At a time when most publishers are reporting dwindling sales and revenues Facebook is showing numbers that might put a whole new spin on online advertising as an industry.
Facebook Inc. said the number of customers using its automated online-advertising system more than tripled in the past year, according to Bloomberg. The advertising system in question is “Engagement Ads” by Facebook.
For those who don’t know, the ad system basically lets companies make small edits to their ads during campaigns and suggests words for advertisers to target users. These are the same ads that come on profile pages and fan pages on Facebook. These are mostly used by brands to generate fans on Facebook for their fan pages.
In the meanwhile, Techcrunch reported that Facebook has accepted claims of Click Fraud on its network. It yesterday reported the piece of news which claimed advertisers are facing a high volume of click frauds -
A big part of that revenue comes from cost-per-click advertising from small self serve advertisers. And right now those advertisers aren’t very happy. They’ve been complaining about click fraud of up to 100% for weeks, and the situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
These were based on a thread at the website Wickedfire which were filled with complaining advertisers posts. Today Facebook issued a statement through one of its employees on the thread accepting that click fraud is an issue on the site and that they are dealing with the same.
It would be interesting to note how Facebook sorts this issue out because, a large part of its growth above has been through small and medium advertisers testing out its ad system last year. If they continue to be at the receiving end of fraudulent clicks it will put a big question mark over their continuity on the system. Facebook has however said that all advertiser damages would be accounted for and advertisers who have lost money will be duly credited.
Considering its recent interest in India, Facebook can take this news ahead to countries like ours and perhaps engage local companies to try their hand on their system as well. If that happens it would certainly be a welcome move for many publishers as they can then hook these advertisers who are still sitting on the fence.
