Now, according to a report from the Financial Times, sponsored/featured stories are coming to the mobile news feed as well, “within weeks.”

According to the report, “several people familiar with Facebook’s planning” say Facebook has already discussed proposals with ad agencies.

This is interesting, considering Facebook just told us the other day, “We want to clarify that we are not working with any agency to create paid ads on our mobile platform.”

That, however, was in response to a story about reported pilot testing of mobile ads. That story stemmed from Razorfish talking about them, which the company’s Paul Gelb later clarified, “Razorfish is NOT working with Facebook on any mobile media ad buying. Rather, in the interview I was referring to rich media featured stories, not paid ads.”

Well, featured stories are one kind of paid advertisement Facebook offers. You say potato, I say pa-tah-to.

Note: I don’t really say “pa-tah-to”.

Facebook made it a point that its mobile experiences generate very little revenue, indicating that this is a risk factor, given that the company’s mobile user base continues to grow. Long story short, Facebook needs to better monetize mobile, and it looks like that will begin happening soon. I doubt that Facebook’s other ad offerings on mobile are incredibly far off.

“We want to clarify that we are not working with any agency to create paid ads on our mobile platform.”

Gelb clarified further:

“I would like to clarify a statement I made in an interview yesterday regarding Facebook. Razorfish is NOT working with Facebook on any mobile media ad buying. Rather, in the interview I was referring to rich media featured stories, not paid ads.”

So, I guess we’re free top continue speculation on when Facebook actually will start offering mobile ads. It’s still expected top be the near future.

Original Article: We’ve been hearing for a couple months now that Facebook would soon be launching mobile ads. And why not? Frankly, it’s astonishing that the company has not already put them out there.

News comes today, however, that the company is already test piloting some mobile ads, and rich ones, possibly with animation, at that. DigiDay spoke with Razorfish’s Paul Gelb, who says that Razorfish is “currently engaged in pilot programs for ‘mobile and cross-platform rich-media ads”.

DigiDay’s Jack Marshall reports:

It remains unclear on what basis the ads will be sold, but Gelb implied advertisers will be able to reach users across all devices with a single buy. Judging by Facebook’s desktop ad formats, it’s likely they’ll be disseminated across users’ networks as they interact with them.

The units themselves, meanwhile, will offer similar functionalities to other mobile rich-media ad providers such as Medialets and Crisp Media, Gelb suggested. Ads powered by those companies typically feature interactive elements and animations, video content, location-based features and various calls to action such as tap-to-call and tap-to-coupon.

Not exactly your standard Facebook ads, but there’s no reason to think those won’t be coming along in the near future as well.

Rising mobile use, without ads on Facebook’s mobile ads, is one of the things Facebook listed in its “Risk Factors” section in its IPO filing. What better way to avert such a risk, than plastering ads onto the mobile experience(s).

I’d expect to see plenty of sponsored stories showing up in the mobile mix as well.

Ads have done little to push Facebook users away so far. I doubt mobile ads will do much either.

Facebook has 845 million monthly active users. 425 million of them use Facebook mobile products. Facebook also announced $3.7 billion annual revenue.

There is still plenty of room for Facebook to grow ad revenue, even if there’s less room for it to grow users. For example, they don’t even have mobile ads yet, though that is expected to come soon. That should be another huge source.

Recently, Facebook began showing Sponsored Stories in the news feed. These are posts that are arleady out there on Facebook, which brands can decide to promote for increased visibility among the people connected to that post, whether it be from a friend or from a Page they “like”.

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting piece about how brands are essentially being forced to pay for advertising on Facebook to reach users, simply because the visibility of free Page posts has declined so much. There is so much content flooding users’ News Feeds, and of course Facebook controls what users are seeing via their algorithm, based on what the company calls “EdgeRank.” More on EdgeRank here.

Some are finding it harder to get posts to gain traction.

The Journal cites a study from BlitzLocal, saying that between June 1 and Dec. 31 of 2011, unpaid displays of marketing posts to users decreased 33% among the firm’s over 300 clients.

“Content that used to live for a day may now live minutes in a user’s News Feed,” CEO Dennis Yu is quoted as saying. The piece looks at retailer Gordman’s specifically, as a company which has felt the need to turn to sponsored stories just to gain some visibility. The company reportedly found that sponsored stories increased the number of users who saw a post by over 100,000.

Basically, what this all means is that if you don’t pay Facebook for ads, you’re left to the mercy of their algorithm for visibility, and who knows just how Facebook is tweaking that? Does it remind you of the search marketing game?

There is one key difference, however. Facebook does allow users to adjust the way they view their News Feed, so you can see stories by time, rather than what Facebook’s algorithm handpicks for you to see. This is the way many users do view their news feed. I have no idea what the numbers look like in terms of how how many people do this, and how often, but I’m guessing many, many people don’t bother. That’s likely where those extra 100,000 users come in.

Whether or not advertisers choose to pay for sponsored stories, brands are still going to want to take full advantage of the free marketing benefits of the world’s largest social network. To do that, you have to consider that EdgeRank algorithm, and of course engage on Facebook.

Sundeep Kapur, a guest author on BlitzLocal’s blog, said in a recent post:

Successful brands need to focus on increasing interaction effectiveness with their consumer base. You do this by increasing the frequency of exposure, paying close attention to what is being discussed, and focused advertising.

Interactions with consumers will occur as you post and more than 70% of the interaction occurs within the first hour. So keep up your efforts on posting more often and monitoring right after you post versus posting and “going to bed.” Also, a post with a “question” tends to drive increased interaction.

Don’t forget that advertising does work. Your engagement rate can go up by 21% to 43% by knowing what to say, when to say, and of course how you say things on Facebook.

In a separate post, the firm, after conducting research on both large and small brands, also suggested:

Some valuable tips. At least only one of these (sponsored stories) is something you have to actually pay Facebook for. Unfortunately, that might be the one that helps you drive visibility more than anything. That is, unfortunately for businesses with tight marketing budgets. Fortunately for Facebook, as it aims to boost revenue as a public company.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become even harder for brands to get their messages through without sponsored stories. What do you think?

Apparently the company is cold calling, or cold emailing rather, businesses trying to get them to sign on for some “one to one” phone consultation on Facebook advertising, with a program called “Start to Success”. The Next Web shares such an email that someone from the company reportedly sent to a business. It says:

I am reaching out to you to discuss a new progamme Facebook are implementing for advertisers call Start to Success. This is a free and exclusive programme where we are offering a limited number of businesses a 4 week “one to one” phone consultation with our Marketing Solutions team.

…

Furthermore, Facebook is incentivizing advertisers to stay with Facebook with 45% reduction in CPCs, according to TBG Digital’s Global Facebook Advertising Report Q4. Some other interesting stats from that report include:

- Facebook earns 23% more in ad rates since Q1 2011.

- Ad performance improves by 18% in 2011.

- Finance accounts for over 60% of impressions for offsite campaigns

To that point about increasing revenue, Facebook is expected to launch mobile ads soon. That should provide quite a boost. Ads also recently came to the news feed.

According to Inside Facebook, a spokesperson for the company said the feature is now live, though I’ve been unable to find any sponsored stories in my own feed.

Sponsored stories themselves are nothing new. Basically, they’re regular news feed stories from your friends that have been promoted, after the fact, by an advertiser. “These stories only show up for friends, so you can learn about places to go, apps to use, games to play and organizations your friends like,” explains Facebook.

Here’s a video about the ads:

What is new is the placement in the news feed itself, which will give the ads much more valuable placement. This is generally the part of Facebook users gravitate towards. They’re more likely to get eyeballs and clicks. Our own tests at WebProNews indicate that Facebook click rates declined substantially after recent platform and design changes such as the Facebook Timeline.

If you compare Facebook to a search engine like Google, this kind of ad practice has some similarities and differences. Both feature ads in both the column, and the “body” (the news feed in Facebook’s case, the search results in Google’s case). Both are labled. A couple of key differences are: 1. Google presents the body ads in a colored box to make them stand out and make it more clear that they are ads, while Facebook only presents a small light gray link that could easily go unnoticed (screenshot here). 2. Google doesn’t actually have the ads sprinkled throughout the body, but only at the top and/or bottom. Facebook’s sponsored stories may appear throughout the news feed.

Given the fact that Facebook spam is on the rise, people may want ads to be as clearly marked as possible.

Facebook is launching these news feed ads just after a judge basically gave people free rein to sue Facebook for using their likenesses in ads (granted, that doesn’t mean that such suits will be successful).

Users can hide the stories, just like other types of posts. You can click hide to remove individual stories, limit the volume of stories you see from specific friends to “only important posts” or stop seeing certain kinds of stories altogether (unfriending the person or unliking a page).
Of course, there’s always the possibility that one of your own updates will be sponsored.

“Some of your stories may be featured. But you always determine who can see the stories you share. If a story does get featured, it’s shown to the same people you originally shared it with,” says Facebook.

Reports have indicated that the company is close to settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which would keep Facebook from changing privacy settings without users opting into them (as opposed to the strategy of making changes, and requiring users to opt out if they don’t like them).

Now, the European Commission is set to introduce an initiative in January, according to the Telegraph, which would ban the kind of targeted advertising that Facebook ads are based on.

Facebook allows advertisers to target based on location, age/birthday, interests, education, and connections.

“Interest targeting allows advertisers to target users based on information they’ve provided in their profile (timeline),” says Facebook. “This includes listed likes and interests, the Pages they like, apps they use, and other profile (timeline) content they’ve provided.”

In other words, if you’ve provided the info to Facebook, it’s fair game, as far as Facebook is concerned.

Facebook also allows advertisers to target by connections. That means those who have become a fan of the advertiser’s Page, a member of their group, RSVP’d to an event, or used their app in the last month. Advertisers can also target friends of people who have engaged in these actions.

The Telegraph report says Facebook could face legal action or a massive fine if it doesn’t comply with the new legislation.

With an IPO expected to on the way, this is hardly a great time for Facebook’s money making machine to be compromised, even if it’s not a worldwide compromise.

“Facebook has unveiled a new Page Insights tool so that all Pages – small businesses, global brands, celebs, public figures, etc – on Facebook will be able to measure the value of social like never before – and act on it,” a representative for the company tells WebProNews in an email. “As part of this announcement, a new metric -“People Talking About This”- will be made public and appear on every Page underneath ‘Likes’ to show the conversations happening around the brand or business Page. This will help marketers and Page owners understand how to make their content more engaging and shareable, which increases the reach of their messages on Facebook.  It will also help users get a sense for what Pages are relevant, engaging and interesting to them when discovering and connection to Pages on Facebook.”

Some bullets about the new Page Insights from the email:

• See how posts they put on their Page reach people on Facebook – beyond their fans.
• See Total Likes, number of  Friends of Fans of a Page, the new public and internal Pages metric, ‘People talking about this’, and Weekly Total Reach of a Page
• “People Talking about this” counts ‘stories” – structured content that people choose to share through Facebook that is eligible to appear in a user’s news feed: liking your Page, posting to your Page’s Wall, liking, commenting or sharing one of your Page posts (or other content on your page – like photos, videos, albums), answering a Question you posted, RSVP-ing to one of your events, mentioning your Page, phototagging your Page, liking or sharing a check-in deal, or checking in at your Place. 
• Optimize content for posts -whether they’re photos, videos, questions, etc. – see what’s working best at reaching the most people, and how to increase the viral nature of these posts.

“To encourage third party development and analytics innovation, Facebook is also announcing a Page Insights API for the analytics developer community, so that they can create customized Page Insights solutions for existing and potential clients,” the rep tells us. “Webtrends (Gatorade, Simon Malls), Wildfire (Electronic Arts and Virgin Atlantic) and Context Optional (Sony Playstation and Levis) are already creating customized insights tools for clients based on the new Page Insights through the Facebook Insights API.”

As far as the new ad unit, it allows brands to promote page posts to anyone on Facebook.

“When the person viewing this brand’s ad has friends connected to this brand’s Page, Facebook will expand the unit to include a line above that shares which friends like the Page,” the rep explains. “Adding how friends engage give the ad social context, which research has shown increases ad recall.”

”Together, brands will be able to measure their success and enhance their strategies with the combination of Page Insights and thIS new Premium ad unit,” she adds.

According to Facebook, friends of fans represent a 34x larger set of consumers than the fans themselves, on average for the top 100 brands. For the top 1,000, it’s 81x. They are also more likely to visit a store or site and purchase a product or service, Facebook says.

What’s more valuable to you: a like or a click? Let us know in the comments.

SocialCode has released some research data showing a trend in age and gender for likes and clickthrough rates for Facebook advertising.

SocialCode GM Laura O’Shaughnessy tells WebProNews, “Younger users grew up on the web, and are comfortable with the ins and outs of social networking. Therefore, I think they are more inclined to click the Like button.  They know what the button means and know exactly what it does, so they are likely to click it, whether it’s in an ad or elsewhere.”

“We find that older users are very likely to interact with ads on Facebook, but they are inclined to click through and learn more about the offer before clicking the Like button,” she adds. “We also assume that because older users are also the newest subset to join the social network, they may not have high friend numbers so ads may be less likely to have social context in advertisements.”

Here are some highlights from the research:

• 50+ year-old users, the oldest segment in the study, are 28.2 percent more likely to click through and 9 percent less likely to ‘Like’ than 18-29 year-old users, the youngest group observed
• Versus the rest of the younger population on Facebook, 50+ users see a 22.6 percent higher CTR and 8.4 percent lower ‘Like’ rate
• Overall, women are 11 percent more likely to click on an ad
• ‘Like’ rates are almost even for men and women; men are actually 2.2 percent more likely to ‘Like’ an ad than women
• For women, CTR is 31.2 percent higher for the 50+ age group versus 18-29 year olds, men only see a 16.2 percent difference between the age groups
• Versus all age groups, 50+ women’s CTR is 22 percent higher versus a 16.4 percent difference for males
• The oldest male segment has an 11.7 percent lower ‘Like’ rate than the youngest segment, and 9.5 percent lower ‘Like’ rate versus all age groups.  Women only see a 7.2 percent and 7.9 percent difference respectively

So what’s more valuable: a click or a like?

We ran across an interesting post from the National Healthcare Decisions Day site from earlier this year, in which the organization talks about the value of a Facebook “like”. It seems worth sharing with regards to this conversation.

“Lots of brands and organizations may ask you to ‘like’ them on Facebook,” says Christian Sinclair. “It really is a sign of the times. In fact we are asking you to do the same thing.  But our aim may be somewhat different.  We are not in it for the numbers, we are doing this for the engagement.  A superficial click to like can make executives happy when they show more followers and more fans, but what really counts is what you do after the click.”

“Don’t get us wrong, we do want your click, but we will ask a little more from you,” Sinclair continues in the post. ”After you click ‘like’ make sure you stick around a while, leave a comment, send us a tip about advance care planning in the news, share what you read here with your friends.  Get people excited about what you really like.  Then your click on the ‘like’ button becomes much more valuable.”

The like means continued engagement. That is simply going to provide more value for the long term. However, if you are looking for quick gratification and hopefully a quick conversion, the click is certainly valuable, and enough clicks over likes can make a significant impact.

“Both clicks and Likes can be valuable; it really depends on what kind of results you are trying to achieve with your campaign,” says O’Shaughnessy. “For example, Likes are much more important to a campaign that is working to create a targeted fan base; in campaigns where a brand is trying to drive people to take a specific action either on a specific landing pages or on a Facebook tab, clicks are important. For example on a campaign promoting new products or events, clicks would be more valuable because they are driving the action that is valuable to the brand.”

“The age and gender research we conducted is an example of how SocialCode’s advanced knowledge of the Facebook platform will give brands the best insight into which types of campaigns are more likely to drive actions within specific age groups and genders,” she says.

So, the short answer to which is more valuable is: it depends. Establish the goals you are hoping to achieve with your campaign, and place your efforts accordingly. If a click is your primary goal, consider test different ad copy and landing pages (which luckily could help you improve your likes anyway).

What would you rather have: more clicks or more likes? Tell us what you think.

Now, they’re giving advertisers yet another way to target.

InsideFacebook is pointing to a new PDF from Facebook outlining a few different types of Interests Targeting, and one of those is Topic Targeting. This will allow advertisers to get fans of certain topics (which can include specific brands/celebirites) without being limited to those who “like” the official page.

Facebook explains, ” Topics (indicated with a # symbol) combine overlapping precise interests to enable easier targeting. For example, the ‘#Lady Gaga’ topic will capture people with related interests such as ‘Lady Gaga’, ‘Lady Gaga Fans’ and ‘Lady Gaga Music’. Topics are available in the Precise Interests election box.”

“If you know that your ideal audience is likely to have a particular set of interests, but don’t need to manage a complicated list of keywords, Topic targeting is a simple way to reach your customers without having to select every relevant term separately,” says Facebook.

Other options Facebook offers in Interests Targeting are precise interest targeting and broad category targeting. The former are the exact likes and interest people have shared in their Facebook profiles, and the latter consists of broad categories that combine interests and other profile content users have shared such as “Jazz/Blues” or just “Music”.

Earlier this month, Facebook began making its Ads API available to app developers who are able to demonstrate the creation of added value of Facebook advertising via third-party apps.

Darren Waddell, vice president of marketing at MerchantCircle, tells WebProNews, “The surveys continue to show us that local businesses have very limited budgets, and social networks have become a mainstream marketing method for them.”

Of the 35% of merchants who said they wouldn’t advertise with Facebook again, 69% said the ads didn’t help them acquire new customers and 35% said they were simply too expensive.

MerchantCircle also found that “familiarity may favor Facebook and Google in the daily deals market,” a bold conclusion, based on the success of industry leaders (in this particular space) like Groupon and LivingSocial, the former having just filed for an IPO and the latter being integrated into a new offering from Amazon (an investor in the company).

“For local merchants, familiarity with huge social network brands like Facebook, their ease of use and the large audience they offer certainly play into the decision on which locally targeted ads and group buying deals to try out,” Waddell tells us.

52% said the familiarity of the Facebook and Google brands would lead them to choose Facebook Deals or Google Offers over competitive offerings. Business owners also cited bigger audience size (26%) and better local targeting (21%) as reasons to use Facebook Deals. Bigger audience (42%) and brand reputation (34%) were the top reasons for using Google Offers cited by those most likely to do so.

77% of those who have done daily deals say they’d be willing to offer another one, citing effectiveness in customer acquisition (58%), favorable deal structure (30%) and profitability of the deal (24%) as top reasons.

Out of the ones that wouldn’t offer another daily deal, 42% said it wasn’t effective in customer acquisition, 25% said it was too costly and 24% said they lost money.

The survey found that print advertising dropped from 27% to 24%, use of print Yellow Pages declined from 37% to 29%; and use of direct mail decreased from 28% to 26%. Interestingly, the popularity of location-based marketing services has also dropped over the past quarter.

The survey found that 22% of businesses are using Facebook Places to market their business, while only 7% are using Foursquare. In January, 32% were using Facebook Places and 9% were using Foursquare.

In fact, mobile marketing in general doesn’t appear to be doing as well as one might think. Only 18% of merchants reported doing any sort of mobile marketing or advertising whatsoever. This may have a lot to do with limited budgets and a newer, untested medium. 71% said they don’t have a good idea of how to reach consumers via mobile marketing and 61% are spending less than $2,500 a year on marketing. 73% have no plans to raise their budgets this year.

The results of the Merchant Confidence Index also found that merchants remain cautiously optimistic about the economy and revenues, while hiring is holding steady. 57% of small business owners expect revenue to improve or slightly improve over the next three months, over which time, 90% of merchants expect to keep headcount the same or add jobs.