So I was reading this Comscore report about the massive number of ads that are being served on social networks. 8.2% of all display ads on the Internet today in the U.S. are being served on Facebook. Wow. MySpace still has a small lead there, with 9.2%. Overall, social networks are serving up 21% of all U.S. display ads, and that’s with Twitter basically still on the sidelines.
Anyhow, as soon as I finish reading the report and some of the associated coverage, I see an email from Facebook in my inbox. It says:
Hi there,
My name is Melissa and I work in advertising at Facebook. Could you forward this along to the appropriate person who does your online media buying?
I am a huge TechCrunch fan, and I think TechCrunch has one of the best Pages on Facebook. It has seen a sizeable amount of organic fan growth, and the Page content does a great job keeping users engaged. Now that we have “Become a Fan” cost-per-click ads, it’s easier than ever to expand your fan base to a much greater size. With over 250MM users, we can target by various parameters to reach the right people that would want to fan the TechCrunch Page. Having 9,000 fans is a great start, but with the potential for 50,000 or even 500,000 fans, you can make your updates that much more effective.
Running through our online tool, you can control your daily budget, ad creatives, and target audience so your ads are as effective as possible. We can also have a dedicated account manager work with you to make sure the ads are being optimized for the best performance. I am more than happy to help with this fan-growth effort and tap into the potential that TechCrunch’s Page has on Facebook. Feel free to reach out to me by phone at 650-xxx-xxxx or via email at xxxxxx@facebook.com, and I can set you up with a business account and some free ad credits to get started. Look forward to hearing from you!
And all I can think is, how did these guys manage to set up a system where people pay to drive traffic from one place on Facebook to another place on Facebook? Even Google hasn’t managed to figure that one out yet. I’ve known they (and MySpace) have done this since launching their ad platforms, but it never really hit home until today how brilliant this all is.
They even have a nice pre-created ad to show me when I visit our fan page on Facebook, and offer to let me pay via cost per impression or cost per click. It’s all so easy. All I have to do is pull out my credit card and push Facebook a little bit closer to that looming IPO.
I love the Internet.
I lol’d.
Where’s the option for “Become a Fan” cost-per-click ads?
I read the NYT article about the Facebook Exodus. I definitely think facebook contributed to my downsizing, since some of the more immature co-workers friended me and then gossiped about me, thus creating a difficult work climate. I should have played the political game and literally kissed up to her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was thinking about taking legal action, but I want good references and the job was terrible anyway.
http://www.nyti...ium-t.html?_r=1
Facebook will not be as popular in three years as it is now.
It’s certainly less fun than it was about 3 months ago. Could there be more family members. I don’t have time to craft ultragranular privacy settings to make it work for me, I just need an outlet for my filthy social side, and an outlet for Thanksgiving dinner conversation and pleasantries. So I post nada to Facebook anymore. Not quitting yet, Lord knows I enjoy pics of everyone’s kids.
And as for the article itself, 9.2% vs 8.2% is a 12 percent lead, but in every FB/Myspace comparison Myspace is minimized. A 12% lead over something that when in reference to FB elicits a ‘Wow’ should be amazing, not a ’small lead’.
The email is pretty hilarious though. I hope a) they come up with something better, or b) people get wise to the insanity.
A good focus on traffic management and a clever technique by Facebook to collect major revenue. Hope users who develop business through Facebook get benefits and help to drive the internal traffic.
Wow,
That is pretty freakin’ brilliant. I can’t even think of what the analog would be in TV and print… perhaps networks capturing revenue to promote their own shows.
Haha yea it’d be like TV networks making TV Shows pay to advertise themselves on the network.
Actually, I think the analog is when a big brand sponsors a commercial-free showing of an event. In effect, a brand isn’t just paying for exposure to the brand, it’’s also helping to drive traffic (viewer) to the particular show.
If you have the opportunity to work with a few Facebook Ads campaigns, you’ll quickly learn that using a Facebook page as a landing page for your ads is far more effective than linking out.
effective at what? driving Facebook’s comscore numbers higher?
Driving conversions. It’s counter-intuitive, but Sean’s right. Like 2-3x higher conversions than from FB straight to an outside site. Something about “transferable intent”, as the flacks would say, or something.
I suppose you would have to compare it to a similar type of conversion like signing up to an rss feed or a newsletter.
as soon as somebody becomes fan, your TC stream goes directly into their facebook homepage. So you will be capturing fb homepage screen pixels!
fb page is better than fb-connect your website than your website without fb connect.
This is just a stop gap measure for marketers to juice things until it loses effectiveness. It will continue to erode EPC on FB. Diminishing returns on volume, not to mention a deteriorating user experience. So what happens to the IPO when traffic peaks next year. Only one way to go.
You should try it!.
Say yes. Set up an account. Do the math & then post about it.
How much did it cost you to get a fan?
Did they stick around?
Were you able to raise Techcrunch’s readership?
What kind of companies might want to use this kind of campaign?
It’s funny. But I don’t think it is that outrageous. Companies (like you) are opening facebook accounts. They are trying to get fans and friends and groups and whatnot. That means that it is worth something to them. Only question is how much.
I am sure many companies would (& should) pay $0.10 per fan, $1 per fan or even $100. Who knows?
Sean said “effective.” Well.. Effective for fan finding campaign is finding fans.
why not just find fans on twitter for free?
That’s like saying why not get traffic to your site for free with SEO. Why buy ads?
That is what advertising is. paying to cut through the noise.
MA -
Great piece and worth spotlighting but it should be noted that Yahoo! has been doing this for years….
yeah…but apprently since fb and myspace are doing it it’s brilliant. the idea is definately a good one.
I bet they are as surprised that it is working as we are.
I would love to have been in the meeting when this idea came up.
“Guys, lets just get them to pay to drive traffic to ourselves!”
Brilliant.
See you at TC50.
+1
+100
hey an idea is still an idea, good or bad. atleast they are the one’s winning because of this.
YouTube does this as well. Allowing you to buy an ad to promote a video.
Soup dawg, we heard you like ads, so here’s an ad with your ad so you can spam while you spam
why there is no upvoting system on tc for comments? I really want to upvote this.
Up-voted. (In Theory)
Up-voting while spamming my bull***t blog!
+1
Fan page updates is RSS for the masses. Brilliant!
I see it with fan pages that my family uses for their business. They engage with their customers better on Facebook than they do through other online channels. I believe Facebook users feel more at ease on the service than they do elsewhere.
so, did you try those free credits yet, or what?
im sure everyone gets this, but getting fans is the new version of the old school getting email opt ins. it allows companies to keep people engaged. for example, i came to this post from a tech crunch facebook update. yes, its one part of the site to another. but the other part of the site is your part and that part has a built in share and distribute out mechanism. not as silly as you all make it sound.
Yes, but ‘your part’ is also FB’s part and they serve their ads there too. So you are paying FB to direct users to a FB-branded page serving more (and better-targeted) FB ads. Presumably, your users will keep coming back to this FB page too. Mike didn’t say it was silly or not even worth it for TC, just that it’s a brilliant scheme on FB’s part.
It’s sad that all these people/brands are investing so much money to boost Facebook internal referral traffic and give away their brand control and monetization opportunity.
Lame
JC Penney went from 22k fans to 500k fans using this strategy. Here is an excerpt from an article I read on Bloomberg (http://bit.ly/fjM6v)
“J.C. Penney Co., the third-largest U.S. department-store chain, bought ads on Facebook earlier this month to draw users to its own page as back-to-school shopping got under way, said Nick Bomersbach, vice president of the retailer’s jcp.com. J.C. Penney’s Facebook page went from having about 22,000 “fans” to almost 500,000, he said.”
JCP has always been at the forefront of using the web and e-commerce
does that really mean anything aside from jc penny being unlike other brands/companies selling merchandise, and does this actually translate into people buying something from jcpenny? people have lots of fb accounts. when i had an account i would add anything.
Seems like the publication that supported the idea of Calacanis paying $250 large for a Suggested spot on Twitter have little room to mock this idea.
+1
This is only going to work until people are spammed to death by corporate “pages.”
I’ve been advertising online (CPC and CPM) for years. I’ve tracked all metrics of advertising, and so far, the only campaign that has paid off is Facebook (CPC to my site). The conversion rate is ridiculously high, and the targeting of audiences is amazing for the various businesses I advertise for.
The advertising for a Fan Page is something I hadn’t thought about, but I hate the groups I am a fan of (most of them shove uninteresting emails to my Facebook inbox). I’m not so sure I care to make people fans of anything I do — and I can’t imagine TechCrunch really gaining much from doing so.
I’d love to see some metrics on the actual result of CPC or CPM for this particular campaign idea. What does it cost to gain fans, and what does gaining fans gain you?
I think if Facebook shared income with the Fan page owners from clicks/impressions of ads on that page, then maybe it might make sense.
Hmm? Interesting topic, guess it works… came from FB.
+1 for the title.
I would have to say that this is actually quite effective for growing your fan/group base quickly.
We did a test campaign and even with a small budget far exceeded our signups as Facebook offers all the extra data on your ads viewers that Google would never provide.
I would say go for it!
the reason they do this is because it’s the only thing that CAN convert when trying to monetize ANY traffic from facebook. facebook users want to stay inside facebook
We have been using this for a little while now and it beats traditional advertising hands down. Traditional advertising (particularly web advertising) can not compete when it comes to targeting your audience, getting feedback and cost efficiency.
LOL.
I suppose it can make sense if companies use it to drive users back to an FB Page that is integrated fully with a toolset that enables deeper direct engagement that flows across multiple platforms and environments. That’s what we’re gunning for.
But man, in the light that you framed it in it brings home how self-reinforcing the network effect has the potential to be at FB.
So the big question is, what are the actual click through and action rates on FB ads vs. other platforms like Google? My ad-hoc sense is that people click and act upon ads in Facebook far less than they do in Google. Did she share any data about that?
I’ll tell you. Conversions are tiny based on CPMs, but marketers only pay for clicks and even then conversions are lower than search traffic. This is fine for everyone except FB. They’ve got huge traffic. The problem is that it just ain’t worth much and never will be worth much.
Yes, did u try it out? Or making fun of it?
BTW; I became a fan of several events and sites through the ads and I rank them (thumps up or down). What’s wrong with that?
perhaps TechCrunch could exist only inside FB.
Clickthrough on FB is HUNDRED times lower than on Google. Especially for anything related to real sales.
Michael, think of it as lead generation. I’ll gladly pay on a cpc basis for potential customers who I can spam updates to. So brilliant for fcbk but still valuable to advertisers.
I just signed up for this as a test to drive traffic to my comedy group’s Fan Page. (http://www.face...om/sketchcomedy)
What’s odd is in the reporting they show clicks, impressions and CTR but if the purpose is to create “New Fans” why don’t they show conversion? For example:
100 Imps, 10 clicks, 2 New Fans
michael, of all people that talk about how social media is taking over, i thought you would be the one who “gets it.”
anyways heres why people pay for those ads: social media is taking over.
michael, it’s lead generation. many advertisers would gladly pay on cheap cpc basis to acquire potential customers that they can then spam updates to. so brilliant for facebook but also valuable for advertisers…
I recently read an interview of Mark Zukerberg… What he said in that was amazing… he said facebook is just like another internet. Now thats how they treat it. This concept of comes from this paradigm.
But who is going to pay for that new Internet and all the Servers? I’ll clue you in – it will be us and our privacy – that is all they have to sell and our lives/profiles is the only valuable commodity they have, our private info is expendable and exploitable because it will pay their bills and salaries.
yes, AOL had the same kind of Internet within an Internet, I take it facebook are taking notes about what went wrong there to avoid the past repeating itself.
hope you can see my eyes rolling back in my head
obviously this was the plan after all. they aren’t the only one who want to be the internet within the internet. it’s funny that people are buying into it though. it just means more points for the them. good on fb. i hope someone updates their design.
This already happens on facebook by other companies. Adknowledge arbitrage traffic from app developers and push it to their video app, where they get have high CPM video ads. Take a second look.
I’ll stick with following TC (and the other Crunches) on Twitter. Don’t want my Facebook status updates filled with TC articles.
One benefit to advertising a facebook page instead of your main website is that there is a built in viral channel, where in once click the person becomes a fan of your page and broadcasts your page out to their friends (displayed in the “suggested pages” box on the homepage).
Can you think of any other advertising service that lets to reach ALL the friends of every person who shows interest in your advertisement? I’m guessing there is value for that, at least for some companies.
This is old news. Have been using this for some weeks ….
Ok, let us see how this ponz.. er… ecosystem works. TC places an ad on FB to make people become fans and drive them to their site. Why? Because they have ads that drive people to a web service site. Why? Because the web service has ads that drive people to their FB app. Why? Because the app creates real estate for FB so they can get TC to place their app on it.
3 conversions and money changing hands. For what exactly? I lost the plot somewhere in that chain.
I thought this was posted by Sara Lacy because of its “oversimplified logic”.
Let’s see here:
When someone is a fan of your FB page, they will see all your news, announcements, etc through in their feeds. Think of it like a email list, but with much higher “open rate”.
Now, what’s that worth to you, the advertiser. You start from there and then see the value in this.
Ok, think about it. For most web companies, the value to the advertiser seems to be to get people to your site/service so you can put ads on it and make money. Because there is no money being made from visitors because of Freeconomics.
Now the value of putting those ads in that site/service is… (go back to the beginning and iterate).
It is a self-sustained ecosystem based mostly on moving people from site to site while making any money off of such visitors directly is negligible.
It is a simplified musical chair. When the music stops….
You guys have no imagination (to the commenters above). The facebook crowd is a gullible mass of clicky drones. The easiest way to profit from them is to make landers that look like facebook, they don’t even realise they left the page.
Sending traffic to a facebook page is like running an adwords campaign with a big “approved by google” logo on top.
Give your brains some exercise for a change.
Michael – Facebook advertising allows you to link to your web site outside of Facebook and still pay only when someone clicks onto that page. Even if it yields a lower click-thru than sending them to an internal FB Page, if you purchase on a CPC basis, it doesn’t matter. Based on my testing and campaigns, I’ve found Facebook to be a very cost-effective ad medium at this time.
this isn’t nearly as outrageous as you make it out to be. for years, myspace ads drove traffic to companies’ myspace pages. it’s pretty natural. facebook users often want to stay inside of facebook. an ad unit which drives them to such a territory makes sense.
you write as if having more fans is useless. by getting more FB fans, companies are creating a more direct channel with possible customers/audience. It’s not quite direct cause it can all disappear at Facebook’s whim. But the power to populate a user’s feed does have value.
I know it’s entertaining to act like this is some sort of genius and brand new scheme. But it simply isn’t. It’s been happening on other sites for years, and it results in value for the advertiser.
booyah!
+1
I’ll go a step further… is this any different from something like a chain grocery store? If I walk into Safeway, there will be Procter&Gamble ads on the friggin’ FLOORS of the store, the rubber dividers at checkout, and the handlebars of the shopping carts.
You’ve already walked into Safeway and are ready to buy, and Safeway will sell advertising space for the products it already carries on it’s shelves.
And similar to how FB’s own products (FB apps) compete with external apps — Safeway’s own product line (Townhouse, Safeway Select Cola) will compete with the very products that Safeway sells advertising space for.
you’re right. it’s not unlike going to a big box store and seeing ads from lots of various companies or every company trying to attract their deidcated fans through brand loyalty.
it’s interesting to see it happen with public spaces ie. the transit system.
Yes, it’s brilliant. And as an advertiser, I love it and get a lot of value out of it.
What is wrong with driving trafic to your fan-page? Does it make a real difference for marketers, whterher you drive trafic to your web-site or to your Facebook fan-page?
For RadicalMarketer’s there is no difference.
Spongecell just released functionality that allows advertisers to generate new fans from inside regular banners:
http://gallery....ook/olivegarden for an example
We’ve seen some amazing results – people are fanning at almost the same rate as they are clicking!
Wow that’s really cool. What a great idea!
Brands are already paying good money to expose their Facebook pages and try to get people to become fans. I don’t see what’s so ~crazy~ about Facebook looking to get in on that action. Many advertisers look at Facebook as a brand platform, so it makes sense to try to reach Facebook members within the platform to try to get them to their piece of it.
It’s actually not much different from looking at the Web as a brand platform, and corporations putting banners on the sides of popular blogs in an attempt to get viewers over to their own sites.
you should do this because it works. it’s a win win for tc, fb, advertisers…and even sometimes the followers.
By taking this a stage further and utilizing one of the new breed of Facebook Fan Page designers like iFan – http://www.face...fan.page.design fan page owners can not just ammass fans they can bring their products, shops, publications, feeds, just about anything, into Facebook.
Things are changing, instead of the days of holding a top Google spot for your website, yet still having to wait for a customer to come to you, by now combining a paid advertising campaign pinned down by specific demographics to a purpose designed bespoke Fan site – business now have the power to take literally whatever they want directly to the people they want, and all at a fraction of the cost of traditional hard copy advertising.
“Haha yea it’d be like TV networks making TV Shows pay to advertise themselves on the network.”
Urh…yeah
Like MTV? “Give me all your videos for free to promote record sales and we promise we will not build a multi-billion dollar TV network off the back of all that free content…and one day you will have to plug us to get on the playlist”
I have noticed since your post, your fan number has risen!
i am confuzed between all social networks