If you’re on Facebook you have probably noticed how frequently it changes things. From how your page displays friends and chat functions to the complete layout, Facebook is all about change. Recently they’ve been rolling out changes in their advertisements and with those changes an old question is back in the limelight, are Facebook ads right for every business?
In the past Facebook ads were fairly limited if you were interested in having control over where they were seen or measuring effectiveness. Basically you would buy an ad and they would put it where they wanted it, end of story. There was not a lot of flexibilty allowed and the ability to see how effective the ads were, or were not, was disappointing.
It seems that they have listened to the complaints and have been working behind the scenes to fix some of the larger issues people had with their advertising options. Some of these changes include allowing advertisers to decide where their ads run, including in the mobile news feed, desktop news feed, on the right-hand column or a mix of these options.
They also have some new tools available, such as the Ads Create Tool, Power Editor and the API. All of these changes are aimed at giving the people paying to advertise more control over the experience. But will these changes make Facebook a better form of paid advertising for you?
Right now this remains to be seen, but one thing is clear, people that are already connected with your brand socially are more likely to do business with you. Advertising to them can help strengthen brand loyalty. While this is helpful to maintain business it leads to no or modest growth. Afterall, you’re talking to people that already appreciate you.
It’s early on in the game to know if businesses will gain new customers from Facebook after these changes. We don’t have data on conversion from ad impressions to likes, or from likes to increased revenue from new sources. One thing is for sure, social media is here to stay in one form or another and the companies behind it are looking for ways to make their platform an effective marketing tool.