Facebook instant personalization coming to banners everywhere

October 18, 2010 – 9:49 am | by Kevin Skobac

A second Facebook post in as many weeks.  Facebook is apparently launching another interesting innovation, though in a small under-the-radar test:  Facebook and select advertisers are working together to incorporate social-graph powered instant personalization in banner campaigns across the web.  This essentially extends Facebook’s social engagement ads out across the web.  This means when you see a standard 300×250 banner ad for Mountain Dew when you’re reading an article on CNN.com you will see the same type of social endorsement you see on the ads on Facebook.com, how many likes the brand has, and which of your friends have liked it, right in the banner.

Why is this important?  Social endorsement has a huge impact on performance metrics.  Nielsen published a study in April that shows the social endorsement (i.e. your friend’s likes) has a significant impact on ad recall, awareness, and purchase intent (e.2. below).  Interaction with the social ads also generates Facebook newsfeed stories, which lead to further reach and engagement.

This is an early test of a feature that probably won’t be available to a lot of advertisers soon, and it definitely has the chance to trigger privacy concerns, but it has the potential to disrupt online display ads significantly.

UPDATE: A Facebook employee has responded that this isn’t really instant personalization as Facebook defines it because data isn’t being passed to the publisher (see comment below)

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  • This is not instant personalization.

    This small test involves the Like button, which is in iframe in the ad, so that only Facebook sees when someone clicks on the Like button in the ad. We do not share any individual data with the advertisers or the publisher on which the ad appears.
  • Fran - thanks for responding and clarifying! Personally I think whether the information is passed to the publisher or not doesn't change or discount the point I was making- the incredible significance of perceived social endorsement. I will clarify in an update about the personalization nomenclature though.
  • This is not instant personalization.

    This small test involves the Like button, which is in iframe in the ad, so that only Facebook sees when someone clicks on the Like button in the ad. We do not share any individual data with the advertisers or the publisher on which the ad appears.
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