Facebook: Innovating Online Revenue Streams

As more consumers move to social networks to consume their media, marketers have followed suit and found ways to start advertising on those platforms. Unlike on traditional channels like newspaper and tv ads, customers could not easily get rid of these ads. On social networks and the internet overall, however, this can be done very easily through various free ad blocking software.This leads to two different options. Marketers could get discouraged and give up on the attempt to engage in conversation with customers, or they could take lead and innovate the playing ground.

Facebook has been working on a new way to advertise to customers in a way that customers want to be engaged with – through an app-like experience! These new format consist of a normal news feed ad that once clicked on, it leads to a personalized blank canvas for marketers to create compelling experiences to customers.

      This include:

    • Ads living within the Facebook app –> this leads to faster load time
    • Blank canvas format –> allows unique customization of content
    • Compatibility for multi-media: full-screen video, carousel photos, and interactive photos

It does seem to be currently missing an in-app e-commerce platform, but can provide a link to an e-commerce landing site, which would provide Facebook with a second tier CPC revenue stream!

Michael Kors, Carrefour Spain, Gatorade and Mr Porter seem to be the pioneers of the service. Experience this new app-like ads experience for the latter two brands bellow!

Further Readings:
Facebook To Outline New Ad Formats for Mobile in Cannes
Apple’s iAd Not Game-Changing, but Will Move Market
Microsoft Builds Its Own iAd for Windows 8 Apps

Understanding Cost Per Click (CPC) Web Pricing

After the rise of social networks and the deviation from traditional media channels increased, marketers needed to start making changes as to how they advertise and reach their customers. An in order to quantify the impact of these new tactics, metrics needed to be set up. One of these metrics is…

Cost Per Click (CPC) which
“bills by the number of times a visitor clicks on a [particular element] instead of by the number of impressions”Investopedia.com

CPC are most effective for campaigns that:
– work with a set budget allowance
– seek to track and maximize effectiveness

For example Google AdWords allows marketers to place ads with any budget range. Once the budget allowance is reached, the ad is removed from the google searches. Adwords only makes marketers pay for results. If there are no visits or clicks, no fee is charged. CPC ensures that the promotional budget is effectively utilized and spent by only charging for actual clicks, while also gaining some free impressions!

Facebook’s recent updates of its CPC measures on Juy the 8th highlights the benefits of track-ability. Facebook no longer mergers likes, comments, shares and others as part of its CPC measures. CPC payment will only count click on links that direct to another website, on call-to-action buttons to buy or install an app, and among others. This ensure the true impact of the campaigns click-through-rate are captured and eliminates false positive effects of mindless scroll-liking.

Further Reading:
– 5 Pay-Per-Click Mistakes That Can Cost You Money

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