Understands how Sponsored Stories works

 

Understands how Sponsored Stories

works

On Facebook, when people connect with a page, app, or event, it creates a

“story” that their friends may see in their newsfeeds. When these stories are

about your Facebook objects, you can pay to promote the stories so they gain

greater reach—and more people will see them when their friends have engaged

with you. Sponsored stories can be about:

“Likes” of a page

Engagement on a page such as likes, shares, or comments on a post, votes

on a question, and checkins at a place

Joins of an event

Installs, uses, or plays of an app or game

Likes or shares of an external website or link

Sponsored Stories can appear in either of two locations: in the right-hand column

or within the newsfeed of your fans. In the right-hand column, they appear under

a “Sponsored Stories” header. When in the newsfeed, Sponsored Stories bear a

“Featured” link, which, when clicked, displays the explanation, “You are seeing

this because you like Acme Widget. A sponsor paid to feature it here.”

Sponsored Story ads promote interactions between people and entities that exist

on Facebook: a page, event, application, place, video, photo, or album—even a

single wall post. Sponsored Stories enjoy some advantages over other ad types:

Sponsored Stories attract more attention, thanks to the profile picture of a

user’s friend.

They carry the weight of social proof, an implicit recommendation from a

friend. “Brenda Johnson likes American Express” or “Juan Castro plays

Words With Friends” or “Althea Wood is going to San Antonio Zombie

Walk” are powerful endorsements.

At Facebook’s discretion, they can appear not just in the right-hand column,

but within the newsfeed too—which is a more natural, trusted, and higher-

engagement placement.

“The basic idea is that ads should be content,” says Mark Zuckerberg. 

A Sponsored Story includes the profile picture of the person who made the

action and the action performed, plus the names of other people in your network

who have previously liked or interacted with the Facebook entity that sponsored

the story.

Be aware that to run Sponsored Stories successfully, you must have an

established fan base of some size—because these ads appear only in the

newsfeeds of friends of your fans. If you have very few fans, you won’t reach

many friends of fans. 

3 David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World

(Simon & Schuster, 2010).

Wait, you ask, if these stories already appear free in the newsfeeds of my fans,

why would I want to pay?

You pay because the initial, free distribution doesn’t reach enough eyeballs.

Sponsored Stories ensure that “likes” and other interactions generate more word

of mouth than could happen organically. You’re paying for faster growth of your

fan base, among the universe of like-minded friends of fans. It’s not dissimilar to

the concept behind Promoted Posts, which I’ll talk about next.

Promoted Posts

It’s a win when fans “like” your brand page. But don’t expect them to come back

for a visit. Research has found about 90% of users who “like” a brand on

Facebook never return to view or engage with your wall.

That means the newsfeed is your only lifeline to your fans. But if you have

10,000 fans, and you post religiously several times a day, how many of them

actually see what you’re posting?

A mere 16%, according to comScore, and Facebook itself. Many posts are

filtered out of the newsfeed in a deliberate move by Facebook architects to

deliver a more manageable user experience. Posts that do get through are often

missed by users.

Promoted Posts are a means to reach more of your fans, for a fee.

Whether you’re a page admin or an individual Facebook user, you can promote. 

any of your recent posts (within the past three days) by clicking the Promote

button below the post.

Because they are essentially the same format served in the same places as

organic newsfeed posts, Promoted Posts enjoy a much higher engagement rate

than Marketplace ads.

“Organically, you get anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent of your fans,”

says Gokul Rajaram, “In order to reach the remaining 80 to 85 percent,

sponsoring posts is important.”

4

Promoted Posts replaces an earlier product called Reach Generator, which was

an ad-serving utility exclusively for Premium advertisers, which allowed them to

pay a flat fee to reach a set percentage of their fan base.

4 Zach Rodgers, “Inside the World of Gokul Rajaram, Facebook’s Ad Architect,” AdExchanger, September

5, 2012, www.adexchanger.com/socialmedia/inside-the-world-of-gokul-rajaram-facebooks-ad-architect/.

Like many of Facebook’s ad offerings, Promoted Posts is a rather ingenious

system to get you to pay for attention on-site—and to move Facebook users from

one section of the site to another, from the other guy’s stuff to yours.

Adding Social Activity to Ads

When your ad points to pages, events, “stories” and other Facebook real estate,

those objects automatically display a Facebook Like button, which is a great

element for encouraging a response without having to pull users away from

whatever Facebook activity they’re enmeshed in. (They can still also click on

your ad to view your page.)

You can also add the Like button by going to any page you manage and clicking

on “Build Audience” in the admin panel, then selecting “Create an Ad.”

Actions on Facebook are powerful and relatively frictionless. In addition to

“Join” for an event, “Use Now” for downloading an app, and “Like” for virtually

any Facebook content, app developers can define their own custom actions, like

Play Get Recipe Clip Coupon Enjoy Get Crave Want and

more. You can also target these custom actions for ad-serving using the action

spec (more on that later in this chapter).

Sponsored Stories have been well received by most advertisers and Facebook

users alike—although not by everyone.

brought against Facebook, contending that Sponsored Stories violated the rights

of users by making them, in effect, unpaid endorsers whenever their “likes” or

other actions are used in a paid ad. A court ruled in 2012 that Facebook must

make clear to users which of their actions are used to generate advertisements

seen by their Facebook friends. Users must also be given controls to opt out. For

Facebook users under 18, parents must have the opportunity to opt-out their

children.

That said, this ad unit has not ignited the criticism that Facebook has sometimes

faced in years past from consumer advocates and privacy watchdogs. The times,

they are a changin’.

Targeting

Your targeting options will differ somewhat depending on what ad unit you’re

using. But here are some guidelines for the targeting tools to consider: choose

the location, gender, age, likes, and interests, relationship status, workplace, and

education of your target audience. If you are the admin of a Facebook page,

event, or app, you can also target your ad to people who are already connected to

you (or exclude your ad if appropriate).

For instance, Facebook describes how a New York wedding planner might

identify business prospects (see Figure 5-1):

Audience: 45,200 People

Who live in the United States

Who live within 50 miles of New York, NY

Age 21 and older

Who are female

Who are in the category Engaged.