In addition to rumors of the expected launches of Timeline for Pages and a mobile ad platform, we now have a leak as to at least one thing Facebook will announce next week. Facebook will upgrade its premium ads, telling advertisers they can expect a 40 percent increase in engagement, 80 percent gain in retention, and a 16 percent increase in fan rate, according to leaked documents (embedded above) obtained by GigaOm.
The documents reveal that Facebook will allow marketers to take any type of content posted to their Facebook Page and turn it into an ad. Content posted on a Page is currently only viewable to those who have Liked a Page, but once turned into a Premium Ad, that content can be targeted to any Facebook user. That’s right: those ads in your News Feed are about to get a whole lot more encroaching.
Here’s how the new premium ads will work:
- Make a Page post: Choose from six kinds of Page posts: status updates (text), photos, videos, links, questions, and events.
- Promote as an Ad: The ad is created from the content of your Page post. Anything you can post on your Page, you can turn into an ad. Upgraded Premium Ads can be targeted to anyone you want. All available targeting options can be used.
- More Social for Friends of Fans: When the person seeing your ad has friends who are fans of your Page, we’ll automatically expand the ad with enhanced social context about those friends, at no extra cost to you.
- More Engagement Points for Fans: When fans see your ad, they’ll see an expanded interface below the ad that lets them Like or comment on the post directly from the ad.
After this launch, the following formats will no longer be available: Premium Like (Photo & Video), Premium Event (Photo & Video), Video Comment, Premium Roll (Photo & Video). Premium Standard ads (links to destinations off Facebook) and Marketplace ads will still be available.
The company’s first Facebook Marketing Conference (fMC) is taking place on February 29, 2012. The company has booked the American Museum of Natural History in New York for the six-hour, invitation-only event, which will be streamed online.
The fMC invitation is very vague: “Join us as Facebook leaders, along with product and marketing experts, share our newest solutions, actionable insights, and proven strategies that demonstrate how you can use social technology to drive business growth.” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook vice president of product Chris Cox, and Facebook vice president of advertising David Fischer are the three executives listed as attending. Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not mentioned, but he could of course still make an appearance.
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