Just few months back Facebook was testing a new form of search ads called Sponsored
Results whereby advertisers can show ads in the Facebook search
typehead to users looking for a particular Page, app, or Place. Now,
the social networking site is making the feature available to marketers
that will let businesses divert traffic from each other, as TechCrunch
reports.
The latest advertising offering includes paid
advertisements related to search queries at the top of results. The
Sponsored Results appear like any other results in the search box
present on top of each page, but with the word ''Sponsored'' written
clearly. Upon clicking, users will be redirected to a company's Facebook
page, a move intended to keep users within the site.
The search results cannot be based on generic keywords like mobiles, cameras or
games. These will have to be brand or company specific like FarmVille or
Canon camera.
Users have the option of dismissing the ad by
clicking the close button on the top right corner of the search result. A
pop-up then appears with various options asking users to state the
reason for their dislike.
This feature was initially tested with a
small group of advertisers like Zynga, EA and Disney all of whom seem
to be bidding for each others' apps.But now the feature is open to all
advertisers. For example, when users search for Zynga's Farmville, they
may see results for EA's SimCity Social.Most of the times, the sponsored
result will appear above the organic results but in other cases users
will see a "top hit" before an ad.
Sponsored Results could let
Facebook compete with Google sponsored search results and offsite ad
networks for dollars. Advertisers will soon be able to purchase
Sponsored Results through the Power Editor tool or the Ads API.
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