Brands are literally pinning the hopes of ad sales on Facebook around a new feature that the company has introduced, enabling users to “pin” favorite messages on their feed not only from friends, but also from key companies.
Through a new post on its Newsroom page, Facebook has detailed how users can customize their News Feed, using a personalized stream of stories built from the people and pages that users connect to on its social site. “The goal of News Feed is to show you the stories that matter most to you,” says the post. “To do this, we use ranking to order stories based on how interesting we believe they are to you: specifically, whom you tend to interact with, and what kinds of content you tend to like and comment on.”
And the thought that users could do more than “like” a company’s page – and instead make them a favorite on their feed – could be a dream come true for certain brands, according to a story from Ad Age. With this, it “gives hope to marketing executives who felt burned by an overcrowded news feed that meant even fans rarely saw their updates,” per the article.
Facebook previously offered an advertising tool to companies where their pages could be advertised in the user’s side news feed, giving them the opportunity to increase “likes”. With this new feature, though, they’ll have to go the extra mile to remain relevant in users’ news feeds.
Any news pages designated as vital to that user will enable them to “see any new stories they’ve shared since your last visit to Facebook at the top of News Feed, with a star in the top right of their post so you know why they’re at the top,” says Facebook in its post. “You can scroll down to see the rest of your News Feed normally.”
However, this change doesn’t have everyone convinced, according to Nate Elliott, an analyst for Forrester Research. “In 2007, Facebook said, ‘Buy ads from us so that people will like your page, and you can deliver your message to them,’ and then they slowly whittled away that bargain. Now, in 2015, they’re going back to marketers and saying, ‘Buy ads so you can get your message to them.’ We’ve heard this promise before.”
Speaking with the New York Times, the site explained that companies will “get the chance to persuade those fans to add them to the ‘see first’ list so they don’t miss a thing.”
Brian Blau, an analyst for Gartner, added, “Businesses are going to be able to understand what kinds of people are the most passionate about them, and that’s a really good signal for them to have.”
Whether it will be a success in the long run has yet to be seen. But that isn’t stopping Facebook from working on its other business venues, including an increase in video presence and other advertising models.
