Maintaining your brand’s organic presence on Facebook is an essential part of any social media strategy as it fulfils a number of important social online functions. It drives traffic to your website, encourages engagement and drums up general interest, to name a few. But having an organic social presence is just the beginning in terms of amplifying your brand. Facebook paid ads are quite useful too! Over the years, the Facebook Ads feature has gone through quite a transformation to get to the sophisticated level that it is at now.
We take you through the evolutionary journey over the years, by means of a timeline.
2004 – Where it all began
This is the date that it all began, the date that Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin. To get it off the ground, they decided to monetize the social platform to generate some financial support, with Mark stating, according to the Harvard Crimson, “It might be nice to get some ads going to offset the cost of the servers.”
In April, they began selling small sections of ad space on Facebook to businesses looking to advertise their products and services, targeting those using the platform. The ads didn’t look particularly sophisticated by any means, since both Mark and Eduardo lacked most of the knowledge and skill needed at the time to advertise online, but this action served as the first instance of advertising on Facebook and went on to shape the course of Facebook Ads as we know it today.
2007 – Getting serious
Three years later, an official, largescale ads platform was launched called Facebook Ads. It allowed businesses who wanted to advertise on Facebook the option to create individual profiles in order to post content and engage with Facebook users, much like normal users who were just there to catch up with friends.
Mark explained that the new changes allowed businesses to start with a blank canvas and add all the information and content they wanted, including photos, videos, music and Facebook Platform applications. He also said that “The core of every user’s experience on Facebook is their page and that’s where businesses are going to start as well. The first thing businesses can do is design a page to craft the exact experience they want people to see.”
2011 – The introduction of “Sponsored Stories”
Sponsored stories allowed advertisers to place a paid ad directly onto users news feeds, with the initial plan being to show one sponsored story on users news feeds per day. The stories that were shown were determined by friends or pages that the user already liked.
Sponsored stories used content from member’s posts for use in advertisements that appeared on their friends’ Facebook pages. They also used content from those dispatches to display in “sponsored story” segments that showed up in the site’s right-hand bar, where ads were usually displayed. Advertisers were thrilled by this new feature because it meant that they could display their ads directly onto consumer’s news feeds, which was considered highly valuable real estate at that time.
2012 – The launch of mobile ads
Facebook mobile never featured ads up until 2012 so before then, the mobile platform didn’t make any money. Facebook chose to slowly introduce ads into mobile users feeds so as not to upset them by having a myriad of ads suddenly pop up everywhere on their screens. The mobile ads mimicked “Sponsored Stories” which featured on the desktop’s platform and it ended up blending seamlessly with user-generated content at the time. The idea was to make the ads as discreet as possible and it worked! Because of this, advertisers became driven to optimise their ads for mobile.
2014 – Facebook advertising becomes more sophisticated
In 2014, Facebook announced it’s new ad structure which comprised of campaigns, ad sets and of course, the ad itself. Campaigns acted as the overarching theme to specific advertising objectives and helped users to measure and improve results based on the individual ads. Ad sets acted as a subset of the campaign that included budgets and targeting in order to define audience segments. This feature allowed advertisers to appeal to certain demographics more easily and offered them insights into different demographic’s behaviour. The ad features remained the same, giving the advertisers the option to feature multiple ads along with text, links, images and even video. These significant changes at the time meant that ads were easier to create and navigate and the new features became a real game-changer for advertisers.
2016 – Facebook and chatbots
By this time, Facebook Messenger had been introduced as a complementary platform to Facebook for friends and family to chat through direct private messages. In 2016, Facebook addressed the business side of Messenger and decided to introduce chatbots for business. They began offering businesses two options within Messenger where they could choose to use “Sponsored Messages” or “Click-to-Messenger” ads.
“Sponsored Messages” appeared in user’s Messenger inbox and when clicked, a chatbot would start a conversation.
“Click-to-Messenger” ads used calls to action through an advertisement placed on Facebook to initiate a conversation in Messenger when a user clicked on an offer from the advertiser.
2018 – 2020 – Facebook offers more advertising options
Fast forward to now, Facebook’s current aim is to expand advertising options without compromising user experience. With eight different impressive advertising options currently available, advertisers are truly spoilt for choice when it comes to advertising on Facebook.
Does your business need a boost? Contact us to find out more about how we can work with you to put together an effective, results-driven Facebook Ads strategy today.
