Facebook is now testing a new kind of engagement ad. Justin Smith of Inside Facebook found an ad for Chik-fil-A, which requires the user to fill out a form in order to get a free sample.
Smith says the new format is “the most integrated leadgen-style home page ad unit we’ve seen Facebook launch.”
“Facebook has allowed third party researchers to place survey ads in the home page ad slot before, but with the new ‘free sample’ ad, the response form is presented in a popup over the News Feed, and users can easily propagate information they enter in the form to their profile and share their action with friends as well,” he says.
Image from Inside Facebook
The ad looks pretty much like most other Facebook ads. It’s got a logo on the left, some text on the right, and an “X” in the upper right-hand corner. It also has a call to action at the bottom, saying “Get a free Chicken Biscuit now.”
Once that call to action is clicked, the user is presented with the expanded version of the ad, which reveals the form.
Facebook is clearly looking to make some big improvements to its advertising business. Last week, they were reported to be readying a new ads manager, as well as a new bulk uploader tool. They also recently made the design change to make the ads more consistent with other Facebook content, by adding the “like” option and the “x”.
