Facebook Embedded Posts Create Ad Potential, PR Problems

The Interwebs were much abuzz about yesterday’s announcement from Facebook about the slow rollout of embedded posts, in which you can take a post from Facebook and embed it on your site, much like how embedded Tweets function.

Embedded Facebook posts will let you like and share a post right from the page it’s on. This is generally regarded as a good thing, especially for website owners who want to have more Facebook interactivity on their sites while still preserving page views (notice how the first sites to trial this service are pageview-driven web publishers). A publisher can put up a Facebook post on their page’s news story and get the interaction and community without having the visitor leave the website. Clicking on an embedded post to comment takes the user back to your Facebook page.

What’s not to love about the power of embedding Facebook content right on your website?

Ads, of course. By including embedded posts on your website, you give Facebook permission and the capability to feature not only the post you’ve selected, but in theory every other post available in their inventory. That’s fair – they’re providing a service at no cost and need to get value from it.

What kind of ads? Presumably anything that can fit in a newsfeed ad. By having embedded Facebook posts all over the web, Facebook will have created ad space in prime, editorial blocks of content – and imagine what that might look like with their other product announcement from yesterday:

It’s not out of the question to imagine that a video embedded post on your web page could also show Facebook’s 15 second ads. The 15 second ad format is obviously targeted for running on Instagram properties (matching the existing 15 second format), but it could just as easily run on Facebook’s properties as well.

That’s not the only thing to take into consideration, either. What content do you have on your Facebook Page that could be embedded off-page to another website? Do your posts work out of context? Are there posts that you’d prefer not to see on, say, a competitor’s website where they can showcase the occasional gaffe?

Imagine what an inflammatory Facebook post (see any of the recent corporate kerfuffles) will do on detractors’ websites. Think carefully about what’s on your page now and what could find its way all over the web. This might be an especially good time to go through your Facebook Page and do some cleaning of things you wouldn’t want to see on detractors’ and competitors’ web sites.

Takeaways

Web property owners: Take ads into consideration when you start putting Facebook embedded posts on your web properties.

Marketers and advertisers: Start refining your skills for 15 second video ads. Also, remember in your metrics that embedded posts will probably artificially inflate your reach numbers in Facebook Insights.

Facebook page owners: as Facebook rolls out embedded posts, think about how your posts will look by themselves, out of context with the rest of your Facebook page posts. Are they good enough to stand alone?

PR professionals: Policing the Facebook page and managing the brand will be more important than ever.

Are you ready for Facebook Embedded Posts?

Christopher S. Penn
Vice President, Marketing Strategy

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