Facebook Launches Sponsored Results API

Anne Garcia - August 28, 2012

The social network has launched a new way for advertisers to drive more awareness of their app, page or place. Facebook announced a Sponsored Results API that is available for developers to sponsor search results.

Advertisers will have the ability to embed ads in the list of results within Facebook’s toolbar when a user conducts a search. Facebook says that the ads will have a 70 character message and lead users to Facebook pages or apps and can target Facebook entities, such as Pages, Places or Apps. The Sponsored Results can not drive traffic off-site to an advertiser’s web site and must stay on the social network.

Bidding for Sponsored Results on Facebook will be on a cost-per-click (CPC) model or an optimized cost-per-thousand (CPM) model. The minimum bid price is $0.01 for targeting the same entity that you are promoting and $0.15 for targeting other entities on Facebook.

The Sponsored Results will only appear when a user conducts a search using a desktop device, and are not yet available on mobile devices. Facebook says that advertisers can create Sponsored Results using the Facebook Power Editor, which was released a few months ago.

The social network says that their search function is one of the most utilized features on its site, which enables advertisers to impress their ads in a new way on Facebook.

Below is a screen shot of an example of Sponsored Results API that Facebook has released.