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Facebook’s new tools for “engangement advertising”

March 13, 2012 | Online Marketing

By tapping into your already trending content and existing discounts on Facebook, the company now provides opportunities to broadcast those messages to a wider audience

During Facebook's Marketing Conference in New York last week, the company announced its plan to launch new ads, which will look less like advertisements and more like content. The revamped ads will appear in the right column of a user's page, a user's News Feed, within a company's Timeline page and on Facebook's log-out page. Currently, ads appear only on the right side of a user's Facebook page.

Here's what you need to know about Facebook's new ads:

Offers: The most important and widely available new advertising tool for small businesses is called Offers, which allows businesses, brands and other Page owners to share discounts and offers with their fans. Making an Offer is as easy a creating a Status Update. Once posted to your Timeline, fans can claim the offer and use it at your business's brick-and-mortar location or other point of purchase. And best of all, it doesn't cost anything to create, post or claim an Offer.

Reach Generator: Facebook's Reach Generator is a system that allows advertisers to pay a fixed fee to ensure that their content/ads will be seen by 75 percent of their fans. (Currently, the company estimates that a business's branded page reaches just 16 percent of fans on average.) Instead of paying by the click like many who use Facebook's self-serve advertising platform, Facebook hopes the fixed rate will appeal to advertisers. Though the system is targeted at deep-pocketed brands at present, it could offer a lower-cost option for smaller businesses in the weeks and months to come.

Get the full story at Entrepreneur

Read also "The Facebook changes marketers should know about" at iMedia Connections

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