• by Rob Jewell , May 16, 2012

With the new Facebook Pages, the official lines between paid, owned and earned media are now officially gone, creating a flexible, engaging and scalable advertising model combining the best of digital and traditional advertising in a single platform.

However, post fMC, marketers had just 30 days to get their Facebook Pages in shape and brand marketers had to scurry to come up with engaging timeline content for their new Pages. Not an easy task now that ad creative is out, and Page posts are in.

The important thing to remember is that Facebook Pages are now “Mission Control” for brands.

Now, Facebook “ads” can begin as content posted to a Facebook Page; brands may not always need to create separate ad copy. Brands will need to become great content publishers because the content that drives the most engagement will gain distribution as ads through News Feed and mobile and this can be amplified through paid distribution – i.e. Sponsored Stories.

According to Facebook, brands are only reaching about 16% of fans each week. With their new Reach Generator, Facebook is guaranteeing extending this reach to 75% each month with fans seeing brands’ messages as Sponsored Stories on the right-hand side of their homepage or in their News Feed.

This is a big shift for many brands, since most have always invested in fans, but now they need to invest in creating compelling content to keep those fans constantly engaged. The popular thinking is that the more engaging a post on a brand’s Page, the more viral the brand’s growth can be.

The content that gets the most engagement is now the new ‘Premium,' thus gaining distribution on News Feed and mobile. These new channels of inventory for Premium are expected to perform 40% to 80% better than Facebook’s previous product.

Acquiring engaged fans has become more critical than ever for brands, as these fans will help drive word-of-mouth marketing at scale when they share aspects of your brand with their friends, essentially creating earned media at scale.

So, what exactly does this mean for brands?

1. Page content is critical.
2. Brands need to better at monitoring engagement with Page posts in order to increase amplification of Page content and stories (i.e. brands will buy distribution for content which fans find engaging).
3. These new formats will double engagement rates and traffic to Facebook Pages, which implies a brand’s ad dollars are going further.
4. Ads in News Feed will receive five to 10 times higher CTRs than standard ad formats ---Premium inventory just became "cheaper" through increased engagement 
5. Facebook Ads are now an extension of content
6. Engagement with Facebook Pages drives ads to be cheaper so brands have 200x the reach through socially aware ads.