A Facebook Ad Test

Facebook Pages is a component of a new advertising service that Facebook is offering to encourage brands (or nonprofit organizations, personalities (like Ranger Rick) or causes) to promote themselves through their social networks.  Some influential analysts predict that "Consumers will publicly endorse brands, resulting in the birth of the “Fan-Sumer” resulting in efficient word-of-mouth in a trusted network." More in-depth analysis

How is this different from Facebook Groups some nonprofits may be asking?  You can add applications and other features wanted by nonprofits. Like groups, it's free to set one up, but, if you shell out some money, you can increase the viral distribution of your Facebook Page with Facebook Social Ads which advertises the page to the news feeds.

Facebook pages may offer some of the functionality that nonprofit users have been wanting and some problems, for example, profiles set up as an organizational persona (not a real person) being deleted because it violates the Facebook tos.

However, as the allfacebook blog points out, since anyone can set up a page similar to causes and groups - how does one distinguish the "official" page for a cause or organization versus one set up by a fan. Ian Wilkes summarizes some negative reactions here and says it reminds him of AmWay.  More analysis from this article.

I read about this Facebook ad test which is also touches on the privacy concerns on Facebook targeted ads than and decided to try my own test.

So here goes a $10 test of the Facebook ads.  I haven't set up a Social Ads fan page (yet), need to really do it when I the capacity to really support it.   Anyway, this blog post is the landing page for the ad.  If you clicked through to this page from Facebook ad, please tell me:

• Are you one of my friends?
• Did you know of my blog before clicking through this ad?
• What would encourage you to subscribe to this blog feed?

Also, a shout out to any nonprofits reading this, have you used Facebook or MySpace ads or are you planning to?  What have been your results? 

Michelle Murrain offers a roundup of the pros/cons and the best piece of advice: Have a strategy first!  Here are the questions that you should be asking (thanks to Jeremiah Owyang)

Some more critiques about the privacy issues:

Bokardo - Facebook's Evil Design
Here’s a good explanation with screenshots of how it works by Ethan Zuckerman. Read his whole piece, and read David Weinberger’s piece too. They’re important.

 

Comments

[Wendy Harman]

I'm certainly no advertising expert but have been asked by the Red Cross ad folks to pinpoint the best spots to place ads online.

As a person who is pretty adept at ignoring ads altogether, I'm not the best test case, but Facebook seems like a good place to put one.

It doesn't look like Facebook has any special nonprofit rate yet, which would make pursuing it a much sweeter deal.

I am going to discuss it internally.

To answer your questions - I just found this blog post in my RSS reader where I already subscribe to your brilliant blog.

[Colin]

I clicked on your ad from facebook. I've not heard of your blog, but do work for a nonprofit, so i'll probably peruse it...

[Tiffany]

I too clicked on your ad from Facebook - which I swore myself never to do! - but I work for non-profit and curiosity took over from there...

[Word Lily]

I'm here via your Facebook ad; I don't know you, and I hadn't heard of your blog. My husband's the marketing guru for a nonprofit, and he does use Facebook ads as part of his strategy. I'll subscribe if it looks like it would be interesting/helpful to me.