“These updates, aimed at helping marketers/Page admins better develop content and reach people on Facebook, improve the way we organize and report fundamental insights for Pages,” a Facebook spokesperson tells WebProNews.

They do this, Facebook says, by making metrics more clear and simple, more actionable, and by providing more insights about the people that interact with your Page content.

“We heard from many Page admins that they want more insight into the actions that make up PTAT (People Talking About This),” says Facebook in a blog post. “For instance, how people’s liking their business Page differs from people’s interacting with their posts. For this reason, we’re breaking out PTAT into elements that will now be reported separately as Page Likes, People Engaged (the number of unique people who have clicked on, liked, commented on, or shared your posts), Page tags and mentions, Page checkins, and other interactions on a Page. PTAT as a combined metric will still be available for Page admins not participating in the new Insights preview.”

“We also heard that the virality metric in Page Insights is often used as a benchmark for Page post quality,” the company adds. “However, this metric doesn’t include clicks in its measurement, which are a strong indicator of positive post engagement and a key piece in providing marketers with metrics around overall post quality. So moving forward, we’re including clicks in this metric and renaming ‘virality’ to ‘engagement rate’ to be clearer in our definition.”

In the new Page Insights, Facebook aggregates metrics about posts’ performance, reach and engagement into new post-specific score cards:

Also, with the new Page Insights, you can see demographic info not only for who you’ve reached, but who you’ve engaged.

Facebook will be rolling out the updates over the coming days to a select group of Page admins. The current Page Insights will continue to be available for all Page admins until later this summer, when the company expects to make the updates available to all.

“Over the past year I’ve had the privilege of meeting and learning from many amazing business owners who use Facebook,” writes Facebook’s Dan Levy. “Some have just set up their Facebook Pages while others are experts who share their tips with others. I’ve learned from companies like Ministry of Retail in Singapore, Springwools in Ireland, and Scene75 Entertainment Center in Ohio…and many more around the world.”

“I know business owners like these invest their hard earned money and time into running their companies,” he adds. “So today, on behalf of everyone at Facebook, I want to say thank you to them and to the over one million businesses like them who are active advertisers. You have chosen Facebook as a partner to grow your business. We appreciate the chance to work with you, and we celebrate your success.”

These active advertisers, Levy says, are “real people with real stories,” and with that, Facebook is inviting others to ahre their business success stories at a Facebook destination for entrepreneurs.

Much is going on in the world of Facebook advertising, and marketing on Facebook in general. In addition to the newly launched hashtags (which marketers will find many opportunities with), the company is simplifying its advertising offerings. For one, they’re cutting the available number of ad units by over half. This week, they also announced some new features for page post link ads.

Take a look:

Microsoft’s Stephen Kim discusses all of these here.

Microsoft also announced the availability of the Ad Pano format for all advertisers and publishers who use the Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows 8.

“The Ad Pano is a premium Ads in Apps solution for Windows 8 that was born from the original development sessions we conducted with agency and brand partners last year,” a spokesperson for the company says in an email. “The Ad Pano gives advertisers unlimited storytelling potential to customize their ad experience to deliver an interactive, immersive, panoramic ad experience comparable to a magazine fold-out.”

Jenn Creegan, General Manager for Display Advertising Experiences at Microsoft Advertising, discusses this more here.

As discussed in that same post, Microsoft also commissioned a study by Nielsen, which found that 60% of people exposed to ads on Windows 8 perceived the brands as innovative, cutting edge and trustworthy. Brands that advertise in Windows 8 are more than twice as likely to be seen as innovative compared to the “Nielsen norms,” Microsoft claims.

New data from SocialBakers suggests that Twitter users are almost as likely to engage with your Vine videos as they are to engage with any YouTube videos you post.

They looked at average engagement rates of tweets containing both YouTube videos and Vine videos, posted by targeted brands in the past month or so. What they found was that Vine is fast approaching YouTube in terms of content that’s getting the clicks from Twitter users.

“Tweeted YouTube videos earned a 0.048% Engagement Rate. Compare this to Tweets containing Vine uploads which earned a 0.031% Engagement Rate. That means in the six months since Vine was introduced to social media, it has almost caught up to YouTube uploads on Twitter in terms of engagement. This is amazing considering that for most of its life, Vine was only available on iPhones and iPads,” says SocialBakers.

And they’re right. Vine just launched an Android app around two weeks ago. At that time, they reported 13 million registered users. Vine is definitely the new kid on the block, but it’s definitely making an impression.

Vine is not only seeing a high level of engagement – but it’s also simply seeing a higher level of exposure on Twitter. Last week, Vine video shares surpassed Instagram photo shares for the very first time. That’s even more incredible when you think about the active user discrepancy between the two – 13 million registered users vs. 100 million monthly active users, respectively.

Sure, Instagram and Twitter had a falling out and Instagram photos are no longer displayed in Twitter’s expanded tweets – but still, you can’t deny Vine’s quick influence in the social sphere.

Vine may even have Facebook (who owns Instagram) scared. Rumors indicate that Facebook may be gearing up to unveil short video capabilities, akin to Vine, for Instagram.

Brands are already using Vine to expand their social media reach. One example of the best use comes from Lowe’s, who has been posting 6-second how-to videos for months now. They’re pretty awesome.

The company notes that while CPCs typically increase during the Spring, seasonality can be ruled out as the sole drive of this trend.

“With the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns the historically lower CPCs for tablet campaigns should increase to reflect desktop CPCs,” Adobe says in the report. “We’re only just beginning to see this trend materialize with a 3% increase in tablet CPCs with respect to desktop CPCs, along with a smaller 1% increase in mobile CPCs. These percentages will likely rise as advertisers holding off on migrating to Enhanced Campaigns until the July 22 deadline set by Google are forced to do so.”

“One other trend we noticed is that CPCs on Google have stabilized,” the report says. “For the past two years, Google CPCs fell on a year-over-year (YoY) basis due to the increase in mobile and tablet traffic where CPCs were lower. However, for the first time in 7 quarters the CPCs on Google are flat YoY and we anticipate that CPCs will rise on a YoY basis again starting next quarter. We expect this trend to positively impact Google’s ad revenue.”

Adobe says that with increasing CPCs, proper mobile bid adjustments (MBAs) are more critical. The company says Google’s tend not to reflect the performance of individual campaigns and a groups, and with that, Adobe announced it has updated its Media Optimizer algorithm to “ensure maximum ROI” for campaigns and “highly effective” MBAs.

“Search marketing is getting increasingly complex – and it is becoming increasingly difficult to use a manual approach to get the best possible performance from a relatively simple campaign,” the company says. “Not only are there GEO specific targeting options available, there are also device level and time-of-day/day-of-week options to consider. While MBAs are Google’s attempt to simplify this for marketers, this also complicates matters for the advertiser. Not only does one have to consider the bid but also the mobile adjustment factor to get the most out of a search campaign. This only increases the need for automated algorithmic bidding platforms that resolve the complexities to manage such programs.”

In the immediate future, enhanced campaigns will drive competitive pressure on tablets for this month and next month, Adobe notes, with the full effect of the change on the market coming in Q3.

In keeping with the goal of streamlining our ad products, starting in July advertisers will no longer be able to buy sponsored results. We’ve seen that most marketers were buying sponsored results to advertise their apps and games, and we already offer mobile app install ads and Page post link ads on desktop to achieve these same goals.

The move is particularly interesting given that Facebook’s huge search revamp – Graph Search – hasn’t even completed roll-out, or come even close to including all of the stuff Facebook intends for it to include. It has not yet gone mobile either. In other words, the product is in its infancy, and it seems somewhat odd that Facebook would kill the ad product that goes with it before it’s even completely rolled out.

It’s unclear whether Facebook will keep around the ads that appear in the middle of Graph Search results pages, which are a bit different, and essentially the same as the ads you see to the side of the news feed:

But Facebook is greatly reducing its ad offerings, as recently reported. In fact, the company plans on getting rid of over half of those available. The company says that many of its offerings accomplish the same goals, so they’re eliminating some redundancies.

Among the other ad products going away are Questions for Pages, Offers, and the need to create separate sponsored stories in addition to other ads.

More on Facebook’s plans here.

Sponsored search results went live last August.

Obviously, there are some pretty big marketing implications with this, but there are also marketing risks. Marketers looking to launch successful hashtag-based campaigns are going to have to put some thought into their strategies so they don’t amount to wasted time and money, or worse, harm the brand.

Are Facebook hashtags a game-changer for marketers? Do you intend to capitalize on the feature? Share your thoughts in the comments.

“Every day, hundreds of millions of people use Facebook to share their thoughts on big moments happening all around them,” says Facebook’s Greg Lindley. “Whether it’s talking about a favorite television show, cheering on a hometown sports team or engaging with friends during a breaking news event—people on Facebook connect with their friends about what’s taking place all over the world.”

“During primetime television alone, there are between 88 and 100 million Americans engaged on Facebook – roughly a Super Bowl-sized audience every single night,” Lindley adds. “The recent ‘Red Wedding’ episode of Game of Thrones, received over 1.5 million mentions on Facebook, representing a significant portion of the 5.2 million people who watched the show. And this year’s Oscars buzz reached an all-time high on Facebook with over 66.5 million interactions, including likes, comments, and posts.”

Hashtags create new pages on Facebook. When you click on a hashtag, your’e taken to a results page that looks something like this:

As you can see, you can easily update your status, or add photos or videos right from that page, making it easy to jump into the conversation.

The best part about Facebook hashtags from a marketing perspective is that it takes something marketers are already using it, and magnifies it greatly by utilizing Facebook’s huge user base.

A Facebook spokesperson said in an email, “If you are already using hashtags in an advertising campaign through other channels, you can amplify these campaigns by including your hashtags in Facebook advertising. The same creative best practices on Facebook still apply – compelling copy and photography that is in the brand voice works best.”

“Any hashtags that you use on other platforms that are connected to your Facebook Page will be automatically clickable and searchable on Facebook.,” the spokesperson said. “Like other Facebook marketing tools, hashtags allow you to join and drive the conversations happening about your business,. We recommend you search for and view real-time public conversations and test strategies to drive those conversations using hashtags.”

“Hashtags do not impact your distribution or engagement in News Feed on either desktop or mobile,” the spokesperson notes. “We recommend you continue to focus on your existing campaigns to drive your most important business objectives.”

One of the great things about hashtag marketing is that it allows campaigns to flourish across multiple social networks, and obviously the addition of Facebook is a huge part of that. People have been using hashtags on Facebook pretty much since hashtags have been used in popular Internet culture, but now they have meaning.

Hashtags can also of course be printed anywhere you’re running an ad in the physical world as well, and Facebook’s addition simply makes them more ubiquitous across the social web. This is becoming more the case all the time. Vine, for example, recently added hashtags, as did Flickr in its iOS app. Google recently added a new related hashtags feature to Google+.

Postano Digital Marketing Manager Julie Blakley says, “Before implementing your own branded hashtag, you’ll want to think about being transparent without necessarily including your brand name, as this can discourage people from participating, as well as give brand haters more motivation to upend the hashtag’s meaning.”

“Generic hashtags like Nike’s #makeitcount have more creative potential both for the brand and for consumers. Either way, the hashtag should be informative and concise rather than conceptual.”

She provides a number of tips here.

Digital Lab CEO Mike Saunders says, “Hashtag strategies are not limited to branding hashtags…The Washington Post found value in using hashtag advertising to promote their own content, by sponsoring the hashtag #Elections as a trending topic on Twitter during the last US elections. As a result, the newspaper’s tweets appeared first when users searched #elections on election day.”

“Another hashtag strategy, common to bloggers and news aggregators, is to use hashtags as a means of crowdsourcing,” he says. “By having fans and followers share content with their company’s hashtag, brands are able find and share content that’s relevant and shareable. Other common hashtag strategies include gaining follows and linkbacks with hashtag competitions and using hashtags to create buzz at events.”

Greg Finn at Marketing Land suggests that Facebook hashtags are “anti-Facebook Page,” as in they could dilute a company’s real Facebook presence.

“Another advantage that Facebook has is that brand pages are rich, robust and can act like a website for many,” he writes. “When you head to a specific topic page (like the NBA) fan discussions can be seen. Unlike Twitter, conversations and reactions can be viewed on a specific page. Now users will be required to utilize both hashtags and tagging to tie in brands. Instead of bringing in brands and pages, the conversations will be on separate hashtag streams.”

He makes another good point about hashtags on Facebook likely being dominated by brands rather than users, which could dilute the appeal to the users these brands are trying to reach. The reason for this is that most Facebook users have private profiles (as opposed to on Twitter where profiles are mostly public), and brands are public. This could create a very brand-heavy balance in a lot of hashtags on Facebook.

There are also direct risks to brands using hashtag marketing.

As David Berkowitz, vice president of emerging media at 360i says, “Marketers creating campaigns centered on hashtags need to be cautious. Hashtags can easily turn into flashing targets that scream, ‘Hijack this brand!’”

He specifically references the famous McDonald’s hashtag debacle. Last year, the company launched a campaign under the hashtag #McStories, which quickly became dominated by negative (and in some cases dirty) tweets about the brand.

“No matter how good your intentions are and how well you execute the campaign, hashtags can get hijacked in unexpected ways,” says Berkowitz. “Make sure any relevant brand managers, agency account executives, and other relevant parties are aware of what can happen, and share some real examples like those noted above. Also be clear that brands use hashtags in campaigns every day, and there are very few that generate any negative publicity.”

Facebook is just getting started with hashtags, and the possibilities are bound to increase, going forward. Twitter is actually letting people make purchases using hashtags these days, and given Facebook’s breadth, something like this could be a pretty big deal in e-commerce.

Facebook is not getting any money of hashtags at this point, but that will likely change. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is already getting grilled by shareholders.

AdAge reports, “Facebook won’t be profiting from its hashtags out of the gate. Advertisers won’t be able to target people posting hashtags about a particular TV show or live sports event, and they won’t be able to sponsor a hashtag in the vein of promoted trends on Twitter.”

But how long until this changes? Last week, the company announced that it’s cutting the number of ad units it offers in half.

Hashtags, in some ways, are about search marketing, and they should instantly make Facebook Search better, at least with regards to real-time conversations. This is going to be increasingly important to marketers. Consider that Apple’s Siri just added Twitter search. Will it add Facebook search in a future release? iOS already includes tight Facebook integration. That could have some interesting ramifications for search itself, in terms of taking more searches away from Google, which no longer has a really good real-time search feature (since losing the Twitter firehose a while back). Keep in mind, Facebook will continue to work at making its own search better, and will eventually add a lot of types of content to Graph Search, and turn it into a mobile feature.

Interestingly, Facebook says the hashtags are just a first step in a broader “public conversations” initiative. More features are going to be coming out within the next few weeks and months. These include trending hashtags (much like Twitter) and “deeper insights” which should only help marketers even more.

Are you excited about hashtags on Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

The best part about Facebook hashtags from a marketing perspective is that it takes something marketers are already using it, and magnifying it greatly by utilizing Facebook’s huge user base.

A Facebook spokesperson tells WebProNews in an email, “If you are already using hashtags in an advertising campaign through other channels, you can amplify these campaigns by including your hashtags in Facebook advertising. The same creative best practices on Facebook still apply – compelling copy and photography that is in the brand voice works best.”

“Any hashtags that you use on other platforms that are connected to your Facebook Page will be automatically clickable and searchable on Facebook.,” the spokesperson adds.

Here are some examples of what it looks like when you click over to a hashtag page:

“Like other Facebook marketing tools, hashtags allow you to join and drive the conversations happening about your business,” the spokesperson says. “We recommend you search for and view real-time public conversations and test strategies to drive those conversations using hashtags.”

“Hashtags do not impact your distribution or engagement in News Feed on either desktop or mobile,” the spokesperson notes. “We recommend you continue to focus on your existing campaigns to drive your most important business objectives.”

People share over 4.75 billion pieces of content on Facebook every day, according to the company, and much of this is already getting hashtags from people who weren’t waiting around for Facebook to actually launch this feature. Now, these will have a bit more meaning.

The move comes after Facebook announced last week that it is cutting its ad units in half.

By the way, you can also search hashtags in Facebook’s Graph Search.

The reduction will not happen all at once, but over the course of the next six months.

For one, they’ll be getting rid of the Questions product for Pages with the reasoning that marketers can just ask questions in posts and get answers in the comments. The company canned Facebook Questions for users back in October.

They’re also getting rid of the online Offer product, saying that marketers have found that a Page post link ad is more effective for driving people to deals on their own sites. These particular changes will occur in July.

Facebook says it wants to include the best of sponsored stories in all ads.

“Previously, to get the best social context available, advertisers had to purchase sponsored stories in addition to ads,” says Facebook’s Fidji Simo. “In the future, for example, when you create a Page post photo ad, we will automatically add social context to boost performance and eliminate the extra step of creating sponsored stories. We know social enhances ad resonance; people are influenced by this type of word-of-mouth marketing. Research from Nielsen, comScore, and Datalogix shows that social context can drive awareness and return on ad spend, so we want to make it easier to add it to our ads.”

These changes will take place this fall. More immediately, Facebook is looking to make its ad units more consistent.

“We want to have a more consistent visual display of our ads across all marketer objectives and Facebook placements,” says Simo. “This will reduce the number of ad formats and make the ad creation process much simpler for advertisers who run multiple campaigns or want to test which ad creative performs the best. We think this will ultimately help advertisers optimize their campaigns across desktop and mobile. A consistent look and feel to our ads will also be a better overall experience for people on Facebook.”

These changes will start later this month.

The news comes from AdAge, which cites “people with knowledge of the matter” and an “executive familiar with the matter”. Tim Peterson reports:

It’s unclear how far along Twitter is in building the exchange, though Facebook managed to create FBX from scratch in a month. In keeping with the company’s measured approach to advertising, Twitter is performing its due diligence. Since at least late last year, the company has met with several FBX partners who are well-versed in locating on Facebook people who had previously visited a brand’s site and retargeting them with non-standard display ads on the social network, in hopes of luring them back to the brand site. It works by by pinging a partner when a cookied user visits Facebook so that the partner can bid to target ads to that user on the social network. The talks are early but ongoing, and Twitter has not briefed potential partners on a planned launch date.

According to the report, Twitter wants brands to buy directly on the exchange, and has been reaching out to multichannel retailers.

Twitter is expected to launch an IPO sometime within the next year, and it’s certainly paving the way to more revenue streams, and working to appeal more to marketers in general. Last week, the company announced a new Lead Generation card for marketers as well as TV ad targeting and Twitter Amplify, a multi-screen partnership program.

Also last week, Bloomberg reported that Twitter is readying a customer-matching ad tool similar to Facebook’s custom-audience service.

Meanwhile, Twitter continues to find ways to appeal more to users. For example, earlier this week, the company launched updates to its mobile apps, and now it has greatly increased the usefulness of its Lists feature, perhaps in a bid to capture some Google Reader users as that service prepares to shut down.

Twitter has also expanded its “Certified Products” program.

Twitter is not commenting on the potential ad exchange product.

Facebook said earlier this year that 1,300 advertisers were purchasing a billion impressions per day with FBX. Twitter only has something like 200 million active users, however, compared to Facebook’s over a billion.