Facebook announced their advertising platform last week. Basically advertisers bid to send targeted ads to Facebook users and pay on per click basis. This is much like Google's Adsense works. The major difference, beyond the fact that Facebook ads stay on Facebook, is that Facebook users can become "fans" of the product or brand advertised. Once someone becomes a fan, information will sent to their friends through the Facebook feed. They call this social ads.
This approach is really interesting - it combines traditional online ads with community and word of mouth marketing. Lots of research shows that consumers look to friends and social network members for trusted information and Facebook's ad system automates this process. It is not clear this approach is going to work - not everyone wants to be a public "fan" of brands. But it is a great experiment and I'm really impressed that Facebook is attempting this approach.
To better understand and figure this out I have launched a Facebook advertising campaign marketing this site. I created an ad and budgeted $10 per day to drive traffic here. The ad took about 3 minutes to create and I plan to follow up with a SmallBizLabs page when I get the time. I will report back on my progress.
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