Eight million brands have switched to Facebook’s new Timeline profile just 10 days after its launch, according to the social network.
Facebook claims that some businesses find the switch is helping them reach a broader audience on the 845-million-member social network.
The new brand pages mark part of Facebook’s strategy to boost ad revenue as the company prepares for an initial public offering that could value the 8-year-old company at up to $100 billion.
One of Facebook’s most important challenges is convincing businesses to spend money advertising on its service rather than simply using the social network as a free promotional tool, analysts and industry observers say.
Dr Pepper case study
Dr Pepper has amassed more than 11 million “fans” of its Facebook page, but hasn’t done a lot of advertising on the social network until now.
“If there’s a specific message we want to drive, we know this guarantees we’ll get in front of them,” said Steve Baer, director of strategy at Code and Theory, a New York digital marketing agency that recently ran a paid promotion for Dr Pepper using Facebook’s new ads.
Dr Pepper Snapple Group paid to try a new type of Facebook ad that ensures that a post on its brand page will be promoted to its fans in multiple places on the social network.
The result, said Baer, was that the post reached 83% of Dr Pepper’s Facebook fans over a 28-day period.
Dr Pepper Snapple Group was allowed to use the new Facebook ad format before it was officially introduced to other advertisers two weeks ago and the level of user “engagement,” such as users “liking” the post, was 80 per cent higher than normal.
Facebook ad revenue
Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, with 85 per cent of the revenue coming from its advertising business.
Facebook’s revamped brand pages, which are available to businesses at no cost, offer companies more capabilities to create splashy, media-rich pages within Facebook. A chronological timeline on the right side of the page lets businesses create customized pages to showcase past milestones, and a new “offers” capability lets companies place coupons and promotions directly on their page.
Companies can offer the coupons on their Facebook page free of charge, as well as pay for the coupon to be seen by a larger audience on Facebook.
View the official Facebook Timeline video below, explaining how to set up subscribers:
