Friday, June 4, 2010

Facebook Engagement Ads –Consumer Engagement redefined

I recently got a call from one of our clients congratulating me on the official facebook launch in Nigeria. We spoke for a while about his ongoing internet campaign and at the end of the conversation, I heard the funniest thing. He said to me “so it’s now www.facebook.com.ng”, and I said oh no it isn’t, it’s still www.facebook.com. He was a bit confused and then asked me what the whole launch event was about, and then it struck me that there must be so many people just like him that do not know the true meaning of what took place on that day.

With the new facebook layout change came some other changes on the site, some immediately visible, and others not so visible. Facebook took down the former skyscraper ads and introduce the new Facebook Engagement Ads.
Engagement ads are designed to integrate naturally within the user’s experience on Facebook . With Engagement ads, when a user clicks the ad, he isn’t taken away to a web page out of Facebook, but can interact and leave comments and can generate social stories in Feed. The ads allow your brand to share and connect with users on their home page without leaving Facebook and their social network.

Facebook Video Engagement Ads

The Facebook Video Engagement Ad allows users to leave inline comments on the video without leaving the home page. When a user comments on a Video Engagement Ad, the comments are visible to their entire friend list. What’s more, users can also “like” and/or become a fan of the brand inline, without interrupting the video. There is the Video engagement ads which allows you to see your friends who ‘liked’ the ad thereby increasing the likelihood of you watching our trusting the product.

A Sample Video Engagement Ad


Event Engagement Ads
Another interesting engagement ad on Facebook is the Event ads. I will definitely click on one of these if people network or my friends are attending an event. I don’t want to get left out.

The ad expands to invite friends to the event when one of the 3 RSVP options are selected. Friends who are attending the event are listed within the ad unit, as well as the total number of Facebook attendees. This increases the trust and likelihood of the user to engage in the ad. The act of RSVP-ing to the event is public and may appear in friends’ home pages. After RSVP-ing to the event, the user has the option to become a fan of the brand.

Marketers can use the Event ads to promote events through viral invites and user interaction.

A Sample Event Engagement Ad

Fan Engagement Ads
The Facebook Fan Engagement Ads allow users to interact with the ads in the profile and newsfeeds –without leaving their Facebook page, thus increasing interaction, social spread, and brand engagement.

If the user’s friends are already Fans of the brand, the ad unit provides social context. This endorsement increases both the user’s trust in the brand and the likelihood that the user will engage with the ad unit and become a Fan themselves.
If none of the user’s friends are currently Fans of the brand, the ad unit displays the Page’s total fan count at that time. This number assures the user that they are becoming a Fan of a popular page that is of value to many other Facebook users.

A Sample Fan Engagement Ad

Gift Engagement Ads
Brands can now create virtual items that fans can share and send to each other. This engagement ad is suitable for consumer products and entertainment.
The ad unit expands to include a message field when the recipient field is clicked on. Send a message along with the gift, all inline. Messages previously exchanged between a user’s friends are seen below the ad, increasing the trust and likelihood of the user to also engage in the ad. These comments are public and can appear on friends’ home pages in the Stream.

A Sample Gift Engagement Ad


Poll Engagement Ads
The ad unit asks a question with 2 or 3 responses. When the user selects a response, the poll results appear. These results reflect the answers of all Facebook users who have answered the poll. The user can also click to see how their friends voted or become a fan of the brand. When the poll ad is created, it generates a Wall story on the poll’s Page, which can publish into its Fans’ home page Streams. When a user engages with the ad, the poll story can appear on the user’s Wall and friends’ home pages.

The poll engagement ads can be used for market research so before a new product, design or initiative is introduced, a company can run the poll engagement ads to sample the audience opinion. These ads can be served to over a million people across Facebook. Targeting is involved, it could be served to Nigerians e.g between the ages of 18-35 or 30-40. From the result, he would know if he should pull the plugs or go ahead with the new products.

A Sample Poll Engagement Ad


Facebook Self Served Ads


Facebook self served ads appear throughout the site, but not on the home page. The self served ads can be booked by anybody that wants to publicize their product or events. Of course these ads don’t have any engagement features and usually have a lower click through rate than the engagement ads. The engagement ads gives more mileage to a product and its premium.

Sample Self Served Ads

1 comment:

  1. I just read the great article, got a clear outline, how those Facebook Ads work, but still have some questions...since i work in an Advertising firm, how could we exactly create those campaign(including video, event, poll, gift...) for our clients through Facebook? should we contact with facebook? where can i get more infos about it? by Facebook? have checked! but could not find the details and till now no clue....we really wanna know, for the Engagement Ads what could we offer to our clients? how can we do the campaign? and how much does it cost? etc.

    ReplyDelete