Running Contests on Facebook No Longer Free

Last week, Facebook announced that all contests or sweepstakes run on its social network must first go through approval.

With the new promotional guidelines, marketers would be faced with a lot of restrictions when running these promotions.

Also, according to CNET, this new policy might be the first step towards Facebook’s plan for a new revenue stream. Marketers are told that they would need to purchase ad space to run promotions through Facebook.

If sources are accurate, minimum ad buy is $10,000 for 30 days, using Facebook’s self-service advertising system or $30,000 for 30 days of Facebook home page ads.

Facebook representative refused to comment on this.

A summary of the promotional guidelines

1. The promotions must be administered through an application directed by Facebook. No more status updates and fan page contests

2. The promotions must be located on either the canvas Page of a separate Facebook application or on an application box in your Facebook Page tab

3. Materials for the promotions must be submitted for review and approval at least 7 days prior to the start date of the promotions

Basically…

You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as making a post on a profile or Page, status comment or photo upload.

You can: Use a third party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo through a third-party application to enter the contest.
You cannot: Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by becoming a fan of your Page.

You can: Only allow fans of your Page to access the tab that contains the third-party application for the promotion.