This past week Facebook released its new cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model for advertisements on their social media platform. With this change came much happiness for marketers. Facebook now provides more diverse advertisement plans and strategies for businesses that are much more budget friendly and business specific. Advertisers no longer have to pay for advertisements that people merely “like” or “share,” but instead companies have more control over what they pay for on Facebook.
This model should not only benefit Facebook itself, but ideally it should increase company attraction toward paid Facebook advertisements. This sort of change has been seen across a multitude of social media sites, as these platforms begin to understand exactly what marketers want to do through their interface. Twitter transformed their advertisement platform by allowing brands to only pay for consumer interaction that aligned with their marketing aims. Google’s display advertising system underwent similar change.
It’s important to recognize that while social media is incredibly normalized throughout society, and feels as if it has been around since the Stone Age, there is still a lot to learn. Given Facebook’s new model, businesses are able to separate their viewers and sharers from their buyers. Ideally, this should make Facebook a more user friendly and beneficial platform for advertisers.
Advertisers must recognize that Facebook’s new CPC model will force businesses to adapt their advertisement approaches on this social media site. Ads will need to be much more creative in order to generate click-throughs rather than likes and shares. Social media specialists believe that advertisers will begin to push the boundaries and higher tolerance to risk in order to generate sales through Facebook.
While there may be more hesitance in Facebook ad approvals within companies, the brands that allow their marketing departments to explore and test out the new model are the ones that are going to see the most financial benefits from this change. Social media always seems to be a risk for companies. You either flourish, or flop – sink or swim. This shift in CPC will allow for bigger winners, but will bring about big losers as well. It is important for companies to not only get familiar with the new model, but implement it as well. Nothing ever seems to slow down in the world we live in, something that marketers are all too familiar with. It is important for companies to be continually fluid and adaptable in a matter of seconds. It will be interesting to see the creativity that advertisements will employ to maximize their return on the new CPC Facebook model.
