Turning Facebook Into a Massive Ad-Sales Platform

Tech Firm Involver Hopes Publishers Pull an Us Weekly

Posted by Abbey Klaassen on 04.27.09 @ 10:06 AM

Last week Ad Age reported on Us Weekly's selling a sponsorship on its Facebook page -- and that isn't the last you'll hear of this concept. Involver, the company whose technology powers the Us Weekly page, today is announcing that it will market the concept to a swath of media companies and brands.

"Us Weekly might have thousands of fans, but once you have a fan page, it's like 'Then what?'" said Rahim Fazal, CEO of Involver. So his company created tools to try to make it easy for media companies to syndicate their content into fan pages in an automated way.

"When we started to expose this to some brands and media companies there was a lot of interest, but they were saying, 'If we're going to take our content and start bringing it into social networks, we think there will be interest in bringing our sponsors who are offering their content on our website into Facebook or other social networks,'" Mr. Fazal said.

Simply put, media companies are recognizing they've got compelling content and enthusiastic audiences but those audiences are distributed. So the content is going to live not just in the publication or on the website, but anywhere -- whether that's on Facebook or the mobile phone.

Involver said there's an important clarification about what media companies on Facebook are selling to advertisers: They're not selling their advertisers' display ads but rather sponsorships that look more like integrated content. For example, a media company can have on its Facebook page a video player in which it can offer a sponsor's video content. Other sponsored on-page elements could be polls or coupons.

"We're trying to create some standardization around new formats for pages," Mr. Fazal said. Involver can measure how many people took a sponsored poll, clicked on a coupon or watched a video.

Of course, at first blush it certainly seems perplexing that Facebook isn't charging some sort of revenue-sharing fee for the media companies that are using its platform to sell ads. But the social network can make money other ways: from selling vanity URLs or virtual gifts to "Engagement Ads" that help media companies develop audiences for their fan pages. And every additional page view a media company's fan page generates is another opportunity for Facebook to serve a display ad alongside the page.

Right now Involver gets a share of revenue when a company using its Facebook fa- page technology sells a sponsorship. It's still trying to figure out the business model for non-sponsored pages.

"Our goal is to offer these apps to as many brands as possible, because there's so much value to opening this up to every fan page," Mr. Fazal said.

5 Comments

By tylerwillis | San Francisco, CA April 27, 2009 11:38:14 am:

Thanks Abbey,

We're really excited about getting this platform out, just wanted to provide the link for interested folks since, as you say, anyone with a fan page can use this. www.involver.com/pages will have all the apps and walk you through how to use them!

Also, we're currently talking with Media companies about how to help them generate sponsorship from their pages, anyone interested can email me at tyler@involver.com
-
Thanks!
Tyler Willis
Involver

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By vissanjy | Fairfield, CA April 27, 2009 12:13:46 pm:

Abbey,

Thanks for reporting on this. This is the first article I've read about how to effectively tap into facebook's revenue potential for companies. I bet sources of revenue like this look really important to big companies struggling to add to their bottom line (or triple bottom line)

Looks like Involver has a great product and looking at their website they are doing some pretty innovative things.

-Nadir

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By jspencer55 | Malibu, CA April 27, 2009 05:15:14 pm:

What do you guys think about http://statusplug.com ?

It looks like they are taking a different approach to monetizing Facebook pages...I kinda like it

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By briefattentionspan | Oakland, CA April 27, 2009 07:24:35 pm:

Nice article, Abbey.

Beyond the monetization via in-page sponsors, the real "wow" breakthrough here is that Involver has figured out how to add their robust multimedia functionality to the "standard" Facebook fan page. And all this thanks to FB opening up the fan page API a bit more.

Think about it for a minute... because this is literally a game-changer for marketers who have traditionally gone into Facebook via opt-in custom applications. The barrier to entry for opt-in apps has always been that the user has to accept yet another non-FB app - which more and users are reluctant to do.

Now with the new Involver fan page functionality no-one has to opt-in to anything - it only requires users to become a simple, Facebook-sanctioned "fan." As a direct result, I'm talking to bunch of previously reluctant clients about taking the Facebook fan page plunge.

Sincerely,

Greg Gotts
founder/CEO
Brief Attention Span Communications
gottstogo@briefworld.com

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By PatSwain | Lawrence, KS April 29, 2009 07:39:10 pm:

This sounds like a great idea! With the current state of the economy, comapnies need to do anything and everything to get their message out. Facebook started out as just a way for college kids to meet other kids at their univerisity. But now everyone is using it. Now I'm even friends with my uncle and history teacher from high school.

The point is, everyone's on Facebook and it is a cheap, effective way to stay in contact with customers. I think that this will be a growing trend for big companies in the near future.

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