Facebook announced yesterday in a post on its developer website some interesting changes to its advertising API due to take effect on April 9th. Amongst the various changes, Facebook expressed its intent to eliminate the controversial sponsored stories.
The ads actually are not "coming from friends", but they leverage an interaction made with a page or an app.
Is it really the end of Facebook Sponsored Stories?
Facebook clearly states its plan to "sunset sponsored stories" on April 9th in its post; however, it is actually not good news for opponents of the ad format. Facebook is said to have earned over $230 million on sponsored stories between January 2011 and August 2012, according to Reuters, and is not ready to give up the lucrative ad format.
Marketers can continue to use sponsored stories until April 9th, after which all existing sponsored stories will automatically be converted into a different ad format. If you are currently advertising on Facebook but haven't used the sponsored stories yet, we encourage you to give it a try before April, in order to get used to leveraging social context and better plan its integration with other ad format.
We would like to hear your opinion on sponsored stories and how you plan on using the new social context integration in all ad formats, get in touch with us in the comment section below or on Twitter.