Facebook Ads On Photos

Facebook recently rolled out its new and improved photo viewer, kinda a similar to Google+. But what's interesting is that Facebook Ads now show up on your photos.

A very smart move by Facebook indeed, because Facebook has just invented a new real estate to increase the visibility of its ads. Lesser the comments on a a pic the more better for Facebook as it can display more (max 2, I guess)  sponsored stories.

And things don't stop here. If you think this makes Facebook ads more pervasive then wait till Facebook starts turning every single activity of users into  ads and offers them on a platter to advertisers. Read this interesting piece on the same by Techcrunch here.

With ads being the sole revenue driver for Facebook, and taking into consideration the recent IPO filing, it will be no surprise the way Facebook starts squeezing the juice out of its real estate space for displaying ads to monetize its platform and please the investors. 

Facebook Introduces Featured Stories in the News Feed

Facebook has discreetly announced the launch of its new Ads feature - the Featured Stories (also known as Sponsored Stories as of now).

For obvious reasons advertisers will have to pay to highlight their stories in user's news feed. Facebook believes that by doing so there is a better chance that user's friend will see it and thus lead to another fan conversion for the page.

Facebook also said that since there is lot of noise in a user's news feed so not all friends of a user will see a featured story hence as an advertiser make sure you get maximum impressions for your featured story. How do you do that? Well, Facebook has made it directly proportional to the organic stories your page generates. In simple words the more the reach/impressions your posts gets the more  the impressions your featured story will get.

So, do not rely heavily on Featured stories if you're not confident about your page's performance. A mix of both Featured and Facebook Ads seems to be a good way to start.

Although Featured Stories are ads but Facebook has cleverly disguised them to look like just another post from a page you liked. Have a look at this image - courtesy AllFacebook.com

It will be interesting to see  user reaction to this new feature. Will there be a backlash or they will eventually be accepted just like other Facebook updates. Let's wait and watch. But for advertisers this certainly is a good news as now they have entry into fan's friend's news feed directly.

What are your thoughts on this "Featured Story" ? Do you like it? Do share your comments below.

UAE in the list of Top 50 Countries on Facebook

As Facebook continues to take over the world, our UAE is not left behind. UAE is now in the list of Top 50 countires on a 800 million strong Facebook, standing at #49. People of UAE seems to be loving Facebook a lot as the the growth has been phenomenal in past 6 months. UAE now boasts of 2.7 million Facebook users and then number grew by 449840 users in past 6 months.

Other interesting statistics provided by SocialBakers are:

• Facebook penetration is 55.65% compared to country's population. 

• The largest age group is currently 25 - 34 with total of 1 246 059 users, followed by the users in the age of 18 - 24.

• Male-Female ration is 2:1 

• The Dubai Mall is the most Liked brand having 193,628 fans 

There is something also for advertisers to note that as consumers focus shifts more towards digital medium, social networking sites like Facebook stand out as a great tool to reach out faster and engage target audience on a more deeper level.