Facebook confirms advertising placements for redesign

No sooner did I post up yesterday about Facebook's redesign and what that means for us advertisers than said social network sends me an email...

Hi,

Thanks for advertising with Facebook. You may have already heard that Facebook is about to get a new look aimed at making user profiles simpler and more relevant. You can read more overall about the new design here http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/press/releases.php?p=47448, but let's also take a deeper look into what the new design means for you.

While the content on the site will remain the same, the new design will shift the placement of ads on the site. Advertisers won't need to make any changes to the ads they already have created in order for them to appear on the new site design. The look of the ads will remain the same, but they will be located in a different part of the page.

The most basic change that you'll notice is that ads will now appear on the right side of Facebook pages instead of on the left. The new placement integrates the ads into the new site design in a meaningful way. As many as two ads may show at one time on any given page.

In addition to these changes, you will also see a new ad on the home page. This new ad is located just to the right of the News Feed, and will initially run a limited set of advertisers. As this space continues to evolve and improve, we'll provide more details.

If you have questions about your advertising or how it might be affected by the new design, please visit the Help Center at http://www.facebook.com/adshelp or contact our team using the form located here: http://www.facebook.com/adscontact

As always, we welcome any feedback you might have to help us make our advertising products as effective and useful as possible.

Enjoy the new design!

Sincerely,
The Facebook Ads Team

So there we go - the adverts are moving to the right side of the page, which could signal better returns for an advertiser. Eye-tracking has revealed that people tend to view webpages in a clockwise fashion, starting from 10 o'clock.

Previously adverts were at around 7 o'clock, now they're earlier in the cycle, which hopefully will mean they're noticed quicker. And I suppose Google has grown to become an advertising behemoth on the back on right hand side adverts...

As I've mentioned previously on Facebook advertising, the clickthrough rates on Facebook are very poor, so anything is up from the poor returns advertisers currently get (and in an effort to finally monetise the network, Facebook must be hoping moving the adverts will help raise CTRs as well).

Labels: advertising, facebook