TheFind Tells Partners New Focus Is All About Facebook Product Ads

A little over a week after announcing its acquisition by Facebook, TheFind has begun notifying businesses about where its new focus will lie as part of the social giant: Facebook Product Ads.

The shopping search engine had already said it would be shutting down its site in a matter of weeks after the acquisition. Facebook had said in a statement that with theTheFind, “Together, we believe we can make the Facebook ads experience even more relevant and better for consumers.” It was clear that helping to power and grow Facebook’s Product Ads program, but from the email, that appears to be Facebook’s sole focus for leveraging its new team and technology, for now at least.

The email from TheFind does not mince words that Facebook is looking to build this piece of its ad business, with the hope that retailers will turn their once-free listings on TheFind into paid ads on Facebook. Partners, TheFind says, will soon be hearing from a member of their Facebook account team “to explore how you can use Facebook’s Product Ads to connect your products with new and existing customers from the 1.39 Billion people who use Facebook every month.”

Here’s the email:

The move underscores how seriously Facebook is taking its entry into shopping ads — a space dominated by Google Shopping, but that also includes competition from Bing and Amazon among others.

Advertisers must work with a Facebook partner or feed management service to upload and manage product feeds to Facebook at this point, but that will become self-serve “soon” in Power Editor, according to Facebook.