Facebook ads have more options – how do I use them?

Facebook likes to keep us on our toes and there have been a few changes during the past few weeks to ads as well as to pages.

Below on the Facebook ad tool I have circled the changes.

1) Sponsored Stories

This is an interesting addition to ads. You can now target two groups of people by using this feature:

• Friends of those who are connected to your page by clicking the like story box. This means that your potential reach is far smaller but also it means that it will potentially be more powerful, with people seeing that their friend already likes the page they are more likely to.
• People who are connected to the page through clicking the page post story box. This can be used to promote the posts you put on the page wall to people who like your page but may not have seen the posts. This could be good because a recent article said that only 5% of page posts appear in likers newsfeeds – scary!  Particularly relevant if you are posting a hot topic you want people to see.

2) Destination Tab

If you are advertising your Facebook page through the ads you can now specify where you want people to land on the page when they click on the ad. This is great if you have a special offer or want to create a landing tab that is a sales page. This means your ad can be very specific and the landing position can match that.

3) Ad layout

If you have switched over your page to the new look ads will be appearing horizontally rather than vertically as previously.

It is now more important than ever that your image fills up the space on the left. You need to use the space to make your ad really eye-catching in order to grab your readers’ attention.

Facebook ads are also now seen in more places apart from the right hand side of the page.

If your page photo’s tab has been upgraded to the new light box version (if you click on a photo in an album you can tell if the photo pops up on a black background) there is now an ad that appears at bottom right.

Lara Solomon is the founder of Mocks, mobile phone socks www.MyMocks.com, founder of Social Rabbit – your guide in the world of social media www.Facebook.com/SocialRabbit and author of ‘Brand New Day – the Highs & Lows of Starting a Small Business’. Lara’s business LaRoo was the winner of the NSW Telstra Micro-Business Award in 2008.