | Top News

There's no indication that Facebook will stop rolling out more advertising options anytime soon.  A TechCrunch article announced that Facebook was testing a new Facebook Search ad titled "Sponsored Results." These results will allow advertisers to show up next to organic results and can be targeted to people searching for a page, app or place.  These ads are not targeted on a keyword bases, but rather an "entity" much like Sponsored Stories do. The ads look quite organic, but have the word "Sponsored" next to the listing: Facebook is currently testing these ads, but TechCrun [...]

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

As the industry engages in back-and-forth about the efficacy and relevance of Facebook advertising, agency TBG, which specializes in social media marketing, has released a report showing that CPMs and clicks have increased on the social network over the past year, though CPCs vary across geographies. The stats, aggregated from more than 275 of TBG's clients, bolster the argument that Facebook's product developments have provided value for advertisers, at least in some places. In its analysis of more than 406 billion impressions of Facebook ads globally, TBG found CPMs (cost-per-thousand-imp [...]

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

In the last column, we saw that a number of different elements make up an effective Facebook campaign. One of the most important elements is ad selection. In contrast to some forms of digital marketing, which offer almost no variety or evolve very slowly, Facebook is constantly updating their inventory of ads to provide even more choices for advertisers. Just recently, they introduced the ability to target ads to users on mobile phones. To take full advantage of the platform, it’s key to understand these ad types and which work best with your marketing objectives. We’ll continue t [...]

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

With some very visible questions about the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook in its rear-view mirror, Facebook has revamped its Facebook for Business Page with an emphasis on education and case studies. The new page takes a more hands-on approach to what you'd call "onboarding" -- the process of eliminating friction for small business owners that are considering adding or expanding their Facebook marketing plans. The home page offers "Success Stories" and "Steps to Business Success," and promises to teach business owners how to turn some of Facebook's 900-million-plus users into cust [...]

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

Since the botched IPO, Facebook has been working feverishly on creating enhanced ad offerings.  According to Clickz, the most traditional form of Facebook ads will be adding rotation to the mix.  Currently ads are static on a page and aren't swapped out until the user hits a different page. This makes quite a bit of sense for Facebook.  Facebook ads typically get noticed and are clicked quickly, or are bypassed for good.  Having the ability of displaying multiple messages should increase the click to pageview percentage on ads.  An overwhelming majority of advertisers only use pay- [...]

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