A service that Facebook released this year that has been getting some pretty extensive attention from Facebook advertisers is their Offers feature. This is the feature that Facebook created to allow advertisers to promote deals to their Facebook fans that were separate from other sponsored advertisements. Anybody who uses Facebook (which is just about everyone) has seen them pop up in their News Feed every now and again, and occasionally there is one that pertains to your interests and you click it. I know that personally, I click these offers all the time, as they often are deals that can’t be found elsewhere. So, it is clear why it has become such a popular commodity with marketers on Facebook. They show good results and they are free to use.
However, it seems they aren’t free anymore. If you read about the happenings of Facebook, then you have heard that Wall Street has been sort of demanding a bit more revenue and profit from Facebook, and therefore they have been looking for a new way to monetize certain features. Reuters is now reporting that Offers is the feature that Facebook has chosen to monetize next, because of its ever growing popularity with Facebook users and Facebook marketers alike. This decision from Facebook is actually good for marketers, even though it really does not seem that way at first glance.
The Offers feature will now require marketers to pay $5 on related ads in order to use it. This cost will, of course, depend on the size of the company’s Facebook pages. The good that this will do for advertisers exists with the fact that Offers are now tied to related ads. Targeting offers to those Facebook users that find them irrelevant will now be less of a problem.
From Reuters:
“We think this aligns incentives nicely,” said Gokul Rajaram, director of product management for Facebook’s advertising and Pages businesses. “The best results on Facebook Offers will come from organic distribution plus paid distribution.”
In the past, some Facebook Offers have not been relevant to all users, partly because some people saw deals in their News Feeds from merchants located far away from where they live, Rajaram added.
“The requirement to pay for related ads will focus merchants on who and where they want the offer to reach,” he said.
In the end, Facebook is simply trying to help itself with its Wall Street dilemma while trying not to impact Facebook advertisers much at all. By helping advertisers with better targeting and sort of forcing them to try out Facebook Ads, some doors are opened for Facebook marketers even though they will have to start paying. Marketers will be getting something for their money though, as they will now have access to the offers they already love, but these offers will be enhanced by the tie-in with related ads. The $5 dollar cost is not a number that is out of this world, but some marketers use Offers mainly because they are free. We will see how the popularity of the Offers feature shifts when the monetization is official.
