Until now, all clicks on Facebook ads were considered equal — regardless of whether they were interactions within the social network or “link clicks” directing users to external content.
Through its official blog, Mark Zuckerberg’s company announced that from now on, cost per click (CPC) will only count clicks that lead to websites, calls to action, external video views, or app installations.
According to the company, the reason for this change is their ongoing effort to make their advertising offering easier for advertisers to understand and better aligned with their campaign objectives.
Beyond this change in how CPC is measured, advertisers will still be able to run campaigns to generate page likes or interactions within the social network. However, these will now be completely independent campaign types.
In practice, this represents a reorganization of ads according to campaign objectives. It also reflects Facebook’s intention to strengthen its advertising tools by making it clearer for advertisers how they are spending their money.
Finally, this update may open the door for Facebook to introduce different pricing models for ads that direct users to internal content versus external content. Following recent algorithm changes aimed at encouraging brands and users to stay within the platform, it wouldn’t be surprising if, in the near future, campaigns linking to external content become more expensive than those generating actions within the social network.
