Last year, Facebook held a competition for ad agencies to come up with ideas that will help brands promote themselves on the social networking site. Leo Burnett emerged as the winner and the winning concept has been recently launched by Facebook. Burnett's bright idea was to add a Comments section to the Sponsored Stories that appear on the right of the page.

Here's how it works. Brands can post images, videos and questions, which will appear as a Sponsored Story. Below the Sponsored Story, users will see a comment box where they can feed their comments and responses. Once a user replies, the conversation will appear on the user's news feed, hence encouraging users' friends to also comment.

It is definitely better then counting Likes for a brand page. This concept makes it more interactive, encouraging conversation between the brand and the users. Facebook has been trying to improve the social networking site as a platform for ads; last year itself they launched ‘Sponsored Stories' and ‘Ads with Friends'. It's too early to say how effective the Comments ad unit has been, but brands like Hallmark and Allstate have already experimented with it.

What do you think about the Comments ad section? Do you think it will benefit brands in engaging with their users? Will you comment in such conversations or will you consider it as spam? Let us know in your comments below.

- Prerna Arora