I am at Facebook’s social advertising announcement in New York City, where Mark Zuckerberg is about to take the stage and tell us all what we already think we know: Facebook is getting into the advertising business in a big way. Much of what will be announced today, such as projects code-named Beacon and Pandemic have already leaked out. We’ll see how much of that leaked information was correct, and what more there is to add. Facebook is certainly pulling out all the stops with this announcement, on the agenda later on is a panel with Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson and Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes that will be moderated by Charlie Rose (who charges a lot to do these things, or so I hear).
Facebook is announcing three things: Social Ads (ads targeted based on member profile data and spread virally), Beacon (a way for Facebook members to declare themselves fans of a brand on other sites and send those endorsements to their feeds), and Insight (marketing data that goes deep into social demographics and pyschographics which Facebook will provide to advertisers in an aggregated, anonymous way). These three things together make up Facebook Ads. Here are the press releases for Facebook Ads, Project Beacon, and its launch partners.
Zuckerberg just took the stage (keep in mind that he is addressing advertising executives and press in the audience). The following notes are in reverse-chronological order:
A few extra tidbits from press conference with Zuckerberg afterwards:
Q: “Are you worried this will make Facebok too commercial?”
Z: “Actually I think this will make it less commercial because the ads now are [more generic].”
Big point: Microsoft won’t be serving Social Ads. This will be controlled by Facebook. Zuckerberg clarifies: “Microsoft is the exclusive third-party provider of IAB standard ads. This is not going to go through Microsoft. We think it is a different kind of advertising.”
“The pricing mechanism will be completely auction-based. People can either bid for a CPC or a CPM.” You will also be able to buy non-social ads through this system as well, which should be turned on by tomorrow at this link.
People will not be able to opt out of these social ads or turn them off, at least for now, unless they stop revealing information about themselves on Facebook. Says Zuckerberg: “It is an ad-supported service. It is a free service.”
Zuckerberg doesn’t think he is competing with Google ads so much as offering a better way to create brand advertising online. Social Ads are not so much about buying a digital camera right now because you are in the middle of your shopping research. They are about planting suggestions for things you may want but do not even know that you want. That is what brand advertising is, and it represents the majority of ad dollars spent today offline.
My thoughts: This could be huge if done right, but it could also backfire badly for Facebook. If I start to think that my friends are advertising to me, I may no longer trust them (and, in fact, try to avoid them . .. by not logging into Facebook anymore). So the the trick is to make these appear to be genuine recommendations, and not ads. I am not sure how many people will be fooled by this, though. It risks turning something useful—the feed of my friends’ activities—into something spammy.
Zuckerberg Presentation
3:06 PM: “Everything you have seen here is launching tonight.” Launching with 40 partners [press release says 60] (including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, The New York Times, Sony Pictures, Verizon, Dove, and Zazzle). “This is something we have been working on for a long time. It is really good to share it with you guys.” [Zuckerberg walks off stage]
3:03: Insights. Aggregates profile data. “We look at the people your ads are reaching and break it down by age, gender, interests, and a whole lot more we are adding soon.” Says none of this will be personally identifiable. “We will be able to track how much people are talking about your brand in public forums across facebook. As you run ads on Facebook you will be able to see the exact mind share you are getting.”
2:57 PM: “Social Actions + Content = Social Ads.” They spread your message virally through the social graph. these ads will appear both in people’s feeds and as a personalized banner ad.
“Let’s talk about targeting. With Facebook you will be able to select exactly the audience you want to reach, and we will only show your ads to them. We know exactly what gender someone is, what activities they are interested in. their location, country, city or town, interests, gender,” work history, political views [Like what they've already done with Facebook Flyers].
2:52 PM: “Social distribution, now here is where it gets interesting. When somebody engages with your page, that is spread virally through the network. When someone says they are a fan of your brand, that becomes a trusted referral. It goes right to their Mini feed. A strong trusted referral for your brand. You will be able to craft the types of social actions you want to spread across the social graph.”
“We have created a product called Beacon that let’s you do this. Beacon will let users send information to their page, we confirm it, and share it on Facebook. One partner is eBay.” Can share listings from eBay on Facebook. So usres can share social actions from other websites and share them on Facebook. “This will be completely free.”
2:48: “the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today. As marketers pushing our information out is no longer enough. We are announcing anew advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about getting into the conversations between people. 3 pieces: build pages for advertisers, a new kind of ad system to spread the messages virally, and gain insights.”
Advertisers can build their own Facebook pages and design them any way they like: “We have photos, videos, discussion boards, any Flash content you want to bring to your page, plus any application a third party developer has made.”
2:46 PM: Messages spread virally. All you need to do is get your friends to engage with it and add it to their profiles. Gives example of how causes are spread across Facebook. Support Breast Cancer, more than 2 million members.
2:44 PM: Zuckerberg is explaining the social graph. “Where Facebook really excels is in helping you keep up with all of your connections at the same time. It is making the cost of communication so low that information can be pushed out more efficiently than it ever could from a few big companies.”
2:43 PM: Z: “More than 80 applications have more than one millions users.”
2:37 PM EST: Zuckerberg: “Once every hundred years media changes. the last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections.
“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than are recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.
“Have already passed 50 million users, doubling once every 6 months. only active users who have used facebook last 30 days. More than 25 million people are using Facebook every single day. Each person is viewing more than 40 pages a day, more than 65 billion page views a month.”
Notes:
Beacon Partners (Facebook advertising buttons that exist on other sites and when clicked are reflected in members’ feeds as a brand endorsements—how many of these brands would you bother to explicitly endorse to your Facebook friends, opr even identify with?):
eBay
Fandango
IAC brands (CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, iWon, Citysearch, Pronto.com, echomusic)
Travelocity
AllPosters.com
Blockbuster
Bluefly.com
CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter)
ExpoTV
Gamefly
Hotwire
Joost
Kiva,
Kongregate
LiveJournal
Live Nation
Mercantila
National Basketball Association
NYTimes.com
Overstock.com
(RED)
Redlight
SeamlessWeb,
Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Pictures
STA Travel
The Knot
TripAdvisor
Travel Ticker
TypePad
viagogo
Vox
Yelp
WeddingChannel.com
Zappos.com.
Few spelling errors, but looking forward to it.
Yeah me too. Can’t wait man… I love it. Like totally. Yes. Spelling errors, sprerros… you know who give a [] let’s just dance with zuckerberg.
get on stickam or justin.tv and imbed it here.
Oh wow what should we expect? I know this will be a hype though.
Great stuff … I’ll be giving analysis of this over on my post:
http://www.allf...k-announcement/
Thanks for covering this guys! Apparently you guys were among a small group of journalists. I’m jealous.
For coverage, and why this announcement matters, there’s details here.
We also compare it to MySpace’s Micro-Targetting announcement
Rise of the Fan-Sumer
http://www.web-...tter-to-brands/
Wow, an actual facebook entry worth reading. I’m getting excited now
Seriously …. you would think in Manhattan Erick’s connection would be better
“I am Facebook’s social advertising announcement in New York City, where Mark Zuckerberg is aboutto take teh”
“Mark Zuckerberg is aboutto take teh stage”
l33tspeaking poserizm right then and there
“OMG, ZOMG, Mark is such a hottie, I just wanna jump in his mone….. I mean pants”
There, I saved that one poster that ALWAYS posts this crap the trouble this time.
Get that stuff the hell outta here. :/
Nice to meet you. I am Facebook’s social user person. Greetings.
“Nice to meet you. I am Facebook’s social user person. Greetings.”
It’s l33tspeak foo.
Erick,
Have you heard or seen anything about Facebook Music yet?
Thanks,
Ed
Is it just me or are there others that can’t stand the hype surrounding young entrepreneurs like Mark Z like he is some kind of visionary business legend? For god sake, I have underwear older than him, sheesh. As far as I am concerned, he was in the right place at the right time, business visionary he is not.
“2:37 PM EST: Zuckerberg: “Once every hundred years media changes. the last hundred years have been defined by the mass media.”
Dude, you copied friendster like myspace did and made it for college kids.
Do you really think you’re that revolutionary?
Somebody’s head has gotten awfully big.
Visionaries: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs
Lucky-ass pimple-face punks: Mark Z., Larry, Sergey
Don’t be ridic. He’s well cool. Like so much cooler than you. Pimply, nah! He’s actually hot with brains. It was a totally originally idea! Like who else has thought of something like facebook. I no there are so many ova sites out der eg. myspace, bebo, but fb has the edge. Something doesnt have to be unique to be original. He’s made his own style and made it original. He’s a fucking billionaire. You’re not. Get da f*** ova it. Pimples.. you’ve got em on your ass. Ha ha. Ain’t I so hilarious! I’ll be a billionaire next week. SO BITE ME
It’s hard to fault a 23yr old billionaire. My head’s pretty big and I’m broke. Beacon sounds like crap though. Someone need to explain this whole social graph thing to Mark.
“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than are recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.”
It’s ‘trusted’ because it’s NOT advertising.
Hey I guess that it’s more social sites for us
That way, we can get more traffic to our website
I hope that it’s something good…
@18:
No, it’s the other way around. When it’s trusted people don’t call it advertising.
Awesome report, but underwhelming message by Fbook. Well, maybe the goods will be in the implementation. But this definitely furthers that FB is AOL Meme.
@16
visionaries are the ones with grand plans for the future – thats Mark, Larry, Sergey and a few more but those three get all the press.
Bill and Steve are more like icons (their visions become reality) then visionaries right now.
“Lucky-ass pimple-face punks: Mark Z., Larry, Sergey”
Larry and Sergey are anything but punks. I strongly disagree. Do some research.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg modified existing software and cloned school registries. Brin and Page created new software for organizing the internet in a meaningful way. Read some of their papers from Stanford. They’re for real.
“Steve are more like icons”
http://www.amaz...s/dp/0471720836
More like a punk.
@20:
Maybe if they don’t know it’s advertising.
@22, I heartily disagree. Did you know that Larry and Sergey initially pushed hard to get their technology sold to companies like Yahoo (who rejected them). They didn’t build Google into what it is now, that credit goes to Schmidt, the CEO, don’t confuse the two. Likewise, I am sure Mark is the designated spokesperson for FB. Making him out to be some kind of visionary is like making out an actor of a movie to be visionary, NOT!
This all sounds a lot like what had been leaked.
Great coverage guys! This is really big news and not some fluff or pr stunt like OpenSocial.
It will be interesting to see how the ad pages will incorporate applications. that could very interesting and possibly provide a revenue model for app owners?
The bottom line is this brings to the surface new ways in which advertisiers can engage and get their brands into people lives.
We will be providing more analysis this evening when these ad platform changes go live.
Cheers!
Rodney Rumford
Editor: http://www.facereviews.com
We at SocialMedia applaud the innovations Facebook is making on social advertising, some key threads of which we have been experimenting with at length with in our own social advertising network (via Appsaholic) on Facebook itself.
Social advertising is the next generation of advertising, going well beyond display, contextual and behavioral targeting. We and many other companies will be innovating on social advertising in a wide variety of ways following the key principle “Nothing influences people more than are recommendation from a trusted friend.”
We are at the very beginning of this new wave of innovation, and look forward to the exciting times ahead for consumers, advertisers and publishers of social applications both on and off social networks.
jerry yang should be upset, zuck is moving exactly into the market position that yahoo likes to maintain – close relationships with strong ad partners. google has gone the mass market route and doesn’t move as strongly in the direction of catering to a few large partners…this has always been yahoo’s thing.
if zuck has the partners he claims for real, yahoo shareholders should be very concerned
“We will be able to track how much people are talking about your brand in public forums across facebook. As you run ads on Facebook you will be able to see the exact mind share you are getting.”
Soooo…!!!
This is a BIGBROTHERbook.com after all !
f.. you Mark Zuckerberg !
P.S. Should be tested on rabbits first, not on students, they may be too smart.
Impressive stuff. I used to think Facebook was overvalued, but sounds like this Zuckerberg guy is the next Steve Jobs.
Allowing people to become “fans” of a brand within Facebook is a good idea (ex. HotLists). The Beacon concept is also a good one for cases where I want to share activities with friends (ex. I just wrote a review on Amazon). However, I don’t see the value for the consumer in allowing those brands to control the message that is sent to their friends through ads in the news feed or on profile pages. As a Facebook user, if I want to share a favorite brand with friends, I’ll send them a link, a video, or an invitation to the brand’s app. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see the incentive for consumers to give up control of the message by allowing these brands to display ads on their behalf.
This might work for the brands that people trust entirely or are insanely passionate about, but there aren’t many of those brands out there and most of them don’t need to advertise as much anyway.
“This is a BIGBROTHERbook.com after all !”
Um, I bet you use AIM or MSN right?
Do you know that your neighbour can simply get on your cable network and sniff your packets? They can read all your IM conversations. Both protocols are bytestreams in plain text.
Anything you send on a commercial network can be read or filtered. 95% of internet communications are unencrypted by design. Tracking cookies across multiple sites via javascript like Doubleclick is the lightest form of invasion.
Tracking across the same site is even less so.
“facebook social SPYWARE needs to stop” Group:
http://vt.faceb...3401&ref=mf
As a Facebook subscriber what is my revised role and where do I get paid in the monetization scheme? Has my motivation changed for my music reviews?
I want in
Peace,
Ed
Chris,
1. NONE OF THE ABOVE !
2. Don’t mix cookies with blatant, concious and intentional COLLECTION OF INFORMATION ABOUT… how did he put it?… ‘mind share’.
P.S. Don’t teach me how everything can be hacked, I know it better than you can imagine, I work AGAINST those people for more than a decade, many of them are in jail already.
Zuckerberg has to talk about “mindshare” because it’s one of those ethereal terms which replaces the word “results”. The fact is, advertising on SOCNETS does not work. I know, I’ve tried it. This is especially so with the savvy college student demo. They are far too smart to be fooled into becoming the unwitting pawns in this new marketing scheme which asks them, in essence, to become unpaid marketers for a particular brand. I fail to see what motivation anyone would have to share the fact that they just bought a Coke at the convenience store. Yippie!!!
Facebook’s biggest problem may in fact be success. What IF the user base actually broadcasts their brand loyalties and the news feed becomes nothing more than a ticker for Madison Avenue? I think you’ve lost the soul of the site and opened the door for the next iteration of SOCNET — a fee based site with no advertising.
If I were Zuck, I’d go to jgwentworth.com and see if I can unload some of my stock now.
AOL 2.0! Now with higher walls and a better gardener!
JGWentworth is the dream that inspires American Vision Mr Peters. And they also have $9.99 trades and no load Mutual Funds.
Facebook to me has become nothing more than an annoying street peddler. From Marketplace, Facebook Flyers, to Virtual Gifts, Facebook Apps, you name it, they’ve tried it and nothing works. Facebook users have been duped into clicking on a banner ad only to be bombarded with popups, spam and ridiculous re-directs. They’re not falling for this crap again, so someone please tell the University of Phoenix they can stop wasting their money on Facebook.
‘2. Don’t mix cookies with blatant, concious and intentional COLLECTION OF INFORMATION ABOUT… how did he put it?… ‘mind share’.’
What do you think double click is? What do you think Google does?
There’s what they will tell the public, then there’s what they actually do. They know people aren’t able to understand the innards of data collection, so they put out blanket statements.
“many of them are in jail already.”
The NSA isn’t? You should see the crazy people that work there.
“P.S. Don’t teach me how everything can be hacked”
We haven’t moved towards secure information exchange on the internet for a reason. There’s a reason stuff is still in plain text and easily filterable at any level on the iproute.
Tracking advertiser references across a single website is hardly an invasion of privacy.
Collecting personal information is. Ethics play a large roll in this, because there aren’t really laws that govern this type of thing. You really have to be comfortable logging on and submitting information to Facebook because there is nothing really holding them back from using the data you send to them in any way they want to.
Most people don’t sit back and think about this. They’d rather not do so. That’s them, that’s their due diligence. If they ignore it, it’s on them.
Is it just me or do I not want my Facebook feed filled with alerts every time someone clicks on something. I could careless about a brand trying to target something at me. How about unclutter my Facebook. I think what will happen is that with all this ad’s coming at people left and right in Facebook people will just get annoyed.
@32:
Exactly. People already make recommendations. Trusted recommendations are driven by satisfying products. To make that activity easier or controlled by advertisers is diluting the value of it and people will just find a more unambiguous way to make trusted recommendations.
This isn’t going to change the world. It’ll just make Facebook more noisy until something else comes along where the commercialism isn’t in the way of what people are really there to do. Nothing is free, but a social network with more modest ambitions might be the thing that could beat Facebook. The lengths Facebook has to go to support its perceived value is diminishing its core usefulness. That’s a bad sign, no?
The Project Beacon group on Facebook
http://stonybro...?gid=7278541402
Facebook won’t even give out case studies on how their advertising has worked for a company. I’ve requested information from them and they don’t have those figures. The campaign I’ve run on Facebook have been waste of money with no conversion rates. We’ve even looked into the sponsored group but $50,000 or more just doesn’t seem worth it to me without some evidence that it’s actually going to be beneficial.
I don’t know what to think about this announcement.
On one hand you have a platform that is heavily concentrated with young people (high school to college). On the other hand you have an announcement that has so many buzz words without much substance.
I guess if you are an advertiser targeting folks between 18 to 22 this is good news.
examples,
Taco Bell
1) Music
2) T-Mobile Fav5 accounts
3) Ringtones
4) New and Used Text Books
5) IPTV – could be huge here re-runs of “I Dream of Genie and Hogans Heroes”…. for those who smoke pot “”Night of the Living Dead”
6) Chevy Camaro
7) Ford Mustang Convertible
9) Jack in the Box – Late Night Drive Thru coupons
10) Schaefer or Keystone Beer
11) Blondies Pizza coupons (yum, in Berkeley)
Chris,
You didn’t understand my point, sorry to say that and I apologize for the heated language if that was the cause.
HE WANTS TO INTERVIENE IN A PUBLIC SPEECH! Think about it! In a big way!
He wants to sniff public speech, he wants to trade this stinking intelligence for big buck and people are supposed not to notice, right? No! Wrong.
It’s a fundamental breach of TRUST. Also, as to public speech – it’s worth a separate review whether it violates 5-th amendment. It’s America ! It’s not a asian despoty, remember? This snotty f…ck should be reminded just that.
Mike #44. Give me your $50k instead I’ll show you better results.
We spent money on facebook as well, we have a 0% clickthru rate in a very highly targeted demo in just one particular city. What a waste of time and money.
Even Val Pak gets better results among young people!
i think facebook could make more money through blackmail: “pay us $2billion US or we let zuckerberg make another speech”
“It’s a fundamental breach of TRUST. Also, as to public speech – it’s worth a separate review whether it violates 5-th amendment. It’s America ! It’s not a asian despoty, remember? This snotty f…ck should be reminded just that.”
I hate to say this, you know those contracts base jumpers have to sign that say the company doing the jumping off the bridge are not responsible should you DIE HORRIBLY —(see I can use caps too, whoohoo!)
https://registe...k.com/terms.php
” By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. ”
Yeah, you jumped off the bridge buddy. We also have an extensive TOS, and our new project will have an even more extensive TOS. They ALL have extensive TOS’s and they all use the data for targeted advertising in one way or another.
What pisses me off is that they are taking the same old crap from 10 years ago and rebranding it as something new. It’s NOT NEW, and you’re NOT a REVOLUTIONARY, you’re a little PUNK just like the bastard Jobs boy.
Thank you good night, I am done here.
#35
What, you think users are anything more than a tool for Facebook to use to make money?