Facebook monetises friend activity with Sponsored Stories
Keen to cash in on the interactions of its users Facebook is rolling out Sponsored Stories, a new advertising concept which translates the actions of friends into promoted content.
This enables marketers to gain space on people’s news feeds by sponsoring activities that take place there, and featuring their brand alongside the comment.
A column in the right hand side of the news feed would display these stories, not showing the advertisers content directly but rather the actions (such as checking into Starbucks) of the users friends.
Four specific actions will be sponsorable in this way: likes, checkins, actions within apps and page posts, which Facebook hopes will prove attractive to advertisers as it is the user who directly defines the content.
Amongst the big name brands to have already signed up for the platform are Coke and Levi’s whilst slots will also be made available to non profit organisations such as Amnesty International and UNICEF.
From January 25 Sponsored Story slots will be made available to everyone on a per impression and/or per click basis.