Facebook, (which in my humble opinion is one of SMBs greatest web resource) has done it again. By now, everyone is familiar with the recently launched Sponsored Stories. These are similar to regular Facebook ads, in that they are fee-based, but they differ because they are about your Friends' and Pages' activities on Facebook--stories that are already eligible to be in the news feed. However, Sponsored Stories are almost always in the ticker, and identified as being a "Sponsored Story". But still, Sponsored Stories are a step above a regular Facebook ad.
But wait, there's more. Today, Facebook launched it's Featured Stories. Now we're talking about ad exposure! Featured Stories will be embedded in the news feed and will not be identified as an ad. In other words they will look like any other posts. Users will only be able to determine the "post" as ad by the word ‘Featured’, which is greyed out underneath the post. When you hover over the word it will show you exactly why a particular post has been featured in your feed. Facebook is guarding against flooding users' news feeds with paid ads by promising that just one Featured Story will appear each day in a users' news feed.
Undoubtedly, this new advertising option will drum up debate, both pros and cons. But for the small and mid-sized business owner, let's welcome another opportunity to advertise on a larger, yet comparatively inexpensive scale.
Help grow this blog. Subscribe to Daily Mentions, comment and tell a friend.
2 comments:
Hi Deb.
Sounds like a cool idea. Can you further share "How much" or can you copy and paste an example of such a feed?
Happy New Year to y'all--and welcome back.
Hi Les,
I haven't seen a Featured Story in my news feed yet. But since they only started running them yesterday, I'm sure they'll start popping up shortly. I'll post one up when I come across one.
Thanks,
Deb
Post a Comment