Facebook, which has caught the imagination of millions of people worldwide with the wide dimensions of new horizons which can be envisioned with online social networking, has come up with an exciting new innovation, "Sponsored Stories". Christopher Heine has reported for ClickZ "Facebook Ticker to Carry Sponsored Stories." Distribution for Sponsored Stories will be increased by Facebook by allowing them to run in the ticker across the site, ClickZ News has reported. The ticker, which is a lightweight newsfeed seen on the upper right-hand part of Facebook.com, was launched in August. The social context ads have been running only via the app ticker for Facebook games so far.
Annie Ta, Facebook spokesperson, is said to have said in an emai "Starting on Monday, we are continuing to slowly roll out Sponsored Stories in the ticker across Facebook. Sponsored Stories help people see more relevant marketing on Facebook and they can be twice as engaging as ads on Facebook." Sponsored Stories were first launced during January, and these ad units have become an important focus of Facebook's pitch to agencies, brands, and political marketers.
Ben Parr has reported for Mashable "Facebook Turns Friend Activity Into New Ad Format." Facebook's new Sponsored Stories are a new ad format that turns your friends’ actions into promoted content. Jim Squires, who is with Facebook Product Marketing, has told Mashable Sponsored Stories is “a way for marketers to sponsor activities that happen throughout the News Feed.”
Companies are able to choose to take certain user actions, such as checkins or actions within Facebook apps, and then feature them in the column on the right side of the News Feed. An interesting difference between Sponsored Stories and TwitterPromoted Tweets is that the user defines the advertised content in Facebook’s format, not the advertiser. This is an exciting development in the evolution of Facebook.
