Facebook Reveal New Look Right Hand Side Column Ads

As you all know I have been for some time concerned about the true value that Facebook provides those businesses that choose to promote on their platform based on the rules around it and the advertising blocking technologies that are freely available today to users who wish to use them.
However as I've also said all along we would continue to monitor any changes or improvements made by Facebook and discuss them as they happened here. On this point it has been revealed i the last week or so that Facebook will now be introducing a new ad format with the arrrival this week of the right-hand column ads.

What Are the Changes

As you can see from the Facebook blog example, the ads are more pronounced and designed to make a bigger splash in terms of impact to hopefully provide a more valuable return on investment from the businesses point of view, whist also providing better value to the reader and potential customer. On this,
Facebook clearly acknowledge the need for them to continue to refine and provide better value for the customers and users alike and this step is an obvious move in this direction.
Facebook have also sggested that initial observation has significantly higher click-through rates from users shown the new advertising design versus the previous style ad. That feedback suggests that users seeing the ads will certainly get a well targetedand impactful ad. So we certainly give that a tick.

What Will The Changes Mean

Facebook will certainly argue then that the advertisers will receive more value for their ad impressions. These ad sill also mean that users will see fewer ads on Facebook. So what will this mean to advertisers.

The inevitable result of this new format which has also been acknowledged by Facebook, that as the bidding for the space on Facebook will increase the total amount of promotional spend will inevitably also require greater promotional budget to compete at the same level. So the key question here is simply this. Is the presumed increased click through rate going to more than offset the certain increases in ad costs to provide a superior ROI? Obviously Facebook believe as they said in their own media post:
"It is our belief that the overall value delivered through this more engaging ad format will offset any potential decreases in impressions".

The true upside for Facebook of course is that they have a great ability to precisely target an audience for an advertiser based on the membership information that all users provide on joining Facebook which ticks all the segmentation criteria. Namely: demographic, geographic and psycho-graphic.
Ultimately what impact this change delivers but again we will follow it closely and monitor and incremental changes as well as anyadditional innovations facebook deliver to overcome the underlying issue of their continuing, ongoing deterioration of their orgaic reach.  Time will certainly tell.

As always to learn more about Facebook or any other form of digital or social media come long to one of the free two hour workshops of the Digital Enterprise Program and qualify for a free four hour one on one coaching session for your bussiness. Simply log on to the VECCI site and click on the link:
http://www.vecci.org.au/business-solutions/digital-enterprise-program/workshops
So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele Lima.