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Although Facebook sold $1.86B in ads last year, most marketers shy away from buying them, and last month’s Webtrend’s white paper citing declining CTR (click-through-rates) and escalating costs for the ads didn’t help. But that may all be about to change.
Facebook has been testing a new delivery model with a small 1% of their worldwide users ('course, that translates to 6 million accounts). Using real-time status updates, the social network is taking their targeted ads to the next level, with a “complex algorithm” that serves up real-time ads at split-second speed, matching up ads already in their system with status content.
So if someone posts “I’m so hungry I could gnaw my arm off”, they would immediately see an ad or coupon from, say, Jimmy Johns sandwich shop, or other relevant messaging. The goal: to capitalize on that moment in time when a decision is actually being made — putting super-targeted messages before eyes at their most receptive.
If the algorithm works, and the ads do what they are meant to, Facebook could steal some of Twitter’s thunder, leveraging a new ability to respond to timely events and trends. Which could make last year’s billion-dollar ad revenues look like chump change.
Tags: facebook / webtrend / status ads