• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 20, 2012

Underscoring its quest to generate more ad revenue, Facebook said today that companies running Facebook Offers will now have to create ads to promote their Offers. “Businesses will still be able to run Offers for a minimal budget, but ads must be created in order for people to see Offers in their news feeds,” Facebook announced today.

The step comes as Facebook rolls out its Offers service globally (Japan will launch next week) to all Facebook pages with more than 400 fans. The social network also added the ability for companies to include a barcode or unique code in an Offer.

“As one of the most requested features from businesses, this will allow businesses to better track the results of their Offers campaigns. This also makes it possible to run Offers for e-commerce sites online,” Facebook said.

Launched earlier this year, Offers essentially allows businesses to push coupons and deals to users’ news feeds directly from their Facebook page. People redeem Offers by e-mail or on a mobile device by clicking the “Get Offer” link. But now marketers will have to buy ads for Offers to appear in the news feed. Page owners will be charged at least $5 per Offers post, according to Inside Facebook.

Facebook said today many businesses have had “great success” with Offers, citing as an example, ARIA Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, which saw more than 1,500 rooms booked a night after running Offers on Facebook. That translated into ROI of 5X.