Facebook Lead Generation Ad Unit

Inside Facebook is reporting on a new Facebook Ads ad unit. The new facebook ad unit is an extension of the homepage engagement ads it has been running for large brands. The homepage engagement ads it has been running was the following 6 ad units; Facebook Event Ad, Facebook Video Ad, Facebook Gifts Ad, Facebook Page Ad, Facebook Website Ad, Facebook House Ad (as explained here).

Now there is a big difference between the new Facebook Direct Response Home Page Ad Unit & the homepage engagement ads mentioned above.  In all the older engagement ads – the user was taken off the facebook homepage and directed to an inside page on facebook.com or to an external website.  The new Facebook Lead Generation Ad Unit has the facebook user complete the facebook advertisers lead generation form on the Facebook.com homepage. This means facebook collects the form contents and passes them over to the advertiser.  I’m guessing that this is charged on a CPL (cost-per-lead) – so advertisers will know exactly how much they will pay for each completed direct response form.

This new ad unit is being tested by Chick-fill-A for free samples of their chicken biscuits. When the unit is clicked it launches a popup with the form & gives users the option to quickly fill the form from their profile info (side note, it is only a matter of time until this is the default option – where the form pops up & the info is filled, im sure there will be an option to change / remove the profile info – but it will be more opt-out. This type of behavior pumps the click to form-submit conversion rate – as the user doesn’t really have to do much).

This move & the pending full roll out of this ad unit will no doubt make Facebook Ads the largest Lead Generation Ad Network on the web. While the test is perfect for a foodservice company (like the free chicken biscuit sample from Chick-fill-A), don’t be fooled to think this wont make its way to the more profitable side of the lead generation business. Think credit cards, mortgages, local service professional and much much more.  Oh and just wait for the Facebook Ad Network & the Facebook Affiliate Program that was confirmed by its CEO – then you will be able to post these lead-gen offers on your site via facebook connect and share in the revenue that Facebook collects from the advertiser.

So, what do you think? Did Facebook just become the largest lead generation network on the internet?

~FBADS

If i had to guess they got a team of people over at the new facebook headquarters, working like crazy on search. Ever since their latest redesign that was designed to push users to share more and more with the front and center “whats on your mind” box with quick links to add; links, photos, video. With all that data from the crazy amount of users on facebook, we should be able to be doing very advanced searches – something like what friendfeed already has.

If i had to guess, they are waiting for more people to start sharing more publicly (meaning not just to friends, but more like twitter – which is by default set to share with everyone). Once they start getting all that data & organized – they will have a very very powerful Facebook Search product.

Now Facebook Search will be very powerful tool for the end user but maybe even more powerful for the Facebook Ads Program. Imagine if facebook could start generating tons of searches on facebook.com – forgetting about click-data, but they will have all the current demographic data they already have + search engine data and how it is being used by what users.

Try this senerio on for size;

Ad Buyer: Can you pls show my ad to people in NY, who are male, between 18-35, make 100k plus and search for “XYZ”.

Google adwords rep: hmmmm, how about just everyone in ny???

facebook search ads reg: sure, just use the self-serve facebook ad program.

Now this is the just the tip of the iceberg, how about if i can i tell the facebook search ads program that i only want my add to show up when a user searches for & that user already “visited” and “liked” one of my competitors sites (which would be able to easily by supplying a list of links i want to target). What do you think the cpm or cpc is worth on something that targeted??? …. let me tell you, crazy high!

But like i said it is very surprising you hear noting about facebook search in the news/blogs. Especially when search is suppose to be twitter’s golden egg.

What do you think about Facebook Search? Where do you see it going? What implications will it have on the facebook ads program?

let me know in the comments
~FBADS

On the future of the facebook ad network, Mark Zuckerberg is quoted saying:

“You can see over time us wanting to offer more ways for people to monetize their site and help out with that, and it could be a pretty natural extension for us to do something with ads or a number of other things that we’ve considered”

You can call facebook  allot of different things today, but one day soon they will be referred exclusively as an “advertising business” (just like google

~FBADS

About a month ago facebook told us that they will soon let users sign up & login to the site via OpenID. And now they do! While this is obviously the beginning of a full rollout – they have integrated and made live the open id support with Gmail. Starting today you can go to facebook and set up a new account with your gmail account.

There is a great write up on the announcement over at InsideFacebook – check it out.

So what does this mean? For Facebook? For Facebook Ads?

Its means that the one internet company growing like a weed on A-Rod’s steroids is facebook – and now they are putting the pieces in place to let anyone come with any sort of online profile (OpenID will be everywhere in a few years) and signup / login in seconds. Yep, so the weed grows even faster / bigger / stronger.

Now on the Ads side they are just shoring up more and more users that = more and more impressions. More impressions, means more data, more data means better targeting and better targeting  = better monetization  & ad performance.

Oh and pls dont tell me how not everything facebook does is about thier ad product. Ads are how they plan on funding Mr Zuckerberg’s vision of this next gen social graph / social app.  And guess what, its working – Techcrunch is reporting that facebook turned down a VC round at 8 billion valuation & there are rumors that they will do 550 million revenue in 2009. Guess what is generating that 550 million dollars – thats right, the ad product. enough said…

Another smart move by facebook. Im getting used to it

~FBADS

But this raises all sorts of questions to me;

Will advertisers be able to target specific apps?

Will facebook releases demographic data of users of a specific app?

Here is a big one;  once they are comfortable monetizing facebook apps with facebook ads – will they stop allowing fb app devs to user 3rd party ad networks to serve ads inside the facebook apps?

Can fb ap owners run 3rd party ads along side the same app that is running facebook ads?

Will fb ads monitize as well as other 3rd party fb ad networks?

Now, if you read the blog post on the facebook developer blog, they titled it: Sharing your best practices for making money on Facebook Platform – and they make no mention of the facebook ads inside facebook app canvas pages until the 2nd to last paragraph. They try to focus the post on building “real” business around the facebook platform and facebook applications. 

Here are the first 2 paragraphs in the blog post (click here to read the full post on the fb dev blog)

We launched Facebook Platform to give you the opportunity to create innovative new experiences for our users, and with that gave you the flexibility to monetize those experiences in the ways you best saw fit.

Since launch we’ve seen many of your applications grow from brand new applications with zero users to businesses with tens to hundreds of thousands or even millions of monthly users. And as applications have grown, we’ve been excited to witness so many of you building real businesses based on your users’ engagement and earning significant amounts of revenue via numerous models including advertising, sponsorships, and charging users for your (or related) services.

The post then goes on to link to some pages on the facebook developer wiki to help facebook app owners make the most out of the the “real business” they are building on the facebook platform. These links include:

Business Models for Facebbok Apps

fb app 3rd party monitization  partner directory 

Interesting articles on facebook ap monetization

So, while i do have some conspiracy theories about this (like i usually do) it doesn’t seem that they plan on doing anything game changing any time soon. I mean if they were about to ban all 3rd party ad networks on fb – would they really link to a directory of outside fb ad networks??? This will be every interesting to see how it plays out & what effect it will eventually have on the facebook ads program and eventually the facebook affiliate / partner program.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Here is a screenshot of the facebook ads live inside a facebook app (image courtesy of  AllFacebook  (a must read facebook blog).

facebook ads in facebook apps

Side note; While writing this post it got me thinking about my post from last week: Facebook Commenting Widget & What It (could) means for FB Ads - Here is another example of Facebook adding and adding to their demo-targetable ad inventory. While adding facebook ads to facebook apps might be a more natural extension of the facebook ads program than adding facebook ads to the facebook commenting widgets – they both have the same common goal = further the facebook ads platform and make it a must buy for anyone doing any internet marketing (which it might already be…).

FB Comment Box

A little off topic here for this blog, but try to stay with me and my out-there theories…

So today, facebook launched a publicly available Commenting Widget for any site via its Facebook Connect program. This is a very powerful tool – as it gives the ability to any site/blog to allow their users to use facebook logins to post comments on the site. That means the site doesn’t have to convince the user to sign up for an account, fork over personal info, check there email and verify it etc etc. In this day and age everyone has a facebook account – and now if you have any desire at all to leave a comment on a site that users FB connect commenting widget, there is no sign up – you just login with your facebook credentials and boom  - you are verified and ready to leave a comment.

Now, you are probably asking – what the heck does this have to do with facebook ads (given the name of the blog – Ads on Facebook)? Well, here is what im thinking. If facebook can gain mass adoption across the web with this type of widget (which i think they will, given the points above) – they are in essence growing there “available impressions”. The elements inside the FB commenting widget are 100% controlled by facebook. While yes, you can change the background color and the such – you cant add any custom code or HTML to the widget (as most widgets work). So now Facebook has this block of code on your page that totally controls a (commenting) section of the page and can add anything they want. OK, so you know where im going with this – yes, they can use these widgets to display ads. 

Now, i understand that fb wouldn’t even dream of adding ads anytime soon – as they want as few obsicales as possible in front site owners so they implement the fb commenting widget. But lets look a few years down the line & half of the web is using facebook connect as a commenting widget – the same time fb is trying to pump revenue to prepare for and IPO… would it be so crazy for them to start placing their ads inside the widget??? Look at google, 6 months ago they didnt have ads showing half the products that they do now (maps, images, there are more – just cant think of any off the top of head) – and now, they are popping up everywhere google can put them. This is also how they started with search – ad-free until people “needed them” for search. Whats gonna happen when site owners need FB for their commenting system.

Or maybe, that havard drop out is even smarter than that & can use the commenting widget (and the other 100+ widgets im sure they are already developing) to create the adsense 2.0 fb-style. Its pretty easy once you got a million sites using your widgets – you give the site owner the option to add facebook ads to the widget and share the revenue via a facebook affiliate program.  And just like that, you double, triple your ad inventory… Couple that with the data that facebook can collect on your site – ie. the people who comment – what they like, what they do on fb etc etc. Damn talk about targeted ads!

Its amazing, that in this day and age – where it seems like the entire global economy is collapsing & the govt is about to take over the banking industry (if that doesn’t scare you nothing will!) — facebook keeps on better positioning itself to become the next big thing on the internet (oh, it already is…..). 

Here is a 5 minute video facebook put out that shows you how to add the facebook commenting widget to your site in 5 minutes.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Am i crazy? Am i dead on? Do you have some other ideas how they can use these “widgets” for future business purposes?

Anyhow, i will document my findings in more detailed fashion with separate posts – but something just popped up in my facebook ads account that made me think of this specific item:

What was it? This:

Facebook Ad CPC Too Low

So i see this message : 

Your bid on this ad may be too low. In order to get more impressions, we recommend that you increase your bid to at least $0.18. For more information about how bids work, please see our help page. Note that your ad is not paused and it is possible that you will continue to receive some impressions.

Now im thinking what, am i losing my mind? i know i read the minimum cpc is $0.01 – and i tried to set my ad to a 0.15 bid — but Facebook Ads is telling me no the minimum cpc for this ad is  $0.18. Now im guessing this has to do more with the history of the ad than any “system wide min cpcs”. But just as google loves to tell you the min cpc is 0.01, but you find me some terms that i can get an impression when my max cpc is at $0.01 (forget about a click…). Now i am almost sure that if i delete the ad (instead of lowering the cpc) and re-add it exactly the same – with a CPC of 0.15 it would have gone through and got impressions/clicks.

btw, since i was only lowering my bid to $0.15 & they only suggested a bid of $0.18  ”in order to get more impressions” & bec the ad was making money even at the old higher CPC i raised the CPC back up to $0.18. Although, i will be testing this in detail with other ads at which time i wont comply with their “suggestion” and see what happens. Ill report my findings here. 

This will be an interesting trend to track, if anyone gets this message when lowering a CPC or (gasp.) when starting a new ad – pls let me know in the comments.

Everyone just has to be a little patient … Like i said in a comment on Louis’s post:

Louis – you got to give them time….. Most people dont remember late 2000 when adwords launched it was also common to see non-relevant ads (and they didnt have to decode user profiles, they just had to match keywords).

In time the advertisers will come, fb will enhance their ad platform & using facebook ads will become as common as advertising on adwords.

im following the progress at my new blog; adsonfacebook.wordpress.com – check it out.

thanks

People are very quick to forget that facebook provides them with a FREE  social networking experience. No one is asking you to pay for using facebook, in fact they are telling you to use it as much as your heart desires & enjoy it – but lets try to cut them some slack as they prepare to try to build the most advanced advertising platform on the net ALL TO SUPPORT YOUR FREE & UNLIMITED USE OF FACEBOOK and all its features…

So, just ignore the ads for a while if they bother you & before you know it you will be asking how they heck the ads on facebook dont even feel like ads bec they soo damm relevent.

ok, </rant>

• Shoemoney’s 90% Failure At Facebook Ads
• Zac’s recap of the  Affiliate Sumitt Panel: Advertising on Facebook 
• Web Analytics Word – How to create successful Facebook Ads

Wow, cant believe i forgot to post this one:

• Making Money With Facebook – ShoeMoney Show

This is a must listen for ANYONE interested in facebook ads, this guy has been in charge of the facebook ad program for over a year – so grab a drink and listen to the interview here: http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Advertising/Shoemoney-Show/Facebook-Ads.htm

If video is more your speed, check out this ~10 min on a walk-though of setting up a new facebook ad and the options available. (note; i have watched tons on youtube fb ad walkthroughs & most of them are garbage – the one embedded below is actually quite informative for someone who never set up a facebook ad before.