It’s offical. Facebook is now an advertising network with Web-wide ambitions. Today’s announcement of Facebook Ads is the company’s play to become a major force in brand advertising online, as we reported previously. Facebook Ads is a new platform for creating and disseminating socially-aware ads on Facebook.
Facebook Ads is comprised of three parts: Ads targeted at Facebook members using their profile data such as age, gender, relationship status, work history, and stated interests (Social Ads); ad widgets that advertisers can put on their own sites that allow Facebook members to become product endorsers, and spread that endorsement to all of their friends on Facebook through their personal feeds (Beacon); and aggregated profile information that is exposed to Facebook advertisers that tells them what kind of people are getting their ads and who is clicking on them (Insight).
Facebook will be controlling the inventory for these Social Ads, not Microsoft (which continues to serve the more generic, standard ads on Facebook). It is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s belief that these will become extremely relevant brand advertisements because they are akin to personal recommendations from your friends. So, for example, if I choose to endorse a particular movie, all my friends will see that I like that movie in the feeds that shows what everyone in their network is up to. An endorsement, in that case, is yet another action that Facebook tracks.
Whether consumers actually want to become product marketers is another question entirely. To the extent that endorsing a brand is seen as a way to express your identity or expertise rather than as a way to flog a product, people could embrace it. But advertisers have to be real careful, because if these ads seem too much like ads, people may actually lose friends over it. And those once-happy customers could turn irate quickly.
But if Facebook figures this out, we may start seeing these social ads appearing elsewhere on the Web as well. For now, though, it is a Facebook-only program that goes live tomorrow.
Let me be the first one to congratulate FB!
What about developers? Will they be able to add Social Ads to their applications?
Oddly I was expecting more.
I was expecting them to create an AdSense embed in any page style ad network that works off cookies + their social graph to figure out who your and what your interested in buying in relation to the site you are at. Granted google essentially does this , but facebook would have a different type of data set and could given time deliver a different type of targeting across the ENTIRE web.
It baffles me that they are so set on creating this closed ecosystem.
Maybe they plan to do it , Maybe thats next?
Great analysis, We’ve put our heads together at Forrester and compared and contrasted MySpace to Facebook’s ad platform
For additional detailed analysis (and to find out what really matters) I’d love to get your feedback at this post
http://tinyurl.com/344jed
This is GREAT!!!
Great for monetizing Facebook, but what about the users? How many people think it’s cool toting brands around in their social graph? … Oh wait… I do that everyday with the type of car I drive, iPhone, Sports Jacket brand, jeans brand, type of coffee I drink, phone I use… etc etc etc…
A useful analogy here is the failure of most contrived ‘viral’ marketing campaigns. There are ad agencies, for example, who will tell you they specialize in viral marketing, but the reality is consumers are inherently resistant to being encouraged to participate in this kind of behaviour, and truly viral things tend to be unplanned or just naturally lend themselves to conversation between friends.
For example, when I downloaded Skype I was one of the first 7,000 or so people to do so, but out of the blue I quickly had other friends asking me to install it so they could talk to me. By virtue of the kind of service Skype offered, friends were motivated to recommend it to friends. I may be completely out to lunch, but I just don’t see the small number of real friends most people have on Facebook using that channel to make genuine recommendations.
Way to go FB
I love these mind altering ads.
FB has just jumped the shark. Users will start leaving in droves because they will now feel exploited. Z’s arrogance has finally caught up with him, as it should have a long time ago.
The Beacon aspect is rather interesting. Any word on whether Google’s OpenSocial standard will allow for similar functionality?
Why limit this type of service to just Facebook…
So users are now expected to participate in activities that generate revenue for FB. Looks like crowd sourcing to me (without the revenue sharing).
By the way, a good term to use for this spread by networks is “Endorse”. This really is more of a marketing word of mouth play than what we know as advertising.
Call me naive or paranoid, but up until all this facebook advertising spiel began, i actually thought that this is how they were serving ads already!
facebook has been huge for a while, so i suspected ulterior use of the social graph data for a while.
anyways, it makes sense; just… how long will everyone mind the “walled garden” model? imho im sick and tired of facebook-as-an-email-replacement… Wonder what advertisers will make out of this.
-mp
Interesting move, FB. The Insight aspect is a great idea… however, adding brands as friends is just polluting the social graph. Maybe they could have handled it differently…
Good Move.
Read my blog about Google Ventures
http://webcurrents.wordpress.com/
Facebook is toast.
DAMN… Techcrunch page load opens very slow on high speed connection….
I think techcrunch need to buy high budget server.
Other webpage is fine…
What’s Facebook?
If don’t believe it. Why don’t you check out speed.
http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_.....%0Acnn.com
That’s it?
Facebook is f*cked.
Facebook or Amway? I’ve already un-friended people in analog life over the latter and I’ll do it at FB if this gets too nuts.
Yeah these guys really think that can do whatever the hell they want with people’s information now … it will backfire and many people will probably opt to either leave or change their privacy settings if offered the option.
This really makes me wonder about how much public information I will share on FB going forward. As much as I enjoy Facebook, I am now questioning privacy issues. I suspect people will start to share a lit bit less personal data if they know that advertisers will be mining it.
Yea, doesn’t this just make you really self-conscious about what you do on Facebook? Seems like they’re opening up a need for a private, uncluttered, unfrightening social network.
Isn’t this just Yahoo? Branded advertising on their inventory with targeted ads based on your preferences and usage patterns? I don’t see anything new here.
My facebook news feed’s been down for over 24 hours.
How dumb of FB to ignore the revenue sharing model with users. Hmmm
They are So dumb to ignore it way before. they could have been a lot richer what an idiot.
thanks for this… was wondering if i should sign up on the facebook thing… now, i have no doubts i shouldn’t…
“I like that movie in the feeds that shows”
you mean
“I like that movie in the feeds that show
no?
People tolerate ads because they seem benign, and at times, off the wall. Not sure if the Facebook model is hitting a little to close to home and personal.
I foresee advertisers attempting creepy ad tricks which work on a subliminal level…ie, ‘you are special, one of a kind and desire a double fudge, cheesecake right now…
they should’ve just released their google adsense, and split that extra revenue with the app developers. what was wrong with that…
Facebook had just become “the man”, part of “the system”. using our personal info for thier profit. This will be thier downfall.
Facebook has just stopped being cool. Myspace went down, and now facebook is down. Who’s gonna step up next?
The developers are not at all happy with this. You can check out the discussions on the dev forum. We thought we may get some share but FB wants to keep all of it for itself. This is so Microsoft like…
I dunno…I kind of agree with others that this might be a little too much. I’m not a privacy hype, but this just feels like hijacking and commercializing personal conversations.
It’s be like if I sent an email to a friend via GMail and it turned the email into an affiliate link. Yeah, I know GMail has ads running alongside your mail, but unless the FB system is a near copy of AdSense running on the side of the page, then they might be pushing it.
Plus with AdSense it’s sort of non-personal. We all know (or at least think) that it’s nothing more than a bot tying ads to page content. With FB they’re openly marketing the idea of snooping in on people’s relationships and semi-personal communications to throw ads at them. Even if the only difference is in the packaging, positioning it so blatantly might create a backlash.
So… By becoming a “fansumer” and joining a brand, I fully accept more spam in my feed? As if the application spam wasn’t enough!
Why on earth would I agree to promote and receive spam?
31: The noun referred to by the verb “shows” is “movie”, not “feeds” - therefore the singular form is correct. Try stripping out the extra bits of the sentence if it’s not clear - “I like that movie that shows” - makes sense; “I like in the feeds that show” - meaningless.
Back in July I wrote the bear case for Facebook:
http://bernardlunn.wordpress.c.....bear-case/
At that time I wrote:
What would change my mind:
1. A monetization strategy beyond CPM that does not involve spamming people.
2. An app vendor making serious money (note, making money not just getting a gazillion people to look at the widget a few times)
Nothing to change my mind from this announcement.
Isn’t this just affiliate marketing, except the affiliate gets no money. hmm…
Nobody remembers HotorNot’s foray into a similar idea (eg. promoting brands on their profile page)? At least for their users it wasn’t a problem, though one could argue about the sophistication and honesty of the users on their site.
One thing to note, is that it was long enough ago that I’m sure FB saw that and just took the idea ones step further. Hardly innovative, certainly more bold.
Allowing outside “partner” sites to write to the Feed in this controlled ways is fine and a good sign of where the product is moving. But this only addresses a limited amount of monetizable space: the News Feed. Sure that is where facebook users’ attention is, so the ad is very valuable, but i’d like to see FB expanding their monitizable space by selling/brokering ads that could appear off facebook. To that FB would laugh that there is still so much low hanging fruit in monetizing their own 36B monthly pageviews.
Great, now we need to worry about friends bombarding us with ads on top of hundreds of annoying group invites, event invites, application invites…I loved Facebook when it first started, but this is getting out of control and I find myself using it less and less.
I guess this is what happens as facebook gets more “corporate.”
Allen Vartazarian
Famesource.com - Claim your fame!
http://www.famesource.com/splash.aspx?r=17
If I understand this correctly, the bombardment with ads happens only if you enter Facebook. Like Allen says, if it goes over board you’ll simply stop going there!
In general, I think the Facebook approach is interesting. If you like something, chances are that your fiends would like it too. And if both you and your friends hang out at Facebook then I am sure you won’t mind being told what your friends like/liked!
One wonders whether brand marketing is really the powerful tool or whether “last mile” marketing of an actual opportunity to buy matters more. Facebookers will gravitate to endorsing brands: it’s cool to endorse Coke, but not so cool to talk about the Safeway where you bought it.
Yet, does Internet advertising pay better for brands or for actual purchases? Doesn’t the Internet disintermediate such things and focus on doing it right now with just a simple click?
Seems like Facebook has a lot of potential to create an appetite which Google still wins by satisfying for the actual purchase:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.co.....-the-sale/
Why do you maggots block Ron Paul? You are bringing about your own demise!
i really liked facebook when it was just geared towards the college crowd. it was more exclusive and relevant towards what we really used it for.
now it has no more use than finding out peoples birthdays.