At this week's “Advertising Week” in New York, Facebook is expected to announce an expandable type of ad along with an analytics tool designed to incent brands to post more compelling content.
Facebook's new type of ad will expand if a friend “Likes” the brand. Once the ad expands, a user will be able to see other comments and offer their own comment. These ads are different from “Sponsored Stories” which show interactions with a brand and “Social Ads” which tell you if one of your friends took action in response to a brand's ad.
The new add resulted from research Facebook conducted earlier in the year showing Starbucks fans and friends of fans spent 8% more at Starbucks than other Internet users.
Facebook's new “Pages Insights” analytics tool has added a new metric they call “People Talking About” (this may not be the final name for the metric). The concept is that a Page with a high “People Talking About” rating will likely be a Page that has content good enough to compel a user to post a comment. The goal is to incent a brand's content creator to post more compelling content.
At the same time, Facebook will emphasize it's other brand Page metrics, including “Likes,” “Friends of Fans” and “Weekly Total Reach.” We all know about the “Likes” metric. The “Friends of Fans” metric will measure the actual number of friends a brand's fans have. This has obvious benefits to help a brand determine its reach. The “Weekly Total Reach” metric will show a brand how many people posted something about your Page, how many news organizations referenced it and how much viral distribution posts received.
Look for these four metrics under the Facebook Gestures banner and start posting content your fans feel compelled to comment on.
