Facebook has launched Sponsored Story Ads in the News Feed. Now users are seeing paid, targeted messages occupying the top of their feed for the first time. Starting today, Facebook will require all premium ad buys to be Sponsored Stories based on Page Posts. While there has been a lot of talk in recent years of tying together paid and owned executions on Facebook, this move will certainly force brands to take a more holistic approach to their Facebook marketing campaigns as they must synch their page publishing efforts up to their ad buys for Premium IOs.
The new placement of Sponsored Stories in the News Feed extends the lifespan of a brand’s best content and engagement, ensuring messages are seen by users rather than getting buried in the feed. Because Page Post updates tend to lose visibility, Sponsored Stories are a guaranteed way to get the most out of posts and to amplify the interaction of fans with those posts.
The major difference between Sponsored Stories and Standard Ads is that Sponsored Stories are ads that can only originate from content in a Page Post or user actions on a page or custom app. Both Sponsored Stories and Standard Ads can have social context. For example, you have the ability to see which friends have engaged with content in both Standard Ads and Sponsored Stories. However, in a Sponsored Story, the content of the ad is generated from the content of a post or engagement by the user and not by the advertiser. To learn more about Facebook Ad Types download the GraphEffect Guide to Facebook Ad Types.
As mentioned our last blog post on Facebook Mobile Ads, according to the Financial Times and Mashable.com, there is word that Sponsored Stories are coming to mobile. To learn more about Facebook and mobile advertising, read our latest post, Rumor Has it: Facebook Mobile Advertising to Launch this Month.
To learn more about sponsored stories view the video below, or visit: http://www.facebook.com/help/featured-stories
How do you think Sponsored Stories in the News Feed will affect Facebook brand strategy?