Updates to Facebook’s advertising Algorithm

by | Jan 22, 2014

Updates to Facebook's advertising Algorithm
3 min read

According to Facebook, a picture is worth a thousand words online in its new algorithm update where they have announced promoted posts are to become more visual. This will have a major impact on viral advertising done on Facebook.
Their goal is to have better and more relevant content sent to the users. This requires richer media to be shared including images and videos, rather than posts with only links in them.
This was already a common trend identified by a number of people within the Social Media Marketing industry, with images returning a higher click-through-rate than plain text with a link. However, Facebook will now be actively promoting ads and posts with images and videos with an overall goal of showing people more content they want to see.

Above is an example of a Facebook post with the thumbnail preview displayed. These are the type of posts Facebook is looking to now promote. It engages the audience and has an increased click-through-rate when compared to its plain text version.

This post has the same content, however it is much more appealing to both your customers and to Facebook. With their new algorithm, Facebook will promote this over the previous one.
While there is no magic formatting style that will capture all your audience, Facebook’s product manager Chris Turitzin suggested to “use the story type that best fits the message that you want to tell – whether that’s a status, photo, link or video.”
We recommend that you try to include a visual element into each Facebook post you make. This will not only promote your post to your audience and increase your impressions, but hopefully increase your social interactions to lead to conversions.

Kirsten Tanner
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