Facebook rolls out new premium ad platform

Facebook is core to any brand’s social marketing push. Advertising also makes up a major portion of the social network’s revenue. Hardly surprising, therefore, that it should want to evolve its ads platform.

With the launch a brand new advertising platform, called Page Post Ads it appears to be doing just that.

Page Post Ads will replace the Premium ads that currently appear on users’ homepages.

Facebook representatives claim the new adverts will “have a bold new design, larger than other formats, with features that are more social and more engaging than standard ads”.

There will be six Page Post Ad formats available for brands; photos, videos, questions, status, event and link ads.

According to internal research Facebook Page Post Ads on average, performed significantly better than the older formatted ads. On average, they show 40% higher engagement, are 80% more likely to be remembered, drive a 16% increase in fan rate, and drive a significant increase in purchase intent.

Michael Krynauw, Facebook Innovation Manager at Habari Media, South Africa’s official Facebook sales partner claims that brands have a lot to gain from the new ad format.

“The principal benefit of the new formatted ads is that brands can now target existing fans as well as friends of fans. When users comment on a Page Post Ad, it will register on the brands page, as well as in the news feed of the user’s friends, which helps to ignite the social graph. Furthermore, when friends see that their friends have been engaging with an ad, ad recall can double and engagement increases”, said Krynauw.

Facebook has only just confirmed the existence of Post Page Ads, although GigaOM claimed to have been in possession of leaked documents outlining the roll out of the new ad platform.