Facebook has officially announced the launching of its new advertising system, the oh-so-cleverly-named Facebook Ads. This system is the beginning of what is being dubbed “social advertising” – targeted ads based on social network users’ personal information, activities, and interests. This doesn’t apply solely to Facebook activity, though. Facebook Ads has partnered with several companies to track users’ on- and off-site activity.
Here are the three divisions of Facebook Ads:
1. Social Ads – Ads will be targeted at users using their personal information, including gender, location, work history, political views, stated interests and activities, etc.
2. Beacon – Companies allow users the option to include activity on their sites in their Facebook news feed. For example, if a user is selling or bidding on an item on eBay, or puts a movie in his/her Blockbuster.com queue, that user has the option of including this information on his/her Facebook news feed. This effectively makes users product endorsers, and provides companies with personal, word-of-mouth-style recommendations for their products, but on a much broader scale.
3. Insight – Facebook will share data with companies about what kind of demographic their ads are reaching. This step supposedly doesn’t include personally identifiable information, just broad statistics (e.g. – more people of a certain age group tend to click on Coca Cola ads, so they will adjust their ad strategy to compensate).
Companies will also be able to set up their own profile pages on Facebook, allowing users to join groups, install viral apps, etc. All of this activity will of course be included in news feeds.
So what are the risks in this venture? On the one hand, users may see this as a great way to include their non-Facebook activity in their Facebook news feeds. Essentially, it allows them to use Facebook to provide even more information about what’s going on with them, what their interests are (a la “John rented Star Wars from Blockbuster.com – ‘Marathon at my house!’” or “Jane bought a ticket to Chicago from Travelocity – ‘I’m going home for Thanksgiving’”).
On the other hand, if news feed ads start reaching out-of-control spam status, the whole thing could blow up in Facebook’s – well, face. “Friends” who overuse the system or companies that overproduce viral apps could drive users away.
Facebook has promised in its blog to keep it clean and that users won’t see any more ads than they already do, they’ll just be more “relevant.” They’ve also claimed that this is the way of the future for advertising, stating that the mass media had their run but will eventually be outdated.
Check out what Facebook is offering advertisers here.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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yuwiesocial.com Says:
on November 10th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Yuwie is like myspace, but they actually PAY you to use it and refer friends. Its just starting, has less than 300,000 members, but soon it will grow as it actually pays the users. You can have a profile, webpage, and pics, vids, etc, just like myspace.
I created this webpage to explain you how Yuwie works.
yuwiesocial.com
r.yuwie.com/allenjaime
The potential being that you get paid for the people that you refer, and the people that they refer, etc.
For up to 10 levels, so in a few months that could mean MANY as the site just started recently.