Last month, Facebook began testing a new feature for advertisers. “Sponsored Results” allow marketers to purchase ads that appear within search results in Facebook’s search bar when a user types a certain keyword.
Now, according to TechCrunch, Facebook is telling marketers to fire away by making Sponsored Results available through the Power Editor tool. Sponsored Results are also officially a part of the Ads API. Officially, Sponsored Results give “advertisers the ability to embed ads to the list of tyeahead results.”
More from Facebook:
Advertisers can create standard on-site ads (with a 70 character message) that lead to Facebook pages or apps (including custom tabs on their page). Ads can be targeted against Facebook entities, including Pages, Places, Apps, and subscribe-enabled users. Facebook users see the ad when the targeted entity appears in their search results. Ads only show in desktop search results, not on mobile and not on the “more results” page.
These ads cannot direct users anywhere off-site – for now.
To users, yes this means ads in your search bar. Advertisers can target the ads to show up when users type certain keywords. Apparently, Zynga and Match.com are some of the big name developers that are already flooding your search bar with Sponsored Results.
The Sponsored Results work like any other ad on Facebook, meaning you can click the “x” on the upper right-hand corner to do away with them. And just like with the rest of them, Facebook will ask you exactly what displeased you about said advert.
In some cases (like the one seen above), the Sponsored Result will appear at the top of the box. In other cases, a “Top Hit” result will appear on top of the Sponsored Results.