Status Plug: Should Facebook Page Admins Sell Their Status Updates?

Regardless of our personal feelings, it’s clear there are a growing number of social ad networks, like Magpie and adCause, that capitalize on status updates. We now know that advertisers will pay and some users will gladly accept cash to Tweet about their products.

We don’t think these ads are wise without disclosure that they’re ads, since your followers might see them as a personal endorsement, breaking down the trust relationship. (Some followers might also find them annoying and stop following, but that’s another issue.)

Status Plug, an ad network just for Facebook pages, is one of the newest entrants in the space and hopes to appeal to page admins looking to cash in on their social capital, and advertisers who want to reach page fans and their friends.

Both advertisers and page admins — you must have 10,000 fans or more — can sign up with Status Plug. Interested admins share a bit about their page, audience, and minimum ad buy rates. They’re then listed in a page directory, where advertisers can browse, opt to bid on prospective buys, and create their ad.

Advertisers control the content of the ads which can include text, video, audio, and images. They can also specify the publish date and any additional special instructions. Should the page admin accept the offer, their page will post a rich-media update with said content. Status Plug will pay 70% of the agreed upon amount via PayPal (they keep the rest) within 5 days of the ad being published. You can see demo ads on the Status Plug page.

In true Facebook fashion, Status Plug ads are published as status updates and Facebook users can engage with them — share, comment, like — just like normal status updates. Since advertisers control the content, the boundaries between actual update and sponsored update could easily be blurred. In fact, we see no requirement to disclose that the update is an ad, which puts this on shaky ethical ground: would you trust a page admin who puts ads in his feed without disclosure?

Status Plug is currently not available to regular FacebookFacebook reviews users; you must have a public page with more than 10,000 fans. Those same admins, however, can completely sell out and turn over page administration to the right buyer for the right price.

Right now the directory of hopeful page admins consists of region-specific pages. Denver, Tucson, Oregon, St. Louis, and even my hometown, San Diego, have put their updates for sale. Since most of these are pages for users by users with a shared interest, one could take the stance that the admins shouldn’t sell ads to communities that have previously existed ad-content free (outside of Facebook’s more obvious ads). But there’s always two sides to a story, so we’ll let you weigh in on this hot topic.