Facebook shows a New Way to Advertise

Facebook has been making a lot of changes on its website recently in order to cater to the their customers wants and needs. However, unlike most companies, Facebook has also been paying close attention to the brands that use their site as a way of advertising. Facebook wants companies that use their site as an advertising tool to monitor more closely how Facebook users are engaging in the brand’s Facebook page. Instead of having the companies just count how many times their ads or pages are clicked on, Facebook wants companies be able to dig deeper so their own information system technicians can build off the information that they learn.

To help with this process, Facebook has added a Page Insights dashboard (also known as “People Talk About This” link), which allows brands to view statistics about their “fan” pages. In addition to seeing how many people are “liking” their brand page, They can also see a demographic and gender breakdown of who is viewing their Facebook page. Other information available to companies through the dashboard is what type of consumers responded to events, what type of customers recommended their company, or even what customers tagged their company in a picture. Doing this, Facebook hopes to increase “earned media” which is information coming straight from the customers themselves on the different markets and products that are being advertised. However, there is one worry that Facebook faces and that is how many people are actually clicking on the ads to begin with. Recent estimates have shown that less then one percent of people on Facebook even click the ads that are available to them. Therefore, Facebook has decided to put more of an emphasis on the “fan” pages. Hoping that the information will then reach the people who are mainly interested in what the brand is offering and get the perks of finding special deals or sales.

Both Facebook and various companies can benefit from this new type of advertising. Companies that use Facebook as a form of advertising will have a way to learn more about their consumers with the new advertising statistics available to them through this new technology. The information that Facebook is providing companies is highly desirable for business strategy. An example of this, for instance, is a company can now track the number of females in relation to the amount of males that search their product or brand. Tracking these statistics will allow the company to improve their ads by focusing them in on certain interest that will cater to their target markets. On the flip side, Facebook will be able to profit from the brand’s decision to advertise through the site itself.

The introduction of the “People Talking About This” software can only increase the relationship that companies have with their consumers. It is obvious that social media is becoming one of the primarily places to gather information. This being the case, fan pages can provide great insight to companies about what kind of markets are interested in their products more. Which in turn, helps the company zero in on specific groups of people that they might want to channel their advertising towards.

Ingram, Mathew. "Can Facebook Persuade Advertisers to Forget About Clicks?" Bloomberg.com. BLOOMBERG 

     L.P., 7 Oct. 2011. Web. 9 Oct. 2011. 
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