Apart from being the social network with the highest amount of users, it is also the platform for online advertisement with the biggest reach. The Facebook model relies on advertising.

Today all companies and brands foresee a part of their social media budget for Facebook ads.

Well, a few days ago Facebook launched a new update in their policy on branded content. The idea is to make it easier for brands, companies and marketers to share promoted posts on the network with the help of verified pages.

But first of all, what is branded content?

Facebook defines it as “content that refers to or mentions a brand, product or sponsor.” In short, it’s a post published to promote something in particular.This would include any post by a celebrity who posts about liking a specific product.

Before verified pages were not authorized to publish this kind of content, because it would have converted the post in some sort of spam email assuming that he/she was paid by the associated company.

Under this new policy verified pages can now share sponsored content, but only if they follow the rules.As a requisite, Facebook requires that the verified page mentions the page he/she promotes.Once mentioned, marketers of the page will have access to the analytics of this post.

What does this mean?

This means that they can see the repercussion of this publication in real time. The mentioned brand will have access to the data of the post via its own Facebook page.

The type of publications that you can use are links, photos, videos, messages, articles, and 360º videos (basically everything minus life videos).

How to identify this update?

Easy. Just look for the icon of a handshake:

Once you click on the icon, you will be able to write the name of the product, brand or sponsor that you need to include. On the newsfeed the post will appear with the tag.

Careful. Facebook is very clear on the topic of not complying with the new rules deleting the post immediately. To prevent that ads are too promotional, the company does not have the permission to include watermarks, pre-roll ads or banners in these sponsored posts.

During the next few weeks, Facebook will start to offer this service to all verified pages.