Just received an email from my contact at Facebook with the following information:

As of tomorrow, it will be possible to create engagement adverts using the self serve tool. This means that you can promote business profiles and events on Facebook using the run-of-site (ASU) adverts and encourage users to become a fan of that page or RSVP to an event invitation directly from the ad space, as the (very basic!) examples below show:

This is replacing the ‘social actions’ feature which allowed ads to link to a page but didn’t let users fan the page from the ad itself. This is potentially huge for brands/businesses with profiles (create a profile here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php) as it means you can pay on a CPC basis to generate fans. This used to be only available on the homepage on a CPM model.

With business profiles becoming much more like a personal profile, they are a great way for brands to communicate with their customers on a more personal level, with status updates, videos, competitions and so forth, e.g. http://www.facebook.com/adidasoriginals The ability to run targeted ads driving traffic to those business profiles means that users can interact with their favourite brands with just one click whilst browsing Facebook. the average CPC on the self-serve tool (http://www.facebook.com/advertising) is currently around $0.25, so effectively, a brand/advertiser can gain an engaged user/consumer for about $0.25.

I’ve just emailed back with the following questions so I’ll let you know what the answers are when I get them:

1. if someone clicks ‘become a fan’ on the ad, do they still get taken to the Fan Page or do they just become fans and not move pages?
2. can someone click the ad and go to the fan page but not click ‘become a fan’?
3. can you now only pay when they become a fan and not when they click through to the Fan Page but don’t become fans?
4. can you still get ‘endorsed’ by existing fans when the ad is shown to friends of fans by having their friend’s name and picture accompany the ad? AKA ‘Social Actions’?