Facebook’s Attempt at Search Advertising
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Facebook is constantly coming up with innovative advertising products to help businesses amp up their presence on the social networking site. One of the most recent tools in their advertising arsenal is Sponsored Results. According to Facebook, “Advertisers can create standard on-site ads (with a 70 character message) that lead to Facebook pages or apps (including custom tabs on their page). Ads can be targeted against Facebook entities, including Pages, Places, Apps, and subscribe-enabled users. Facebook users see the ad when the targeted entity appears in their search results. Ads only show in desktop search results, not on mobile and not on the “more results” page.”
This means that advertisers can make it easier for users to find them in Facebook search results (Sponsored Search is currently only available within Facebook search results). For example, a user is searching for a hotel in Montana, your Montana ranch resort could pop up to the top of their search results depending on how you target the key words of the Sponsored Search ad. In the example below, a user is searching the word “poker”. The results show up in the top of the search result under “Sponsored”. In this case, the search brings up apps and games that have been targeted to include the work “poker”, which looks to be games that may be of interest to someone who enjoys poker and other such games.
Sponsored Search ads became available to advertisers at the end of August. Prior to that, the new advertising tool had been tested with such brand names as Match.com, Zynga and Disney. The ads are available through Facebook’s Power Editor tool and the Ads API. Power Editor is a recent addition for advertisers who create and manage their Facebook ads with Facebook advertising representatives (in other words, big brands). Advertisers can buy Sponsored Search ads as CPC and CPM, though they have to bid on objects and not keywords. The ads have a 70-character limit to use in promoting the ad (which differentiates the result as an ad), however, as with their other ads, Facebook gives users the option to “X” out ads they don’t want to see. If the ads are as successful as they are projected to be, this will be a big game changer for businesses trying to one up their competition by advertising on Facebook.
Sponsored Search ads are currently limited to desktop-only units. If they really take off, it would not be too surprising to see the pop up in Facebook’s increasing mobile advertising offerings. Since Facebook’s search is one of the most high traffic areas on the site, it is only logical to target the space. According to TechCrunch, the units are helping advertisers target new audiences effectively, however, the data seems to suggest that the most successful implementation of the new ads will be integrating them with your regular search advertising and Facebook ads. In short, Sponsored Search ads are “a new way of reaching people” that can grow brand’s audience in an “incremental” way”.
Post written by Tia Marie Kemp aka @TiaMarieKemp. To learn more from Sociality Squared, become a fan!
